On the Road to Easter

Mark 8:27–30 (GNB)

²⁷ Then Jesus and his disciples went away to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Tell me, who do people say I am?” ²⁸ “Some say that you are John the Baptist,” they answered; “others say that you are Elijah, while others say that you are one of the prophets.” ²⁹ “What about you?” he asked them. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰ Then Jesus ordered them, “Do not tell anyone about me.”

Ash Wednesday was celebrated last week, which traditionally marks the beginning of the Lenten season, the 40 days to Easter and the Passion of the Christ. Often times Protestant do not participate in the ceremony, and they do not usually contemplate the meaning of the event.

The aim of Ash Wednesday is said to be threefold:

• to meditate on our mortality, sinfulness, and need for a savior;
• to renew our commitment to daily repentance in all of life;
• and to remember with confidence and gratitude that Jesus has conquered sin and death.

Our daily worship should be filled with the impact of this gospel truth. In order to truly understand and appreciate the impact of these three statements above, we have to start by answering the question that Jesus posed to Peter: “Who do you say I am?” If we can answer whole heartedly to Jesus, as Peter did, “you are the Messiah,” we can then rejoice with the Apostle Paul when he says,

“Consider yourself dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11).

To Reflect:

Spend some time being still before God, and ask the Spirit to search yourself:

Psalm 139:23–24 (GNB)

²³ Examine me, O God, and know my mind; test me, and discover my thoughts. ²⁴ Find out if there is any evil in me and guide me in the everlasting way.

Picture Credit: The White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall, 1938

Worship – A Dialogue on the Purposes of the Church: Who do we Worship?

Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Psalm 96:1b

This post is a part of an ongoing dialogue about the five purposes of the church. The first post addressed the question of Who Do We Worship?  I want to continue to interact and dialog with Marva Dawn as she dialogs about the “Who” of worship in her book How Shall We Worship?

There is an interesting observation in her book (p. 20) about the nature of our cultures today, described by social analyst Christopher Lasch as a Culture of Narcissism.

Lasch stated that social developments in the 20th century, such as the end of World War II and the rise of a consumer culture in the years that followed, gave rise to a narcissistic personality structure in which peoples’ self-concepts led to a fear of commitment and lasting relationships (including religion), a fear of aging (e.g., the 1960s and 1970s "youth culture") and a overdeveloped admiration for fame and celebrity, nurtured in part by the motion picture industry and television. The result is confusion, anxiety and uncertainty about how to live and relate in the world today (see a review of Lasch here).

Marva believes that this culture of narcissism has entered the church, which has resulted in attitudes and views that ask the question, What’s in it for me? (p. 21) Ever have anyone say to you, “I didn’t get much out of the

worship service today.”

Since worship is the response of all creation to “God’s gift of being,” any response that we have that is “hunting for what will please ourselves” can be nothing more than sin.

A couple of the results that we see in churches today is the tendency to see Sunday morning worship as an evangelistic rally, i.e., using the appeal factor of the worship service to attract those who are not yet Christ-followers by appealing to their immersion in our narcissistic culture. Thus a church can entertain and give people the impression that they have been part of a worship experience.

But if worship is for God, can those outside the community of faith enter into worship? Or more bluntly, can we say that these kind of services qualify as worship?

A pastor friend made a comment to my previous post, “One of the things we teach about worship is that it includes every aspect of life, not just what we do together on a Sunday morning. Worship is also our service to God as we serve His people.”

That to me is the paradox of the question of worship: Worship is about God, but yet as we worship, we can also serve the people of God.  The example I have in mind is the Milepost 13 Band that recently came to Grenoble. I saw some aspects of worship that I hadn’t notice before. They are a worship band, so their main purpose or goal was to worship God. But yet they were also evangelistic in their concerts, and one of the biggest benefits was how they served the two congregations in Grenoble –one French speaking and one English speaking, and the fellowship and community we enjoyed as a result.

So for me, this is a marvelous picture of what worship can be, it is more than an subjective experience on Sunday morning. As Marva points out, worship is the glad response to the immense grace of Triune God.” So when God’s grace is pouring out on us, we can experience the outworking of that grace through fellowship, evangelism, service, et. al., which in turn should rebound in our response to that grace.

Yes, grace is amazing!

 

Technorati Tags: Culture,worship,France,Kingdom,Missional,purpose

15 Theses by Wolgang Simson (Conclusion)

15. The Church comes home

Where is the easiest place, say, for a man to be spiritual? Maybe again, is it hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes, preaching holy words to a faceless crowd and then disappearing into an office? And what is the most difficult, and therefore most meaningful, place for a man to be spiritual? At home, in the presence of his wife and children, where everything he does and says is automatically put through a spiritual litmus test against reality, where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can grow. Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred buildings far from the atmosphere of real life. As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns back to its roots, back to where it came from. It literally comes home, completing the circle of Church history at the end of world history.

