Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-29-23

The followers of Christ were frightened and confused. Their Jesus had been tortured, killed, and buried. On the third day He rose from the dead. He was with them for 40 days, then left them again. He ascended bodily to Heaven. But among the words He left were two specific things. He said it was “better” that He leave them, because “One would come” who would give them each, individually, “power from on high.” None of them understood. He also told them to “wait.”

In the meantime, for the harvest commemoration called Pentecost, Jews from “every nation on earth” were gathered in Jerusalem, many with the Apostles. They waited… for what? They were confused, nervous, choosing a replacement for Judas, anxious, wondering…

… until, suddenly, in an upper room of a house where they waited, a “mighty rushing wind” blew through. On their foreheads were strange sights – “tongues as of fire” appeared on those gathered. Then (some began to remember) as Old Testament prophesies and words of John the Baptist had foretold, the men and women were “filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

So this is what they were told to wait for. Was it merely a strange occurrence, a bizarre one-time event, with incomprehensible meaning? Some people, in subsequent generations, have attempted to obscure this event, but it was crystal-clear.

This was Jesus’s Promise fulfilled. The Holy Spirit – the next manifestation of God on earth; the third member of the Trinity – had come to reside in the hearts of believers in Christ. For that day, and for the rest of humankind’s history.

Many things changed, profoundly, that Day. The fear and confusion among the Disciples evaporated. Peter, who had always been an impulsive and sometimes foolish Follower, was suddenly mature in faith and leadership. He became the head of the newly organized church.

Yes, this was the birth of the Church.

Those who had gathered from other lands likewise were filled with Truth and Power, and returned home to spread the Gospel. Members of the Twelve became missionaries who visited them, and other lands, to establish groups of believers. So the acceptance of Jesus as Savior, and His Church, spread. Before the year 70 A.D., there were even Christian fellowships as far away as England.

The second chapter of the Book of Acts recorded these events of Pentecost; and so did secular reporters of the day, and contemporary historians like Josephus. But in ancient Scripture, it had been foretold. And in the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophesy; your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.

All through the New Testament are accounts of how God subsequently poured out His gifts. St Paul listed them succinctly in his first letter to the Church at Corinth: Words of wisdom; Words of knowledge; the Gift of supernatural faith; Gifts of healing; the working of miracles; the Gift of prophecy; the ability to discern spirits; speaking in tongues; and the interpretation of tongues.

After two thousand years, these Gifts still sound strange to some people, but scarcely are stranger than Jesus, and His followers, making the blind to see; raising people from the dead; and – perhaps most audaciously – forgiving people of their sins in the Name of Jesus. Oh, that’s not for today? Then the Savior Who promised these things is a liar.

Further than that – if you might be someone to whom these things sound like fairy tales or delusional rants – I have experienced many of these Gifts. I have seen them exercised by others. I have seen healings; I have been at exorcisms; I have found myself praying over people things that I had no way of knowing – not in a trance; nothing like that, but just aware what God wanted me to share. My daughter prayed over my wife who was diagnosed with three types of cancer, somehow aware that God had healed her. Indeed the doctors found no cancers the next day. It was not my daughter’s prayer that healed, but she had an inspiration to share what God had done at that moment. That is a Gift.

Manifestations of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit – Pentecostalism; the Charismatic Movement; Holy-Ghost Revival – never died, but since around 1900 have exploded around the world. There are major denominations in America. The Underground Church in China is largely Pentecostal. There are more Pentecostals than Catholics in Africa and South America. The Assemblies of God has more adherents in Brazil than in the United States and Europe combined. Think of news stories you have recently heard of “revival” breaking out in Kentucky and elsewhere…

Readers, you might know and be already at home with many of these things. Or maybe they are foreign to you. Or are rumors you have heard; or perhaps are unknown to you. Your salvation does not depend at all on whether you accept or reject the Gifts. You might respond – or not – with ecstatic worship. There are no rules! My own “prayer language,” when exercised, is in private.

But just think about the Gifts of God He offers you through the experience of the Holy Spirit. I invite you think back on any Christmas morning, or birthday. How many wonderful gifts were given to you by your loving parents; how many times that you said… “No… not for me.”

Really?

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In the chance any of this intrigues you, please contact me and I can offer you information, and will prayerfully answer your questions.

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This is not a church service; just worship time:

Click: Cleansed / Look What the Lord Has Done

6-13-22

I’m not going to go Theological on you here. I will take a moment, however, to invite us all to consider a glaring matter (I believe to be a problem) in today’s churches.

