Last night, in a study I was leading about demonic spirits and deliverance, a standard question came up. I think it’s a good question and one that comes up frequently. I didn’t have time last night to answer it adequately, so I thought I would try to do a better job in a this and one more blog. The question was, “Why do most churches avoid teaching about demons and deliverance today when demons and deliverance are so prevalent in the pages of the New Testament?”

The answer to this question goes beyond discussions of demons and deliverance to the very heart of any supernatural or miraculous events in the Bible…including the resurrection. The 18^th century ushered in what has been labeled, The Age of Reason. Much had happened in previous decades to upset the established order of Western Europe. Abuses in the Catholic Church had prompted Martin Luther to protest and the ensuing Protestant Reformation undermined the dogma and political hold of the Catholic Church. As the Catholic Church came under fire, so did the biblical theology on which Rome stood. What was dangerous to question before, was suddenly fair game for European intellectuals. Not only was the Catholic interpretation of scripture challenged, but scripture itself became a target.

At the same time, science and medicine were making great strides.
Reason and logical deduction became the new bywords of “modern society.” In the cultural atmosphere of Western Europe and the United States, science and reason became the new gods. In the context of “the Age of Reason,” science and medicine became the proclaimed hope of mankind.

This 18^th century perspective invaded universities and the schools of theology within those universities. Suddenly, the scientific method was deemed the only valid way to discover truth. Reality only consisted of those things that could be observed, measured, and reproduced in a laboratory. Undoubtedly, there had been some dark days of superstition and inquisition in the centuries before the Age of Reason, but, instead of the pendulum swinging to a balanced middle position, it swung to the far side and a movement began to deny not only Biblical revelation as a source of truth, but also to deny the existence of God altogether.

The big fizz about Darwin’s theory of evolution was that if offered a natural mechanism that seemed to make God unnecessary.  Of course, the fossil record and numerous other scientific discoveries have left the theory untenable, but even the brightest minds of today doggedly hold on to it as a way to deny God and any personal accountability to a God. The intellectuals of the 18^th century, including theologians in major universities, began to “reason away” the supernatural aspects of our faith as events recorded through the lens of superstitious and backward people. Many began a movement to “demythologize” the scriptures and give naturalistic explanations to the miracles recorded in God’s word. Miracles simply weren’t scientific.

That thinking affected even Bible believing Christians and preachers who were not willing to throw out the miracles of the Bible but found an intellectually respectable middle ground. Their position was that the miraculous accounts of scripture were indeed true, but were limited to “Bible times.” Their view was that although God intervened in the lives of his people in miraculous ways throughout the Bible, he curtailed those supernatural activities somewhere around the end of the first century and has not been in the miracle business since. In today’s world, God still acts on behalf of his people, but only through natural means. This position is called cessationism and is the most prevalent view in American churches today.

This view is based on the assumption that the only reason Jesus and the apostles performed miracles was to validate who they were: Jesus as the Son of God and the apostles as his inspired representatives. Once the New Testament church was established and the Bible was completed and confirmed through first-century miracles, there was no longer any need for such supernatural events and, therefore, God has only worked through natural means for the past 2000 years. Any claim to the contrary, they say, is misguided at best and heretical or deceptive in worst cases.

As a result, when churches pray for the sick today, they rarely pray for supernatural healing but rather for God to guide the doctor’s hands. When a person is tormented by mental or emotional anguish, the church does not consider demonic affliction but simply turns God’s people over to the medical community (many of whom are unbelievers) and over to medications. When cancer is diagnosed, our first call will likely be to M.D. Anderson rather than to the elders of the church to come and pray for healing (see James 5:14-16). You can see that in the American church, we trust God to forgive our sins but we trust science, medicine, and government for the rest.

More on this in my next blog.  

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.  And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:12-16

In the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, he spends a great deal of times underlining our essential need for the Holy Spirit. He begins the chapter recounting the decision he made after his disappointing stint in Athens (see Acts 17). While in Athens, Paul had rolled out his most eloquent arguments and debated with the philosophers on Mars Hill with little response. I’m certain that he spent a number of hours in soul searching and asking the Spirit why his strategy had so little effect. When he came to Corinth he had settled on an entirely different approach. “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom, as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God…my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:1-5).

In his two letters to the church at Corinth, he speaks of power at least 25 times. He always relates power to the Holy Spirit as did Jesus, who had instructed the first disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received power from the Holy Spirit.

There are numerous ways in which the Spirit enables us to serve God. In this text, Paul emphasizes our ability to comprehend God and his ways. First of all, he says, the Spirit gives us understanding. Paul had a miserable experience trying to reason with the “wise men” of Athens. Ultimately, what he was telling them made no sense to their intellectual leanings. Paul begins the section I quoted at the beginning of this blog by telling us that God gave us his Spirit so that we could understand the things God has given us. Spiritual understanding is critical to faith and without the Spirit, there is no spiritual understanding.

For those of us who believe, we often marvel that some of the brightest minds of our time consider the complexities of the universe and still walk away as atheists. Paul, who was a brilliant scholar himself, said, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). The word translated as “discerned” here means to make an appraisal, a judgment, or a right evaluation of something. In other words, without the Spirit of God in us, we cannot evaluate or judge truth accurately. So…don’t be surprised that university professors ridicule our faith.