As Christians of all walks of life, from all denominations and backgrounds, feel a clear echo in their spirit to what God's Spirit is saying to the Church, and start to hear globally in order to act locally, they begin to function again as one body. They organize themselves into neighborhood house-churches and meet in regional or city-celebrations. You are invited to become part of this movement and make your own contribution. Maybe your home, too, will become a house that changes the world.

You are welcome and encouraged to redistribute this article.

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15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (part 8)

13. From Denominations to city-wide celebrations

Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of religious companies with global chains marketing their special brands of Christianity and competing with each other. Through this branding of Christianity most of Protestantism has, therefore, become politically insignificant and often more concerned with traditional specialties and religious infighting than with developing a collective testimony before the world. Jesus simply never asked people to organize themselves into denominations. In the early days of the Church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly His church and vertically converted to God, and then organized themselves according to geography, that is, converting also horizontally to each other on earth. This means not only Christian neighbors organizing themselves into neighborhood- or house-churches, where they share their lives locally, but Christians coming together as a collective identity as much as they can for citywide or regional celebrations expressing the corporateness of the Church of the city or region. Authenticity in the neighborhoods connected with a regional or citywide corporate identity will make the Church not only politically significant and spiritually convincing, but will allow a return to the biblical model of the City-Church.

14. Developing a persecution-proof spirit

They crucified Jesus, the Boss of all the Christians. Today, his followers are often more into titles, medals and social respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth being noticed at all. "Blessed are you when you are persecuted", says Jesus. Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again live out New Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin, conversion or persecution has been, is and will be the natural reaction of the world. Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be again discovered as the main culprits against global humanism, the modern slavery of having to have fun and the outright worship of Self, the wrong centre of the universe. That is why Christians will and must feel the "repressive tolerance" of a world which has lost any absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize and obey its creator God with his absolute standards. Coupled with the growing ideologisation, privatization and spiritualization of politics and economics, Christians will, sooner than most think, have their chance to stand happily accused in the company of Jesus. They need to prepare now for the future by developing a persecution-proof spirit and an even more persecution-proof structure.

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15 These by Wolfgang Simson (Part 7)

 11. Stop bringing people to church, and start bringing the church to the people

The church is changing back from being a Come-structure to being again a Go-structure. As one result, the Church needs to stop trying to bring people "into the church," and start bringing the Church to the people. The mission of the Church will never be accomplished just by adding to the existing structure; it will take nothing less than a mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication of itself into areas of the population of the world, where Christ is not yet known.

12. Rediscovering the "Lord's Supper" to be a real supper with real food

Church tradition has managed to "celebrate the Lord's Supper" in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the "Lord's Supper" was actually more a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning, than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning. God is restoring eating back into our meeting.

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15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 6)

9. Return from organized to organic forms of Christianity

The "Body of Christ" is a vivid description of an organic, not an organized, being. Church consists on its local level of a multitude of spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a network, where the way the pieces are functioning together is an integral part of the message of the whole. What has become a maximum of organization with a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism. Too much organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for fear that something might go wrong. Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control, faith can trust. Control, therefore, may be good, but trust is better. The Body of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-minded people with a supernatural charismatic gift to believe God that He is still in control, even if they are not. A development of trust-related regional and national networks, not a new arrangement of political ecumenism is necessary for organic forms of Christianity to reemerge.

10. From worshipping our worship to worshipping God

The image of much of contemporary Christianity can be summarized, a bit euphemistically, as holy people coming regularly to a holy place at a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual lead by a holy man dressed in holy clothes against a holy fee. Since this regular performance-oriented enterprise called "worship service" requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy to keep going, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed quickly into rigid traditions. Statistically, a traditional 1-2 hour "worship service" is very resource-hungry but actually produces very little fruit in terms of discipling people, that is, in changed lives. Economically speaking, it might be a "high input and low output" structure. Traditionally, the desire to "worship in the right way" has led to much denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism. This not only ignores that Christians are called to "worship in truth and in spirit," not in cathedrals holding songbooks, but also ignores that most of life is informal, and so is Christianity as "the Way of Life." Do we need to change from being powerful actors to start "acting powerfully?"