The root of “Theology” literally is “the study of God,” so I might break my promise before I start, but I rather think in this matter we should study not God so much as contemporary worship, the practices of Western churches, and the evolution, yes, of denominations.

Simply: I think significant portions of Christendom – north of the Equator, generally, and in America especially – have sublimated important aspects of Christian doctrine. That is to say, the Church that Jesus inspired and the Apostles established.

Stick with me: Essential elements of Christianity, the accepted teaching over many centuries, and the foundational beliefs of Christians… are often ignored today. In Christian churches themselves.

Many Christians are being taught incomplete Gospels, if taught at all.

An incomplete Gospel is not the Gospel at all. Churches and their traditions and denominations used to proclaim “a full Gospel” and be dedicated to “know Christ and make Him known.” Now it is what has become convenient, or appealing, or uncomplicated. And I am not here referring to obscure debates or fine points of, say, eschatology or, you know, “how many angels can dance on the heads of pins.”

Those challenges are serious enough… and I suppose always will be. My concern actually is more basic, and can be illustrated by two recent days in the church “calendar” that are practically ignored in much of today’s church.

The first is Ascension Day. For centuries the Transfiguration of Christ – His bodily ascension to Heaven, witnessed by Disciples and accompanied by faith-heroes of the Old Testament – was a major event, celebrated by churches in a major way, observed for its major significance.

This Transfiguration of the Christ “closed the circle,” made complete His earthly Ministry. The fulfillment of a hundred various prophesies… the details of His life and many miracles performed… His suffering and sacrificial death… all were the varieties of signs and wonders that announced who He was. Of course, His miraculous victory over death, and 40 days of being seen, and preaching anew, were further signs that He was – as His followers were now believing – much greater than the prophets of old.

But Jesus’s bodily Ascension to Heaven, lifted to the clouds, welcomed by the Father… this was the final act in His ministry on earth. The Ascension confirmed, finally, that Jesus was Divine; that He was returning to the Father.

This act, this fact, was profoundly important to the early Church. And it remained a major element of teaching and creeds and church observances for centuries. Properly so.

Today (and believe me, I know and honor the pockets of exceptions) the mainstream denominations scarcely mention the event, the Day, its implications. A needless omission; a symptom of post-Modern disrespect for God Almighty and His plan for His church.

You might ask: Would clergy who undergo training, and people who build churches, really abandon the Faith??? The answer is found, sadly, many times throughout Biblical history. At one time (see Samuel II, chapter 6) the Israelites actually let the Ark of Covenant — delivered and designed by God Himself — be abandoned for three months. There is an example. (King David wanted to return it to Jerusalem, but instead consigned it to the household of Obed-Edom, appropriately, a Levite — and this, I believe, was a sign to us: “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord!”)

Even more egregious, and more widespread, is what I call the “Duine God” who is worshiped and glorified, to the extent He is, by the contemporary church. (That is, opposed to the “Triune God” – the Trinity.)

Ten days after Jesus’s Ascension, a significant promise of His was fulfilled. As the Disciples and others “waited” as Jesus commanded, “there came a rushing sound as from a mighty wind… over the heads of the assembled crowd there appeared what seemed like tongues of flame… everyone began speaking, but in languages of others, and in unknown talk that sounded like gibberish…” (My paraphrase of the account in the Book of Acts.)

Happening on Pentecost (the “Feast of Weeks” on the Jewish calendar; subsequently known as Whit Day, sometimes Whitsunday) – the events of that day gave rise to the Pentecostal experience of believers.

That Pentecost event was the birth-day of the Church. Jesus had assured the Disciples that it was “better that He leave them, because One will come with power, so they might do all things He had done.” A miracle happened that day… and has not ceased. Nine Spiritual Gifts, as listed in I Corinthians and elsewhere, came upon those people, and are still promised to believers today. They include speaking, and understanding, strange tongues, “the language of angels.” Gifts of miraculous knowledge, and wisdom, and prophetic visions; and healing.

Not all “powers” at all times to all people: they are not magic wands. But they are gifts.

And I am astonished how few Christian churches believe in them today. Or seek them. Or accept them. Or teach them. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever… and so is the equal member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit – God in us. Yet today’s churches are afraid to see the Gifts, and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, as anything but a 2000-year-old religious relic. Tragic.

Some people today claim that this experience was “emotionalism.” But things changed, forever. Peter, for instance, had been an impulsive and sometimes foolish fan of Jesus. After Pentecost he became a wise, mature, and persuasive leader. Some people today claim that the Pentecostal experience was for that moment only, to “anoint” followers. However, it did not stop. Within decades there were Christian churches as far away as England, and in short centuries, Christianity was the official faith of the Roman Empire. The power of Pentecost!