It is not that spiritual things are not logical; it is just that spiritual logic is not the same as natural logic. When I was first studying to be a minister in a fellowship that did not accept the present- day ministry of the Holy Spirit, I was surrounded by very bright men who studied the scriptures daily. However, in an attempt to understand difficult passages, they applied Aristotelian logic to the scriptures. Their conclusions were inevitably legalistic. Think about it. They applied reasoning processes developed by pagan philosophers and applied them to truths of the Spirit and, I believe, consistently came away with false conclusions. If you don’t have the Spirit or don’t listen to the Spirit you cannot understand spiritual things. Spiritual logic turns natural logic on its head – the first shall be last, the least shall be greatest, the save your life you must lose it, and so on. To the man without the Spirit, those things sound naïve and foolish. To us they are cornerstone truths in the kingdom of God.

As Paul considered that truth, he put away his eloquent outlines that appealed to man’s wisdom and, instead, preached a simple gospel followed by demonstrations of the Spirit’s power. One of the great values of power in evangelism is that the power of the Spirit upsets the natural man’s paradigm – his way of understanding the world. When the rational or scientific man encounters the power of God in prophecy, healing, deliverance, raising the dead, walking on water, etc. his mindset cannot explain adequately what has happened and he experiences a paradigm shift – an openness to knew possibilities. Paul experienced that shift on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians while he was still known as Saul of Tarsus.

Even as Christians, I believe we have missed part of the implications of what Paul has told us in this text. The amazing truth he gives us is that we have the mind of Christ – the mind through which the universe was created. Too often, we limit spiritual understanding to theology rather than all understanding that comes from the mind of Christ. What if we believed that the cure to cancer was available to us because we are tapped into the mind of Christ who understands perfectly everything from the forces that created the universe to sub-atomic physics as well as the cellular structure and genetics of the human body? God cares about our health as well as our salvation. He cares about the suffering of men in this world as well as the world to come. Jesus said that his Spirit would lead us into all truth. We should be teaching ourselves and our children to ask God for spiritually creative pathways for music, art, literature, media, and architecture along with heavenly solutions to disease, world hunger, poverty, energy, and pollution. By restricting God’s truth to theology only, we have, in all likelihood, robbed the world of uncounted blessings.

The Holy Spirit is a game changer that opens us up to the very mind and heart of God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. His presence and power sets us apart from all people on earth. While some churches discourage any pursuit of the Holy Spirit and his power, we should be pursuing Him and all that He has with all of our hearts. It is the Spirit who gives us understanding and then empowers us to activate that understanding with the same power that raised Jesus from the grave. What a gift and what a privilege for those who believe in the Risen Lord. Make the most of his Spirit living in you today! Ask Him for answers to everything.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.          For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor.13:8-13)

The text above is the second half of the discussion on love that Paul sandwiched between his two chapters on spiritual gifts. In my last blog we discussed the need for all gifts to be governed and motivated by love. What is interesting is that this section is also a key passage that “cessationist theologians” use to demonstrate that miraculous gifts no longer operate. I thought it might bed helpful to discuss these verses in light of the question, “Do the supernatural gifts of the Spirit still operate?”

Many churches in the western world teach or operate on the assumption that God no longer intervenes in the world in miraculous ways as he once did. Their argument is that Jesus performed miracles in order to validate his claims to be the Messiah, the Son of God. The apostles exercised miraculous gifts in order to validate their leadership, their authority, and their writings as being inspired and established by God.

The argument continues that once Jesus had performed enough miraculous signs to validate his position as Son of God and once the apostles had demonstrated their God-ordained apostleship which was validated by their miracles, there was no further need for miracles. In this view the sole function of miracles was to validate Jesus and the apostles or to provide direction (prophecy, words of knowledge, etc.,) until the New Testament was penned. Once validated and the New Testament was delivered, there was no further need for the miracles and so they ceased when all the apostles had died.

Jesus did say that his works validated his claims but in many settings, scripture says that he was moved by compassion to heal and deliver rather than a need to be validated. He often told many he healed to tell no one what he had done. If God no longer acts through miracles on behalf of his people, does that mean he is no longer is moved with compassion? Additionally, several books in the New Testament were written by men who were not apostles (Luke, Acts, James, Hebrews, for instance) and, as far as we know, performed no miracles. Does that mean their writings are subject to question? Many individuals in the New Testament who were also non-apostles and who wrote none of the New Testament performed miracles. If miracles were only for validation of Christ and the apostles why did these others operate in miraculous gifts?

As textual proof, those who hold that view offer the verse above that states, “But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.” The Greek word that is translated as “perfection” or “that which is perfect” is teleion. The word can mean “complete” so the idea is that when the inspired writings of the New Testament were completed and verified by the past miracles of those who wrote the New Testament, the miraculous gifts of the Spirit would cease.

They go on to argue that the so-called miraculous gifts of the Spirit today, do not meet the Biblical standards of miracles, so they are invalid. The biblical standards they offer are prophecies in which every word is proven true and healing gifts through which every person is healed. Since not all prophetic words today come to pass as spoken and since not all are healed, they declare that current “miracles” are psychosomatic emotionalism, at best, and satanic deception in other cases.

