Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts

Monday

Reciprocity With God

The other day, I went for a walk in the woods, in “our place”: a set of trails that God & I used to spend a lot of time on together. What with the price of gas to get there, and the business of life, I haven’t been to those trails much recently; we’ve been meeting in coffee shops and back rooms instead.

When I got to the trailhead, my first words were according to tradition, “Hi Papa,” and then He broke our tradition. Instead of waiting for me to quiet my mind over the next mile, He immediately began speaking to me of reciprocity in relationships, particularly His relationship with individuals. He seemed very excited about it. I’m afraid I loved that part best: His enthusiasm is very contagious.

“My relationship with you,” He began, and I could hear Him smiling, “is reciprocal.” And He let me think on that for a bit.

I sometimes teach a model of relationships that uses a bridge as an illustration of our relationship: the stronger the bridge (the relationship) between us, the more weight that can be carried across the bridge from you to me, or from me to you, but we both have to build the bridge.

I thought of this illustration now, as He was teaching me. “That’s actually not how I relate to you.” I was getting excited with Him by now.

So He began to describe to me how He limits Himself in His relationship with me – or anyone else – based on how I approach Him. While He is always attentive towards me, if I give Him my time and attention, then He gives me His time & attention: the degree to which I experience Him is pretty much determined by how much I’m willing to invest myself in Him, in our relationship.

I wish I could capture the joy, the immediacy, the clarity that came on those trails.

He pointed out that He’s “pretty much omnipotent” and if He relates to me in His omnipotence, I’ll pop, or my brain will fry, or I’ll burn up in a puff of smoke. “No one can see My face and live,” He said to Moses, and suddenly I understand better. If He brought the infinite force of His personality to our relationship, I would crumble to dust when He showed up. That’s hard on the relationship.

It’s mercy that keeps Him at a distance from me.

And so He must limit Himself, His glory that is in His person, His personality. I pray, “Show me your glory” like Moses, and He must answer, “I cannot.”

But the limit that He puts on Himself is the limit that I set. Or to put it the other way, the more I open myself to Him, the more He opens Himself to me.

I long for His presence. I appreciate His mercy.

Friday

Practical Deliverance from Demons.

I've been discussing practical deliverance with a friend recently. It seemed appropriate to discuss it here. This approach, while effective in street ministry and casual encounters, certainly is not the only approach; there are gentler ones (I really like SOZO ministry for established relationships!).

My favorite teaching passage for deliverance is Mark 9, and Jesus is our model here, not the boys.

Some principles that work well for me:

  • Be loaded up on the glory of God before going into that battle. Since it’s hard to know when you’re going in, go ahead & stay loaded up on glory. (vs 1 – 12)
  • Don’t be surprised if the occasion is marked by crowds, disputing, amazement, hubbub and such (vs 14 – 16).
  • It’s not unusual for believers to not know what to do with demons. (v. 17-18).
  • Demons often manifest (act out) when confronted by the presence of God. (v20). Nevertheless, in His presence is the best place for them to become free (v20 – 27).
  • There are 3 pieces of information that may be helpful in finding the key to that person’s deliverance:
    1. History (v21)
    2. Symptoms (v 22)
    3. Ungodly beliefs (v24) (This was the one that Jesus picked up on in this event, and he corrected the false belief before delivering the boy. Note that it was his father’s belief that was the key.)
    4. Note that these can be learned supernaturally (through prophetic words or words of knowledge) or naturally (by conversation or observation); a combination is always helpful.
  • Rebuking and commanding are appropriate (v25). Note that
    1. a) these do not need to be loud or aggressive in either the physical or soul realms to be forceful in the spirit realm; my experience is just the opposite: the gentler my voice, the stronger my authority is on the spirit, and
    2. b) the rebuke and the command are directed at the demonic spirit; the person hosting the demon are almost uninvolved in the encounter.
  • Making a scene is to be avoided (v25) if for no other reason than to avoid embarrassing the person to whom you’re ministering.
  • Expect to see a physical reaction (possibly convulsions or something dramatic; more likely a substantial and Godly peace) in response to the exercise of real authority (v26)
  • Ministering to their physical needs comes after the deliverance (v 27 and other examples).
  • The best authority is a life characterized by prayer and fasting (v29: note that Jesus neither prayed nor fasted during this event).

The biggest issue is knowing that you have the authority in the circumstance and the demon has none when facing Jesus. In circumstances like yours – where you were dealing w/ a demon in a friend (if I understood the facts right) – then it helps to explain some of these things, at least enough to be comforting, to the person being ministered to.

Don’t be freaked: that’s the enemy’s goal: to get you to look at him instead of at Jesus. Weird voices, weird manifestations and the like are just part of the sideshow. I could tell you stories, but it would be redundant: if you’re looking at Jesus & listening to the Spirit in all of this, then the vitriol, the vomiting, levitation, or whatever, is completely irrelevant.

It would be easiest to teach this if we were ministering side by side with a demonized person; this will have to do for now. Please ask questions if you have any.

Walk in warm footsteps!

