Hands on!

I was reading through Acts 6, and my attention was drawn to verse 6. 

The story is the appointment of the first deacons. Our verse:

Acts 6:6: They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

The next verse points out “So the word of God spread, and the number of disciples multiplied.” There was a connection between this action and the spreading of the gospel. This is a powerful thing.

The New Testament Model

The Bible is thick with examples of God’s people laying hands on folks. Matthew 19:13 is the first NT example of someone laying hands on: “Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them.”
  

Mark 16:18 says that we will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.

Acts 13:3 speaks of the commissioning of the world’s first missionaries: So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.”

Acts 19:6-7 shows another application for laying on hands: “And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.”
  

So the Bible shows us we lay hands on people for four purposes:
  

1. Imparting a general blessing, such as our modern practice of baby dedication.
2. Healing the sick. In fact, Mark 6:5 suggests that healing is easier if we lay hands on in the process.
3. Commissioning people to an office, or consecrating them to that service or office. This one appears to be more dangerous than others (see below).
4. Imparting an increased manifestation of Holy Spirit’s presence and gifts. See also 1 Timothy 2:8 and 2 Timothy 1:6.

Luke 21:12 talks about a fifth kind of laying on of hands, but I don’t think we want to adopt this practice: “But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you.”
  

The Danger of Laying on Hands

Some will correctly point out that the Bible gives a warning to the topic as well:

1 Timothy 5:22: Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others.This appears to reference #3 above: commissioning people to an office. And of course, a warning against laying hands on someone hastily is also an affirmation that while we must not rush, we are expected to lay hands on them.

There are members of the Body who – out of fear of error in this matter – have become unnaturally cautious, perhaps fearful, about laying on of hands. As a result, we have, intentionally or otherwise, come to the place where it is not acceptable to lay hands on an individual and consecrate them to service without at least a Bachelor’s degree in ministry. Preferably this is combined with a number of years of successful ministry, where “successful” is defined as “without significant moral failure.”

It is not my intent to minimize the danger. It is also not my intent to react out of fear and miss out on what appears to be a powerful weapon available to the sons and daughters of the Kingdom of God. I understand that there is a real danger; let us not fear to use the weapon because of fear of the danger.

  

The Invitation to Lay on Hands 

  

We are, in fact, clearly expected to lay hands on people in order to manifest the kingdom of God in them. I consider it similar to “painting the target” in modern warfare: “Holy Spirit, this is where to strike!”

Acts 6:6: They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

As I read the verse, I had the distinct impression that Holy Spirit was saying that we’re authorized to use laying on of hands more than we have been, and that we’re missing out on a fair bit that God wants to do in us, and on a fair bit of what we want to accomplish in him, because we’re missing out on the resources available to us.
  

Multiplication From Laying on Hands

  

I have been observing that the church is finally making a wonderful transition. For many years, we would work on increasing the effectiveness or range of our gifts. Evangelists would travel to more cities and host larger events. Pastors gathered larger churches. Teachers spoke to those larger congregations, and then to television and radio audiences, and then began to distribute tapes and CDs of their ministry.

It was a season of effectively adding to their ministry to increase the good things that were being accomplished in God’s name. More recently, churches, leaders and ministries have been offering training schools to raise up a new generation of leaders, to multiply their ministries. Growth always happens faster by multiplication, of course, than by simple addition.

The Book of Acts, the beginning of the Church, started the same way: “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47) When the twelve apostles laid hands on seven deacons, the next verse points out “So the word of God spread, and the number of disciples multiplied.”

This is actually the second time the New Testament speaks of the number of disciples multiplying: the first was verse 1, which led to the appointment of the deacons. It was because the crowd was multiplying that they started laying hands on others, and it was because of laying hands on others that the numbers were multiplied.

It is clear that laying hands on individuals is both a response to revival and a means of maintaining it. From this point forward in Acts, the spotlight moves from the apostles who had been doing the miracles to the deacons who were now the focus of the miracles. The twelve were not removed from the picture; they continued to teach (that was their main reason for appointing the deacons), and they governed the burgeoning megachurch. Later, the focus moves to the apostle Paul, who was healed and commissioned through Ananias laying hands on him.

The church grows when we lay hands on.

Metaphors for Wise Warfare

We the church have talked about “spiritual warfare” for decades. In the past, we’ve yelled at demonic strongholds and called that warfare, or we’ve described unlucky breaks in life as spiritual warfare.