I have experienced some of the Gifts; and friends have. Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing segment of the church, and south of the Equator is overtaking Catholic and traditional Protestant denominations in numbers. Holy-Spirit Christianity is outstripping Islam in Africa (the massacres you hear about in the news are routinely of Pentecostal communities).

These “holes in the Gospel” today I see as nothing less than a religious “cancel culture” of the post-Modern age, with dead, frightened mainstream skeletons behind pulpits of social clubs and mausoleums posing as churches. Churches that deny the Trinity.

That is harsh, but I think Christians need some spiritual tables overturned in church parking lots and courtyards. Would Jesus know His church if He returned today?

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Click: Altar Call – Baptism In the Holy Spirit

11-23-20

We have just been through a presidential campaign like no other. In other breaking news, the sky is blue – that is to say, it is evident to almost everybody that this election was far from ordinary.

But I am speaking as a trained and published historian when I point out that there have been contested elections almost as bitter. The elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, for instance, had delayed results, “rotten bargains,” and probably fraudulent outcomes. In 1960, John F Kennedy’s father called his vassal, Mayor Daley of Chicago, to “discover” Democrat votes in Illinois to take that state’s electoral votes away from Republicans. On that razor’s edge, Richard Nixon lost the presidency. In 2000, the national results seemed to come down to hundreds of votes in teeter-totter Florida. After Al Gore ran to courts here and there, in 37 days he lost the presidency to George W Bush.

Those elections are only anomalies regarding the contested results. There also were campaigns of dirt, sleaze, scandal, bribery, lies, and slander… much rougher, actually, than in 2020. Washington, our sainted Founder, was treated horribly in the press, and his rival Jefferson (and his rival Hamilton) even worse – moral turpitude and such. Andrew Jackson was libeled for having killed a man and married his wife illegally (she died, partly in shame, about the time he took office). Abraham Lincoln was called a baboon, frankly throughout his presidency.

U. S. Grant’s problems with alcohol were joyously portrayed by opposing cartoonists. Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock, in the Victorian days of 1884; he admitted to the fact but was elected anyway. During that campaign, correspondence soliciting bribes written by his rival, James G Blaine, when Speaker of the House, were exposed. In 1896 Democrat candidate William Jennings Bryan was regularly depicted as a demented anarchist. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt called President William Howard Taft a “fathead” with brains “less than those of a guinea pig,” and Taft called former President Roosevelt a “dangerous egotist.”

In contrast, one might think that 2020 was beanbags.

But there has been a difference, and a serious difference. It is a difference that exposes a possibly fatal malady in our Republic; a challenge to all citizens but to Christian patriots especially.

It is not the nature of discourse that should trouble us or, as I have pointed, is that different than disgraceful, quadrennial mud-fights of the past. It is a barely redeeming aspect of American democracy that in the past, the partisan enemies have dusted themselves off and civilly conducted their business. Government by Hypocrisy.

In our times, however, peoples’ basic humanity is questioned and slandered. Platforms, motives, standards, beliefs, sincerity, honesty, and actions are not merely questioned but disbelieved and ridiculed. For what Donald Trump promised in 2016 – and mostly delivered, in itself a departure in presidential politics – his enemies considered him worthy of being destroyed. Not defeated, but destroyed.

A further departure from historical tradition is that these vicious schemes were more personal than partisan; and they began, not in the post-convention season of 2020, but the moment President Trump completed his oath of office four years ago.

It is very important – and very difficult in our contemporary news-cycle and sound-bite culture – for citizens to realize how different this situation is from any time in the American past. How profoundly poisonous. How deep-seated in origin. And how difficult it is to return from. God forbid that we have not passed the point of no return in these civic cancers.

I address Christian patriots above because we are not the only segment of society to be concerned about moral drift. Some on the other side, in fact, think they have a monopoly on morality, and that becomes an excuse for rebellion, subversion, and violence.

As Christians we are aware of Higher Morality, and the necessity of calibrating that to all of our convictions, decisions, and acts. I am outlining a political essay that would in effect ask liberals and radicals, “For four years you have tried to teach us how to treat a president with whom we disagree. Shall I now adopt your methods?” Of course that would seem to be a child’s game of tit-for-tat…

Wouldn’t it? But how should we then act? This question addresses near-term questions about ballot fraud, and long-term attitudes toward government policies on abortion, education, free speech. And more.

“Rules are made to be broken.” That is a sarcasm thrown about informally. There is more determinism than morality in the proposition, as in “mangers are hired to be fired.” But for Christians, rules – adopted or broken – are the types of formulations that are meant to be in flux; adaptable; open to comment, challenges, and change; understood to meet the exigencies of the moment.

