Talk Vs Power
1 Corinthians 4:20-21 20 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. 21 What do you prefer?
I read this in my morning devotion and it has been stuck in my mind. Even though verse 21 is a precursor to the rest of the verse, it made me think. “What do people really prefer?” Words, or power? Looking at the church the past 20 years it appears that “Words” dominate the season. Power seems to be absent in the church. In some churches today, if you feel a little tingle during worship you think that the power of the Holy Spirit is just rushing through the place, when 15 years earlier in the same church, the power of God was so evident, that you could almost reach out and touch it.
I was talking with a friend last night at a birthday party. We had both cut our teeth in ministry at a certain church we had both attended. We reminisced about how you had to be at this church on Sunday Nights at least an hour or more before service started to get a seat. It was generally standing room only. Sunday evenings were much more “free” in a sense because there were no time restraints. Worship was over the top. You could feel the “Glory of the Lord” in and outside the sanctuary. At times you could see it. It was like a cloud hovering over. People accepted Christ not because of what the pastor preached, but due to the presence of power in the place. No words needed to be spoken. God was there and everyone knew it. Even the people who came in off the street and did not know God knew who they were in the presence of. People were healed of sickness, set free from addictions, and totally restored. Services started at 6pm and many times we left after 10pm. Why? God was moving. Man stayed out of the way. Man did not input his own wisdom into the service. Man followed God, and His Word. This same church is just a shell of what it once was. The leadership and people currently attending this church now will tell you that it is alive and has cutting edge everything, and reaching people for Jesus, but like in Revelation 3:1, “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” They are following one of the church “models” that are out there and now they accept what used to be unacceptable. Rich Wilkerson asked on FaceBook what we thought “Status Quo” meant, well concerning today’s church, it is doing what everyone else is doing. Just getting by. Doing just what is good enough. Using man’s creation other than God’s.
What do I prefer? That’s easy. I’ll take the manifestation of God’s power any day. I have heard enough talk in church. I want to see action. Prayer brings action. Prayer lays the ground work for God to move. I was once a proponent of the best bands, fun in service, cutting edge technologies being used in services, all the things to draw people to church. It was all man’s ways. I had been influenced by other church leaders, conferences, and even seeing people come into church in large numbers, but I found how shallow the church was. Now I am not against good worship music/bands, technology, or even have a fun service, it’s all about why? Why do we do what we do? Do we want bodies to fill the seats to show that we are successful or do we do it because we have a heart after God? There’s a big difference between the two. Paul had it right. 1 Corinthians 2:4-5 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.
Jesus at Disney
Got this off of one of the daily emails I receive from “Breaking Christian News”. Jesus is alive and well and miracles happened at of all places, Disneyland. They videos of this on YouTube.
When the “Magic Kingdom” Starts Looking Like God’s Kingdom
Aimee Herd (June 23, 2009)
When a group of Christian youth visiting Disneyland pray for one young man and he’s healed instantly, many other healings and salvations suddenly break out.
Jesus made a visit to Disneyland recently (in the form of healings and salvations), according to a blog by Jason Chin on the website for Bethel Church in Redding, CA. A small group from Bethel went down to Disneyland for a day of fun, but God had much more than that planned for them. As Jason says, “It made the happiest place on Earth even happier!” Read Jason’s testimony below, and don’t miss the YouTube video (below) which was recorded while the young people prayed for others in the food court at Disneyland’s “Frontierland.”
(Thursday, June 11th) Jason Chin’s Testimony:
I went down to see my best friend, Jason Tax, in Los Angeles, just to visit for a week and hang out—and who knows what adventure the Holy Spirit might lead us into. Jay and I love to do street evangelism together. On the way down, I saw a Disneyland sign, and I remembered the times of lying on my bed dreaming with the Holy Spirit of revival inside the theme park. I thought, “Wow that would be cool if that ever happened for real.”
I had the privilege of speaking at my friend’s church on Wednesday night, and after the service, a lady asked me if I wanted a free ticket to Disneyland the following day. Yippie, Jesus. I thought, Wow! Those tickets are $94!
Jason Tax, Hanna Ford and I went to Disneyland to have a great day in the sun with the Son—and God set us up through one key miracle of a young man’s shoulder that was in a sling. We approached him and asked if we could pray for healing. Jesus instantly, completely healed his shoulder, and he removed his sling and began to test it out. He started crying from God’s goodness, and he told us how he could not raise it at all because of a fresh torn rotator cuff injury. He then started raising his arm over his head and moving it as freely as the other one. His friends explained how he is the star football player at their school and he would have had to take the entire year off from football after his scheduled surgery, so we explained the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the miracles to the group of eight or so, and they all got saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, and two of them got healed—one of scoliosis. The other had Jesus grow out his leg as his friends all looked on.