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15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 5)

7. The right pieces - fitted together in the wrong way

In doing a puzzle, we need to have the right original for the pieces, otherwise the final product, the whole picture, turns out wrong, and the individual pieces do not make much sense. This has happened to large parts of the Christian world: we have all the right pieces, but have fitted them together wrong, because of fear, tradition, religious jealousy and a power-and-control mentality. As water is found in three forms, ice, water and steam, the five ministries mentioned in Eph. 4:11-12, the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists are also found today, but not always in the right forms and in the right places: they are often frozen to ice in the rigid system of institutionalized Christianity; they sometimes exist as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and "independent" churches, accountable to no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new, and at the same time age-old, forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual "ministers" can find their proper role and place in the whole. That is one more reason why we need to return back to the Maker's original and blueprint for the Church.

8. God does not leave the Church in the hands of bureaucratic clergy

No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional "holy man" doing the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive religious consumers Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy professionalization of the church since Constantine has now been a pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially into laity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), "there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." God simply does not bless religious professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever. The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself directly through Jesus Christ, the only Way. To enable the priesthood of all believers, the present system will have to change completely. Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because it basically asks only two questions: yes or no. There is no room for spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life. This may be OK for politics and companies, but not the Church. God seems to be in the business of delivering His Church from a Babylonian captivity of religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain, the hands of ordinary people made extraordinary by God, who, like in the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume and revolution.

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15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 4)

5. The church has to become small in order to grow big

Most churches of today are simply too big to provide real fellowship. They have too often become "fellowships without fellowship." The New Testament Church was a mass of small groups, typically between 10 and 15 people. It grew not upward into big congregations between 20 and 300 people filling a cathedral and making real, mutual communication improbable. Instead, it multiplied "sidewards", like organic cells, once these groups reached around 15-20 people. Then, if possible, it drew all the Christians together into citywide celebrations, as with Solomon's Temple court in Jerusalem. The traditional congregational church as we know it is, statistically speaking, neither big nor beautiful, but rather a sad compromise, an overgrown house-church and an under-grown celebration, often missing the dynamics of both.

6. No church is led by a Pastor alone

The local church is not led by a Pastor, but fathered by an Elder, a local person of wisdom and reality. The local house-churches are then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and members of the so-called five-fold ministries (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers) circulating "from house to house," whereby there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, and 4:11.12). A Pastor (shepherd) is a very necessary part of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more than a part of the whole task of "equipping the saints for the ministry," and has to be complemented synergistically by the other four ministries in order to function properly.

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15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 3)

3. The Third Reformation.

In rediscovering the gospel of salvation by faith and grace alone, Luther started to reform the Church through a reformation of theology. In the 18th century through movements like the Moravians there was a recovery of a new intimacy with God, which led to a reformation of spirituality, the Second Reformation. Now God is touching the wineskins themselves, initiating a Third Reformation, a reformation of structure.

4. From Church-Houses to house-churches

Since New Testament times, there is no such thing as "a house of God". At the cost of his life, Stephen reminded unequivocally: God does not live in temples made by human hands. The Church is the people of God. The Church, therefore, was and is at home where people are at home: in ordinary houses. There, the people of God:

• Share their lives in the power of the Holy Spirit,
• Have "meatings," that is, they eat when they meet,
• They often do not even hesitate to sell private property and share material and spiritual blessings,
• Teach each other in real-life situations how to obey God's word, dialogue, not professor-style,
• Pray and prophesy with each other, baptize, `lose their face' and their ego by confessing their sins,
• Regaining a new corporate identity by experiencing love, acceptance and forgiveness.

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A philosophy of education and experience?

John Dewey proposed a philosophy of education that focused on traditional education (education from without) and progressive education (experience, education from within). Traditional education focuses mainly on content, but it can become a “banking concept” for the transfer of knowledge.

Progressive education (education from within, or experience) is the other school of thought. Basically, it is grows out of our life experiences; but without sufficient or proper content, it will do little to offer growth or development. For Dewey, there needed to be a proper tension between education and experience.

As an educator in the church, I think we need the tension between what we are taught and what we experience in our spiritual formation. Teaching that is little more than throwing words out to the learner and hope that somehow they will appropriate them and figure out what we need to know and put into practice is not much use, either to the learner or to the body of Christ . 

Our preaching and teaching needs to educate us (think of it, if you will, as providing the raw materials), it should also provide guided, practical experiences that will help us to understand and assimilate what we have learned and how to apply it to life in order to promote growth and development in our spiritual formation.

Next time: What are we to teach?

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15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 2)

2. Time to change the system

In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the historic Orthodox Church after Constantine in the 4th century AD adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament, complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple (cathedral), frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther did reform the content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of "church" remarkably untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the Charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the superstructure. It is about time to do just that.

