Bill Johnson has said that a gospel without power is no gospel at all.  I agree.  Much more importantly, so does Jesus and so does Paul.  A gospel that leaves us floundering in our pain and brokenness in this life while promising relief only after the funeral denies that the kingdom of God has come to this world.

Jesus scolded the religious leaders of his day because they neither knew the scriptures nor the power of God (Mt.22: 29). Paul warned Timothy about those who held a form of godliness but who denied the power of the kingdom (2 Tim.3:5).  He also declared to the church in Corinth that the kingdom is not a matter of words but of power (1 Cor.4:20).

A gospel without the power to transform lives and set people free from the oppression of the enemy is only a philosophy of life. Jesus didn’t come as a philosopher but as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus didn’t come just to talk about how to navigate life in a fallen world but he came to teach us how to transform that world.  Jesus came to defeat the “prince of this world” and to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn.3:8).

Those “works” were the condemnation of man that came through sin, disease, suffering, torment, brokenness, violence, and finally death. Jesus spent three years and several hours on a cross triumphing over each of those things by the power of an advancing kingdom.  Jesus taught us to constantly pray that the kingdom of God would come to this earth so that the Father’s will would be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”

God’s will is for the works of Satan to be eradicated from this world.  Some of that work will be done in the hearts of believers as they receive Christ and the love of God and as the Holy Spirit begins to redesign the landscape of their hearts. But much of that work will be done by confronting the powers of darkness with the authority and the power of heaven that has been given to the church who is destined to do even greater things than Jesus did on the earth. (Jn. 14:12.)

A gospel that does not declare the power of God’s kingdom as well as the grace of that kingdom, is not the gospel Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated day after day. Don’t settle for less.

This week a number of us from our church are attending the Every Nation World Conference in Orlando. Wayne Alcorn of Australia has brought several amazing messages.  I want to summarize some of his thoughts and my thoughts about his thoughts on today’s blog.

For the most part, very few things are reported in all four gospels.  When words or events show up in all four, we should take special notice.  The baptism of Jesus is described or commented on in each gospel.  “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water.  At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son whom I love.  With him I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:16-17).

Just as he did in Acts 2 for the church, at his baptism the Holy Spirit came to impart power and anointing to Jesus for a ministry of miracles.  Shortly after his baptism experience Jesus would begin to change water into wine and begin to heal the blind, the deaf, the lame, the lepers, and raise the dead – not to mention taking evenings strolls across the Sea of Galilee and feeding thousands with a boys sack lunch. For power he needed the Holy Spirit.  But for ministry he needed more.

The “more” was found in a solid identity and relationship with his Father.  The thing that kept Jesus on track and moving forward was knowing whose son he was and that his Father not only loved him but was proud of him.  When you face “hosannahs” one day and “crucify him” the next, you better know who you are and whose you are.

Too many of us are uncertain about who we are and how much value we have.  We spend a great deal of time searching for an identity that we can be proud of because we didn’t have fathers who told us that we were their sons or daughters and that they were proud of us.  When we live with that deficit, we tend to search for significance and approval in the eyes of other people. When opposition or criticism comes, we waiver because our sense of worth and significance has not been drawn from a loving father who never changes but from the crowd which changes like the weather.

The power of the Holy Spirit is a wonderful thing.  But if we are plagued by insecurities about who we are and the one eternally meaningful source of our approval then the power will not be stewarded well.  It will inevitably be used for self-gratification and self-glorification rather than to build up others and bring glory to God.

What we need is a revelation of how much God loves us.  It is that revelation that causes our love for him to grow more and more and that gives us a rock-solid identity and the sense of our true north – the Father’s love and approval.  Without knowing how much he was loved and how proud his father was of him,  Jesus could have easily waivered from his mission in the face of threats, criticism, and slander. And yet he seemed to shrug those things off and move ahead with the Father’s plan. Because his focus was on the Father rather than the crowd, the Father clearly revealed his plans to the son.

As believers, we are grateful for the power of the Holy Spirit.  We are grateful for the miracles and the blessings.  But even more than that, we can be grateful that our Father in heaven looks at us and says, “This is my beloved child.  In him/her I am well pleased.” God says to each of us because of Christ,  “I love you and I am proud of you.”  Receive it.

One of the things I have always wished I could do would be to return to first century Palestine during the three years that Jesus fulfilled his public ministry and follow Him from place to place, watching form a distance  as He encountered people and changed their lives.