They all started freaking out, and the heavenly momentum hit and it erupted into an all-out Holy Spirit healing miracle service in the Disneyland food court for four and a half hours as groups of young people got their friends and brought them back to us for healing. They would come to us and say, “Can you heal this?” as they would point to a lump on their knee or a bad ankle. We would answer something like, “We cannot heal anything but Jesus can heal everything and that same Jesus is in you now, so everyone put your hand on this person and say, ‘Be healed in Jesus’ name! Now test it out.’” Really, that’s how we prayed: “Be healed! Now test it out.” Almost every healing was instant as the looks of shock appeared on the faces, then praise and cheers to Jesus would erupt from the crowd of youth!
Flat feet were healed as arches formed in front of everyone to witness. One girl was so scared as her friends dragged her up to us. She was almost crying from fear. We told her, “Hon, you have nothing to be afraid of. This is Jesus and He loves you very much.” She had extreme scoliosis and a dislocated thumb that was in a hand brace. She was still very much afraid so we told her, “We won’t even need to touch you because the glory is here. Just remove your brace and move your thumb around.” She did and her thumb was instantly healed. We asked her to touch her toes and then check her back out. She did and her friends lifted up the back of her shirt to check out her spine. They all screamed because it was now perfectly straight. Jesus! We asked her if she knew Jesus, and she said no. We told her it was Jesus who just healed her and asked her if she would like to know that Jesus? She said yes, so she got saved and then we explained to her about being filled with the Holy Spirit and she said she wanted Him, too! So we asked her to put her hands out in front of her and say, “Holy Spirit, come and fill me up. I give my life to You.” She started shaking under the power of God. God is soooo good!
We witnessed bone knots dissolve from knees, asthma healed, crooked knees straightened out, and eyes healed. Some protruding ribs were pulled back into the chest. Even gold dust showed up on many and three youths experienced supernatural weight loss as their once tight pants got looser and looser. Screams erupted as one man grew an inch taller while everyone looked on.
A super cool thing was how each kid got saved and then we prayed for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit and almost every kid felt a strong manifestation of the Holy Spirit like electricity, heat, tingling all over their bodies or a heavy, weighty presence.
They would then ask us questions like, “Can you make the sadness I feel leave the inside of me?” All their friends would say, “I feel that way, too,” so we started praying in large groups, commanding depression to leave them and joy to come. Kids were crying, laughing, yelling “Jesus,” saying things like, “I can’t believe this! This is way better than any ride here!” Those kids were getting set free. We prayed for healing for the first few kids only. Then we taught the youth that the same Spirit dwells in each of them, and then we watched Jesus heal through their hands! We witnessed around 120-140 healings, most of them instant and about 100 or so decisions for Christ, of which 50 or so were first-time decisions, asking Jesus to forgive them of their sins. Yea, Jesus! One young man came up to me and said, “I never knew that Jesus died for me,” and he yelled at the top of his lungs: “Jesus!”
Thoughts for Today
I was reading also in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 this morning, “1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 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. “
Today, in many churches, there is much elequence, wisdom, and persuasive words. You can doubt me, but I have seen and heard them. Pastors have reverted to “words” to draw people into their churches along with programs. Paul said he did not come with words, he came “with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” That is what is lacking in the church today. No Spirit, no power. The church has reverted to men’s words, men’s plans, men’s designs, men’s programs, everything having to do with drawing people into the church using man’s wisdom. After years of hearing words that have no depth, in churches that have no Spirit, people are leaving their church for other churches, but they are not finding what they are looking for because many churches are the same. Even the Mega-Churches are seeing this. I have never seen so much church hopping as I have seen in the past ten years or more. The last five have been unbelievable. The younger generation has said, “forget it, I am not even going to church”. Many in church leadership refuse to change and continue with their own ideas or use someone elses of how church should be, even though they are not growing spiritually or in numbers. The churches that have recognized that they are stagnant, have moved to change. People want more. God is calling His people to more. The spirit within us yearns to know God. Milk and no Spirit doesn’t do it. Paul knew, he wrote what was needed. The Spirit of God. Something that is absent today in th church. Pastor’s have told me they don’t go there, or they don’t need it, or the Spirit is over rated. Over rated. Can you believe that? They wonder why they have a revolving door in their churches, or the people are basically dead in their pews.