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15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 1)

House Church Central has an article by Wolfgang Simson with 15 theses on the church. At some point later I want to do a series of posts on each of his points. What are your thoughts? 

1. Church is a Way of Life, not a series of religious meetings

Before they where called Christians, followers of Christ have been called "The Way". One of the reasons was, that they have literally found "the way to live." The nature of Church is not reflected in a constant series of religious meetings lead by professional clergy in holy rooms specially reserved to experience Jesus, but in the prophetic way followers of Christ live their everyday life in spiritually extended families as a vivid answer to the questions society faces, at the place where it counts most: in their homes.

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More on Missional

I recently came across this quote by Ed Stetzer. I think it is telling for the body of Christ today.

Missions historian Stephen Neil expresses the concern that when churches focus on societal transformation, and particularly when they call it missions, then “everything” is mission. Neil explained, “when everything is mission, nothing is mission.” Those words were prophetic: he spoke those words to a movement that progressively moved away from church planting and evangelistic missions to a near total focus on social justice.

Moreover, are there historical patterns that further confirm Neil’s concerns? When we look at the history of missions, it is frequent (dare I say common?) that those churches which focus on societal change lose their focus on evangelism and church planting. The most healthy churches engage in evangelism (individual transformation), church planting (collective transformation), and societal impact (cultural transformation). And one tends to lead to the others. The best societal impact occurs when it is a reflection of individual and collective, gospel transformation.

When I am told that their church is missional, or they are “being sent,” what I see and hear don’t always align.

Besides losing our focus on evangelism and transformation, our mission ventures run the danger of becoming a project.

Food for thought.

Knowing God

Great quote from my reading Barth's Church Dogmatics this morning:

"We took as our starting point what God Himself said and still says concerning God, and concerning the knowledge and reality of God, by way of the self-testimony which is accessible and comprehensible because it has been given human form in Holy Scripture, the document which is the very essence and basis of the church (CD II.2,p3)

I especially like this observation: Our starting point concerning the doctrine of God is neither an axiom of reason nor a datum of experience. The measure that the doctrine of God draws on these sources betrays the fact that its subject is not really God but a hypostatized reflection of man.

This all goes to say that it is by God that God is known.

This struck me when I read this in Don Miller’s Blog:

Our artists walk away and make secular music and write secular books because they want to say something beautiful and meaningful and so have to walk away from the self-help gospel they grew up hearing about in church.

When we start believing the true story, we will start telling it, and when we start telling it, we’ll help make sense of the world. Story is a sense-making device. And the gospel of Jesus makes sense.

Powerful stuff.

The point of this interpolation is this: We approach our knowledge of God as something we can learn is we study or try hard enough, thus the principles or self-help program approach to knowing God.

What would happen if we took our understanding of God seriously?

Technorati Tags: Barth,Kingdom,Spiritual Formation

A thought from C. S. Lewis

I came across this C. S. Lewis quote from  The Great Divorce.

 

Time is the very lens through which ye see –small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope –something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all (p 140f).

This quote gave me pause for thought. When you consider that MacDonald explains that Lewis’ voyage from Hell to Heaven wasn’t just locomotion, but also increasing in size, works to help me realize that my view of heaven and ‘--by implication, of God, are bound by where I stand in the universe.

This has also come true this week through the SSD conference led by Larry Crabb. I know I do have a skewed view of God and who he is. I can hide on this side of my spiritual telescope and pretend I have it all together.

The telescope is actually meant to be more of a microscope, to help hem see my shrunken heart and land of perpetual pre-dawn that the characters of Lewis’ book lived in before they took the bus to heaven.

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Missional Activity (according to Larry Crabb)

I want to share a few thoughts that Larry Crabb presented at the School of Spiritual Direction this past week.

It deals with the idea of what it means to be missional. Yes, of course, I’ve been a fan of the emerging church and what it means to be missional, but there always seems to be something missing.

I think Scot McKnight’s comment about postmodernism and its relationship to the emerging church in the April 2009 issue of the UK Magazine Christianity,

We found that it tasted good, even if at times we found ourselves spitting out hard chunks of nonsense.

I can concur with that sentiment. However, Larry Crabb gave a short overview of what he thinks it means to be missional, which I would like to reproduce here.

Disclaimer: Any cloudiness or murkiness engendered by this article is my fault and not Larry Crabb’s.

Larry suggested that often we approach the missional activity like this:

Idea:

This is based on our Passion, message, vision, and Strategy.

What do we do? We dialogue, organize, and initiate. And we end up with:

• Package the message
• Get a plan
• Create a team
• Pray

The result? We make it happen!

This is linear, systems thinking at its best.

Larry Crabb suggests another path: Reflect, repent, and release.