Sunday

The Failure of Christian Street Festivals

I recently attended a major Christian street festival.
I was embarrassed.
Don’t get me wrong, it was well produced; it wasn’t a two-bit “guy on a soapbox” preacher with a cheesy “sound on a stick” PA. These folks had very good bands on a real stage with a professional sound system and it really sounded good. The administration was tight: the right supplies and the right people were in the right places at the right time. It was a well done event.
Christians often get that one wrong in street festivals: we often look stupid because we can’t handle the simple tools of a basic public event. When we’re in the public eye, when we’re speaking to the community at large, we need to use the vocabulary and the technology that speaks to the community, and we need to use those tools with a basic level of competence that they can respect. It doesn’t do to speak Swahili when talking to Vietnamese neighbors, now does it?
This festival got the technology right, and that was a nice change. But they got the festival completely wrong.
Let me describe it this way: Sometimes when I have a day off, I like to relax, and sometimes “relaxing” means lying on the couch in my boxer shorts and a worn out t-shirt eating nachos and reading a paperback novel with an unshaven face. Or I may wear my grubbies, and my closest friends or my family are welcome to come to the house and hang out with me; we’ll eat chips and slurp Pepsi and talk about the game in our grubby clothes. In the privacy of my own home and with family or close friends, it’s appropriate to hang around in clothes that we wouldn’t generally wear out in society.
But when I’m going out in public (to go to the mall, to work, to a restaurant…), I try to remember to put on decent clothes. I don’t particularly like to dress up, so I may wear Levis and a t-shirt without holes, or if my bride and I am doing something together, I’ll probably wear a button-up shirt with Dockers, and real shoes. I really don’t feel comfortable in public in my skivvies; in fact, if I showed up in the grocery store in my boxers, I’d embarrass both myself and anyone who saw me.
But that’s exactly what most Christian festivals do. We the church are in public, but we’re dressed for the casual environment of our homes. We’re in public in our skivvies.
What do I mean?
The bands that come out of our churches pretty much always play worship music; that’s all they (we) know. The world doesn’t “get” worship music. That’s for ourselves in privacy, not for public display. In fact worship is supposed to be all about intimacy, and intimacy doesn’t really belong in public.
Often enough, we have “intercessors” scattered around the park or plaza where we are. I don’t know how to say this any way but blunt: intercessors are weird. They accomplish miracles, and I’ll be the first in line to ask these weird brethren and sisteren to slap hands on me and pray, but that will be in private, away from the public eye! Come on, have at it, but do it in private! Waving our hands and yelling weird stuff to an invisible God is going to get in the way of anyone outside the cultural clique of the Pentecostal church.
Worst of all, when we speak to the crowds – when we do that thing we call “preaching the gospel” –we’re speaking in a whole other language. We shout about being “washed in the blood” and “repenting” and “worship.” Even people who deplore “Christianese” very often use it when they preach; I suppose it’s nerves. We’re communicating the most valuable information in the universe, and we might as well be speaking Swahili. I can’t help but think that it’s a complete waste of time. No, it’s worse: it confirms the world’s judgment of the Church: we’re out of touch, we’re an irrelevant culture, like Mennonites or Hasidic Jews: meaningful only to ourselves. We assure them that there’s no reason to listen to the Church.
Our public gatherings are increasingly irrelevant to a world that is growing more distant from their Christian roots. It reminds me of fat guys in their tighty-whities in the grocery store: Ewww! I did not want to see that!
On the other hand, I can see two different kinds of public gatherings that could have real legitimacy:
The first is where we the church get together to do church business, and we acknowledge publicly that we’re not even attempting to talk to the people on the outside. Maybe we need to repent for something, or make prophetic declarations or whatever. That’s fine as long as we acknowledge that this is something private: “You’re welcome to watch if you want, but this isn’t about you; this is about us.” That, from my perspective, is occasionally appropriate. It’s like newlyweds kissing in public: if you stop and watch, it might be embarrassing, but we understand that newlyweds do that kind of stuff, and it’s OK.
On the other hand, if we’re going to try to communicate with the world, we need to speak in their language. Worship probably isn’t the right music; we need to learn how to sing about joy or friendship or love and maybe include stuff about how God thinks about us, and we need good musicians. We need to sing to the people, which is exactly opposite of a worship service where we’re trying to lead their singing to a God they may not [yet] know.
By all means, have intercessors at the street festival! But if they can’t act “normal” (defined as “not drawing attention to themselves”), then keep them in a dark room, out of the public eye. Open the door every once in a while and throw in fresh meat to keep them going, but don’t show them to a world we’re trying to communicate to; they won’t understand, and they don’t need to.
And for Heaven’s sake, please can we learn to speak English? The drunks passing the bottle on the other side of the meadow don’t understand “the blood” or “the Lord told me” or “get saved.” We’re speaking Cantonese among people who only understand French.
I am not, by the way, trying to dismiss power evangelism. I understand that people who experience the power of God are far more likely to listen to an explanation – in English – of why they’re suddenly shaking or why their back doesn’t hurt for the first time in years. But do it in a way that works for them, not for you.
Yeah, there are the odd exceptions, when God clearly directs. He told Ezekiel to wander around nude for a year and more: God’s as weird as His intercessors sometimes. But let’s not do the naked thing – literally or metaphorically – unless He clearly instructs us to. Gets a mite drafty in the winter.
This festival that provoked this rant broke almost every rule: the worship was great for the members of the Christian clique; the intercessors moaned and shook and shouted; the prayers prayed from the stage were thick with frightening shrieks and shouts and the brief “gospel message” was indecipherable, except to the “blood bought Saints of the Lamb, hallelujah, bless God!” If this had been behind closed doors, it would have been a fun time. For the blood-bought believers anyway
One old guy watching from the trees summed it up pretty well as he set his joint down long enough to put on headphones to drown out the preacher: “Are you with these wacko’s? I just don’t get why they’re here wrecking our park like this!”
And that’s all we did. We were in public in our underwear, talking to the passers by in our own made-up language. The onlookers saw and were embarrassed for us.
I wept for the loss of another opportunity to speak to the community.

Friday

Covenant And Control

The Bible is full of examples of covenants: 314 times in one translation. In fact, the Book itself is divided into two Covenants, and the two Testaments that describe them: Old and New.

In the church today, we use the term “covenant” sometimes (in some circles more than others) to describe our relationship between individuals, and between individual congregants and the congregation of which they are members.

Covenant is an agreement, at a heart level, to walk together. Biblical covenants are divided into a small handful of standard models: a marriage covenant, various covenants between God & His people, covenants between a king and his people, and specific covenants for a specific task. Biblically, covenant exists primarily between God and man, or between man and man.

In fact, the only place where an individual makes a covenant with a group is for rulership (anointing a king), and that does not have a NT parallel.

So when I join myself with a congregation, I can make a covenant with them according to one of these models; I can submit myself to their pastor to rule me as a king (probably inappropriate in the days of “the New Covenant”), or I can forge a covenant with individuals in the congregation (including the pastor), but there doesn’t seem to be any Biblical model for a covenant between me and a congregation, between an individual and an organization or a group. On the other hand, apart from the “church of the city,” the individual congregation is not a Biblical concept, so it makes sense that there is not a Biblical model for a covenant with a less-than-Biblical concept of a congregation.