God is raising the bar in spiritual warfare. We’ve gotten away with ignorance and immaturity and sometimes foolishness for years. But over the past few years, over the next few years, He’s bringing us into a greater level of maturity.

I have only the highest regard for those who have been involved in warfare these many years. They’ve faced ignorance and opposition and sometimes just plain bull-headedness from the church, and they’ve stood in the gap on our behalf.

That incredible faithfulness notwithstanding, I believe the Lord is moving us into a new level of maturity, a new level of authority in the realm of spiritual warfare. I do not believe that those who have been involved in warfare in the Spirit have been only playing at “war games!” However, when we look back on this place from the place God is taking us to, we will say, “up until then, we were only playing with shiny toy guns. We were only waving our arms and pointing our fingers and shouting ‘bang!’”

Here’s the problem: I don’t entirely know where we’re going; I just know we’re moving forward.

I was discussing this with one of my mentors the other day, and we were using the American Military as a metaphor for spiritual warfare; much of this will be familiar.

Foot Soldiers: The most common role in this battle is the simple foot soldier: we obey orders given us from our officers and noncoms over us. We generally don’t have the strategic overview of the war, or even the battle that we’re in; we just point our weapon as we’re commanded and pull the trigger when so instructed.

Noncommissioned Officers: Other non-officers with more skills and more experience and a tactical understanding of the battle; if we’re wise, we’ll follow their advice, even though they don’t wear the brass of an officer. They may not know the big picture, but they know how to get the foot soldiers through this alive! These are the home group leaders, mentors, deacons.

Officers: These men and women have strategic-level understanding of portions of the warfare; they often receive orders from above, but sometimes they are given the objectives to accomplish, and they make their own plans with the soldiers that work with them. Some are junior officers, some senior officers, and their position in the spiritual army does not correspond to their position or influence in this world: I know pastors of huge churches that are faithful lieutenants, and leaders of a group of less than a dozen who are generals, though there are senior officers who lead large ministries as well.

Joint Chiefs: Currently, I’m not convinced that we have a functional Joint Chiefs; I am waiting for the day when we have something equivalent to the Council of Jerusalem of Acts 15: a council of apostles and elders who represent heaven to the forces on Earth. While there are obvious complications, the Catholic “Holy See” (the Pope and the Roman Curia governing body) approaches this authority within the realm of the Catholic Church.

Commander in Chief: We have but one Commander-in-Chief, and He is not elected.

Air Force: These are the intercessors in our war, and the goal is the same: air superiority over the field of battle. Weaponry includes worship, declarations, prophetic actions, and other weird things that reach the heavenlies, where these warriors are known to visit.

Marines: First troops into the territory, elite, but probably not occupation forces. These are the short term missionary teams, the apostolic equipping teams (which will include prophets and teachers),

Navy: Some of our forces are stationed off the coast, and provide artillery, attack forces and supply lines for the rest of the forces. Some of these folks are administrators, support teams, tacticians.

Army: Ground forces occupy the new territory. These include missionaries occupying new territory, evangelism teams on the streets, home groups and new congregations in previously unconquered territory.

Supply Lines: Any army needs food and ammunition. In our battles, these are the prophets, teachers, pastors and friends: the ones who invest in, who love on and support the warriors. These are also donors who support ministries financially, administrators who handle details so others can minister on the front lines.

Firebase: In the natural, this is an artillery base, esp. one set up quickly to support advancing troops or to forestall enemy advances. In this metaphor, this may be a team of intercessors or prophets.

Intelligence: Agencies like the CIA, Secret Service, FBI. This is clearly the role of the prophetic gifts: prophecy, discernment. But not them alone: Researchers (like The Sentinel Group) can give valuable insight into the demonic roots in a region; prophetic teachers reveal principles and application (strategies and tactics). This is often the primary role of prophetic intercessors. 

Weapons Development: James Bond has his “Q”; the US Military has DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency); in the Spirit, the developers of new weaponry come from the revelation gifts, particularly from apostles and prophets.

Boot Camp: The church is developing a large number of training schools across North America to train young men and women: revival schools, bible schools, Masters Commission, YWAM.

Military Academies: Military training schools, like Annapolis and West Point: We’re short on schools to train the officers, particularly to train senior officers in our current warfare.

Watch Out! Your Mouth is Loaded!

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of years. I’ve had to go slow about it, because the conclusion that I’m coming to is pretty much exactly the opposite of the things I used to believe and teach. I hate it when that happens, but I’m delighted to have my understanding corrected and my weaponry updated.

