This past year, John MacArthur, a well-respected preacher in southern California, published a book entitled “Strange Fire” which essentially denies the validity of the charismatic movement and the current expression of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. It has stirred some controversy among churches in America and has invited division among “cessationist” churches and churches that believe in the continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit through the manifestation of all the spiritual gifts.

I continue to be amazed that people would push back against healing gifts, prophetic gifts, deliverance, and other miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit in God’s church.  It’s one thing to say that there are abuses of these gifts and their expressions. I would agree with that.  There were abuses in the first century church.  It is another thing to deny their existence all together and to consider any expression of those gifts to be deception.

In his gospel, Matthew recounts a moment when Jesus cast out a number of demons from two demon-possessed men in the region of the Gadarenes.  These men were so demonized that they lived among the tombs and were essentially uncontrollable.  The demons, knowing that they were about to be dislodged from their “homes” begged Jesus to let them enter into a herd of pigs that was feeding nearby.  Jesus did so and the entire herd ran into the sea and drowned. We are told in Mark 5, where Mark emphasizes only one of the two men, that when the inhabitants of the nearby town went out to see what was going on they found the man (probably both) clothed and in his right mind.

You would have thought that there would have been a great celebration and that revival would have broken out in the presence of Jesus, the great healer and deliverer of his people.  However, just the opposite occurred.  All the people begged Jesus to leave their region immediately. Of course, its possible that they were upset about the pigs and someone’s lost investment in these “unclean” animals, but I think they were responding to a supernatural moment outside of their experience that essentially scared them.

That’s not unusual and even people of faith can be frightened when God intrudes into the ordinary business of life.  In most biblical accounts, every time an angel showed up his first words had to be, “Don’t be afraid.” When God descended on Sinai the response of most of the Hebrew people was great fear.  When Jesus called up a great catch of fish for Peter and his partners, Peter was afraid. When Jesus silenced the storm on Galilee, his apostles were stunned and I think felt that same sense of panic that all men feel when they first encounter the supernatural.

I believe that is a large part of the “push back” against the miraculous move of the Spirit in the 21^st Century.   Men hunger for the supernatural but when it shows up they often panic. What draws men to “haunted houses” or fuels “reality shows” about the paranormal?  Graham Cooke points out that a hunger for the supernatural is part of our DNA which was attached to us when we were made in the image of God. Although the DNA has been fragmented by sin, we still hunger after the spiritual and something that takes us beyond the natural. It a way, that hunger points us home to heaven.

It seems that we hunger for the miraculous or the “supernatural” while fearing it at the same time.  When demons are cast out, some believers invite those who do such things to leave their church right away.  The biblical record is that whenever God showed up in unusual ways, people “freaked.”  That feeling might be evidence of a true encounter with the living God rather than something to be avoided.

That’s not to say that anything goes.  We are to test the spirits and to test prophecies and even the miraculous gifts of the Spirit are to be exercised in an orderly way.  But what is orderly to God may not be orderly to the religious among us who want no surprises in their interaction with God. The response of the Pharisees was first to deny that miracles happened and that those who thought they had seen something had been tricked or deceived.  When they could not deny that a miracle had occurred they simply declared that it was the work of Satan because Jesus or his disciples had not worked in a prescribed manner that fit their theology.  Religion wants to control life and even control God with rules and boundaries that leave no room for the miraculous intrusion of God into life or a church service.

Again, the biblical record shows us that the nature of God is to intrude into the natural order of things in unprecedented and unexpected ways.  “Let’s just march around Jericho seven times and blow trumpets.  Let’s turn the Nile to blood. Let’s have the leper go dip in the Jordan River seven times. Let’s feed five thousand men plus women and children with a few loaves and fish.  Let’s walk on water. Let’s call this guy out who has been dead for four days.” God chose to intervene in amazing ways in the life of his people with moments that were unanticipated, made no earthly sense, and that scared many of the people who witnessed the invasion of earth by the powers of heaven.  Why would he not continue to do so today?

If a hunger for the supernatural is part of our DNA, then when we block the miraculous ministry of the Spirit in our churches, we force God’s people to satisfy that hunger in other places. I’m not saying that we should seek miracles for the sake of miracles but that we should invite the Father, the Son and the Spirit to show up and intrude in the natural order of our lives and church services in any way they choose. At times, it will be unusual and should be unusual because that is how God has always operated.  For those who have never experienced God in those ways, it might even be a little scary.  Seeing demons manifest for the first time and seeing them driven out for the first time can be eye opening. But God is eye opening.

My hope is that in 2014, we will see the miraculous move of God more and more in our lives and churches, but unlike the Gadarenes, we will not beg Jesus to leave but rather to stay. If we want more of God then we will have to invite God in as he is, not as we want him to be.  And…if there is not “eyebrow raising” going on, then Jesus is probably not present because wherever he went, he surprised people and on occasion, even frightened them a little. Be blessed this year and invite Jesus to do the unexpected in your life and even in your church!

The church today is hungry for more.  God’s people not only want to hear about God but to experience him as well. God is moving in unprecedented power around the globe and great numbers of believers in American churches are hungering to be part of that move. Conferences and books about healing and prophecy and other “power gifts” of the Spirit are multiplying. Many of those conferences are turning people away because registration takes them beyond seating capacity weeks before the conference begins.

