"There will be terrible times in the last days..."

The news these days is quite instructive. If I were a baby Christian, I would have said “depressing”, but it is worthwhile to read the news in context of the Word of God.  Wordwide, there is great disappointment with political leaders, there is state-sponsored terror, and impunity. For the story about persecution of Christians in the picture, click on it.

People and governments are increasingly not just immoral, but amoral, without any sense of right or wrong. Even in churches, many pastors believe righteousness is a means to financial gain – to the extent that I cannot even bear the sight of so many on TV – posturing and being so theatrical, having the form, but lacking the power.

However, we have confidence and foreknowledge in that Paul warned us of what would occur in the last days, as in these words in 2 Timothy 3;

” 1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”

As we see the evil become more evil, the insatiable greed of corporations and their managers; and the growing secularity of nations, it should encourage us that Christ is coming soon. It should also inspire us towards good works which He has prepared in advance for us to do. The time is short.

God is not impressed by the nations that rage and the people who plot in vain. In fact He laughs and scoffs at them (Psalm 2) and soon will rule them with an iron scepter, dashing them to pieces like pottery.

I’ve been focusing too much on the world these days, terrorism, wickedness, impunity, corruption, greed, and too little on what God is doing. That must change. I will instead, focus on what God is doing and what He is calling me too. I will fix my heart and thoughts on things above, where Jesus is seated at the Father’s right hand. That is the wisest course. When the dust settles over His creation, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. Then we will see that it was the best decision to serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling and take refuge in Him. May you be similarly encouraged in Jesus. Amen.

John Lake

John Lake was a mightily-used man of God whose biography I love to read often.  I also greatly admire Smith Wigglesworth, another man whose life is an inspiration to modern-day Charismatics and Pentecostals.  I’m often deeply reflective as to where the anointing and tenacity of these men and others have gone in our day.

I recognize that some ministries today are moving in power, but there is much from that era that I believe we lack. I recall an account from John Lake , who while ministering in South Africa, went through an extended period where every person he prayed for and laid hands on was healed – every single person!

It is easy to think that as your local or national church goes, so goes the whole church globally. Many of us see little and thus become discouraged.  However, remember that we only ever see a small part of the fabric.  Even here in the USA, there are pockets of miracles, faith, healings and deliverances.  All over, from Kansas to California (go IHOP and Bethel!), Pennsylvania to Florida.

This is not even to speak of Chinese teens raising the dead in rural China and blind eyes being opened in Mozambique.  We must keep in mind that as in Isaiah 9:7,

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

I encourage everyone involved in the ministry of healing to read about the likes of Lake, Wigglesworth, Kathryn Kuhlman, Jack Coe, Aimee Semple-Macpherson, John Wimber, and others used mightily in faith and healing.  Their life stories will encourage you, motivate you and mobilize you in moving more effectively and determinedly in the ministry of healing.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The idea is to make people self-reliant, so we don’t have to give them aid over and over again. It is a good principle, often used in the context of aid to poor countries – teaching them to farm, to provide for themselves, so they don’t become dependent on aid.

There can even be a spiritual analogy, where we teach people how to pray for themselves or minister to others independently, so they can do so without their teacher or instructor.  Again, this is a great idea that makes us self-reliant and productive.

There is a danger though, in stretching the spiritual analogy too far.  God taught Israel in the desert, not so they could become independent, but so they would learn to depend on Him.  When He told them to go and possess the land, they balked, but later decided to go on in their own strength.  The results were predictable—defeat.

Time after time, after God gave both victories and peace, Israel would begin to believe in themselves and trust in their own strength.  Then they would face defeat again and have to repent and restore fellowship with God.  God gave Israel manna and quail not to teach them how to grow manna and trap quail, but to teach them to depend on Him for everything.

Remember the 120 in the Upper Room?  They had to wait until the Holy Spirit came on them in power and then rely on Him everyday in preaching to the ends of the earth.  Their strength was not a requirement; in fact it was an obstacle.  Paul himself says, in speaking to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:4),

4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

It is always better to go in God’s power.  That’s why He tells us in Ephesians 6:10,

“Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power”

Paul also states in 2 Corinthians 1:7-9:

8We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

Since even the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength, why would I want to go in my own strength anyway? There is no area of greater reliance on God than in the ministry of healing. In so many areas of ministry, you can ‘wing it’ without it being evident that you lack a reliance of God. Powerful prayers, great-exhortation, erudite preaching can all take place in man’s strength.

However, in healing ministry, it is immediately apparent if we have reached a place of dependence on God or not. When we do, there are healings, when we don’t, a lot of nothing will be happening.

Does this mean that dependence on God always brings healing? Sadly, no. what I mean is that, dependence on Him in he ministry of healing is necessary, but not sufficient. While simple, healing is also quite multifaceted, leading us to remember the scripture in 2 Timothy 2:15 that says:

“study to show yourselves approved of God, a work man who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth”

What this means is that the Word and the Spirit are essential for healing.  The Holy Spirit will always break yokes and heal, but without the Word, we cannot understand fully what He says.  We need to know the Word on Healing.