In some ways, we treat our churches like we treat our favorite sports teams: we want ours to be “better” than the others, and we are offended to one degree or another when someone leaves our workplace, our favorite team, our church, to join with another “team” across town (or in the case of pro sports, across the country). We whine about free agency in pro sports because it encourages players to leave “my team” to join another team that more aligns with their goals (usually financial goals). When someone leaves my church to join another one, we talk behind their back. I know one church: when one family left his church to join with another, the pastor of the church they were leaving called up the pastor of the church they went to and demanded to know why he allowed that to happen!

We apparently feel we own them. Honestly, while I feel some sense of ownership towards the Seattle Seahawks, I don’t really own them. When they traded Percy Hawkins away a few months ago, some of us took that personally and indignantly. And that attitude is encouraged by sports pages and by the NFL, but the reality is that I’m not even a part owner: the owner continues to be billionaire Paul Allen, and he doesn’t answer to me! The real issue – if I’m a Seahawks fan – is that I miss his receptions, and that will be true whether I’m a Seahawks’ fan or the head coach.

My friend, and covenant partner, Todd recently explained to several of us in our church that he has been feeling God’s call to Mike’s church on the other end of town. I will really miss him: he’s come to mean a lot to me, and I have loved watching God work in Todd’s life. But I don’t have any more right to hold on to Todd than I do to Percy Hawkins: I’m not the owner or master of either, and that’s true whether I’m just another “member” or the “head coach.” God is Todd’s owner, and if He’s really calling Todd to cross pollinate with Mike’s church, then I am responsible to be excited for both of them!

We’ve developed this mentality that “my church” has some level of ownership of me: that if I leave this congregation for that congregation, somehow I’m being disloyal, to which, I say, “Balderdash!”

Sure, it’s possible that someone leaving my church is flaking on God and on me, that he’s just decided to forget his friends and become self-centered and find something that makes him feel happier. People change churches for those reasons and others all the time in this town, but those don’t count: these “shuffling sheep” probably weren’t ever “a part of” in their past church, and they won’t be significant contributors in the new one; don’t worry about them.

One day, God may bring Todd back to “my” church. But ultimately, God is the one who said “I will build My Church and the gates of hell will not stand against it.” Todd’s trade may have been orchestrated for Todd’s good, or for Mike’s, or for the good of others in that congregation; He probably does not orchestrate Todd’s life for my convenience.

There are two issues here: covenant and control. If I’m in a covenant relationship with Todd, then it doesn’t matter if he’s attending this church, or the one across town: we have a commitment to each other that transcends issues like “this makes me feel better.” But if I try to control Todd’s choices – whether I’m his pastor or just another member of the congregation – then I’ve moved out of covenant relationship into a controlling relationship, and that would be a serious problem.


Soul Ties

I’m convinced that one of the weapons in the realm of spiritual things – both for good and for trouble – is the issue of soul ties. As usual, this weapon was invented by God, was designed by God, and was absconded by the enemy.

Soul ties are pretty complicated to explain: it’s when two people’s souls are tied together. Please indulge me for a moment.

Soul ties start in the beginning. “In the beginning, God…,” and God is Father, son and Holy Spirit who are tied together. Shortly after that, he shared it with us: “…and they shall become one flesh.” Adam and Eve, when they came together, were connected by God, and were one person, in one of those strange, you-can’t-see-it way.

And God had a plan for soul ties:

Malachi 2:15 But did He not make them one, Having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring.

So God’s plan for tying souls together is to create godly offspring: to make more kids. Kids like himself.

So the enemy hijacked the plan:

Corinthians 6:16-17 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.”

The enemy takes the same link between people, and he’s bringing his own children from the union. He’s using sex to tie people together in slavery.

Soul ties exist between guys who work together sometimes.

1 Samuel 18:1: Now when he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David , and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

Here’s a soul tie that appears to be a good one, and it has nothing to do with sex. It’s a couple of guys working together in an authority-based environment (in this case, the army). You can be tied with your boss, or with an employee, or with a pastor or a teacher.

Philippians 2:2 fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

Paul talks about unity among Christians brings us to the place “of one mind.” This doesn’t mean we agree on stuff; that’s the phrase before, “of one accord.” There’s a tying of souls that happens when we are in unity.

OK. Enough background.

I believe that there are a bunch of inappropriate soul ties among believers. We build relationships in the church that we’re serving – we build soul ties – and then we move on to another church. We build relationships – some of them become soul ties – and then we move. We have soul ties from our pre-Christian days and from relationships since then.

Many years ago, I had a soul tie with a very weird friend; after a while, we drifted apart. Later, I got married, and years later, my bride & I learned about soul ties. One night, ten years after I’d last seen my weird friend, my wife & I were in someone’s guest room, sleeping in twin beds across the room from each other. I couldn’t sleep, so I was thinking and praying, and God showed me the soul tie with my weird friend and told me to renounce it. Beneath my breath, inaudibly, I renounced the soul tie from that relationship. Instantly, my wife – with whom I have a wonderful soul tie – woke up, sat up in bed, and blurted, “What was that? Something just lifted off of me! What was it?”

So here's what it is:

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

God has given us a weapon to divide the soul, to divide my soul from the soul of my weird friend. The soul tie that I had with them clearly affected my wife through the soul tie I had with her. God has given you and me a tool to cut the ties that should be cut and to leave the ties that should be left.

And every soul tie, whether active or not, is a channel that brings stuff into your soul from somebody else’s soul. It’s like we have sixty-eleven IV tubes plugged into our arms, our legs, into every vein on our body; and every IV tube has stuff pouring into our lives from sixty-eleven different sources, with different motives, with different kinds of resources to pour into us. Some of them are fine. One or two may be good, but the majority are filling us with garbage.

So many of us in the Body of Christ have dozens of soul ties that need to be broken off. Let me encourage you to find some folks to walk with you through the process of cutting the ties that bind you.

Saturday

Naked in the Streets

Nakedness isn’t about what I have. It’s about what I don’t have.

When I’m naked, as in “naked and unashamed,” I am without clothes. If I’m using “naked” as a metaphor – and I am – then I’m writing the absence of the things for which “being clothed” is a metaphor. I’m also writing about the absence of the things for which “being armored” is a metaphor.