Observing the miracles would, of course, be amazing – empty sockets growing eyes; withered hands regaining strength and flexibility; lepers once again merging with life while the lame danced and the mute sang.  Seeing what Jesus actually looked like intrigues me as well as the rest of the group of ragged fishermen and former tax collectors that followed Him.

But even more than that, I would like to see how he hung out with prostitutes and publicans, thieves and drunkards.  I would like to see how He walked in righteousness without compromise and at the same time conveyed absolute love and absolute truth to those whose lives were in the ditch.  How do we share God’s standard with a person who is living in sin without sounding self-righteous?  How do we accept a sinner without somehow seeming to approve the sin?  How do we affirm and love the God-given potential in even the worst of us without somehow enabling or excusing a broken and sinful life style? Jesus apparently pulled it off because the sinful and the broken clamored to Him while He himself remained sinless.

We live in a culture full of sinful and broken people who so quickly take offense at truth.  We live in a culture that now labels good as evil and evil as good and vilifies anyone who questions their paradigm as being bigoted and intolerant. But I doubt that the days of Jesus were much different.  So I want to know what He said and how He said it.  I want to know what His conversations focused on and how He called people to righteousness without sounding all religious and holier-than-thou.

I heard Graham Cooke say one time that we are obsessed with our sin while the Father is obsessed with our righteousness.  Our sin has been dealt with in Christ and so our failings are no longer the issue. For God.  We spend our days recounting all of our failures while God wants to recount the righteousness that is ours in Christ.  God wants to shout out the potential for spiritual greatness and goodness in each of so as to prophetically call forth what He has planted in each of us in seed form.

Maybe that was the secret of Jesus –  getting people to see who they could be in the eyes of God so that the appeal of the Father’s love and approval would simply outweigh the appeal of sin and the flesh.  However He did it, we need to figure it out because we are surrounded by sinners who long to hangout with Jesus and hear how He sees them and we are called to be Jesus to each of them.

When his disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he began with a relatively revolutionary idea – Our Father in heaven.  For the most part, Jewish theological thought viewed God as the one whose name should not be spoken and whose presence in the Holy of Holies was as dangerous as it was glorious.  He was seen as the Holy Judge of all the earth and the destroyer of the enemies of Israel.  He was the thunder and flame on Sinai and the earthquake swallowing up the sons of Korah.

But Jesus spoke to the Father in familiar and intimate terms and encouraged every believer to do the same. That must have been a difficult paradigm shift for many.  It still is.  One of the great hindrances to receiving the promises and the power of the Holy Spirit is our view of God. When we ask God for healing, deliverance, favor, provision, and protection we often ask with a qualified expectation.  We hope he will answer our petitions, but we are not always confident that he will.

Many of us have a difficult time believing that our Heavenly Father is willing, able, and eager to bless us, heal us, and deliver us from the power of the enemy.  We still view him as a God who keeps careful records and who weighs our good moments against our bad moments to see if we have earned enough points to merit an answered prayer. We see him as a Father whose love is conditional, who is beyond understanding, and who often feels like pain and suffering are ultimately in our best interest.

So we pray, hoping for the best but not really expecting it.  When we are sick we pray for healing but wonder if God actually wants us to be ill so that our faith in suffering glorifies him, or purifies our soul, or has a purpose beyond our understanding.  When we live with emotional pain and brokenness from our own bad choices we may see God as the Father who sternly remarks, “You made your bed, now you can lie in it.”  Myriads of believers simply view their Heavenly Father as a distant replica of an earthly father who made promises he couldn’t keep, whose primary emotion was anger, or who was loving one day while distant and unpredictable the next.

When we have a mixed view of our Heavenly Father it is difficult to pray with faith or to pray at all.  But prayer is the very thing that opens the valve so that the promises and the power of heaven can flow to us and through us.  If we view God as distant, angry, or conditional then we will not pray at all (there’s no point in asking) or we will pray as if we have to convince, coerce, or nag God into blessing us.

So how do we understand this God who seems angry and vengeful in the Old Testament but is called “Abba” in the New Testament? John goes so far as to say that God is love and God is light.  They key is Jesus.  No matter how we understand the Old Testament or what kind of father we had on earth, Jesus clearly stated that when we have seen him we have seen the Father in heaven.  If you want to know how much you are loved by the Father, look at the cross.  If you want to know how God will deal with your sinful past, look at the Samaritan woman of John 4 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8.  Ask yourself how many times Jesus turned down people who came to him for healing and how he dealt with Peter after Peter denied and abandoned Jesus in his hour of suffering.