Again we start with an Idea:

1. We begin by reflecting as asking the questions: What is my ruling passion? What is God’s passion? What other passions do we see?

2. We look at Relationships. The questions we ask may include:

• What is my lifestyle?
• Am I weary or tired?
• Can I say “no”?
• Am I appreciative of others?
• What kind of feedback am I getting?
• What is my history?
• Do I have self awareness of this idea?

3. This leads to Repentance.

• Where’s the fire?
• Is there a spirit of rest?
• Do I have the courage to say no?
• Is it attractive to others (especially to those closest to me)?

4. This leads to a Release to Ministry. This leads to:

• Prayer
• Discerning a commitment
• What has God provided
• The message is developed
• There is a deliberate strategy

This is definitely not systems thinking. It is also not how we usually do ministry. Think about it, and work through it, and give me any feedback you may have.

Technorati Tags: Kingdom,organizatonal leadership,emerging,missional

 

 

Alpha Talk on Healing

I've decided to post my talk that I did for the Alpha course on the topic of healing. I think I've arrived at what I think is a good theology of healing.


There is a lot of interest in health and being well and well being. I recently googled the phrase healing, and these are some of the results that I found:

• Faith Healing
  
• Spiritual Healing
  
• Holistic Healing
  
• Nordic Healing
  
• Energy Healing
  
• Healing Crystals
  
• Theta Healing
  
• Pranic Healing
  
• Color Therapy for Healing
  
• Reiki Healing
  

There was at one time a bit of an embarrassment to talk about healing in the church. It was a family secret that we kept hidden from view and did not talk about openly. My theological training made the assumption that even if the gifts survived the apostolic age, they were of no use or value to the church today.

But the conversation has changed. It has changed from a topic that caused embarrassment or anxiety to the reality that healing does exist, and what is its source?

This is no surprise, as health is the power to be a human, as exercised the vital functions of the soul and the body. Health and life is not an eternal possession, it is temporal, and therefore a limited possession. It is entrusted to us, but it does not belong to us. It is a gift from God.

Perhaps nothing has challenges us more than physical illness. We can make a space shuttle land on a dime after circling the heavens, but we have no cure for the common cold; the strongest athlete can be struck down by an invisible microbe.

The doctor can set the bone, cut out the tissue, and administer a drug, but it is only life itself that can join cells back together again and restore our health.

But the realm of the spirit is at once powerful, largely unknown and beyond our control, and perhaps we find it threatening.

But to believe in healing prayer:

1. We must first believe that the spiritual world is real,

2. We must believe that powers in the spiritual world affect things in the physical world.

In order to gain an understanding of what healing is, we will look at the subject healing as it is found in the Old Testament, in the ministry of Jesus and in the rest of the New Testament. We will also look at Church history as well, and then at what is happening today.


I. Healing in the Bible

1) Old Testament

The Divine Magna Carta - Ex. 15:26 He said, 'If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.'

Our Part - Psalm 30
¹I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. ²Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.
³You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit.

Our Response - Psalm 107: 15 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for the human race, ¹⁶for he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron. ¹⁷Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. ¹⁸They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. ¹⁹Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. ²⁰He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave.
²¹Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for the human race.

2) The Ministry of Jesus

As we look at the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament, we find that 25% of gospels stories focus on healing the sick, driving out demons, and raising the dead.

A. Jesus chooses the twelve (cf Matt. 10:1ff, where he commissions them)

1. Matt. 4:23 –

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and illness among the people. 24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.

2. Nine miracles, mostly healing Matt 8:1-9:34

Jesus heals a man with leprosy 8:1

The faith of the centurion 8:5

Jesus heals many 8:14

Jesus calms the storm 8:23

Jesus restores two demon-possessed men 8:28

Jesus forgives and heals a paralyzed man 9:1

Jesus raises a dead girl and heals a sick woman 9:18

Jesus heals the blind and the mute 9:27

3. Jesus goes throughout Galilee Matt 9:35-38

35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and illness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.'

What does that look like?

4. Sends out disciples to heal, preach Matt 10:1-8

• 1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil1 spirits and to heal every disease and illness...
  
• 5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: 'Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: "The kingdom of heaven has come near." 8 Heal those who are ill, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.
  

5. Cf Luke 10:1-20, sends out 72 disciples in pairs

• 1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.
  
• 9 Heal those there who are ill and tell them, "The kingdom of God has come near to you."
  
• 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.'
  

B. Rest of New Testament

1. There are about ten stories in Acts of people who are healed, raised from the dead, or being freed from demonic oppression.

2. Book of Acts – First event after Pentecost is Peter and John healing the man in the temple.

3. 1 Cor. 12-14 Spiritual gifts are listed and discussed, which show that they were not the domain only of the apostles, and didn't end with them.