Some time ago, God showed me a series of weird pictures about self protection. Clothes are a layer of protection, though not generally from great big bad things. A t-shirt and shorts protect me from a cool breeze, from embarrassment, from abrasions and scrapes.

Now think of wearing a layer of heavier clothes: more protection, right?

Beyond that, if I’m wearing body armor, then I’m probably planning on going in harm’s way, to places where I need protection from greater weapons and greater attack than a t-shirt will provide. (Either that, or I’m trying to impress the ladies, and that’s not part of today’s conversation.)

The image I saw was actually from the ‘70s movie Rollerball: where armored men played a testosterone-charged sport with armor and spikes (I told you it was weird!). In spite of the armor, it was a remarkably bloody sport.

The next picture was modern soldiers in an Abrams M1 tank: monster gun on top, monster engine in the back, several inches of armor protecting those inside. Did you know that there are weapons specifically engineered to successfully penetrate that much armor?

This is the way He presented it to me: no matter how well armored I am, there’s always a weapon that’s powerful enough to penetrate the armor. If I’m wearing a t -shirt, then my armor can be pierced when I trip and skin my knee, or by a stray blackberry bramble. On the other hand, if my armor is in the form of an Abrams tank, then it takes an armor-piercing shell or a larger-than-average land mine to penetrate my armor.

It’s true that were I to wear the ugly Rollerball armor or the thick steel of an Abrams tank, then I’m pretty effectively protected from skinned knees and blackberry brambles. I’m also protected from machine guns, hand grenades, and drunk drivers.

So which looks like the more effective armor? First glance rather looks like the heavier the armor, the more I’m protected doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too.

And then He pointed out that I can easily survive a skinned knee; and when my t-shirt “armor” is penetrated by a blackberry bramble, sure it hurts a little, and I bleed a tiny bit, but then I go about my day. I don’t venture into land mines or armor piercing shells, because I know that the armor that I’m wearing – the t-shirt that I’m wearing – is completely insufficient of itself to protect me from that level of warfare.

On the other hand, if my armor is thick like the steel of a tank, then when (not if) the armor is pierced, I will be destroyed: I’ll be completely dead. But think about this: if there are enemies in the neighborhood that have armor piercing shells, they’re looking for a tank to shoot at. They’ll never waste those shells on a guy in shorts and a t-shirt.

In other words, the strength of my defenses will to some degree determine the strength of the attack that comes against me. And at some point, an attack will get through my personal defenses. And then what will I do?

So which is the safer place: when I’m well protected behind several inches of steel? Or when I’m wandering around in out-of-fashion gym shorts and a worn-out T-shirt?

There is an application, of course, about walking before God with our defenses down. When we armor ourselves to keep the bad guys out, we keep the good guys out, too. Our armor may be our self-sufficiency, our pride, an unwillingness to let people speak into our lives, or it may be fear of trying something new: it’s anything that protects us from the people around us; it’s anything that keeps from being “members of one another.”

Those defenses – that personal armor – has two problems: first, it seems that people with a strong defense attract stronger attacks. And second, while it keeps out things that can make me hurt, it also keeps out things that can make me better, like my brothers and sisters in Christ, or the presence of a living God.

Now let me clarify: I am not talking about the spiritual armor of Ephesians 6. I’m talking about my own armor, my own defenses. I absolutely need God’s armor, because it’s the only thing that actually cannot be overcome; there is no weapon that is forged against me that can prevail against His armor protecting me, and His armor doesn’t keep Him out of my life.

But in regards to my own defenses, the less I have, the better. Ideally, I’ll walk before God “naked and unashamed” like Adam did. Ideally, I’ll walk with “naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” I’ll live with my life open and uncovered from the eyes of the world. Naked (uh… that’s metaphorical, remember) in the streets.

But doesn’t that leave me open to attack? to being hurt by stupid people or stupid choices?

Well, yes, actually it does, all that and more: I can be wounded by stupid people, by evil people, and I can be wounded by good people in a moment of weakness, too. But the solution isn’t to develop stronger defenses. It’s to be as defenseless – in ourselves – as possible, to take the hits and be wounded, and then to learn to be healed quickly and effectively.

So I am encouraging us to be – spiritually, not physically, of course – naked in the streets: without the defenses of a hard heart, of a manipulative soul: to be open and transparent before God and before our fellow man, and to learn to heal quickly from the wounds that do come our way.

Tuesday

Go! Preach! Heal!

I’ve been studying the Bible for many years, and I’ve come to a conclusion: Jesus is a pretty good role model. For example, I’ve been watching Him in His ministry, and listening (so to speak) as He instructs His followers, and I’m thinking, “Hey, I’m a follower. Maybe I’d better pay attention!”
 
For instance, at the end of Matthew 9 we have a description of how Jesus did ministry, and if I want to be like Him, then I ought to do ministry the same way. And then in the beginning of Matthew 10, He instructs the Boys (aka “the apostles”) on how to do ministry. I’m thankful that He’s not a hypocrite: He teaches them to do the same things that He did. And when you boil it all down, it’s actually not real complicated.
 
Matthew 9:35: Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
 
So the essence of Jesus’ ministry was pretty simple: Go, Preach, Heal.
 
Matthew 10:6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 And as you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' 8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.
 
And His instructions to the Boys were pretty much the same: Go, Preach, Heal. He added some details about what to preach (“The kingdom is at hand”) and how to heal (cleanse lepers, raise the dead, etc…).
 
Even the Great Commission focuses on the same things.
 
Mark 16:15 And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; 18 they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."
 
All of my responsibilities as a Christian fall into two camps: who I am and what I do. And in the “what I do” category, I have only three things: go, preach, heal.
 
I look at that list, and it scares me. I think: “Go. I can do that. Preach. I can do that.” And then I come to the last one: “Heal. I can’t do that.”
 
That’s wrong on a couple of levels. First it betrays a fundamental heresy in my understanding of the gospel: the gospel requires the supernatural. The presentation of the gospel that Jesus understood involves signs and wonders. It involves people throwing down their crutches, and dead guys climbing out of their coffins and surgeons looking at x-rays and scratching their heads and demons being chased out of people. That’s part of the gospel!
 