Mature discernment, when exercised with responsible citizenship, persuades me that situations allow for rules to be broken.

“Obey the law.” Yes, render unto Caesar. …the things that are Caesar’s. Submit to authorities. Even Jesus went to jail. Disciples went to prison. If the laws, “right” or wrong, sent them there, they complied. But they opposed certain laws, and when the Holy Spirit sent an earthquake the Apostles walked out. There was no democracy in the first-century Roman Empire. There is, today, or supposed to be, in America. In a democracy you obey the law… or submit to the consequences.

Mature discernment, when exercised with responsible citizenship, persuades me, like Martin Luther and Martin Luther King alike, that unjust laws must be challenged.

“Keep the Faith.” Friends, let this become our watchword… but only the first half. An annoying aspect of Obama’s 2008 campaign was the vagueness of his slogans. “Hope.” “Change we can believe in” – changing what, exactly? And “Yes we can!” – can what? The meanings were deliberately elusive, as he gambled on a pliant, gullible electorate.

The same is a danger of “Keep the faith.” Never share that with a complete, intentional meaning. Demand of yourself: Faith in Jesus? Faith that God answers prayer? Faith to pray without ceasing? Faith that our opponents may change their hearts (as we change the laws)? Faith that God is in control?

Faith that if we are forced to go the route of civil disobedience in the next years, God, who protected those in the fiery furnace?

Faith that as we walk through the shadow of death – because we might – God will be with us?

Faith enough to pray, not only that God be on our side, but, as Lincoln maturely discerned, that we be on God’s side?

The Holy Spirit brings gifts of discernment. We can not proceed without it. Especially in these next four years.

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Music Vid: “Help Me” (For readers with hand-held devices, click or paste: )

6-15-20

These messages here, especially in the past three weeks, have evoked letters from readers who asked virtually the same questions.

How did you know I needed those words at this time in my life?

The Holy Spirit must have guided your hand. You answered questions that were eating at me lately!

I found your site by accident… but it was no accident. Your message brought tears to my eyes.

When I receive messages like this, I am reminded that this is all worthwhile. Sometimes (I hope all the time) I write by inspiration. But who reads; who is impressed of a Godly message… that is out of my hands.

Christians sometimes obsess over what impact we have. We think we have to close every deal when we share the Good News. To borrow from recent messages, that is the Holy Spirit’s job. Our job is to bear witness to the Truth. The Holy Spirit will work on peoples’ hearts.

We plant seeds. The Holy Spirit cultivates and harvests.

When I speak at Christian writers conferences I make a point of pointing to random spots in the audience, or sometimes making eye contact here and there, and encouraging the discouraged as well as the hopeful – that is, reminding every writer and aspiring writer of the consequential opportunities they have; and the responsibilities.

“Something you wrote last week might seem like it died without being noticed. But perhaps one person read it and was touched and saved the clipping. And next year might share it with a distant relative. And that relative might pass the thought along to a stranger who needs those words at that very moment. And that person might change his or her life because of that thought, which can then spread to family members and neighbors. Hundreds, or thousands, of people can find truth and beauty and salvation, all because of something you wrote, and maybe thought a failure or a waste of time.”

Or I share variations of that very plausible scenario. Or that this pertains not only to things we write, but things we might say. Or a way we acted when challenged a certain manner. Or how we reacted, maybe when we thought nobody was looking.

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us (Hebrews 12:1).

Many times I have thought of the time a small family of missionaries visited our little church when my daughter Emily was a young schoolkid. Their testimonies and stories and slideshow impressed her so much that she broke out in spontaneous prayer, and told my wife later that day that she wanted to be a missionary – that God told her she would serve in the missions field. She did. She went to Bible college; joined missions trips to Russia and Mexico and Ireland. She went to Ireland a second time to do street ministry, more training at a Bible college, and did church work.

I often think what might have happened in her life, or not happened, if she had skipped church that day, or was not open to that message from that family.

But we should all think about the pictures from life’s other side. What if that family had not been open, themselves, to the Holy Spirit’s leading? What if they had grown weary, and not visited that church that morning? What if they had checked their passion at the door, and shared a mere travelogue instead of the powerful stories of lives changed in a faraway land of hurting and needy people?…

The Bible chapter preceding the one cited above – Hebrews 11 – sometimes is called “The Hall Of Fame of Faith.” It contains a long list of the Bible’s heroes who believed, and stepped out, and persisted, and fought the good fight for God’s truths, or “ran the race” well. By the way, they did not all achieve their “goals.” But they are honored in God’s eyes, and in history, for being faithful… as witnessed by uncountable angels, the heavenly host, the “great cloud of witnesses,” and by us today.