Here’s the conclusion I’m coming to: my words are powerful. They change worlds. So do yours. Our words have the power to change this world. In fact, I may go so far as to say, as a wise man has been teaching me, “nothing gets done without there first being a declaration about it.” My declaration. Your declaration. And certainly God’s declaration.

And here are some of the processes that have gone on to change my mind. I need to explain that until these things happened, I had a nice, tidy Calvinist theology: God is going to do what He’s going to do, and maybe my prayers can move Him and maybe they can’t, but if He doesn’t do it, it won’t get done!

1. My theology was corrected by a prophetic word. I had not had much exposure to the prophetic back in 1998 when a prophet declared to me, “But you see, when you don’t know that you have that anointing, you’re just praying, ‘Oh God, would you please….’ But when you begin to understand … you begin to say, ‘Move! In the Name of Jesus, you’re coming down!’” That came from a man I had never met before, instructing me to petition God less (OK, to whine at God less) and to declare the thing that that I would previously whined about. That messed me up, particularly as the prophet accurately nailed a couple of other things in my life: I couldn’t dismiss the word in good conscience.

2. I had a couple of experiences that my previous theology did not support. I’ve written about one of them here; I won’t repeat the details in this article, but I’ll just say that God used my application of that prophetic word (using declarative prayer rather than petition prayer) to get me the truck of my dreams. In the other experience, some friends asked me as their home-group leader to make a declaration over them, and we were all surprised at the power than was released that night. It changed their lives, and its effectiveness changed my life.

3. I’ve been meditating on what it means to be made in God’s image. One of the conclusions I’ve come to is that I get things done the way He got things done, beginning with “And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.” (In fact, I think this verse is describing the Big Bang, but that’s just conjecture.) When God needed to make something happen, he spoke it into being.

4. The NT says that I’m seated with Christ, and that He’s seated at the right hand of Father. Father’s sitting in a throne, of course, which means that Jesus is sitting on the next throne over, or Jesus is in the main throne, and Father’s on the other side: either way, if I’m seated with Christ, I’m seated in a throne. He did say, after all, that I am to reign with Him, and that I’m both king and priest. So I’m in the role of king, seated with my big brother Jesus on a throne, doing the work of reigning or ruling my portion of the Kingdom. So how does a king get his will accomplished? He makes decrees. He issues authoritative statements saying, “This is how it’s to be done.” And everybody obeys. Or if they don’t, the army goes and helps them obey.

5. As I’ve studied the prophetic gifts, I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t just communicate information from God to man. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve told, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” with little-to-no effect. But that was one of the most powerful prophetic words I’ve ever spoken. “Uh, God says He loves you…” and this mountain of a man, well schooled in church teachings, broke down and wept like a baby, actually experiencing the affection of His heavenly Father for the first time in years. The true prophetic word carries information, yes, but it also carries the power of God to accomplish that word. When I was moved by God to make declaration about my dream truck, I got the dream truck (and I learned a big lesson!). If I had not spoken that declaration, I’d still be driving a wimpy Honda and whining my prayers.

The point is that in my shoddy Calvinist thinking that my prayers were at the best wishful thinking and at the worst, whining at God, I was horribly mistaken. I’m coming to the conclusion that

We know that our words have the power to seriously wound someone. A very foolish person once said, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” I’m coming to the opinion that if the Bible is really true, and if I’m going to live like it’s true (very big “ifs,” I agree), then it’s the other way around: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can really hurt me.” Our words have power in the realm of the soul: the mind, will, and emotions of ourselves and those around us.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” (I grew up Presbyterian. I still can’t get rid of the “thee’s” and “thou’s” in the Lord’s Prayer!) What shall we do to make that happen? Jesus taught us to forgive peoples’ sins (which we do by speaking). He did not teach us to pray for the sick, but to heal the sick, something far beyond the wishy-washy prayers I heard in Sunday school I think.

That’s enough background. Here’s where I’m going with all this: it’s time for us to wield the word of God as a tool, a weapon. It’s time for us to discern what his heart is on a matter, and to declare that (and yes, I realize that sometimes He’s asking, “Well, what do you think?”). It’s time for us to learn to not just petition God, but also to declare the will of God with authority from our position seated with the Son of God into the matter before us.

In my home group prayer times, we often put someone in the seat in the middle and pray and prophesy over them. I’m getting to the point where I’m insisting that we don’t stop with, “I hear God saying this about you.” Now my team is learning that if they don’t declare that promise over or into the person we’re praying for, that I’ll remind them.