I’m thinking that a five minute presentation of “the Four Laws” is insufficient. That’s what brought most of my generation to Christ (maybe that’s our problem!).Someone who knows about these things pointed out to me that pretty much every time in the gospels that we see Jesus teaching or preaching, we probably see him healing the sick as well: a powerless gospel is not the gospel!
 
But that leads me to my second problem: I don’t do so good at healing people. I can’t really do that. And for long seasons of my life, I gave up trying. This is where my second major error happens. Sure, I can’t heal people without divine assistance. But what on earth makes me think I can do the rest of it on my own?
 
The whole gospel is – at its core – supernatural. It involves at the very least a transformation from death to life, and if you believe the Bible, then there’s a party in heaven when that happens, because something supernatural happened! So what makes me think I can preach without His divine impartation on me? What makes me think I can even go as a representative of Heaven except that He commissions me, He sends me, He goes with me? This is not a place where a “Please bless my words” prayer will work. I need power as desperately in my going and in my preaching as I do in my healing the sick and raising the dead.
 
And just because I can’t do it is no excuse. I still need to heal the sick and raise the dead.
 
So ultimately, my problem is that I don’t believe the Bible: I haven’t recognized the necessity of the supernatural, so I’ve left the healing part out, and then I’ve tried to do the rest of it pretty much on my own.
 
I think I have a lot to learn!
 
Go! Preach! Heal!
 

 


Sunday

The Gospel According to Zelda

My kids are experts at videogames, as are their peers. I don’t know anyone of my generation that plays the kind of games that the teenagers do, so I took on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. My daughter is my tour guide through Zelda’s lands, and she coaches my battles with the bosses, but she still thinks it’s strange that her fifty-something dad is playing Zelda.

I’m playing the game for several reasons, but I think God has other reasons. For me, I want to have fun, yes, but more than that, I want to understand the mindset of the games because it influences their culture and generation: I want to understand that influence; after all, that generation is already assuming the leadership of the Church in North America.

I’ve been learning some really interesting life lessons from video games. Zelda, at least, encourages values like teamwork, curiosity, persistence, loyalty. But did you know that Zelda is an excellent training tool for learning about spiritual warfare? I was stunned!

Think about it: these games – Zelda included – are all about moving into a new territory, overcoming the enemy in those places, learning lessons, discovering treasures, and finding weapons in the new territory, taking out the big boss (the stronghold), and then finally occupying the territory. Along the way, we get shot at, we overcome enemies; if we fail the test, then we go back to the beginning of the level (“Game Over”) and we try again. If we succeed, then (usually) we’re given back our “life points” (we’re healed) and we emerge a more formidable warrior.

That strikes me as a pretty good picture of the real world, or at least one aspect of the real world: As we grow, God brings us into new territory – like He did with the Israelites in Exodus, but the new territory has not been pre-conquered for us.

Our job – like in Zelda – is to run around discovering what is waiting for us in the new territory: what opportunities, what weapons, what enemies, what treasures. We capture the treasures, pick up and learn the weapons, overcome the enemies, and grow in experience and strength through the whole experience. Eventually we confront a substantial enemy (the “big boss” of the level) and it takes everything we have learned and every weapon we’ve found to overcome him, but when we do, his plunder is ours, his territory is now ours, and we are more formidable than we’ve ever been.

When Israel had conquered Canaan, they suddenly had a homeland for themselves that was among the richest in the world. When we conquer the enemies and landmines in the territory that God gives us, we have new wisdom, new strength, new influence. Obstacles and temptations that would challenge and threaten us are suddenly insignificant. Life blooms around us, and people and ministries are strengthened by our presence in their lives. It takes everything we have, but the reward is worth the cost!

Besides, we have the Holy Spirit to guide us – like my daughter is doing for me – to help us find the enemies, to show us the weapons and the treasure caches, to guide us along the way. We can do this!

Missing Jesus at Bethesda

This is an interesting story:

John 5:2-9: Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. 3 In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. 4 For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water , was made well of whatever disease he had. 5 Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” 9 And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.

It seems that there were a bunch of needy folks there, enough that John called them “a great multitude.” And their need was substantial! They were sick, blind, lame, paralyzed. That strikes me as substantially needy! So we have a great multitude of people who were greatly needy. Then in walks Jesus.

This is going to be good: we have the Son of God, the Healer, the Great Physician Himself walking in among a crowd of desperately sick people. We would expect to see hundreds of healings, right, and dozens of people repenting from sin. A great revival is going to break out: we have the need, and the presence of the Son of God is there? What could be better?

But out of that multitude, only one person was healed.

I’m stuck by that: the normal pattern is the other way around: everybody who comes to Jesus with a need always had their need met. They got healed, delivered, even fed! But not this time.

I know dozens of people like that: they have huge needs. Some of them have prophetic words promising a healing or promising that Jesus will meet their need. And Jesus is there, or rather there they are in His presence. It’s the same situation: Needy people and Jesus is in the midst of them.

And one or two get healed, get their miracle, but most of the people don’t. And often, I’m one of the ones who don’t.

There’s a verse in Proverbs that talks about this:

Proverbs 13:12: Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

So we have people hoping for a healing, not being healed. We have people with huge needs, and even huge promises of God’s provision. But the hope, the longing, remains unfulfilled, and heart sickness sets in. Now the physical brokenness is accompanied by a brokenness of soul.

I see a principle: Being needy in the presence of God doesn’t change anything. Let me say it another way: making my needs known in God’s presence doesn’t change anything!

That’s not heresy, you know. It’s actually an accurate description of hundreds, maybe thousands of people in the Church.

And, I’m becoming convinced, there’s a reason: Here in the crowd, at the pool of Bethesda, nobody brought their need to Jesus. Jesus seeks one man out – I think he had a grandma praying and Jesus was answering her prayers when she sought him out – and even then, Jesus has to drag it out of the guy: “Do you want to be healed?” The guy replies in such a way as to communicate “yes” (he takes a lot longer to say it), and Jesus heals him.

So what’s going on? Unfortunately it’s simple: people were needy in Jesus’ presence, but nobody brought their need to Him. Nobody asked Him for anything. Here they are – here we are: paralyzed or blind or hopeless in one way or another, and the almighty Son of God is in our midst, but nobody is asking Him for anything. Nobody actually brings their needs to Him.