Let me respond to those claims. First of all, the word “teleion” typically means complete in the sense of mature, especially spiritually mature. Strong defines it as, “ a state of ideal wholeness or completion, in which any disabilities, shortcomings or defects that may have existed before have been eliminated or left behind. In secular Greek teleios means also: (i) adult, full-grown, as opposed to immature and infantile.” Paul often speaks of believers growing up into the fullness of Jesus – full in the sense of his spiritual maturity and holiness. 1 Corinthians 13, is an entire chapter that sets the standard for full maturity as love and a life that is expressed through love for God and others.

When “perfection comes” is most likely alluding to the coming of Jesus, who is spiritual maturity incarnate, or is talking about the time when our love will be perfected – when Jesus comes. Paul’s argument, in the context of 1 Corinthians, is that the believer’s goal should not be to surpass others in miraculous works and power but to surpass them in love.

He rests his argument on the idea that the spiritual gifts of the church are good, needful, and desirable, but not eternal. When Jesus establishes the fullness of his kingdom, miraculous gifts will not be needed. Gifts of healing will not be needed where no sickness exists. Deliverance will not be needed where no demons are present. Prophecies will not be needed, as God himself will be present to declare his word, and so forth. In eternity, love, not spiritual gifts, will define the kingdom.

Up to this point, the completion of the New Testament has obviously not yet provided everything the church needs to be spiritually mature or victorious. The power of the Holy Spirit along with divine weapons are still needed in a hostile world. The supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit are part of that heavenly arsenal.

The argument that the present day offering of miracles and healings does not meet biblical standards is also addressed in Paul’s three chapters on spiritual gifts in this letter. Gifts of prophecy are not the same as the office of prophet (Eph.4:11ff). Spiritual gifts under the new covenant are capacities that often begin as seeds and then grow to maturity. In the process, not every person with a gift of prophecy will hear God accurately or fully in the beginning. That is why Paul instructs the church to “weigh carefully” what has just been prophesied (1 Cor.14:29). He is not calling them to constantly be on the hunt for false prophets but to evaluate prophecies because there is room for error. Those who mature in prophecy and that may have an extraordinary anointing in the gift may then fill the office of a prophet and the standards for his accuracy will be higher.

The same is true in healings and deliverance. Not everyone is healed or delivered. Some of Jesus’ own disciples were not able to cast out a demon in Mark’s gospel (Mk.9:18). Paul spoke of some who were close to him who were dealing with sicknesses that apparently he had not been able to heal. Since spiritual gifts are for both the mature and immature and because they must be developed, a standard of perfection is unbiblical and does not invalidate the gifts.

Not only that, but cessationist churches take the text from I Corinthians that says tongues, prophecies, and knowledge will cease and extrapolate that to all miraculous gifts. Even if “that which is perfect” were the completed New Testament (which I do not believe it is), the apostle did not list healings, words of knowledge, miracles, and so forth as gifts that would cease. To take a few gifts as representative of all the gifts also would also eliminate gifts such as teaching, encouragement, mercy, hospitality, generosity, and so forth. The New Testament does not differentiate between those spiritual gifts and tongues, prophecy, etc. Each are supernatural gifts given by the Spirit to build up the body of Christ. To cherry-pick the gifts we are comfortable with and deny those that make us uncomfortable seems to lack integrity.

We still live under the New Covenant and part of that covenant is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the release of spiritual gifts to the body. That covenant has not changed and has not been diminished. Every spiritual gift listed in the New Testament is still available to be distributed by the Holy Spirit as he determines. Even gifts not listed (worship, creativity, writing, etc.) are evidently given and anointed by the Spirit. The key is to desire the gifts out of a hunger to exercise them as an expression of God’s love and compassion to others. When we operate out of love, God will gladly give us his gifts and give us even more as we continue to love. When all is said and done, faith, hope, and love will remain but the greatest of those is love. Blessings in Him.

Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebub. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you. (Luke 11:17-20)

The gospel of Luke gives us insight into the mindset of the Pharisees regarding Jesus. Jesus did not match their preconception of what the Messiah would look like. Jesus was not raised in a noble family; he was not educated at the feet of great Rabbi’s; he had not presented himself to the Sanhedrin or the Pharisees asking for their seal of approval; and he did not covet their favor at all. In fact, rather than courting their support he had confronted them on numerous occasions about their religious hypocrisy. As a result, they rejected him as the Messiah. They did have a major problem, however, in their attempts to discredit Jesus. His miracles were extreme, public, numerous, and undeniable.

Their final ploy was simply to ascribe his miraculous works to the power of Satan. They were most clear about their accusations when Jesus was casting out demons. Jesus’ response was simple. Why would Satan (Beelzebub) cast out his own minions who were doing his work? Wouldn’t that kind of contradiction undermine the kingdom of darkness? And…if demons are only cast out by the power of Satan, then how did they explain their own exorcists who cast out demons?

Ultimately, his response came down to a declaration regarding the kingdom of God. The Jewish leaders were very keen on the Messianic kingdom being established in their own day. They anticipated that it would be a kingdom of politics and military might backed up by the power of God. They had thought that they would all be given positions of power and influence in that kingdom. Jesus’ disdain for them and his disinterest in a political or military solution did not “fit their theology.”