For some, this growing emphasis on the Holy Spirit and miraculous gifts is alarming. Many of us who grew up in mainline denominations in America were taught that “spiritual experiences” were dangerous, deceptive, and should be avoided. We were taught that faith comes from more and more Bible knowledge rather than through supernatural experiences with Jesus.

But many have come to realize that knowing more and more about God without experiencing him does not really build a relationship any more than just reading everything you can about a famous person makes you his/her best friend.  Obviously reading God’s word is essential and a life of lifting up prayers to God is praiseworthy.  And yet, unless we hear God speak to us in response to our prayers, see him answer our prayers in powerful ways, or experience him working through us in ways we could not have imagined the relationship will never be what it could be  – for us or for God.

People are seeking more of God and more of his Spirit.  They are pursuing spiritual gifts and no longer want to be a people who merely explain God to others but who connect others to God through the exercise of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.  That is, in fact, the New Testament pattern. Three thousand were added to the church on Pentecost through the preaching of the gospel but they were prepared to receive the gospel through the miraculous manifestation of tongues where every man heard the proclamation of God and his good news in his own language. Throughout the gospels, the book of Acts and the epistles, mighty works were being done in the name of Jesus and people were praising God and coming to faith in the anointed one of God.  God’s Spirit is moving in the same ways now.

Will this most recent move of the Spirit be abused and will some be led astray?  Of course.  Satan twists and counterfeits every authentic move of God.  The gifts were abused in Corinth but Paul continued to exhort them to earnestly desire those spiritual gifts rather than making an effort to shut them down. The Lord’s Supper was abused in Corinth as well but no one objects to churches participating in the body and blood of Christ because it might lead to strange doctrines and deception. Instead of minimizing the spiritual gifts or warning people about them, Paul simply taught them how to exercise the gifts, test the prophecies, and to make sure that their motive for exercising the gifts was love rather than power or personal notoriety.

In Acts 17, Paul learned a powerful lesson regarding knowledge about God without experiencing God.  In that chapter, Paul made a stop in Athens.  Being a first-rate scholar he checked out the philosophical debates being aired in the Areopagus and gave his best, most scholarly presentation of the gospel and the resurrection.  If you read the chapter, you will discover that the Athenian philosophers found his “new teaching” very interesting but were not convinced.  Only a few expressed faith in Jesus and Paul was extremely disappointed.  His next stop was Corinth.  In his first letter to the Corinthian church Paul recounted his revised approach to sharing the gospel with them. “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 man’s wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:4-5).

Paul had used wise and persuasive words in Athens with little to show for it. He decided that a demonstration of the Spirit’s power would be a much better strategy.  In a sense, men didn’t need more information about God but needed to experience the reality of God for real faith to be established.  How many of us have talked to an unbelieving loved one over and over again with nothing to show for the effort. We keep thinking that one more argument or a few more facts will push them over the threshold of faith.  But they don’t need more information about God, they need to experience him.  The exercise of a spiritual gift (a word of knowledge, a prophetic word, healing, etc.) possessed by some believer could provide that experience.

I’m not saying that experience without the Word of God is the way to faith.  All experience must be grounded on the Word of God and must be consistent with the revelation of that Word. What I am saying is that God never intended for us to have only an academic understanding of who he is but an experiential understanding as well.  The gifts of the Spirit are primary pathways for that experience.

That is what the church is hungering for today – not just to hear about God but to hear God, to see him, and to feel him as well.  Under the Old Covenant, God revealed himself to men in ways they could experience with both their physical and their spiritual senses.  God revealed himself to his people through angelic visitations, direct words, fie and smoke on the top of Sinai, in the pillar of fire and the cloud that directed Israel in the wilderness, through the Shekinah glory that would descend on the tent of meeting and later the tabernacle, through daily provision of manna and water bursting forth from rocks. We live under an even better covenant with the Spirit of God himself living in us.  How much more should we expect to experience our Father than the people of the Old Testament?

I believe God is creating a hunger for more in his people today that they might seek him and his Spirit more. Spiritual gifts are an expression of God’s love for people.  Healing is a grace.  A prophetic word that strengthens, comforts and encourages is a grace. Deliverance from demons is a grace.  All these gifts and more are ways that God loves his church and the lost through the manifestation of his goodness with these gifts.  Churches that push back against these gifts of the Spirit also push back against the Spirit. As they quench the Spirit they quench the outpouring of God’s love. I know that is not their intent, but it is the unintended outcome.

If we fear deception and want to keep people from error then perhaps we should adopt Paul’s tact. Rather than suppressing or denying the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, we should instruct our people on how to use those gifts in biblical ways with biblical motives to produce biblical outcomes.  If God’s people are hungering for more, then perhaps we should feed them. The church’s fear of the miraculous and heightened suspicion of unusual manifestations of God today may cause many to miss him altogether. My hope is that God’s church in America will choose to embrace all that God has for his children and be open to receiving from God in ways we have not experienced before. God loves to do new things. Be blessed.

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland… to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise. (Isa.43:18-21)