Some of the people who have unmet needs, who have a heart growing sick, have been in God’s presence with their needs, and they’ve talked about their needs in His presence, they’ve taken their needs out, they’ve taken their sick heart out and looked at it in His presence, but they haven’t actually captured His attention. They (we) haven’t brought the need to Him in such a way that His attention is brought to our place of need.

Being needy isn’t enough. Being needy in His presence isn’t enough. We need to ask. We need to bring our need to Him, and we need to leave it with Him. If we take it back then it’s ours again, and we don’t want that.

That’s hard to hear and it’s hard to say. Sometimes the very act of looking at the wound in our heart, the disappointment, the heart sickness of never having this need met is so painful that it’s a terrifying and exposing experience just looking at the wound, whether in the body or in the soul.

Bill Johnson said something fascinating once, when he was talking with a group of intercessors. “if we come away from our prayer time still burdened by the same things that were heavy on us when we started, then we weren’t praying. We were whining. There’s a difference.”

I’ve done that before. I’ve brought my need out and looked at it, talked about it, wished things were different, and some of the times that I’ve done that, I’ve done it in God’s presence. But that isn’t praying. That was whining. I brought out my need, but I never released it to Him.

I’ve done it in worship, too: I’ve been there in an environment of worship, and I’ve been in His presence there, but my attention, my focus, was on other things, some of which were my wants and needs. I missed worship; I had the opportunity to worship Him, but I hadn’t connected with Him. I was in the place where He was, but I missed His presence.

Disclaimer: I am not saying that the only reason that our prayers aren’t answered is because we never actually bring them to Jesus, because we have never actually connected our needs with His person. But I think I am saying that one of the main reasons that we don’t have our needs met is because we’re where He is, but we miss His presence. We look at our needs, we focus on our needs, and we miss Him.

Friday

Clean Refrigerator Prayers

I was visiting a friend the other day, and we were talking. She is rather an active person, and while I was sipping tea at the kitchen counter, she played the exciting and fun game she calls, “What’s that smell” with her refrigerator.

Her refrigerator is new and efficient, but it had developed a weird smell. It was full of good food, but every time she opened the door, this strange odor wafted out. It wasn’t terribly bad, but it was NOT a food smell, and it kind of turned my appetite off.

Here’s how to play “What’s that smell?”

First set aside some time: I’m going to do this; I’m not going to be interrupted.

In our version, you’ll want to prepare yourself. Call a friend. “I’m going in. Cover me!”

Then open the door, and start looking for the smell. Pick a shelf: start at the front, and open every container on the shelf. I usually start on the bottom shelf because that’s where my refrigerator is likely to have the most interesting colors and textures.

For every container: Lift the lid. Look at what’s inside. Then give it the Sniff Test. Is it nutrition, or is it a science project?

Somewhere near the back of the fridge, you’ll probably find something really interesting. My friend – who was cleaning her fridge while I sipped tea and tried to say encouraging things – discovered some candy she bought on a trip to Sweden. Two years ago. She didn’t remember it being that color. Or that slimy.

When you find the source of your smell, you win the prize! Put on heavy rubber gloves, take the prize container out, and throw its contents away. Sometimes it’s better to throw the whole container away still sealed. Then take the trash out immediately.

Now it’s time for a choice. You’re all dressed for the mess, and you’ve already won one prize. Do you stop there, or do you go for an extra bonus prize? Since you’re already prepared, maybe pick another shelf and keep looking: Lift the lid. Unwrap the tinfoil. Look at what’s inside. Then give it the Sniff Test. Is it nutrition, or is it a science project?

Doesn’t that sound like a fun game?

Let’s take a left turn for a moment.

Hebrews 12:1: Therefore we also, 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….

We want to run, but stuff is holding us back. Some of what is holding us back is sin. Some is just weight that hinders us. Some is buried wounds that have never healed. Some of the weight is made up of lies: lies from the enemy, lies that we've told ourselves. And some, we may never know what it used to be; we just know we need to get rid of it because it smells yucky.

How many of us are hungry for revival, and we want to be part of what God is doing, but we know we’re not really ready for it? We know there’s garbage in our soul that’s whispering to us, “Sit back down there. Who do you think you are, wanting to be part of a move of God like that?” Sometimes we’re already aware that there’s stuff in our lives that needs to go. Or some of us are thinking, “I’m already dying! How in the world am I going to keep up with a move of God?”

That’s who I’m talking about: we need to get rid of the stuff that’s weighing us down. Like I said: some is sin, some is woundedness, some is just weight. But there isnt any part of it we want to keep, is there?  So the source hardly matters, because the real question is how do we deal with it? How do we get from where we are, weighed down, to where we need to be, free from crud and ready to go?

It’s time to play “What’s that Smell?”, but this time, we play with the help of the Holy Spirit, and we play in the confines of our own soul.

Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to live in us, but He doesn’t come as a quiet house-guest, sitting around, bored, waiting for you to entertain Him.

John 16:7 Nevertheless 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 depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin , and of righteousness, and of judgment.

One of the specific assignments the Holy Spirit has before Him is to convict us of a number of things. That conviction is the smell we’re looking for! That nudge of the Holy Spirit is what we’re going to be looking for. “Holy Spirit, show us, teach me: what can you show me that’s slowing me down? What can I get rid of? Help me find it and jettison it. Convict me of every weight, and of the sin, every lie, every piece of crap which so easily ensnares me please!”

I find that praying in the Spirit for a while as I begin the process is helpful for establishing a fruitful context for these soul-searching prayers.

There are a couple of things we’ll probably find as we allow the Holy Spirit to search our soul, as we sniff through every possible container of our heart:

Nutrition: Quite a lot of what you find will end up being testaments to God’s grace: Memories of His provision, places where you’ve cleaned out former messes and been forgiven, lessons learned. These, we keep. We might even organize the shelf so we can remember them better.

The Leftover Leftovers: Some of the interesting smells we find will be just the residue of life: little offenses we need to forgive, or things we weren’t paying attention to that we need to repent of. If we don’t go looking for them, we’ll never find them. They're not "big deals," but we want to get rid of them anyway: like the "little foxes" of Song of Solomon, they’ll spoil our tenderness if left unchecked.