Jesus, however, made a definitive statement about the nature of the kingdom of God as proof that he was a bona fide representative of that kingdom. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you (Lk.11:20). A mark of the true kingdom was to be supernatural power. It was not power to be used politically or militarily but to destroy the works of the devil. The mark of kingdom would be the preaching of the good news, healing, casting out demons, raising the dead, etc. It still is.

Jesus declared that the kingdom the Pharisees would have ushered in was not the kingdom of God but rather another earthly kingdom devised by men. The question arises – does any view of the kingdom of God that does not claim and demonstrate supernatural power correctly represent God’s kingdom? In his letter to the Galatians, Paul expressed a great concern about the so-called gospel that was being preached. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned” (Gal.1:6-8)!

Paul’s primary concern in this text was a gospel that included works for salvation and not grace alone. But the warning is not to change or pervert the gospel that was declared by Jesus and taught by the apostles. Throughout his letters, Paul frequently talked about the power of the kingdom of God and demonstrated it time and again. Is a gospel without power, a true gospel at all? Is a miracle drug that is eventually dispensed with only part of the formula, still the solution that was promised or is it something else? The gospel is not only the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus but also the promises attached to what Jesus did. Without those promises the gospel is no good news at all. The forgiveness of sin, rebirth into God’s family, the indwelling Holy Spirit and the power of the Spirit in our lives is all part of the package. To leave out any of those components makes the gospel less than it is meant to be.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul wrote, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (Eph.1:17-20).

Wisdom, revelation, spiritual eyes, hope, inheritance, and incomparable power are key words that he prayed over and over again for the church in Ephesus. Without a demonstration of power, Christianity will be viewed, by most, as just another philosophy of life. But…we teach peace and love. So do Eastern religions. The historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection sets us apart but the power of the gospel is what confirms that resurrection. The psalmist declares that God forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases (Ps. 103). When Jesus was questioned about his authority to forgive sins on the earth, he simply healed the man as proof that the man’s sins were forgiven. Matthew records the moment when Jesus said, “For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?  But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he then said to the paralytic—‘Rise, pick up your bed and go home’” (Mt.9:5-6). A demonstration of power, governed by love, confirmed the reality of forgiveness.

We need those same demonstrations today. A gospel that preaches forgiveness without demonstrating the goodness of God through the supernatural intervention of his Spirit falls short. The charisms or supernatural, spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit are not just power but expressions of God’s love for people. That is why Paul devoted a whole chapter to love in the middle of his discussion on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14.

I am still frustrated that so many Christian churches today continue to deny, teach against, and even forbid the exercise of spiritual gifts such as healing, deliverance, prophecy, tongues, and so forth. Like the Pharisees, many still argue that the exercise of those gifts is satanic deceptions. The real deception is found in the prohibition of their exercise. Paul declared, “Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Cor.14:39). He also charged, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt” (1 Thess.5:19-20).

I am not saying that the churches that deny the full ministry of the Holy Spirit do not love Jesus. I’m not saying that they do not do good. I am saying that they operate with an incomplete gospel because the promises attached to his good news are incomplete. Trying to push back the powers of darkness without the manifest power of the Holy Spirit is like hunting with a gun that is not loaded. That was never the Lord’s intent. Regardless of where you attend church, I hope that you will pursue everything the Spirit promises because those promises validate the resurrection of Jesus and the presence of his kingdom. They are continuing expressions of God’s love in a dark world. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you (Luke 11:17-20). Be blessed.

Anyone who believes in the present day ministry of miracles will quote John 14:12, eventually and probably often. “He who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also, and greater works than these, because I go to the Father.”   We often quote this verse but rarely take time to break it down, so lets take a closer look.

Jesus begins by defining who would do the works he did. He did not say, “my apostles, those who have been following me for three years, a few super-Christians,” etc. He simply says, “He who believes in me.” The NIV translates the phrase as, “Anyone who has faith in me…” The potential for doing what Jesus did, and even greater things, rests in every believer. The potential rests there because the Holy Spirit indwells there. Jesus said that his promise was true because he was going to his Father.

The promised event that would occur as Jesus returned to the Father was the sending of his Spirit and the power that would attend the Spirit. In John 16, Jesus told his disciples, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn.16:7). After his resurrection and ascension back to the Father, Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received power after the Spirit had fallen on them. After the power of the Spirit was released, miracles began to happen.

Anyone who has the Spirit of Christ has the potential to do the works of Christ. What were the works? Preaching the Kingdom, healing, cleansing lepers, raising the dead, calming storms, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, etc. The works of Jesus were the very things that destroyed or reversed the works of the devil, which is the very thing Jesus came to do (1 Jn.3:8). It’s important to notice what Jesus did not say in John 14:12. Jesus did not say that those who believe could do the works he did, but that they would do the works he did. Jesus has an expectation that those who have faith in Him will do the very things he did while he was on the earth – and even greater things.

Many evangelicals have cast this verse as a promise of extensive evangelism. They say that the verse will be fulfilled when we have reached more people than Jesus was able to reach while he was on the earth. In their version, the “greater works, ” would simply be more evangelism. There is no doubt that Jesus has called us to reach more people, but that alone does not constitute the works that Jesus had been doing. The miraculous works of Jesus accompanied and facilitated evangelism, but were not simply the preaching of the good news alone.