You see, God does not require success; only obedience. The Holy Spirit takes the baton to finish our race for us.

For that reason (and as the attached music video powerfully illustrates) we need to be aware of those who watch us. Not to be paranoid, but to be encouraged! Be aware of who watch you – God; the heavenly “great cloud of witnesses”; angels; your spouse or children; your neighbors.

And, sometimes, people you will never meet.

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Click: Thank You For Giving To the Lord

6-8-20

I write this as the third part of an informal tracking of a neglected but essential part of church history – the period after Jesus’s crucifixion and death; Resurrection and 40 days of preaching and witnessing; His bodily Ascension into Heaven, confirming His divine nature; then came the day of Pentecost.

It was the promise of Pentecost – what we have come to call the Pentecostal experience – and Jesus’s careful explanation that it was good that He leave earth, because He would then send to believers the Helper, the Healer, the Comforter: One who would empower and instruct. The Holy Spirit, third manifestation, the third Person, of the Trinity. We shared how the Spirit first fell on worshipers in the upper room, how they received a strange gift of speaking in unknown languages, but understood or interpreted.

This was the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” this spiritual joy and maturity. It was not a one-day event in history. It was merely the first time.

I write this in the midst, whew, of the worldwide pandemic’s fears, afflictions, and social disruption; and in the equally chaotic riots following a police suspect’s death. And… what’s next? People are right to be unsure if not unsafe. Or vice-versa.

As a natural skeptic, I wonder whether we will look back on the shutdowns, this virus, and feel blessed, feel relieved, or feel scammed. And these riots – will we look back and see an explosion of righteousness, or a period of anarchy and looting?

I will keep to my promised theme. I can write about things we see and don’t know are true; or I can write about things we cannot see, but know are true.

Things were different, once the Holy Spirit came. Peter, for instance, had been a bumbling and impulsive disciple who denied knowing Jesus three times when things were dicey – scarcely less an offense than Judas’s betrayal. Yet after the Spirit came upon him in the upper room, Peter became the mature leader of the new church that formed, and a powerful preacher.

What happened to Peter 2000 years ago can happen to believers today, and does happen to believers today. Can you have salvation without the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit? Yes. The gifts are… extra. But who would reject gifts, especially from Almighty God? Would children at birthday parties reject gifts?

Yet, some Christians do. If God chose to express Himself in three ways, we need to remember they were equal manifestations. Jesus was all God and all man; and so is the Spirit.

This same Spirit was explained by this same Peter after he was blessed with gifts of wisdom. He recalled, and shared, the passage from Joel chapter 28 (500-800 years earlier) – And it shall come to pass… says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams…. I will pour out My Spirit in those days…

Now it became clear. “Greater is He that is within you [the Holy Spirit], than he who is in the world [Satan].”

Some Christians claim that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were only for that first crowd. But that is to doubt Jesus and limit the Father, not to mention denying the subsequent evidence. I know because I have experienced the Baptism, and I have witnessed miracles; I have received the gifts. Many people have.

Other Christians believe that sudden outbreaks of tongues, ecstatic worship, and miracles broke out in Wichita around 1900 and in a black church on Asuza Street, Los Angeles, in 1906 is where it started. And then, as we shared, Pentecostalism spread to half a billion people around the world, second only to Roman Catholicism among Christians. Not for now? How would that explain miracles, church growth, healings, and blessings over the following 2000 years?

There are accounts (described by no less a person than Theodore Roosevelt in his classic book The Winning of West) of pioneer camp-meetings and revivals where worshipers would gather for several days, overtaken by ecstatic worship and strange tongues. In the 1700s, similar responses in Philadelphia to public sermons of Charles Whitefield; Benjamin Franklin recorded these. In the 1800s, a similar reaction among lunchtime worshipers on Wall Street, of all places. The blind hymn-writer Fanny Crosby prayed in “the language of angels” only she and her Lord knew. And so forth, all before Azusa Street.

After that, however, there were spontaneous and simultaneous “eruptions” of Holy Spirit preaching, singing, worship, healings, Words of prophecy, and such, all over the world. Two decades ago I twice attended a famous such revival in Pensacola, Florida – a visiting evangelist was used by God to spark ecstatic worship that was not extinguished – 24/7, for month after month; people attracted from all over the world.

If the Holy Spirit is the equal of Jesus… but you don’t have to receive this “Spirit baptism” to enter heaven… why do some of us consider it so important? But as I implied before, if God offers a spiritual gift and we decline it, we are spiritual fools.