II. Healing in Church History

First of all, it is clear that Jesus considered that his major mission, in addition to teaching, was to heal and cast out evil spirits. This is how he spent his time, and he even risked his life to heal on the Sabbath.


    He passed his healing power on to the Twelve, the disciples, then on to the entire church. The book of Acts shows that the early church did the same things that Jesus did. Peter healed the sick and even raised a woman from the dead, while Paul also healed and raised the dead.
    In the first four or five centuries after Christ, it was expected that healing might take place. But by the fifth century we begin to that Christians no longer learned to pray for healing. Instead, the sick were encouraged to visit shrines and pray for the intercession of the saints.

Examples from the Church Fathers

1. Irenaeus (130-200 AD), Against Heresies 2.32.4 Wherefore, also, those who are in truth His disciples, receiving grace from Him, do in His name perform [miracles], so as to promote the welfare of other men, according to the gift which each one has received from Him. For some do certainly and truly drive out devils, so that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits frequently both believe [in Christ], and join themselves to the Church. Others have foreknowledge of things to come: they see visions, and utter prophetic expressions. Others still, heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole. Yea, moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been raised up, and remained among us for many years. And what shall I more say? It is not possible to name the number of the gifts which the Church, [scattered] throughout the whole world, has received from God, in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and which she exerts day by day for the benefit of the Gentiles


2. Tertullian, c. 212 "There are still preserved among Christians traces of that Holy Spirit that appeared in the form of a dove. They expel evil spirits, perform many cures, and foresee certain events."


3. Origen, c. 248
"Not a few cures are brought about in the name of Jesus, and certain other manifestations of no small significance have taken place."


4. Augustine (354-430 AD), City of God, book 22:8

a) "The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there, and by which a blind man was restored to sight, could come to the knowledge of many; for not only is the city a large one, but also the emperor was there at the time, and the occurrence was witnessed by an immense concourse of people.

b) "In the same city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman of the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her breasts, a disease which, as physicians say, is incurable. She took herself to God alone by prayer, and she was immediately healed.

    The physician who had advised her, when he had examined her after this, and found that she who was afflicted with that disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly asked her what remedy she had used. But when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied, I thought you would make some great discovery known to me. She --upset at his indifference, quickly replied, "What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been four days dead?"

4. Reformers
– An essential task for the Protestant reformers was to cleanse Christianity of everything that in their opinion had served to corrupt the true faith. This meant ridding it of such practices such as the adoration of saints, veneration of relics and pilgrimages to holy sites, many of which were closely associated with healing. The Protestant church tried to discourage belief in sacred and miraculous healing as a dangerous superstition, but holy sites and relics did not disappear overnight.

• John Calvin - Calvin claimed that supernatural healing ceased with the death of the last apostle (Cessationism) and that Catholics making pilgrimages to healing shrines was vile "papist superstition" and should be abolished. Calvin's doctrine of cessation of miraculous healing is principally based on two propositions. First, they have fulfilled their function of certifying the gospel when it was new, and second, what really matters is the healing of the soul from sin.
  
• 
  
  
  Martin Luther - Luther's emphasis was on faith as trusting Jesus for spiritual healing.
  
  "This life is not godliness, but growth in godliness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way; the process is not yet finished, but it has begun; this is not the goal, but it is road; at present all does not gleam and glitter, but everything is being purified."
  

5. John
Wesley (1703-1791) – Wesley believed that the first 300 years of church history showed that various gifts had survived the time of the apostles.  He said one reason these gifts did not extend as normal past the first 300 years was because of "general corruption of faith and morals" among Christians.  The faith of many grew cold as dry, formal people took over and belittled the gifts. Wesley is quick to point out these were not "fools or scoundrels" who were involved with the gifts. 


Commenting on the charge that no early church father directly claimed to speak in tongues or healed he says:

Perhaps this is true of those whose writings are in existence . . .  But what are these in comparison to those which are lost?  And how many saints of the first 300 years of the church left no written account at all?

III. Healing today

God's desire is for people to be well; he provides for such wellness not only through creation and human vocation, but also through the renewing power of God's Spirit through the gospel of Christ.


Examples of healing today: Indonesia in the 1960's; my own experience.


How does Healing happen?

1. Acts 3:16, Peter says, "By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him."


This healing will not be a "Let me do it TO YOU!" affair

• It involves intentionality – "Look..." (Man reacted as beggar looking for alms, Peter wanted to heal)
  
• It involves relationship – "Look at us." (It wasn't just Peter, but Peter and John who did the healing, i.e., community) 
• The Means: Trust in the object of our FAITH.
  