In addition, the idea of doing “greater works” is not just quantitative in nature. It is not just doing more of what Jesus did. The word translated as “greater” in the text is mizon. It is used numerous times in the New Testament and always carries the idea of quality vs. quantity. Jesus didn’t say that believers would do more things than he did; he said that they would do even greater things than he did.

If Jesus had that expectation, then we should also carry that expectation. I said earlier in this blog that every believer has the potential to do greater works. The potential for all things in the kingdom is released not only through faith that God can do something but also through expectation that God will do something. Most believers have no doubt that God can do anything, but have been taught not to expect God to do those things. That is why the potential has not been released in many or most believers in the western world.

It is a simple verse. It is straightforward. If we take Jesus at this word, believers should be doing what he did and doing even greater works. Whenever the works of Jesus are not occurring, something is wrong or incomplete in those who believe. The problem is that much of the church believes that when the works of Jesus are occurring, there is something wrong.

Let me encourage you to not only believe that God can do miracles, but to ask the Holy Spirit to give you an expectation that he will. The needed transformation in the church will probably not come from the pulpits down, but from the pews up. In other words, most pastors will continue to preach what they were trained to believe in seminary. If they begin to preach something else, they will most likely be asked to step down. When the ordinary believer begins to walk with the expectation of miracles, God will honor that expectation and as those who sit in the pews on Sunday, begin to move in the power of God, leadership may be changed by their testimony.

Regardless of leadership’s expectation, we must honor the Savior’s expectation for his people and his expectation is for every one of us to be doing the works he did. Be blessed today and expect!

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”          Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled.    The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.    But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus. (Luke 6:1-11)

There are some who take offense at the move of the Holy Spirit and the miracles of God. They immediately reject what God is doing when the Spirit moves in ways not specifically seen in the Bible, or when He moves in ways that do not fit an individual’s theology, or when he moves at all. That individual would admit that God once worked in those ways but would assert that God no longer does such things. Each of these individuals would claim scriptural authority for his or her view. How we approach scripture makes a huge difference in our faith. Luke’s account is instructive in our approach to scripture.

The Pharisees were great students of the Torah. They had memorized most, if not all, of the Old Testament – certainly the first five books. They spent their days dissecting and debating the texts, trying to determine all things lawful and unlawful. They viewed scripture as a rulebook. Their approach was simply to determine what was permitted and what was prohibited in life and assign every nuance of life to one of those categories. When there was an infraction, their job was to throw and flag and assess a penalty.

The Torah said that man should do no work on the Sabbath. God, however, deleted the footnote that defined what constituted “work.” So the Pharisees and other religious leaders took on the task of defining the word for Him. Their scholars produced a definitive list of activities that constituted work and over time their definitions carried as much weight as scripture. Of the hundreds of activities prohibited, harvesting grain and healing on the Sabbath made the “prohibited” list. Jesus violated the list! In their minds, that marked Jesus as a sinner.

That would have been an easy label to hang on Jesus except for the fact that he performed numerous certifiable miracles that were far beyond the reach of any ordinary man. In fact, they seemed to be the marks of a true prophet in the order of Elijah or Elisha. But, by their definition of sin, Jesus was a sinner. So they simply declared his miracles to be works of the devil designed to deceive.

Their mistake was in their view of scripture. They knew the two greatest commandments: Love God and love your neighbor. What they didn’t understand was that God’s love had to be reflected in the interpretation of the scriptures. What they didn’t understand was that God was revealing himself in the scriptures as not only a holy God, but also a loving and merciful God who wanted to show them his goodness and kindness at every turn.

Even on Sinai, as God was giving the Law, Moses asked to see God’s glory. The Lord replied that he would cause all of his “goodness” to pass in front of Moses and that he would proclaim his name to the prophet (Ex.33:19). The first thing God wanted to reveal was his goodness so that the Law would be understood through that filter. The “Thou shalt not’s” of the Law were not laws to restrict the blessings or even the freedom of man, but rather warning signs to avoid danger. They were safety signs and doors to blessings from a loving God rather than a set of rules from a harsh judge.

Jesus, who came to show us the Father, understood that. When man was hungry, even on the Sabbath, God blessed him to find food. When a man was crippled, even on the Sabbath, God healed the man. Both of those acts reveal the nature and goodness of God. The Pharisees thought that man was made to serve the Law and the Sabbath. Jesus showed us that the Sabbath and the Law were made to serve man. How much more are the gospel and the New Covenant made to serve and bless us?

When someone today objects to miraculous moves of the Spirit, they end up objecting to men and women being healed, tormenting spirits being cast out of suffering individuals, the dead being raised, the blind receiving their sight and so forth.   If you ask them why they object, they will refer to scripture and argue that in the last days there will be counterfeit miracles and that God no longer operates in that way. My response would be, “So God no longer cares about the suffering of people enough to act supernaturally on their behalf? What about the goodness of God?” They might say that they don’t see the Spirit falling on people in scripture and making them laugh or cry or fall backwards and lie on the ground and convulse for hours. When Jesus came he acted in ways that Pharisees had never seen before. He associated with sinners, let harlots rub perfume on his feet, touched unclean lepers, walked on water, commanded storms, returned sanity to the demonized, and raised the dead over and over.

He then gave the same power and authority to others and declared that anyone who had faith in him would do even greater things. I’m certain that if the Pharisees had seen him walk on water or command storms they would have branded him a sorcerer. Why? Because they didn’t have a clear command or precedent in the Torah for such things. He was acting in new ways, just as the Spirit is acting in new ways today.

