Our church heard a good word from pastor Jim Laffoon last night. Jim made the point that God’s greatest challenge on this earth is not Satan nor broken cultures nor persecuting tyrants, but his broken church. That thought is worth some reflection.
The kingdom of God has significant challenges that stand in the way of establishing God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. There is Satan. There are powerful, corrupt, and atheistic governments. There are defiled cultures that rival Sodom and Gomorrah. There are powerful tyrants that persecute the church and there is a powerful, godless media that shapes the mind of the world. And yet, the church is designed and empowered to overcome every one of those obstacles. Jesus said that even the very gates of hell would not prevail against his church. And yet the world, in many quarters, seems to be winning.
The problem is not that the world is bigger and badder than God anticipated. The problem is that the church is made up of a huge percentage of people who are broken and in bondage to all kinds of things and who are not walking in the freedom and power that God offers. The question then is why is such a large percentage of the church broken and in bondage? Jesus said that he had come to heal the broken hearted and to set captives free (see Isa.61 and Luke 4). So why isn’t he doing his job?
Obviously, the problem isn’t with Jesus. The problem exists on this end. To a large degree, the problem is that a large part of the church has rejected or limited the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his followers that when he left he would send another – the Holy Spirit – and as a result, they would be better equipped than if Jesus were physically present with them. He told them and us that the Spirit would come to be our counselor, our comforter, our teacher, our guide, and the transformer of our character (the fruit of the Spirit). He was also very clear that the Spirit would come to give us power for ministry.
In the beginning, Jesus commanded his followers to stay in Jerusalem until they received power from the Holy Spirit (Acts 1). He didn’t mean that the power of the Holy Spirit would help them do their best and be their best. He meant that the Spirit would operate in them with a supernatural power that would go beyond anything they were capable of even on their best day. Just fifty days earlier the apostles had shown what their “best” was. They ran away. Peter denied Christ three times. They had no comprehension of the resurrection and they simply hid from the authorities and some doubted even when Jesus appeared in the room with them. However, the moment after the Holy Spirit fell on them and imparted power to them, they stood in the temple courts and boldly preached that Jesus was Lord to the same crowd that had crucified him less than two months earlier. As they did so, they spoke in languages they had never learned.
That is a template for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Lord’s church and in the life of every believer. The anointing for personal transformation and power to change the world is found in the full ministry of the Holy Spirit. The supernatural move of the Spirit in us and through us is everything. And yet, much of the church has done its best to minimize the Spirit and in doing so we have minimized the church. The idea that the entire ministry of the Holy Spirit is to simply give us a little insight into scripture and to make us into a gathering of nice people is a real weapon of the enemy.
The theology that the Holy Spirit no longer operates in supernatural power through his people has effectively declawed the Lion of Judah. The church in America is full of demonic presence because she quit believing in the supernatural moves of God or even the supernatural moves of the devil. Recently, a believer from another church in our city went through our eight-week Free Indeed class and Freedom Weekend and was delivered from several spirits. That believer went back to his church and when praying and counseling with one of their members realized that a demonic spirit was manifesting so he cast it out. Not too long after that episode of freedom and supernatural ministry, one of their church leaders told them that they didn’t do that in their church. As a result, many members of that church will continue in brokenness and bondage and will never step into the destiny God has written for them.
The word Christ means “the anointed one.” Jesus Christ is the Anointed One of God. He declared in Luke 4 that he was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, release from darkness for the prisoners…(Isa:61:1). The very things Jesus did required the Spirit of the Lord to be upon him. The anointing was the Spirit of God operating supernaturally through him. John tells us that a spirit of anti-Christ is in the world. I believe that spirit not only denies that Jesus is Lord but works against the anointing of the church by the Spirit. I believe cessationism, the theology that God stopped working in miraculous ways at the end of the first century, is one of the doctrines of demons Paul, warned us about in 1 Timothy 4.
As long as we deny the continuing supernatural ministry of the Spirit in his church and through his church we will continue to be broken and in bondage. We will also leave the world in its brokenness and bondage. We will be an army so handicapped that we will win few battles and hold little ground. Jesus himself promised that those who believe in him would do even greater things than he did. I don’t think he was talking about huge buildings, well run programs, and worship productions that rival Vegas. I’m not against big churches, excellent programs, and powerful worship but Jesus was talking about the supernatural healing of broken hearts and transformed identities. He was talking about casting wheelchairs aside, emptying cancer wards, preaching in languages we have never learned, raising the dead, dismissing depression, and casting out devils in greater ways than he ever did.
The church is broken and the full, unleashed ministry of the Holy Spirit is the antidote. I see more and more churches beginning to recognize that truth but then I see them hesitate to actually embrace the power of the Spirit. My prayer is that God will fill his church and every believer with the fullness of his Spirit so that the world will know that Jesus is truly the Anointed One because his church walks in that anointing. That anointing is available to every believer so I also encourage you to ask for it daily as part of your “daily bread.” May you be blessed today and represent your King with power and love.