So, in closing, God teaches us, not become self-sufficient, but to depend on Him even more – on His Word and His Spirit.  No matter how mature we are and how much we know, we must rely on Him more and more in the ministry of miracles.  May we learn to do this.

What are these evidences? They are important issues that will resonate in the lives of some who will read them. They are ‘markers’, if you like, that can be used to measure Christian character and maturity. I personally don’t gravitate to “lists” normally, as some of my friends know, but when they are given, I’ll write. That’s the way it should be: when God says “Jump!” the correct answer is not “How high?” the correct answer is to jump with all your might.

Some of the great men of faith amuse me. Read Moses’ burning bush account in Exodus 3 again and you’ll be incredulous. God says, “I’m sending you to get my people released”… Moses says, “They won’t believe me”…God says, “Here’s a stick that turns into a snake and your hand will turn leprous when you put it into your cloak”…Moses responds: “I can’t speak well”…God replies: “Aaron will go with you and speak…” Know what Moses eventually says? “I just don’t wanna go!” Hmmm… that’s not a shining example of obedience, just in case you were wondering. Moses eventually went and did great things in God, but the burning bush episode was not a high point in his life.

OK, what are these “Nine Evidences”?

• The Tongue: It has the power of life and death (Proverbs 18:21). James declares that fresh and salt water cannot come from the same spring (James 3:11). Today, more than ever, we are too loose with our words, we are coarse, we are obscene, we say things that we don’t mean, we think lying is just being “nuanced”. Words conquer thoughts, don’t you know? What do I mean? I mean, if you have bad thoughts, the way to deal with them is to begin to speak faith-filled words. You cannot think certain thoughts while speaking different words. You remember paper-rock-scissors? Well, thoughts are paper and words are scissors. Who is the Rock? Jesus, of course… Just remember, the solution to ‘uncontrollable’ thoughts is words – His Words.
• Thought Life: This follows from the first evidence. Paul says if anything is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, think on it (Philippians 4:8). If not, don’t. A mature believer has his/her thought life more under control than an immature one. The way to achieve this is to control what you see and hear. I don’t mean just avoiding stuff—that’s only half the battle. The other, more important half is filling your mind with the Word. That includes the Bible and good, faith-filled Bible teaching. Doing one without the other is no real use.
• Relationships: are they real, genuine, or disposable? You don’t need a million Christian relationships, but you need at least a few genuine ones. And yes, it could be your wife, husband, children, parents, cousins and of course, friends. You need people to be accountable to and people who will sharpen you. Proverbs 27:7 states that “Iron sharpens iron”. Healing is also a lonely endeavor – you need people around you who will encourage you to forge on through the good times and challenging times.

OK, these are just the first three of the nine – I shall continue in my next post…

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

From my earlier post about righteousness, it is not surprising that much of the church’s interpretation of this passage is negative i.e., “Paul had a thorn (sickness) so I’m in good company if I have one too.” It is interesting that Christians seek the most negative interpretations of scripture even when these interpretations do not square up with the rest of the Word.  Let’s look at a few scriptures again:

Joshua 23:13 … “then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.”

Numbers 33:55…” ‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live.”

Matthew 7:3  “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

When Joshua talked about the ‘thorns in your sides’ and Jesus warned about the ‘plank in your eye’, we took them all to be metaphorical, not literal.  Joshua did not mean the physical, literal side of your body or your eyes.  Neither did Jesus mean a real plank in your actual eye.  These are metaphors, aren’t they?  But to give the worst possible interpretation, we have mixed the literal with the metaphorical.  So when Paul says:

there was given me a thorn in my flesh,

we translate ‘thorn’ as a metaphor for sickness but keep flesh as our actual, physical body.  Wrong! Completely inappropriate.  Jesus, in speaking of a plank in the eye meant this as a complete metaphor and so did Paul here.  He meant harassment, just as Israel was harassed, as Joshua predicted.

Why we seek out the most negative in the church is still a mystery to me.  I once thought it was our past programming from the world, but now I doubt it. Some of the most naturally optimistic people I have met have been non-Christians. As I mentioned in a previous post, the world will hold telethons to “fight the enemy, cancer” and “fight the killer, malaria“.  Many Christians, on the other hand, will wax lyrical about how God is teaching them something or blessing them by “giving them” a disease.  We have created church myth to satisfy false humility.

I’m not asking that you misinterpret the Bible to “be positive”.  The Bible is positive enough.  ‘Gospel’ actually means “good news”, not bad. Just read the gospels again and see how positive Jesus was – he healed everyone who came to Him.

I now think that much of what we believe in evangelical and even pentecostal circles is church myth or tradition – things that are just not so. May we interpret the Word correctly to see the great hope to which He has called us through His Son, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

“We are just sinners, saved by grace”….

Although it offended my spirit, I never really knew why until I decided to do a study on it. Now I understand why that phrase is not only unscriptural, but also illogical, and one of the sticks we use to beat ourselves up in the church.

The point is that I want to call myself only what God calls me. If you look throughout the entire New Testament, nowhere does God call His people sinners. He calls them righteous.  1 Peter 4:8 is a good example:

“If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

There is a name for you if you have believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That name is “righteous”. If you want other names, they are “light”, “believer”, and “temple of God”. Listen to Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14-16,

14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.