Does that mean anything goes? No, it doesn’t. We must still test the spirits. We need to ask if something actually violates a clear scripture (rather than a “reasoned argument” from men) or if it violates the nature of God and the Spirit of Christ. Healing does not violate the spirit of Christ, but opposing healing does. The Spirit falling on men with power does not violate scripture or the nature of God but denying the power of the Spirit does. Miracles of all kinds do not violate scripture or the nature of God, but assigning those miracles to demonic activity does.

Unfortunately, we still have the spirit of the Pharisees operating through men in our churches today. For the sake of their reasoned understanding of scripture, these men would forbid healing services, would be outraged if someone commanded the dead to rise at a funeral home, and would never allow anyone to minister deliverance to a member of their congregation.

Do they know that Jesus is Lord? Probably. Do they know Jesus? Probably not. When we approach scripture, we should see it through the lens of God’s goodness and his relentless desire to bless people rather than a rulebook that looks to penalize every infraction. We need to enjoy God and expect expressions of his goodness and power as we go through the day. Those who walked with Jesus, experienced that day by day and we walk with him now! So enjoy.

I was first “discipled” in a fellowship that warned against spiritual experiences and snubbed anyone who chased miracles and manifestations of God. All claims to miraculous healings were immediately suspect and were eventually written off as fraudulent acts perpetrated by faith-healing con men, excessive emotionalism, or psychosomatic healings. In that fellowship, we approached God through reason and intellect. The Word of God was to be studied, dissected, debated, and unlocked through the logic of sound reasoning. Any other approach was a prelude to deception.

The Holy Spirit spoke through the written word and the written word only and there was no current revelation beyond the last paragraph of the Book of Revelation – preferably in the King James Version. Experience was deemed untrustworthy and entirely subjective. To know God was to study about him. Any other approach was invalid. There were some wonderful people in that fellowship, but I also noticed some men who could quote almost the entire Bible, but the fruit of the Spirit seemed to be glaringly absent in the lives of some of these learned men.

In the New Testament, there are two words that are often translated “to know.” One is gnosis and the other is epígnōsis. Gnosis is the accumulation of knowledge or information about a thing. I can know about God by studying the Bible, reading commentaries, hearing sermons and so forth. Epignosis is knowledge gained through a first-hand relationship. It is “contact-knowledge” gained from first-hand, experiential knowing. It is the difference between saying that I know about someone or that I personally know that individual and have spent extensive time with him.

In my part of the country, everyone knows about tornadoes. We have all seen Twister five times, read about tornadoes in science class since the third grade, and have seen numerous pictures and reports of the devastation left in their wake – usually on the ten o’clock news. However, our knowledge does not compare to the knowledge of those who have actually huddled in a home while the roof was torn off, while the shift in barometric pressure was ravaging their eardrums, while they actually heard the tornado approaching like a freight train, or after they opened the door of the closet they were cringing in to step out onto a bare foundation. Their knowledge and understanding is epignosis – a personal, experiential understanding of a person or thing.

Peter speaks of “knowledge” several times in just a few verses in his second letter. He says, “Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:2-3). Both times, he uses the word epignosis for knowledge. He says that grace and peace cone to us through an experiential understanding of God, an experience, as well as everything we need for life and godliness. A few verses later, Peter says, “make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control…” (2 Peter 1:5). In that verse he uses the word gnosis.

We need both a learned and studied knowledge and personal experiences with God to have a full understanding of who he is. Feeling the overwhelming presence of God as peace, joy, or love in prayer or worship is epignosis. Experiencing God through a prophetic word, a healing, or deliverance is epignosis. Receiving supernatural provision, miraculous protection, or hearing the voice of God as you wait quietly for him is epignosis. Operating in a spiritual gift and knowing that God just did something through you that was beyond your ability is epignosis. Receiving a warning or a truth in dreams and visions is epignosis. Nothing changes us like those moments. Those are experiences of God that shaped the faith of men and women from Genesis to Revelation. They still do if we receive them.

There is an interesting section of scripture that seems out of place in the text but it says, “Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent… The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent” (Ex.33:7-11).

This text suggests that although anyone could go to the tent for an encounter with God, only Moses and Joshua seemed brave enough or hungry enough to do so. Joshua is about the only hero in scripture about which there are no recorded failings. His faith was phenomenal and his obedience was sure. Perhaps, it was because he so often experienced God at the tent, which he rarely left during Israel’s years in the desert.

The written word is essential and foundational, but experiencing God takes our understanding and faith to a different level. Epignosis (experience) without gnosis (understanding from the Word) will likely lead to deception, but data without experience will lead us to another kind of deception…a sterile knowledge of God without the impact of his presence. The Pharisees produced the fruit of extensive study without a personal experience of God. When experiences with God came as miracles of healing and deliverance, they rejected them. If they couldn’t deny the miracle, they ascribed it to Satan. Not only that, but they never recognized in Jesus the God they had studied about for endless hours, even though Jesus said that if we have seen him we have seen the Father. Intellect, untrained by encounters with God, will often blind us to his revelation.

Studying about God is essential, but so is experiencing him. I would encourage you to pursue both so that you can love him with all of your heart and mind. The promise is, “If you seek him, he will be found by you!” (1 Chr.28:9). Be blessed in your pursuit.