The church I went to prayer in, well, guess what? The church was built on the fundamentals of the Word. The Lord revealed to me in prayer that the foundation of the church was deep, and the prayers of its people was extending the foundation deeper. It was a foundation that He the Lord was going to build upon. He was going to grow it. I could see it in my mind. The early church was very fundamental in it’s structure and mission. Its foundation was deep. It grew into a power house. Maybe we should go back to that. Allow God back in, and take man out.
Starting a new revolution, using ancient ways, one church at a time. Changing the landscape, changing our world.
Youth of the Nation
I’m typing today from Christian Life School in Kenosha, WI. I am a substitute today for a creative writing class. I was talking with the five students that are left in the class, and they said that seven of their other classmates have dropped the class. They said, “why would they do that?” My response was some youth are more analytical so they are drawn to science, some have a creativity that draws them to art, music, and writing, and others are more mechanical and are drawn to working with their hands. Creative thinking really is for a smaller group, but I believe sometimes technology takes away creativity because it thinks for you. You become accustom to a computer or other piece of technology to think for you.
But looking at these youth the past so many months, I have found that they are far more connected to life than those in my generation or maybe the one after. I would imagine that this age of technology where your mind is flooded with energy coming from every angle, you must be aware of the motion that is around you at all times. My daughter can watch TV, listen to her Ipod, do homework and attempt to keep a conversation going with me all at the same time. I guess I am one of the few in my generation that finds myself doing the same thing, but I believe that the “noise” of this world is pulling us from focusing on reality and the truths of life. We seem to fill our lives up with stuff to be ever moving, but not moving with focus or relevance. Maybe when I was a teen I only looked as far as going to work, getting that next assignment finished, or wondering if I was going to that party next Friday night, but I believe because we are not plugged into our Creator, we “fill” up with stuff because when we get drawn into that quiet place, we find ourselves fearful. Well the class is done, I gotta run, finish later……..
What is Truth
John 18:38, Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?”. What is it? Today, I do not believe many know what truth is anymore. The lines between truth and untruth have been blurred. Now those lines have blurred only concerning man. When it comes to God and His Word, those lines are still present and true. They have not moved, will not move, and are the only remaining constant in the universe. I believe very soon, the lines again be moved back to where truth is truth and untruth is untruth. Why, because history shows this to be a cyclical event. Throughout the Word of God, you read where man comes to a place where he in his multitudes have reached the bottom. That which was wrong, became right, and that which was right became wrong. A total rejection of God by the masses. Then, when people were wallowing in their complete disgust of a life living out in the lusts of their hearts, God would intervene, and a revival would ensue, and man would turn himself back to God. We are very close to an intervention. The sins of our nation, and the lack of power or care in our present churches for following the Word, holiness, and loving people, I believe is bringing us to a massive move of of the Spirit of God on His people.
I saw this on Dan Ohlerking’s Blog and had to put it on mine. Ed Stetzer had a great piece on his blog: I just wrote an article for Catalyst on the dangerous trend of gaining converts to our causes without gaining converts to Christ. Here are a few paragraphs. I continue to see movements gaining traction among Christians that do not seem to have many converts. In other words, they have recruits to their cause, but few converts to Christ. And, I am concerned. I am concerned that in the name of “fixing the Church” we are not proclaiming the Church’s gospel.
… So, my Reformed friends, let’s not only read 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John (that is, John Calvin, John MacArthur, and John Piper), let’s go plant some more churches. My emerging church friends, let’s take a pause from the theological rethink and head into the neighborhood and to tell someone about Jesus. My missional friends, let’s speak of justice, but always tell others how God can be both “just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” My house church friends, let’s have community, but let’s be sure it is one focused on redemption. My Baptist friends, let’s focus more on convincing pagans than Presbyterians. And, my charismatic friends, let’s focus less on getting existing believers to speak in tongues and more on using our tongue to tell others about Jesus … If you want to convince me (and the body of Christ) to your cause, you must show me it is a better way. You must tell and show something different. You must not just protest what is, but you must show me what should be.
You need to go an read the whole article to see these excerpts in context at Catalystspace.com,
Copy of a post from Ed Stetzer. Good Stuff
The Church
Church of Acts…
I came across the first message I preached at Life Church after returning to Illinois after 8 years in Louisiana, and one part of the message struck me again. It was an excerpt from Rob Bell’s book “The Velvet Elvis” where he plainly put it that the church really needs to change its thinking about the unchurched. “The most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince people to join them. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is radically and openly displayed to people. And the only way to do this, is the church has to stop thinking about people in categories of in or out, or being good or bad, believer or non-believer, saved or unsaved. Those terms and that thought process completely go against what Jesus taught us about how to treat each other. Placing people in categories is offensive.” Rob Bell.