  
  I remember a film about the evolution of flight, featuring a number of contraptions that people invented while trying to fly. One was a bicycle with a set of bird-like wings attached. Pedaling the bike caused the tires to roll while a series of gears, chains and levers moved the wings in a flapping motion.
  
  
  
  The rider was shown heading full speed toward the edge of a cliff with his wings flapping. His momentum carried him off the edge and allowed him to "fly" about three feet through the air before he headed down to crash in a heap.
  
  
  
      It can be said that this man believed his machine would fly. His willingness to ride it off a cliff proves his faith, and while we cannot doubt the sincerity of his faith, we must question the object of his faith. No amount of faith in that flying machine would make it fly. It was simply the wrong object of faith for flying, or more importantly, it could not be trusted to deliver on the man's faith.
  

2. Prerequisites

Eph 2:6 - And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no-one can boast.
10 For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Romans 8:22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?
25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

1) Simplicity

Faith is not a weapon by which we demand things from God or put him in subjection to us. Faith is an act of self-denial. Faith is a renunciation of one's ability to do anything and a confession that God can do everything. Faith derives its power not from the spiritual energy of the person who believes, but from the supernatural efficacy of the person who is believed: God! It is not faith's act but its object that accounts for the miraculous. Healing is not a right; it's a favor from God and even a constant miracle, for which we are to thank the One who gives us health now and full wholeness in a time yet to come.


(We can't be like the prodigal son, who demands his inheritance from his father and then goes off to do what he wants with his life.)

Faith and Prayer are not meant to be a replacement for hygiene, exercise and a healthy lifestyle, medicine, or the struggle for better living conditions for all. They are meant to complement, supplement, and partner with them.


2) Love


3) Words of Knowledge

It is important as we approach prayer for healing that we take time to listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us, to discern what his will is for the person for whom we are praying.


4) Prayer

a. Where does it hurt? Ask the person what is wrong and what they would like us to pray for. N.B. the question of Jesus in John 5:6 –"Do you want to be healed?"3

b. Why does the person have this condition? Sometimes there is a root cause to the problem.

c. How do I pray? Pray to God to heal in the name of Jesus, ask the Holy Spirit to come upon the person; sometimes anointing with oil, laying on of hands.

c. How do you feel? Sometimes we are healed immediately; sometimes we feel nothing, in which case we continue to pray (example of Jesus and the blind man in Mark 8:22-25)

d. What next?

• God loves us whether we are healed or not. We are free to come back for prayer whenever we want.
  
• No burden for lack of faith on the recipient, or that we somehow can lose our healing.
  
• Important to continue to pray and root our lives in the community of the church, where long term healing often occurs.
  
• We must continue our obedience to the call and commission of Jesus Christ found in Matt 28//, and to proclaim the kingdom of God
  

Healing is more than a cure. Take the example of Marva Dawn. She is an older looking lady who often wears a worn dress. Physically handicapped, she wears a leg brace and often needs help to walk, and is blind in one eye. Her medications for her infirmities take a toll on her physically, but she doesn't wallow in physical or emotional pain.


She has four Master's degrees and an earned PhD in Ethics, she has taught at both Notre Dame (give American pronunciation as well) and Regent's college in Vancouver, BC, Canada.


N.B. – The Error of believing that you can lose your healing.

• for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Rom 11:29
  
• God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Num 23:19
  

How to Live as a Christian, Post-Election

A Christian Response to the 2008 Presidential Election
I have to admit to a bit of sadness over the response of Christians to the election of Barack Obama. I consider myself an independent, and more often than not during my political experience I have voted against a candidate rather than for. That too makes me sad.

I have a couple of observations that I want to comment on.
1. Election Rhetoric.
It struck me that much of what republicans and democrats are saying about this election is much the same as what came out of the mouths of republicans and democrats in 2000 and 2004. Only this time, the remarks have switched parties. For example, republican friends say that a large majority of the country do not agree with the views of the new president (The democrats said this in 2000 and 2004), while on the other hand, democratic friends are saying that the election returns give Obama a mandate for change; again, something that the republicans said in 2000 and 2004.

2. Many of my Christian friends prayed fervently for this election.
Obama won. Did God not answer their prayers?

Or, did God answer their prayers?

God is known to work out his will despite his people. If God did answer these prayers, what does that do to our theology? Still more, what does this say about our support for Barack Obama? I don't want to be put into the situation of second guessing God. My guess is that there is a lot of change in the air, and we have to decide for whom the church will be a handmaid. What if Obama is the gate through which we need to walk in order to bring change to this country and stave off judgment?