A “worldview” is a set of assumptions we hold about the world and how it operates. Everyone has a worldview and these assumptions or core beliefs about reality work as filters that give meaning to our experiences. Most of us, whether we want to admit it or not, discard or reinterpret facts that don’t seem to line up with our presuppositions about life. As an old Paul Simon song says, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

For instance, if we believe that no one can be trusted, then no matter how trustworthy a person has been, we simply assume that his or her trustworthiness is only a ruse to set us up for some future betrayal. We will simply deny the reality of their trustworthiness even though he or she has never shown us any other quality. On the romantic side of life, if we believe that there is only one “right” person for us in all the world, we will probably have such anxiety about missing that “made-in-heaven soul mate” that we will over analyze every relationship we encounter and look for irrefutable proof or signs from heaven so long that the relationship withers and dies. Then we console ourselves by believing that if the relationship died, he or she wasn’t that one and only match made in heaven after all.

Sometimes our worldview affects insignificant matters but sometimes it has eternal consequences. It helps to understand the source of some of the perspectives that make up our worldview so that we might evaluate them to see if they are legitimate or imbalanced. The church should stop from time to time to examine her own assumptions to also see if those assumptions are still aligned with God’s truth.

For instance, do we maintain a biblical view of the spiritual realm? A church’s view of that has wide implications. Believe it or not, not all mainline churches believe in the activity of angels or demons or in the gospel accounts of Jesus and his followers casting out those demons or healing the sick. These churches ascribe the gospel accounts to symbolic, figurative language rather than descriptions of literal events. Why would they not believe?

Francis MacNutt gives a succinct explanation when he writes. “The reason is the acceptance of the Western world, beginning with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, of a rationalistic, scientific view of the world that assumed there is no reality beyond the natural, material universe. If something cannot be measured and observed in a laboratory, it does not exist. This materialistic worldview has so affected Western Christianity that we automatically regard the work of the supernatural with skepticism and rule out the world of angels and demons with no further need of discussion” (Francis MacNutt, Deliverance From Evil Spirits, p.42-43). In the same book, MacNutt quotes Charles Kraft, a professor at Fuller Theological University who adds, “…even though we are Christians, our basic assumptions are usually more like those of the non-Christian westerners around us than we would like to admit…we often find ourselves more Western than scriptural…God and the Church were dethroned and the human mind came to be seen as Savior.”

Unfortunately a western, rationalistic, materialistic worldview has invaded the church as well as our culture. The church whose leaders have been trained in western universities, for the most part, have been trained with a non-supernatural worldview that makes them shy away from or even deny spiritual realities beyond the forgiveness of sin. Some will acknowledge that those realities (demons, angels, miracles, etc.) occurred in “Bible times” but don’t think they occur today.

That kind of worldview allows the devil to run free and pose as all kinds of things that we ineffectively try to attack with worldly wisdom and worldly weapons. When national leaders do not see a spiritual reality behind ISIS and terrorism they seek a political solution that is doomed to fail. When doctors do not recognize that a spiritual dimension to sickness may exist, things that need to be cast out are simply medicated. Even those of us who believe in the spiritual realm often run to every solution the world (natural realm) offers before we finally start seeking spiritual solutions. That impulse betrays a view that the world offers better and more powerful solutions than God since we only go to God when “the best solutions” have failed us. I admit, at times I default to that same setting. I’m not saying that everything is demonic or that we should jettison science and medicine. We are body, soul, and spirit and are affected by issues in both realms but the bible suggests that the spiritual realm is always where the most significant battles are fought.

Spiritual warfare requires a biblical worldview in order to triumph. Spiritual authority and power must be directed against real demonic spirits and schemes. Anything short of that attacks the symptoms and not the cause. That means the problem will only resurface later like cancer recurring after a brief remission.

Because worldview matters, it’s good to check our own worldview from time to time to see if we are lining up with biblical truth. It is easy to be coopted slowly and gently by the world and find ourselves out of alignment with God’s truth. Remember Jesus said that truth sets us free. Being fully  aligned with the Father in our worldview as well as our in our hearts is an essential key to winning the fight.

We just concluded a season of what we call Free Indeed at our church in Midland, Texas. Free Indeed consists of eight weeks of study and small group interaction related to finding healing and freedom in Christ. We conclude the eight weeks with a weekend (Freedom Weekend) of inner healing and deliverance. This past weekend we had 60-65 in attendance and when the weekend had concluded about 95% reported that they had received significant healing or deliverance over the weekend. Some of these were new to the faith while others had been believers for decades.

One of our new leadership couples is from South Africa. After experiencing their first Freedom Weekend, I asked them about their observations since they would have seen what we do with fresh, non-American eyes. Both of them were very surprised at the amount of brokenness and bondage (demonization) among so many Christians. What they saw was our typical weekend comprised of people who love the Lord, attend church regularly, and who serve in the church. By the way, a number of participants also come from mainline churches in our area where they attend regularly and serve.

Our South African friends have a legitimate question. Why are there so many broken and demonized believers? I believe it is because the church in America has majored in getting people saved but not sanctified. We have been great at getting people to pray “the sinner’s prayer” but we have not taught them how to wage spiritual war and how to be transformed by the Spirit of Christ.