What are the Gifts of the Spirit? They listed several times in the New Testament. Any can be prayed for; they can be-one-time gifts – for self-edification, or ministering to a situation – or occasionally are specialized lifetime ministering gifts, for instance to evangelists with healing ministries. They are wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

As I said, I have experienced some (blessing others when needed, or to communicate with God when I felt helpless) and I have witnessed healings, emotional breakthroughs, astonishing revelations.

Listen: Christianity is nothing if not a system of faith and belief and miracles. Plain and simple. How have Christians become so blasé about a Man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, and rose from the dead? “Oh, well, that was God, 2000 years ago.” How can there be so many people who go to church (if at all) out of dull habit; who never feel joyful when “Hallelujah” is read from the same old prayer book; who have “forms of godliness, but deny the power thereof”?

They quench the Holy Spirit, embarrassed to seek… reluctant to accept gifts… afraid to exercise the power it enables.

Instead – bringing it today – Christians complain about current events in the news. They feel helpless to do anything about them. They are lost, spiritually, in these uncertain times. In this time of threats and potential disasters facing us, they might even wish for some miracles.

You know what? It is as easy to pray for miracles, as to wish for them. And you have a loving Father who has stored up gifts you can access. Why, oh why, do people neglect the third Person of the Trinity?

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Since the Pentecostal movement is spread across the world, with no one denomination or pope – the Bible is sole authority – it is joyful to see the workings of the Holy Ghost everywhere… and especially, in these day of persecution, how the Spirit empowers traditional Christians, new believers, and persecuted Christians. Here, a group of Iranians who support underground Christians churches in Iran, singing of the sweet Spirit of God.

Click: Come, Holy Spirit

6-2-20

God’s message for the time of plagues, lockdowns, economic distress, international strife, riots in the streets.

I tell you I am going to do what is best for you. This is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, to you.

We think we are going through strange times, rapidly changing events of great magnitude. Prosperity. Then suddenly the world stops spinning and millions are out of work; schools and shops are empty. The stock market breaks records; commerce is humming. Then suddenly a plague threatens to kill millions. The world’s major trading partners are at odds, then break relations; exchange deadly threats. Hong Kong, reveling in tastes of freedom… waving American flags… singing Christian hymns in the streets… brutally is suppressed and taken over by the Communists. In America, peace in (weirdly empty) streets, then suddenly major cities and towns are in violence, its (savagely crowded) streets aflame.

All within a few months; some things changing overnight.

Jerusalem once was like that. Jesus, that street preacher with a healing ministry, enters the city amidst celebrations and hosannas. Suddenly, in less than a week, He is framed, accused, jailed, tortured, sentenced, and killed. All in five days. The government is repressive, the religious leaders defensive. This Jesus is dead and His followers weep, also fearing for their lives. Earthquakes; the temple veil spontaneously rips in two; the environment is dark. Suddenly Jesus comes back to life. His broken body is perfect. Thousands see him, even skeptical Romans confirm the events.

All within a few days; some things changing overnight.

Jesus did return. He communed. He preached. He explained. People saw. People understood. People believed.

After a whirlwind 40 days – that frequent Biblical number – another change. Jesus left again… lifted up not on a cross but bodily into the heavens. From the Mount Of Olives this Ascension, as we discussed last week here, was the final, supernatural, confirmation that He was God; returning to the throne to sit at the right hand of the Father.

Father? Son? One God? Ah, the mystery of the “Godhead.” God chose to reveal Himself in three ways to His children. He could have chosen two, or two dozen. The Trinity is His choice, all God in three natures. (If we could fully understand, we would be Gods.) Like water, ice, and steam.

The third “person” of the Trinity? That is the Holy Spirit. Present and referred to in the Old Testament. But specifically promised and explained by Jesus before the Ascension. “It is best for you that I depart… The Holy Spirit cannot come until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, to you.”

Who is this Holy Ghost?

The world still asks this. The Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood, and the least accessed, member of the Trinity. When Jesus left this earth in order to send us the Holy Spirit… it is almost like disobedience that we do not welcome the Holy Spirit more, seek its wisdom and guidance and power and comfort.

Fifty days after the Resurrection, Jesus’s followers, men and women, met for the celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem. They were praying, and as recorded in the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles, something like a mighty wind came through the room. What appeared to be flames rested on peoples’ heads. They all began to speak… in unknown languages. Foreign tongues, unknown words, unbidden.

They ran to the streets. People heard; some understood; some thought they were drunk.

But “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance”; that is what was going on.

And this has been “going on” ever since.