According to Hebrews, Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory (the part of God’s goodness we can see) and the exact representation of the Father’s being (Heb. 1:3).  When you see the heart of Jesus toward the broken and the suffering you see the heart of the Father.  When you see the compassion of Christ toward the spiritually clueless you see the Father.  When you see the anger and frustration of Jesus toward those who would deny the healing of God for the sick or who would drive sinners away rather than embrace them, you have seen the Father as well. The cross has allowed the love of God to overpower the judgment of God.  And God is glad.

When you pray for the power of heaven to be released on your behalf, remember that the heart of the Father toward you is the same as the heart of Jesus.  As loving fathers and mothers, we are not always so different from our heavenly Father.  I always want the best for my children.  When they were young and tumbled off their bikes, I ran to pick them up and bandaged their wounds.  When they were afraid I comforted them. When they were confused I taught them.  When they were in danger I protected them.  When they laughed I laughed with them and when they did wrong I corrected them.  All those things were motivated by love and, like most parents, I would have died to save my children.

Our heavenly Father did just that and is much more the loving Father and Mother than we could ever hope to be.  When you pray, you can be certain that your Father in heaven is hearing and acting on your behalf.  We can’t always know why we don’t see some prayers answered. There are mysteries yet to be understood.  But we can always know the heart of our Heavenly Father toward us.  If you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father.  If you have seen the cross you have seen his heart for you.

There are three essential questions in life that determine almost everything.

1. Does God exist?
2. Is God powerful?
3. Does God deeply love me?

You may want to consider what you really believe regarding those questions.  If God does not exist, all bets are off. You (and everyone else) are on your own in a dangerous world.  If God is powerful but doesn’t care about you, then you are still on your own and must protect yourself  at all costs….perhaps even from  God. And if God deeply loves you but has no power, then you are  gratified but must still protect and provide for yourself.

All of us as Christians would answer “Yes” to all three of those questions if they were asked in a group of fellow believers.  But would we be expressing our aspirational beliefs or our actual beliefs?  Aspirational beliefs are those we aspire to have because we know we should believe certain things.  But actual beliefs can be different (and often are) and are revealed not by what we say but what we do.

To say that God exists, that he loves me deeply, and that He is unimaginably powerful implies that he is really there and because He loves me deeply, He consistently exercises his immeasurable power on my behalf for protection, provision, and direction.

Jesus believed that about the Father. I know he did because he slept through storms while others cried out. With small prayers he confidently took a few scraps of bread and fish and fed thousands. He walked on stormy seas and faced hostile leaders with the confidence that God would send a legion of angels to defend Him if needed.

But what about us?  How often do we worry day after day about having enough?  How many of us are “high on control” in our life and relationships so that we won’t be used or rejected?  How many of us are plagued by anxiety and persistent fears of abandonment?  How many of us believe in our heads that we are children of the King, but believe in our hearts that we are orphans living on our own, left to meet our own needs, and always on the brink of disaster – losing whatever is precious to us?

Knowing who we are in Christ and believing it in our hearts is critical in every circumstance.  If we could answer “Yes” to each of those questions in our heart then peace would rule our emotions.  Paul prayed that God would give the church at Ephesus the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that they might know Him better.  Many of us have aspirational faith in the character and promises of God but our actual faith lags behind. How do you know? Just look at what you do and feel rather than what you say you would do and feel. We need these essential truths revealed to our hearts more than we need them deposited in our heads.  That is the work of the Spirit.

Ask Him every day to write “yes” on your heart to each of those three questions so that you can live with the peace and confidence of Jesus. May the Lord give you His Spirit of wisdom and revelation today so that you may know Him better (Eph.1:17).

And He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – Jn. 14:16

For most of my years in ministry, I functioned as one of the primary pastors in my church that provided counseling for members and well as for other believers from the community. I typically saw problems that you would encounter in any counseling practice – chronic depression, anxiety, anger, shame, addictions, gender confusion, eating disorders, and marriages on the brink of dissolving.  Most of those coming for counseling had been Christians for years.  The huge red flag should have been that our people, after following Jesus for those years, looked no different from those living in the world who did not know Jesus at all.

At times,  I met with individuals, gave them a little insight and a couple of exercises, prayed over them and sent them on their way.  I would likely see them again in six months.  Others I met with weekly for months, scratching out a little progress each time. I had taken graduate courses in Marriage and Family counseling and went to top-notch workshops offered by both secular and Christian counselors. Other than an opening prayer, I heard essentially the same strategies for counseling from both groups.