Over the years, even believing families have accumulated a lot of spiritual baggage that has been passed down from generation to generation. Those who have come to us from the world have typically been abused, molested, involved in sexual sin, and in occult practices – all of which give the enemy an open door into their lives. Very few of these have been taught how to deal with their past, their shame, their secret bondage, or the parts of their lives that are out of control. They have been taught to attend church, give, and serve in the children’s ministry but they have not been taught how to drive the enemy out of the promised land of a transformed life. Many pastors don’t even know how to drive the enemy out of their own lives or marriages so they certainly can’t teach their congregations how to wage war with divine weapons.

As I mentioned earlier, we have a number of believers from other churches who attend Free Indeed – a significant number being pastors, former pastors, or family member of pastors from other churches. They consistently report that they have never received teaching or heard a sermon on the basics of spiritual warfare. In their churches, the demonic realm goes unnoticed and uncommented on so that their people are poorly armed against the assaults and schemes of the enemy. The idea of believers walking in real authority is vague at best. The lack is not intentional. We simply pass on what others have passed on to us. But when you look at the American church something is missing. The lives of many, many Christians don’t stand out all that much when compared to the lives and families of unbelievers. That is evidence of a people who are saved but not sanctified.

Jesus and his followers preached the good news of the kingdom of God and then demonstrated its power through healing, deliverance, raising the dead, and radically changed lives. We should be doing the same. My hope is that more and more believers will soon discover the power of Jesus Christ to not only save them from an eternal hell but also from a hell on earth that many believers experience daily believing that nothing more is available to them until after the funeral. Not so. Jesus is so ready and able to heal and set free now and has done so for many. May we assist him in doing the same for many more.

For many years I have felt that a popular “end-times theology” undermines the mission of the church and contradicts a great deal of scripture. I also believe that it can seep into our own personal view of life and undermine our own victorious mindset as well. This particular theology was popularized in the 70’s and really launched into the psyche of the church by Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late Great Planet Earth. This view depicts the last days as a dismal day for the church and believers everywhere. It promotes a view of a one world order, the anti-Christ, and the downward spiral of all nations and cultures into an abyss that can only be redeemed by the coming of the Lord and the rapture of the saints who have become powerless in the face of all that evil.

The damaging part of this theology in my mind is the inevitability of the outcomes and the powerlessness of the church to stand against it. The power of evil is so overwhelming that the only thing to do is to bunker in and pray for the Lord’s quick return. Too often that is also translated into the lives of individual believers so that they “check out” and give in to the world system rather than working to redeem it and establish a glowing and victorious bride for the Lord to retrieve. That theology can and has instilled a sense of futility and hopelessness in the hearts of many believers.

There is also a dynamic that sociologists and psychologists call a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Simply stated, it means that we often act in ways that confirm the beliefs we already hold about ourselves or others. For instance, if a child experiences the loss of a parent, he or she may come to believe that they will eventually lose anyone that they come to love or depend on. In response to that belief, this child may grow into an adult who never fully commits to a relationship or who never fully engages emotionally with anyone because they believe that person will eventually leave them or that they will lose them to some tragedy. Because they never commit to a relationship or connect emotionally, their relationships keep ending and those who attempted to connect with them move on. When those relationships end, the individual is all the more convinced that their beliefs are true and inevitable.

When Christians believe that poverty, evil, tyranny, persecution, unbelief, and the demise of Christianity on the earth are inevitable they withdraw from the battle. When they withdraw, evil wins and they believe all the more that the end is near and there is no use trying to save America much less the world. With this mindset, believers who are supposed to be more than conquerors withdraw from the cultural battles, stay out of politics, retreat from championing social justice, and even fail to vote because they think it won’t matter. Believers with this view cease to be salt and light in the world and simply forfeit the battle to the enemy.

Kris Vallotton adds an interesting insight into this same dynamic in his book, How Heaven Invades Earth, (p.204). “But what happened to destiny when our prophetic people were taught that there wasn’t supposed to be a future because the end of the world was near? They stopped prophesying into the future. And what took place in the absence of the Holy Spirit’s prophetic intonation is absolutely frightening; a visionary vortex, or vacuum was suddenly created that sucked every kind of dark, foretelling spirit into it. This has resulted in the worst psychic resurgence since the days of Daniel. We have Wiccans, New Age people, fortune tellers, astrologers, and psychics all sharing their insights in the highest offices of the land.” That used to be the role of God’s prophets but we left the playing field.

When God’s people leave the playing field the enemy regains his swagger. We are promised that if we resist the devil he will flee from us but this particular theology teaches that there is no point in our resistance. There is another centuries-old theology that declares a triumphant church on the earth that welcomes back the groom rather than a church that has scurried off the field because she was helpless against the one Christ has already defeated. Those who know that they are more than conquerors do not surrender to a bully or a tyrant but stand and fight knowing that they will win because their champion is Jesus Christ who has all authority in heaven and on earth. They don’t give in to injustice, false religion, abortion, violence, deceit, divorce, or any other works of the devil. They don’t give in on a personal level nor do they abandon the culture in which God has commanded them to be salt and light. All the gifts, the power, and the authority Christ has delegated to his church are not just for the church to be exercised behind high walls. They have also been given to redeem the culture and finally the world. We have been letting the devil push us around too long. It’s time to push back.