So may I suggest that we pray a little less along the lines of “Oh Lord, would you please…” and a little more “In the name of Jesus, mountain, you get up and move!” Lets begin to rule in our roles as kings and priests.

Visit Northwest Prophetic for a complete archive of regional prophetic words, or to submit a prophetic word.

Cool blogs:
• The Pilgrimgram • Firefall Zine • Tall Skinny Kiwi • Darpa's Domain • Bill Johnson • The Internet Monk

Resources
• Be a Hero! • Bethel Redding • Graham Cooke • Church Soundguy • End Time Prophetic Vision

Ministries
• Northwest Equipping • Healing the Northwest • Mosaic Northwest • PacificMinistries • Revival Town • Rivers of Grace • Storehouse Ministries

Missions
• Youth With A Mission • Int'l House of Prayer KC • Int'l House of Prayer NW • Int'l House of Prayer WA • Disciple the Nations

Engaging an Enemy

Observations from 1 Samuel 17:

It seems that there are seasons in our lives when maybe we’re a little more gutsy than we otherwise would be. There are seasons where we take on some larger enemies, either in own lives or in our communities, like David did with Goliath. We can expect several responses:

1. Brothers accusing us of wrong doing. (“I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.” v. 28)

2. Leadership or people in positions of authority say, “You can’t do that!” (v. 33) These folks are often – if not carefully Spirit-led – very good at pointing out our weaknesses and the difficulty of the circumstances.

3. Others trying to put their own revelation/tools/limits on us (v. 38: “So Saul clothed David with his armor, and he put a bronze helmet on his head; he also clothed him with a coat of mail.”) There is room to find symbolism in these components, but the point is unchanged: they want to make us like them before they decide we’re ready to “be released.”

4. The enemy also will speak to us:

a. Some enemies will disdain us (v. 42) (Hebrew: “to despise, regard with contempt;”)

“Who do you think you are? What makes you think you can take on this kind of thing. You’re nothing but a ‘wimpy, wimpy, chicken, chicken!’

b. Some enemies will curse us by their own gods (v. 43) (Hebrew: “to make despicable; to curse,” but in a verb form that indicates intensity and repeated action.)

Goliath cursed him vehemently and repeatedly! In the current vernacular, “He ripped him a new one!”

c. Some enemies will make threats. (v. 43: “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!”)

In contrast to the enemy’s words, David took action:

A. Before the challenge:

1. David carried (received, walked in) the anointing of God (1 Samuel 16:13).

2. David was a practicing worshipper (1 Samuel 16:23 & most of the Psalms).

3. David had a practice of serving others (Saul, see above; Dad’s sheep, 17:15; brothers in the war, 17:20).

B. During the challenge:

4. David hung around the warriors (17:22), and became aware of the reality and nature of the war by first-hand experience(v. 23).

5. David asks questions (v 26, 30). I think he's essentially asking, “What’s it take to fight this guy?”

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.

Simple, Powerful Tools

Simple, Powerful Tools

My wife – in addition to being a wonderful human being – is also a gardener. I’ve learned some interesting lessons from her gardens.

One of the most embarrassing lessons is about garden tools.

When Christmas or her birthday roll around, I often find myself in the garden aisle, looking at garden tools. Do you have any idea how many garden tools there are? There are thousands. There are whole, entire catalogs devoted to the latest, greatest, coolest and most high-tech gardening tools! Can you believe it?

Here’s the embarrassing thing: the latest and most high tech gift tools usually fail in comparison to the good old-fashioned tools like shovels and hoes. Best of all are hands; hands with gloves, yes, but hands are the best tools of all.

So the principle is that in gardening, simple tools are better than complex, new-fangled tools.

I think it works that way in the things of God as well, and that’s where I’m going with this. Years ago, one of my mentors taught me (well, “taught us”, a group of us) about a couple of really simple tools when praying – particularly when asking God questions, which is where our faith sometimes stumbles.

I have to admit that at the time, I thought they were so elementary that they were cheesy, simplistic, foolish. I went along with them mostly because I respect him and his team, and these tools work for his group, but secretly, I thought I was past them.