However, as the years passed something kept eating at me.  When I read the New Testament, I never got the sense that the church in Jerusalem (or anywhere else) offered counseling from leaders who went to the world’s universities for training. Nor did the writers of the N.T. encourage believers to work hard to manage their “issues. ”  Instead, they commanded them to rid themselves of those things.  More strikingly, there was no sense that followers of Jesus took months and years of meeting with a local pastor or therapist to experience healing and significant life change.

What I did see was the power of the Holy Spirit and the authority of Christ healing bodies and hearts and lives.  I saw once committed sinners transformed and walking in a holiness that stood out from the world…and it didn’t take a lifetime. Paul clearly expected the church to be the place where the wisdom and power of heaven would reside and where the Holy Spirit would unravel the knots of a believer’s past while drawing the poison out of long standing wounds. There was no hint that the church would go to the world for help but rather that the world would come to the church.  Yet I (and other Christian counselors) tended to call secular training and an opening prayer Christian counseling.

I am not denying that secular counseling can help.  But what I am saying is that there is power and transformation available from God’s Spirit that secular counseling cannot offer. Paul is clear that the real battles for the hearts and minds of people rest in the spiritual realm where only divine weapons and the Spirit of God have impact.

The N.T.  church seemed to rely much more on encounters with the Holy Spirit and the powerful exercise of spiritual gifts to heal and change those who followed Jesus than wisdom the world might offer.  Those who will “judge angels” and who have the Counselor of Heaven residing within them should have much more to offer than secular therapists.

Once I began to allow the power of the kingdom of heaven to invade the counseling room and began to be a catalyst for encounters with God, I began to see the radical life change that I saw on the pages of the gospels. Once I began to speak God’s truth over situations I began to see Christians delivered from anger, fear, depression, addictions, eating disorders, and sexual brokenness in hours or weeks rather than months and years.  I saw marriages on the brink of divorce begin to thrive because the Holy Spirit changed hearts rather than people simply changing behaviors.

I must admit, when the power of God brings the transformation rather than my “amazing counseling skills,” I feel much less significant in the process. In those moments, I am no longer the much needed dispenser of wisdom – the Holy Spirit is. But then, I also get to see radical life change rather than miniscule progress.

The good news of the kingdom of God is that Jesus has indeed come to heal the brokenhearted and set captives free. He wants to release His power into the lives of his children for every circumstance. He wants to do so through His church. The Holy Spirit is an amazing counselor full of both heavenly  wisdom and power.   Until a greater portion of the church discovers that reality, many committed believers who love Jesus will continue to walk for years with a relational limp and a broken heart – never living up to the dream their Father has for them.

Millions of Christians live under a gospel of grace without power.  Grace is only half the good news. Power is the rest. A gospel without power is an insufficient gospel.

In Luke 4, Jesus stood in a familiar synagogue in Nazareth. There He announced his mission to the world as He read from the scroll of Isaiah (Isa.61:1-3).  In that prophetic text, He outlined his three-year mission on earth.  Preach the good news.  Heal the brokenhearted. Set captives free.  Release prisoners from darkness.

Jesus declared that He was the fulfillment of that text and then spent the next three years putting that mission statement into practice.  He preached the good news of the kingdom of God.  He healed the sick, cast out demons, cleansed the lepers, raised the dead, and at all times loved the broken.

When He sent out the twelve and the seventy, he commanded them to do the same. He then declared to his followers, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  We too are to do what Jesus did. We are to offer grace but also access to the power of the kingdom of God.

A gospel with power does more than forgive sins.  It frees and transforms.  For years I have watched faithful, forgiven Christians continue to live in bondage to anger, depression, shame, fear, and lust year after year. They have prayed, cried, repented a thousand times, and sat at the feet of counselors and pastors looking for keys that would free them from their oppression.  At best they have learned to manage their sin or their “issues” but have not truly found freedom. Are they saved? Yes.  Are they forgiven? Yes.  Are they free? No.  But God’s word says:

So, if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.  (Jn.8:37)

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Cor.3:18)

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Gal. 5:1)

Every time the gospel was preached in the New Testament power was on display along with the grace of God.  Power allowed people not just to hear about God’s grace but to experience it.  Experiencing God always has an exponentially greater impact than simply hearing about Him. Most churches enable their people to hear about God week after week.  Not so many enable them to experience Him as well.

When God’s power is manifested, we experience Him. When we experience Him, like Moses on Sinai, we are changed. Where significant transformation in the lives and hearts of God’s people has not been profoundly experienced, then, perhaps, an insufficient gospel is being preached.  “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power” (1Cor.4:20). God is not content to simply be talked about.  He wants to be experienced.