Given the broad expanse of time, this Holy-Ghost experience that has occurred again in these last days – perhaps close to the End of Time – is also a relatively brief and crowded time. In only a century, marked from 1906, Pentecostalism counts a half-billion people around the world, second in numbers only to Roman Catholicism among Christians.

It is a movement that adheres not only to the Bible, in literal terms, but to the practices, power, mystery, ecstatic worship and closeness to Jesus, and miraculous gifts that all Christians experienced on the First Century churches.

Of those “gifts” there are nine listed in the Bible, available to us. Pentecostals (and Charismatics) seek and accept them, and they change lives. I will finish this three-part discussion in the next message – not to be as a schoolmarm lecturing about history, but to share what I have joyfully come to experience.

However, in these troubled times – these very days, these troubled and confusing and dangerous and evil days – I think the Holy Spirit holds more help, and hope, that we can know. And what better time to know that we are not alone. I will share practical Biblical truths. For times such as these, the Holy Spirit was sent to us.

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Click: Sweet, Sweet Spirit

6-15-15

Last week we shared thoughts about the anguish of suffering and illness, and the topic of God’s will regarding healing. It should not be a matter of debate; but it is. It should not be complex, but we make it so.

And we said this week we would discuss coping with the burdens that, naturally, remain when infirmities attack our bodies, our loved ones, our families. How standing strong in faith… can sometimes, still, leave us shaky when the “major” crises are past or covered. We will discuss a surprisingly little-used source of strength, little-used by even the most reverent of Christians.

And that is God.

I am preaching to myself, so I know whereof I speak.

How often do we pray, and pray for a specific result? Do we really pray – and mean – “Thy will be done”?

Do you ever pray for strength in order to go it alone, to be God’s warrior, to be an example to others? How often do you pray to just be God’s obedient servant?

Are your prayers for God to give you strength, or that God BE your strength?

What percentage of your prayers do NOT have a specific result in your request? Do you ever pray, in effect, “I don’t know, God; I am helpless; I am clueless; I trust You, in all You have, all You are, and in all You do”?

Do you remember that God manifests Himself as the Holy Spirit in order to inhabit our prayers, and bring spiritual gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and faith when we cannot summon these things ourselves? Do you remember that Jesus promised, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7)?

You will notice that most of my challenges – most of our “discussion” – has been in the form of questions. Well, life (and its recipe of burdens and grief as well as its menu of joys and hopes) consists of questions. In our personal journeys, we can have questions without answers, but for useful wisdom it is hard to appreciate the answers unless we ask informed questions.

And if life consists of questions, we know that Jesus does not only HAVE the answers. He IS the answer.

This seems like a paradox, or at least a challenge to the spiritual wisdom we are supposed to exercise. God circumvents our fervent thoughts, insights, education… even our theology? Yes. Christianity is, at its core, a counter-intuitive, upside-down, revelation of God. So it is not about what we pray, necessarily, but Who we trust.

Not what He can do, but who He is.

Not framing our desires, but knowing our needs.

Not trusting our own wisdom, or faith, but obeying Him, and trusting all His ways.

My friend Linda Evans Shepherd recently reminded us of St Isaac’s words: “The highest form of prayer is to stand silently in awe before God.” God knows all, anyway.

Christianity, where you can only stand by being on your knees.

Christianity, where rebellion leads to slavery.

Christianity, where obedience leads to freedom.

Christianity, where surrender leads to victory.

Oh, the burdens of our hearts! The desires of our souls! Too often do we pray backwards, ready with a heavenly shopping-list. Yes, we understand the momentous aspects of awful illness and tortured love affairs, of family crises and personal dilemmas. We know the reasons we pray for certain outcomes! But Martin Luther once said that Reason is the enemy of Faith, and so it is.

May God help us always to pray believing… in His wisdom, His love, His strength.

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Click: Please Be My Strength

6-8-15

Yes, I can spell; hold on. I want to address the topics of disease and sickness; and of God’s will and whether God allows infirmities – or whether He visits them upon us at times. Hot-button topics, always. I want to consider spiritual gifts, whether Divine Healing is a grace available to the contemporary church, or whether it was a “sign” to heathens and believers only in the first century.

The questions are not arcane, nor abstract. To the afflicted they can be of burning urgency. To some believers, some factions, they represent attitudes that, for all intents and purposes, define one’s faith.

My own life-experiences reflect different theological viewpoints. Rather, changing viewpoints through the years. Apart from the Theory of Evolution, about which theory I am a skeptic, my views on Divine Healing have evolved. I am persuaded that God has worked a sort of progressive revelation on my spiritual views.