The Slime: Sometimes, there’s just stuff that gets us: we just get slimed. We didn’t go looking for sin, it came and jumped us when we weren’t looking. And just like that green slimy gunk that grows in the back of the fridge, it needs to get washed away.

False Advertising: the enemy is pretty good at slipping lies in among the food. And if we’re honest, we're not so bad at it ourselves, telling little lies to keep from dealing with the real issues that face us. These gotta go!

The Science Projects: the hidden things in the back shelves of the fridge that stink – these are the weights and the sin that so easily entangles us. It’s in there somewhere, and it might be disguised as food, or it may be surrounded by a cloud of green spores, but it’s something we don’t need to carry with us.

The solution for whatever we find is pretty much the same: repent. Change the way you see that thing.

If you find a place of sin that you haven’t seen in yourself before, then it’s easy to repent; now that you know what it is, you can choose to go another direction. As long as we’re there, we might want to repent for letting our guard down, for not keeping watch over our soul, for not catching this earlier. This is a good place to cheat: to ask, "What more can I repent of here, Holy Spirit?"

If you find a place of unforgiveness there, we can repent for holding on so long to the offense, and we can choose to forgive.

If you find a place of hurt or woundedness there, we can repent for holding on, for believing the thing that holds us there. We can also forgive the one who hurt us, and ask God for healing. We can’t ever change what they did to us, but we can change what it did to us, how we react to it. 

The goal here is to find the smell. Wherever the funny smell is, go looking there. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring His conviction, and show us all of the details that we need to know in order to repent well.

Press especially hard into the places where your soul says, “I don’t want to go there” or “It hurts to look at that.” Those are the really rich places. Look into those places, not away from them. The degree that your flesh resists looking into something indicates the potential for God’s healing and grace that we get to have when we press through the resistance, with His help, of course!

Give everything the sniff test: is this nutrition, or is it a science project?

So. You’ve probably figured out that in the end, this is all about repenting, changing how we think. We don’t just wait for the Holy Spirit to tackle us on the big and ugly issues that need repenting: because we believe that repentance brings forgiveness, cleansing and other good things, we go looking for places where we get to repent. There are two reasons I love repentance:

Cleanliness: The more we find, the more we experience forgiveness. The more forgiveness we walk in, the cleaner our heart is, and the more that God can trust us with His secrets, His treasures. And the more we receive His forgiveness, the more we can walk boldly in Him: no condemnation, no worries, no “if only’s.” We’re free.

Intimacy: The process of partnering with the Holy Spirit to accomplish His heart’s desire is an inherently intimate one. In my experience, Clean Refrigerator Prayers are a great way to develop a powerful intimacy with the Spirit of God.

A Season of Grace

Many times recently, I have seen people in ministry (and “in ministry” may mean senior pastors, or it may mean believers who encourage other believers) who are motivated in ministry by serious character flaws. I’ve seen people wounded in the realm of rejection and fear of failure take leadership positions. I’ve seen people wounded in insecurities ministering in intercession and resentment manifesting in worship and “hands on ministry” applications.

Often there’s been this flavor of “I’m going to make up for these feelings of insufficiency by taking a leadership role where I can be in control!” Or “I want to make sure I keep my position because when I have the position, I’m a somebody.”

That’s never (well, hardly ever) the whole story. Usually, there’s a sincere “let’s expand the kingdom” motivation in there with the misguided stuff.

And yeah, those are wrong motivations. However, I believe that this is a season where God is emphasizing grace. I see His grace showing in leadership issues, in holiness or purity issues, and in relationships.

In leadership: I have seen this pattern over and over recently: His leaders, His servants have flaws showing, and yet He tenderly covers them, cuddles them, and still uses them to the degree that they (we) are able to be used. So it’s not like He’s rejecting the wounded, He’s covering them and using them and inviting them to be healed.

In some ways, this reminds me of Noah, after the adventure of the Flood.

Genesis 9:20 And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. 21 Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness.

We have a complicated role here. On the one hand, we are to act as Shem and Japheth and cover the nakedness of our leaders: it is not our job to point out their failings, but to fill in where they’re weak. At the same time, it’s not appropriate to excuse sin, or to be content with immaturity. We need to call each other to a higher level of …, well, of God-likeness. We need to encourage ourselves and each others to be more like God, more like Jesus, than we have before.

In purity and holiness: I believe that right now, God is extending a grace to see His people healed. There are believers – both long-time and new believers – who have had wounds in their soul or their spirit, and God is healing those.

There are people who have wrestled with sin – whether pride, control, pornography, gossip, or addictions – and I believe that right now, God is open for business right now to heal those besetting sins, to free us from those bondages. It’s not like He’s unwilling to do that in other seasons; He’s just emphasizing freedom right now.

One of the key areas where He’s setting people free in this season is in the realm of freedom from religious bondages. There are a lot of people who are deciding that “enough is enough!” and are moving out of “churchianity” into a real relationship with Jesus; some are having to leave their churches to do it.

In relationships: I believe this is a season when God is offering healing in relationships as well. It will require as much humility as any thing else (which is to say, a lot), but if we are willing to pursue Him in this, we’ll find healing in our marriages, in our working relationships, between church leaders and the flock being led.

That last one is worth emphasizing: too often, we’ve settled for inadequate or inferior relationships in the church. Too long, we’ve been willing to tolerate manipulation, or leaders who need to control, or who need constant affirmation that they’re valuable. It’s a season where God is granting a greater grace on healing those relationships.

This “greater grace” is not about, “God’s going to fix it while I sit here like a bump on a log.” The grace He’s giving is to approach the “unapproachable topics.” It’s the grace to “speak the truth in love” as we go to people and offer to help them through the tough things that they think they’re hiding, but the whole rest of the world can see. It’s the grace to receive gracefully those who come to us about the plank in our own eye that we’ve never recognized.

My encouragement is to take advantage of this season: firstly, as we examine our own lives. What is there in my life that I need the grace of God to heal? Then, after we’ve examined our own lives, we can go to our brothers and sisters, and ask, “can I help you with this?”

Saturday

A Season Of Opening Old Wounds

Some time ago, I was working on a cedar picnic table, and I got a sliver in my hand. It was a busy day, so I didn’t get a chance to pull it out right away, and I forgot about it. Over the next several days, the spot swelled up and became painful until I got a sharp knife and cut the spot open and dug out the piece of wood.