The tools – or weapons, if you like that metaphor – come from 1John:

1 John 2:22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.

1 John 4: 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

The whole premise of 1John is that there are deceivers in the world, both people and spirits. Have you ever heard something in your spirit and asked “Was that God?” That’s really appropriate: there are (IMHO) four possible voices that I could hear when I’m praying (this is very basic):

1. It could be God.

2. It could be my own soul speaking.

3. There are demonic spirits that are eager to deceive, and

4. Under some circumstances, the spirits – or at least the desires and choices – of other people can influence us.

If you think about it, these two verses offer two tests for that very question, the question of “Is this God,” which implies “… or is this some other spirit?” So when they’re going to ask God questions, this guy and his team introduce their prayer time by addressing the Holy Spirit – and then to make sure they’re not being deceived (or "spoofed") – they ask two more questions:

1. “Whom do you say that Jesus is?” and

2. “Did Jesus come in the flesh?”

This is something equivalent of a test for the email that claims to be from your bank: is it really from your bank, or is it a “spoof” email. The idea is nothing new; the demonic realm has been “spoofing” the Holy Spirit for years! (How else do you explain Mormonism?)

If the answer they hear back is questionable, they know they're being spoofed: it's another spirit claiming to be the Holy Spirit, but it's been un-masked by the simple theology of First John. You can see that these questions necessarily require humility: I must acknowledge that I can be deceived – an admission that many in the Church have difficulty making.

So I’ve begun using these “simple tools” in my own prayer times. I haven’t talked about it (until now) because it embarrassed me: I saw myself as more sophisticated than that. But I’ve begun to value “sophistication” less than I used to, and as I’ve begun to use these simple – even simplistic – questions in my prayer, I’ve found myself asking, “Was that God?” far less often, I’ve found myself becoming more humble in my prayers, and I’ve been learning more. I’ve discovered something of the Holy Spirit’s quick wit, and I’m discovering how much fun He is to hang around when I’m not having to question everything He says!

May I recommend simplicity in your relationship with God, and may I commend the use of these questions when you’re asking for yourself, “Was that God?” It really helps, provided you can get past the simplicity. Like simple garden tools: the simplest disciplines in the Kingdom are often among the most useful.

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!

Impending Battle

Over the past few years, the Lord had been speaking of an impending battle. One of His illustrations has been this picture from The Horse and His Boy, at the end of the Narnian army's march to the battlefield in Archenland:

Here, the army halted and spread out in a line, and there was a great deal of rearranging. A whole detachment of very dangerous-looking Beasts whom Shasta had not noticed before went padding and growling to take up their positions on the left. The giants were ordered to the right. The archers, with Queen Lucy, fell to the rear and you could see them bending their bows and then hear the twang-twang as they tested the strings. And wherever you looked, you could see people tightening girths, putting on helmets, drawing swords, and throwing cloaks to the ground. There was hardly any talking now. It was very solemn and very dreadful…

For a season, we've been preparing for a great battle that is yet before us. What you're seeing now is the first skirmishes of that battle already upon us. It's like God is bringing His reluctant army into warfare little by little, toughening us up, preparing us for the bloodshed to come.

Since you are a warrior born, and since you are always drawn to a battle, you are one of the first to experience the fight. You have surrounded yourself with warriors, and so you see many of your friends beginning to encounter more of the enemy.

This is the purpose of God, this is His plan: that you would not shrink from the battle, that you would cause more casualties than you take, that you would learn to be healed quickly and to heal those around you quickly, and that you would leave behind you a very wide swath of demonic corpses as you take the battle to the enemy.

This is your destiny! Draw your sword! Throw your cloak to the ground! Let's go to war.

We Have Entered A Dangerous Season!

Some time ago, Chuck Pierce released a prophetic word that said in part, “The enemy would like to knock your legs out from under you and drive you off of your path,” and “The confrontation of the enemy is at hand. You must be filled with praise to enter into that conflict ahead. War is stirring in your midst. War is rising,” and “We are entering very dangerous times. This is a time of opportunity, yet a time of danger.”

I can’t tell you how many people I know that are walking in those times right now. I know I have been, and – as warfare generally is – it’s been hard to keep my perspective in the midst of the battle.

Recently, the Lord reminded me of the promise, “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.” A lot of the church is experiencing the refining.

In reality, however, I’m not sure that this one is for the whole church. It seems that this fight is for the Calebs among us: “Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it. If the LORD delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land flowing with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the LORD, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them.’ ” (Numbers 13:30, 14:8-9, also quoted by Chuck Pierce).

A bunch of us are in that battle now: we’re being hit and the people around us are sometimes being hit even harder. The enemy is not stupid: he knows that sometimes the easiest way to take down a warrior is to hit the people that the warrior cares about. He also knows that hitting our families is terrifically discouraging, and if he can discourage warriors, then he doesn’t have to face us in battle.