3. Election Issues.
There are a lot more issues in this presidential election that are as important as abortion and homosexuality, but evangelicals are shy to address. For example, approximately 30,000 people die of starvation, waterborne diseases and AIDS each day, deaths which are viewed as preventable, yet I am only now beginning to see organizations such as Feed My Starving Children gain visibility. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we better be certain that we don't react to what God is doing when Rhoda comes to tell us that Peter is at the door (Acts 12:12-17).

4. I am astonished at the amount of negativity coming from the mouths of Christians!

Come on people, we are people of hope. The elections are important, but let's focus, okay?

Having said all this, the point of this post is this: We need to stop moaning and beefing about who won the presidency, and pray just as hard for the success of this man in God's will as we did for the whom we thought God wanted as president during this election campaign.

Here are two parts of a post by by Mark Roberts that speaks to the issue of how to pray for the election and the new president (here and here). I like what he says in his first point:

We Should Act Upon the Call of Jesus to Peacemaking in the Way We Relate to Our Fellow Citizens.

There are other blogs that have shown up today (see this one by Randy Alcorn), which encourages me to believe that we will ultimately do the right thing, as soon as we stop focusing on why it was wrong to trust in Obama/McCain and not Jesus.

(Posted using ShareThis)

A Hedge or a Sword?

Hedgerows are a part of the history of humankind. They have been around since the Bronze Age, although many of the older hedgerows found today in Europe were first planted during Roman times.

They made life a living hell for soldiers of the Allied armies trying to break out of the Normandy beachhead in WW2. The hedgerows that they encountered, called bocage by the French, consisted of small, irregularly shaped fields, measuring only about 200 by 400 meters, enclosed by ancient, overgrown hedges that grow from earthen mounds flanked by drainage ditches.

These hedgerows surrounding the fields were four to ten feet thick, grew up to 15 feet high, limiting visibility to one field at a time, and were impenetrably dense — even for tanks. They formed a thousand square miles of tough patchwork terrain, connected by a network of dirt roads sunken far below field level.

The idea of a hedge is found in the writings of the Rabbis. They surrounded the law with a hedge, a body of interpretations, expansions, and applications of the Law that they came to regard as of divine origin. Look at this example from the Mishnah:

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the prophets; and the prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah (Pirke Aboth, 1:1).

Incidentally, the word translated fence is a mishnaic hebrew word (סיג) for wall, fence, or a thick hedge.

Since you could inadvertently break the Law, we find the principle of “putting a hedge around the Law,” not to protect it, but to provide a margin of safety. Whatever one thought right to do, the oral Torah provided a margin of error. Any commandment was an opportunity to show one’s obedience. For Jesus this kind of scrupulous observance would only lead to a neglect of the major points of the Law. It is inevitable that there was an over-concentration on the manageable, the visual and perceptible things of the law—to the neglect of the weightier matters:

‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practised the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel (Matt. 23:23-24).

Speaking to the city of Jerusalem through the Prophet Isaiah, God likens the city of Jerusalem to the planting of a vineyard:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love-song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and cleared it of stones,

and planted it with choice vines;

he built a watchtower in the midst of it,

and hewed out a wine vat in it;

he expected it to yield grapes,… (Isaiah 5:1-2)

The problem? quite simply:

...but it yielded wild grapes (Isaiah 5:2b)

The wild grapes, according the metaphor, are the sins and unrighteous acts of the people:

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts

is the house of Israel,

and the people of Judah

are his pleasant planting;

he expected justice,

but saw bloodshed;

righteousness,

but heard a cry! (Isaiah 5:7)

Because they refused to turn away from the sins and crimes, God made a promise:

And now I will tell you

what I will do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge,

and it shall be devoured;

I will break down its wall,

and it shall be trampled down. (Isaiah5:5)

Hedges are meant for protection, either on a literal or metaphorical level. But I notice that a sense of complacency often occurs among those living inside a building, vineyard, or city protected by a hedge. God uses the hedge as a metaphor for his protection, by breaking down the hedge he allows the enemy to pour in to execute judgment.

What struck me is that I, like many people, often pray for a hedge of protection for myself and others. I’m not so sure that is the best use of that metaphor. I would agree that there are times when we need protection, but that is a passive approach to living the Christian life. I think Paul has a better approach:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people (Ephesians 6:10-18).

Sort of reminds me of Nehemiah’s instructions to carry a sword in on hand and trowel in the other (Nehemiah 4:16-18).

So, the question is, do live behind a hedge, or do we follow Christ, in full panoply, ready for the day?

An interesting video

Found this video on a website called Connaitre Dieu. It is a great metaphor for the love of God.