Later, I cut my other hand, and I was “too busy” to stop and slap a bandage on it, so of course it got sawdust and dirt and germs in it before I was through with the picnic table, but the damage had been done. This wound also swelled up and got tender, and I had to open it up, but there was no chunk of cedar to pull out.

A lot of God’s people are like my hands were: we’re wounded, but the wounds are hidden, buried because we didn’t deal with the issues when they were fresh. We have two kinds of wounds: some have slivers in them, foreign stuff that doesn’t belong in our lives, and some are just infected with lies or accusations or bitterness.

The pressing problem with healing old wounds is that they must first be opened. If we’re looking at our wound or our soul, then we encounter the pain first; sometimes we feel all of the pain that put the wound there in the first place and sometimes we have all that topped by the additional pain of having remembered the wound, or feared its opening, for Lo! these many years. However, I believe that God is urging us to not focus our attention on the wound, but on Him, and as we do that, He’ll be our anesthesia: the wound will be opened, cleaned and healed, and we won’t have suffered the same debilitating pain again and again.

Let me prophesy this: we are in a season where God is opening up old wounds in His saints, bringing to the our consciousness things that we haven’t thought about for years or decades. Some, we haven’t ever dealt with, and some we have addressed, but God wants to get the last little specks out of them and clean the wounds.

God wants His warriors healed; He wants us able to fight the enemy without fear that a stray shot will hit our old wounds and knock us out of the battle. His goal is healing those hidden places, and it might hurt for a while, but he’s taking out the foreign stuff, cleaning out the infection.

There are three things that are needed to bring healing in these old wounds:

· First, we must let God take us there, but we look at Him, not at the wound. If He says to repent of stuff, we repent. If He says to forgive folk, we forgive. If He says to make declarations, we make declarations. We need to focus on what He has done, not on what He hasn’t [yet] done. Psalm 37:3 saysDwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness.” If we dwell on His faithfulness, it grows good things. If we dwell on our lack, it grows bitterness and offense.

· Second, we immerse ourselves in good input. This is more than just immersing myself in Spiritual or godly activities, it’s intentionally making place for Him to speak into my life. Worship is a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours. If I use worship to run from the work God is doing, it’s less wonderful, it’s hiding from God and the work He’s up to. But if in worship I open my heart to his scalpel, it’s more profitable for both Him and me. Immersion in the Word – sitting under Its teaching, not marking off pages or studying to teach – brings faster healing. Opening my spirit to anointed teaching CD’s or podcasts, or reading the blogs of radical God-chasing Revolutionaries will be helpful.

· Shut up and move on. OK, that was too blunt. Sorry. How about, “Let’s not complain about the process but instead, let’s position ourselves for growth by aggressively pressing forward into the good things of God.”

· Get over the blame game. We really often blame God (“It must be His will…”) or ourselves (“I must need to learn some lesson from this”). God pretty much never answers the “Why did that happen?” question, but He loves to answer the “How shall I respond?” one.

· Look for the profit. In the Bible, the standard is that stuff that is stolen from us must be repaid seven times. Your wounds, your losses can be seeds for a profitable harvest. But the thief never repays what was taken voluntarily; you must take it back, perhaps violently. It’s called plunder, and it’s yours. But that’s another story.

So don’t be surprised if old hurts come back in the weeks and months ahead: God is bringing an invitation to us: will we let Him clean the wound? Will we let Him heal us? Will we be healed so we can heal others?

Wednesday

Resurrection

Today, I prayed for a dead guy for the first time.

I was at a gathering of a bunch of God chasers, maybe a hundred, and we were in God’s presence, and we were making some declarations. God told someone there that He wanted to heal some folks, and gave some details about people’s intestines, and that person announced God’s intentions. There were some guys that recognized those details and stood up and we prayed for them, and God brought a pretty substantial measure of healing to their intestines.

Then we were worshipping some more, and Mike just got juiced up. A friend of his and mine was in the coroner’s office in another county, looking at the 25-year-old body of William, who was lying on the slab there.

What do we do? We say we believe in healing, and God had just done some of that. We say we believe in raising the dead, and we needed some of that. I know – I really know – four people who have raised the dead in the past, and I have always admired them, and their boldness is part of why I admire them.

So Mike calls our friend and asks him if he’s still there in the morgue (he was) and if it was OK for this company of people to pray for the young man (and it was). So Mike puts the phone on “Speaker”, and invites us to pray.

Suddenly, I’m overwhelmingly aware that I’ve never prayed for a dead guy before. I’ve believed this for decades, but I’ve never had a chance, and here I am, with a chance, and I don’t know what to do. I’m stormed with fears about my own issues, and I’m aware that that’s really not appropriate, so I ask God for compassion, and I go for it. All 100 of us went for it. For a long time.

I was so proud of my troop. This company of people didn’t shy away when facing Goliath. Dead guys are scary. At least when it’s time to pray and they’re looking at you. It’s terrifying. It’s like he’s shouting that he’s taken this kid and he’s not letting go, and why don’t you just give up.

But we didn’t give up. We stood up to Goliath and we looked him in the eye and we spat in his face and we went after it. We didn’t have a clue how to raise the dead, but we went for it anyway. I was so proud of the group: they didn’t chicken out.

But the dead guy didn’t stir, at least as far as I know. (If I find out differently later, you’d better believe I’ll post it here!)

And I’m aware that young William paid the price for our ignorance, our unpreparedness. We were bold, but we were ignorant, and William stayed dead. Jesus commanded us to raise the dead, and our spirits were willing, but we were weak. Our gospel doesn’t have resurrection in it yet, not really.

I want to make this declaration: if we are going to be serious about following Jesus, we need to do what He did. We need to Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. We know how to worship. We know how to pray. We are learning about prophesy and about healing the sick and about casting out demons. We have to get better at all of that, and add raising the dead. We’re good at chasing after Jesus, and we need to get good at doing the stuff that Jesus did.

On the other hand, if I keep hanging out with a troop like this, we’ll get there. The dead won’t be safe in this town.

We gotta do what we talk about. Can we keep up the pace? Can we keep pressing into Him until we get there? Or will we quit early and keep leaving people dead on the coroner’s slab?