It’s like 1 Samuel 30: where the Amalekites hit David’s home base of Ziklag while the warriors were out killing bad guys; they took their provision, their families, their future and their promise. “Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept, until they had no more power to weep.” That’s pretty serious grief, and there are a number of people in the church that are suffering like that.

David, in contrast, is our example. After grieving, “David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” Grief is fine, it’s appropriate, even valuable. But if we stop with grief, we’ll soon end up in self-pity or bitterness. We must move on to strengthening ourselves in the Lord.

The result was that “David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away, and David rescued his two wives. And nothing of theirs was lacking, either small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything which they had taken from them; David recovered all.”

There is no battle, whether spiritual or physical, that is without spoil, without booty that can be taken, must be taken, by the victor. The enemy fights for our attention, our hope, our vision. If he takes those, he is victorious: that’s how he can tell he has won: he has plundered our treasures.

That’s the spoil that we bring to the battle. But the enemy is at risk as well. He has brought captivity, disease, poverty to the battle. If he loses, then captivity and disease and poverty fall to the forces of those who have taken part in the battle. It is our privilege, it is our duty, to take the plunder, and to use it for righteousness.

You know people around you that are wrestling with disease and discouragement, who are under the heaviest attack in this battle. If you leave them there alone, they will be casualties, and the enemy will turn next on you. If you join with our brothers and sisters, and help them keep their hope, their vision, their eyes fixed on Jesus.

Some of us are in the midst of the battle, in the furnace of affliction right now. If we fight alone, we’ll likely fail; then we will have fought in vain, and the enemy will be unhindered as he trains his sights on those we’ve sought to protect.

We certainly must keep our eyes on Jesus in the fight, but we will do that better if we stay in relationship with the other members of our squad, our battalion. If we can receive their support, their encouragement, their reinforcement, then we will overcome, and they will overcome.

And we’ll share the plunder together.

(With thanks to Chuck Pierce, Trevor Macpherson, and Bill Johnson)

T.B.I.

I’ve become aware recently of a great trend that has no doubt been part of the American church for a long time. It’s the making of irrelevant and meaningless excuses.

The other day, I was counseling with a man who had managed to get himself addicted to a particular brand of sin. I’ll call him Bob for convenience sake. Bob and I were discussing some of the action that he needed to take if he was going to free himself from his sin. To be fair, the course of action was a challenging one, but he and I both agreed that it was necessary if he was going to get free. And then he pulls out the excuse from hell:

“But that’s so hard!”

When I hear that excuse – and I hear it often – I groan inside. Bob’s right, of course: it will be difficult. But then it’s a difficult task he proposes: extricating himself from persistent sin to which he has been enslaved for some time.

The problem with that excuse is that it’s true, but it’s irrelevant. Yes, it is a difficult road he proposes, but so what? The choice, contrary to Bob’s evaluation, is not between “that which is hard” and “that which is not hard.” Rather, it’s between “continued enslavement” or “freedom.” Freedom, by nature, requires hard choices.

Both roads are difficult, of course, but our flesh is eager to agree with the enemy that the road to freedom is hard. The devil is not particularly forthcoming when it comes to acknowledging the trials of enslavement or addiction.

I’ve come up with a response – for my own amusement – to those excuses: TBI: True But Irrelevant. I’m fascinated by the number of times we come up with excuses to obedience that are true, but completely irrelevant to the heart of the matter.

Recently, I was talking to a businessman who is faced with some challenging circumstances in his business; I’ll call him Henry. He has some tough decisions to make if his business is going to make it past its current challenges. Recently, Henry made some decisions that represent something of a moral compromise; not a big one, but they mean that he’ll break his word to some people who count on his truthfulness. We were talking about his business, and I brought this up. His was to explain why he “needed” to make this compromise and why it wasn’t really that bad. “I didn’t have any choice! We have a problem in the company!”

TBI.

Yes, it's true, Henry does have that problem in his business, and yes, this morally compromised decision will help solve some of those problematic symptoms in his company. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a moral compromise: Henry is still breaking his word. He’s still betraying a trust, and this decision will make it harder for his staff to believe his word in the future, and I believe it will distance his business from God’s blessing.

I’m making the choice in my own life to attempt to escape this trap, to not offer irrelevant, self-centered excuses to the things that my relationship with Christ require. I’m going to attempt to deal with the issues of what is required of me, by God, by the people around me, by my circumstances.

You can pray for me.

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?