Could it be clearer than this? In our false humility, we resort to calling ourselves and each other names. Again, nowhere in the NT does God call you a sinner. There will be no sinners in heaven. People are not sinners because they sin, they are sinners because they have not come to Christ to become new (righteous) creatures. Conversely, you are not righteous because you do right things all the time, you are righteous because you are a new creation, because of Christ’s work and the transformation by the Holy Spirit.

It doesn’t matter if you add “saved by grace”. That is irrelevant, as the first part of the statement says “I am a sinner…” (present tense). You are not (present tense) a sinner. You were a sinner, but you are not one now. Why glorify that part of your life, when God does not? You are a saint. Go through all of Paul’s Epistles and see how he addresses the church. He typically begins, as follows,

Romans 1:7  To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints…

1 Corinthinans 1:2  To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy…

2 Corinthians 1:1  To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia:

Ephesians 1:1   To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus….

Philippians 1:1 To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons…

I could go on, but I hope my point is made. Why didn’t Paul say: “To all the sinners saved by grace in Ephesus…”?  You are NOT a sinner, you are a saint, you are of a holy nation, a peculiar people, a people belonging to God. Do this for yourself: study the NT closely, looking for the names God calls you. See that He calls you a child of God in 1 John 3:2

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.

John didn’t say that you would become a child of God. You are already a child of God!! That’s who you are and what you are. He calls you many other names besides, none of which is “sinner”.  The reason I’m discussing this here is that it affects your faith and your faith is important in healing.  Calling yourself (present tense) a sinner is harmful to your faith because it is a lie.  So let us grow up in Christ and stop using that harmful phrase, “I’m just a sinner, saved by grace”. It is neither humble nor true.

Actually, such a renewed focus will require three levels of prayer organization. First and foremost is a small core of intercessors who will pray for the new ministry on a daily basis. These are the most important. Due to the amounts of time they will need to spend praying individually and corporately, a pastor cannot be a full member of this group. The next level is a larger prayer group that meets regularly (perhaps weekly) and offers prayer for the healing ministry as one of their activities. Last is regular prayer in the church congregation for healing.

Back to the small core of believers, frankly, like Gideon’s 300, these are the most important – many of the miracles and healings you will get during the day will have been obtained at night by these faithful ones. Intercession is powerful and if you have members with a passion for intercession in your church, be very glad. Sadly, few of our churches feel the need for intercessors and all-night prayer has become an oddity, replaced by activity. If you are called to intercession personally, seek out the baptism of the Holy Spirit, as it will help you immensely.

The next issue that is critical in this renewal is training. Poorly trained healing workers are the best tool to drive people away from your church, never to return. They can do so much damage. If you went in to see a doctor and was told that the person seeing you was a person who “had a passion for medicine”, but had undergone no formal training, you would probably head for the exits. However, the attitude in churches seems to be to throw in folks who have a “passion for healing”. What a huge mistake we make! Workers who couldn’t rub two scriptures together or have unresolved issues are dangerous in healing ministry.

I’ll say it again; any church seeking a healing ministry must train their workers. If you cannot train your workers, get a trained person in to do it for you. I will discuss training in my next post, but some key areas are (a) Personality, including compassion (b) Communication Skills (c) Christian Character and (d) Knowledge of the Word, especially regarding healing. Over time, it is also essential that they discern their spiritual gifts.

A careful reading of the Gospels and the Book of Acts provides electrifying ideals of what healing should be. I mentioned in an earlier post that Jesus healed as a man anointed by the Holy Spirit. We know this because His healing ministry only began after the Holy Spirit descended on Him when baptized in the Jordan. We can also assume this because Jesus Himself said in John 14:12:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

I’m not sure how you read that but I read greater as meaning greater. This is the challenge that should motivate pastors and laypeople alike to strive towards the goal that Jesus set. I’ve met believers who will focus on the ‘greater’ part and say “..yes, but Jesus meant salvation, not healing, because we would lead people to salvation, which could only happen after his death and resurrection”. Then they proffer a wan smile, saying, “this is what He meant by ‘greater’”.

Fine, I think that is silly, but fine anyway. If you believe that, then strike out the second sentence and look carefully at the first. Jesus said you would do the same things as Him if you believed in Him. If you don’t accept greater miracles, at least do the same miracles that He did. However, you would really have to distort the scripture to read the first sentence as salvation, not healing.

Thus my thought is that healing ministry should be more powerful and more effective than medical science. It should meet the ideal set by Jesus. Let’s think it through. If we could do more through funding medical missions (which I love!) than through miraculous means, then we as a church are corporately not close to God’s ideal. Our inclination when sick should be to get in the car and go to church, but very few believers would. In fact, many tend to come to healing rooms and crusades only after the doctors have admitted defeat and there are no human options left.

I’m not blaming congregants, mind you. Many never heard a sermon on healing, so where would their faith come from anyway? Faith still comes …”from hearing the Word”. My prayer is that a new generation of pastors, preachers and workers of miracles would rise up to the ideals of Jesus. Do you feel the same way?