I am not being flippant: I believe we always should invite God to inspire us – to have the Holy Spirit guide and inform us – as we search scripture and exercise our prayer life, our conversations with Christ. As our faith matures, we are “baby Christians” when that state is sweet and seemingly sufficient, but eventually we graduate from such mother’s milk and subsist – require – heartier spiritual food. The Bible assures us that this characterizes the life of the believer.

When I became a fervent Christian, born-again with all that implies, including multiple blessings, my wife and I were convinced about God’s invariable will to heal. We never quite ventured into “name it and claim it” territory, but if God can heal, and He answers prayer, and the fervent prayer of righteous men availeth much… healing was only a prayer away.

Right? Or a prayer hankie, which could be purchased off the TV ministry. Or a “love offering,” taken up at the preacher’s crusade, with promises of the hundredfold return, not just healing. I saw miracles. I did. A crippled leg extended; deaf ears opened. But when such things did not come, many preachers blamed the sick person’s faith, not germs or viruses or accidents or heredity or self-destructiveness or…

Eventually, I wondered why the evangelists who promised perfect health all wore glasses. Surely they were not fashion statements.

During this time my wife developed illnesses. Diabetes led to heart attacks and strokes. Celiac disease struck. She was listed for heart and kidney transplants. Her faith was never shaken, but at the point of death she received two organs. She believed that God worked a miracle through surgery, science, and doctors’ hands. Healing came. Christ’s promise of “life, and more abundantly,” she came to believe, was about more than money.

Also in her life she was healed of blindness, and, later, thyroid cancer, when the healing prayers were not as fervent, but they were cases “where the doctors can’t explain it.” Spiritual evolution: God was displaying His sovereignty, and we learned obedience.

Where once we thought that “by His stripes ye are healed,” that Jesus guaranteed Divine Healing for all because of the cross, we came to realize that we should pray as we are instructed, the burdens of our hearts; then trust and obey; and when and if healing comes, to give God the glory. By those stripes – Christ’s sacrifice, not a preacher’s sermon – He identifies with us, our fears, and, yes, our pain and infirmities.

Recently I have been acquainted with close family members and close friends with mysterious, serious, troubling afflictions. How should we pray?

Always – for healing. That is the burden of our hearts. There is NO instance in the Bible where God’s prophets, or Jesus, EVER claimed that physical affliction is from the Lord; or that disease is from God; or that sickness is sent to “test us.” Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”? Just as likely temptations or distractions as illness. So: we pray, believing.

If healing does not come… or as we desire… or as fast as we want… or at all… we trust and obey. Our puny selves, with maturing but never matured faith, when it comes down to the paths we walk, cannot even walk without God holding our hands. It should never be, “heal me that I may run away,” but “hold me close that I may walk with You.”

This understanding is not a safety-valve for those who pray and their prayers go “unanswered.” No, it is a mature exercise of faith.

Why is there sickness in the world? God does not send it. But there is sin in the world; in this broken world there is sickness and death; dangers and strife; hostile natural forces (insurance companies have a nerve calling them “acts of God”). The rain falls on the just and unjust. God does not promise that we would be free of these things – only that He would be with us, comforting us, increasing our faith, sometimes healing us, always loving us. Holding our hands.

Does God bring (or even allow) sickness in order to chastise us, keep us in line? God forbid, I say. I know that many believers (orders within the Catholic Church, for instance) believe that sorrow is a virtue and that some people are meant to suffer. I had a friend with many infirmities who memorized the entire Book of James, for its verses that seem to accept and embrace suffering.

However, it can become, it should become, our duty, when illness strikes, to turn to God, to trust Him, to ask for wisdom, to plead mercy for loved ones… all the time praying for healing, and acknowledging that He is the Lord who healeth thee. Of course. He can, and He will. Let us not forget the “Divine” component of Divine Healing. He is the God of Understanding.

And in the meantime, acknowledge that we can’t even walk without His holding our hands. In obedience classes, that would be called “heeling.”

My son-in-law Norman is going through trials of body, emotions, and his work with family and ministry. In his faith, seeking understanding, he has turned to Proverbs 3, and its following verses. Good prescriptions indeed:

3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;  In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

3:19-20 The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; By understanding He established the heavens; By His knowledge the depths were broken up, And clouds drop down the dew.

3:24-26 When you lie down, you will not be afraid; Yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet. Do not be afraid of sudden terror, Nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes; For the Lord will be your confidence, And will keep your foot from being caught.

Next week, some thoughts on how to cope with the burdens that, naturally, remain when infirmities attack our bodies, our loved ones, our families. We will discuss a surprisingly little-used source of strength.
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Click: I Can’t Even Walk Without You Holding My Hand