Word (
AJM April 2005
Written
from
Introduction
His
own experience – reading Romans 8.4, ‘truth penetrated my spirit’. Different
ministry ever since – above all, a freshness and authority in teaching the word
of God.
We tell this story, not to
glorify a congregation or any people in this congregation. Rather, it is an
attempt to seek to encourage those who desire a deeper work of the Holy Spirit
in their personal lives and churches. Churches that seem locked into stagnation
and decline need not be afraid of renewal, but should be prepared to embrace
the helpful aspects of this movement and work them out within a church
framework. Also that those congregations who have experienced renewal and are
now perhaps suffering from ingrownness and lack of direction may be able to
clarify and outwork the issues which the Holy Spirit seems to be bringing to
many churches both in this country and around the world. Things can be changed.
God answers prayer and is gracious and faithful to His people. Fresh breath can
ignite dull people and sweep through barren places creating growth and bringing
blessing .Ne w vision is essential. There’s a community to touch and a world to
reach for Christ. Old bones can live!
This
book is also an attempt to point out to charismatic churches that the results
of renewal should go beyond the four walls of the church and out into the local
communities. The central theme of Jesus’ ministry was the
1. Renewal
Renewal
in a
2. The ministry of the Spirit
Being
filled, blessed, empowered, released, baptised, drenched, touched, anointed,
renewed in the Spirit – what happens to people already Christians, already
serving, already born again.
1
irrefutable fact: Jesus performed his ministry through the power and work of
the HS. He used the same resources we have – not different ones. Resources for
spiritual growth:
o Prayer
o Scripture
o Faith
o Ministry of the HS
Billy
Graham asked, how much Christian activity would continue unaffected if God
removed his HS from the earth? A good question to ask oneself of what one does!
3. The gifts of the Spirit
Are
some still in, some now out? If so, which?...
Prophecy
– the gift of prophecy in 1 Cor 14 and the role of prophet in Eph 4 are clearly
different.
Prophecy
is inspired, yes – but infallible, no!
Miracles:
However where we read the
word ‘miracles’, the Greek phrase used — energemata dunameon — could be
translated as
— ‘workings of powers’ or ‘energisings
of power’. To be a vehicle for an energising work of God’s power does not
seem to be nearly as threatening as a performer of a miracle. Jesus also has
this phrase used of Him in Mark 6:14 where some people were saying that Jesus
was John the Baptist raised from the dead, ‘That was why miraculous powers are
at work in Him.’
In verse 6 of I Corinthians
12, Paul uses the same Greek word when he says, ‘There are different kinds of
energisings (energematon), but the same God energises (energon) all of them in
all people.’ Or in verse 11 — ‘All of these (gifts) are the energising
(energei) of one and the same Spirit and he gives them to each one as he
determines.’ Maybe if the translators had used this terminology rather than
miracles, we would have felt more comfortable about this area.
Similar terminology
translated as ‘working’, is used several other times in the New Testament -
Ephesians 1:19-20, ‘the energising of his mighty strength.’ Ephesians 3:7, Paul
was ‘a servant of this gospel. . . through the energi sing of his power’. Here,
‘energising of his power’ could well he translated ‘miracle,’ Paul was a
servant of the gospel through a miracle! Ephesians 3:20, ‘He is able to do more
than we can ask or think according to his power which energises us’. Colossians
1:29, ‘To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so
powerfully energises me.’ Is it not conceivable, that the Spirit of God, from
time to time, gives special ability (energy) to get a task done, or to bring a
radical change in a situation, maybe a healing, or some other supernatural
event? This certainly seems to have been so in the case of Christ. We read
‘people touched him because power was coming from him and healing them all’
(Luke
For many of us such an
explanation is quite foreign to our Western, non-miraculous framework. It
borders on the metaphysical and leaves numerous unanswered questions. To
understand how such an activity of the Holy Spirit operates, or give adequate
scientific explanation is difficult but we must address the Biblical record. Is
it possible that we are dealing here with divine energy which can apparently
operate through human vessels.p42-43
Learning
to use the gifts of the Spirit – practical guidelines.
4. Change
General
Booth (Salvation Army): ‘you can’t change the future without disturbing the
present’, 49.
Bringing
change: teach it (one of God’s unchanging characteristics is that he delights
in doing new things); point out that maturity means change; pray for ministry
of the HS; communicate with people; use papers to present positions; model the
changes yourself; run with the runners (2.5% of a congregation are innovators,
13.5% are early adapters – work with them); try it out for 6 months; use
questionnaires; teach on the area needing change; be patient with people…
5. Reaching into the community
They
appointed a couple whose job it was to do good works in the community. Concern
for the needs of people in the community comes out of renewal. The gospel has a
social dimension (not the same as being a social gospel). African proverb:
‘empty bellies have no ears’. Maslow’s hierarchy, 5 levels, and lower ones must
be met first. p 64. ‘Christians have to be the good news before they have the
right to speak the good news’. Credibility is primarily gained by loving and
sacrifically serving other people. The modern church doesn’t serve the hurting
community.
6. Words, deeds and signs
Evangelism
by words –
churches have always recognised the need for a verbal declaration of truth.
Evangelism
by deeds:
Proclaiming the gospel by deeds is often the way to a person’s heart:
o Mt 5.16 good works glorify
the Father
o 2 Cor 9.8 we abound to every
good work
o Gal 6.10 do good to
everyone, esp those of the household of faith
o 1 Thess 5.15 do good to one
another
o Titus 2.7 show a pattern of
good works
o Heb 10.24 provoke one
another to love and good works
o Eph 2.9 created to do good
works, prepared in advance for us to do
Not
the same as justification by works…
Evangelism
by signs –
healing
Need
for balance. Evangelicals do words, Liberals do deeds, Pentecostals do signs…
Romans 15.18-19 ‘by words and deeds, by the power of signs and miracles, and by
the power of the HS’. ndividual believers often have a bias towards one of
these ways of presenting the gospel; together we need all. ‘Words proclaim the
truth about God, deeds show the love of God and signs demonstrate the power of
God’, 74.
7. Wanted – unifying theme
The
bigger picture into which renewal fits is this: the
To be sure, we must place
Christ central to all we do, whether that be evangelism, social cancern, work,
spiritual warfare, service, worship or in the use of the gifts of the Spirit.
But to what end result?
Slowly the bigger picture
came into focus, as if the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were finally coming
together giving us a total view, a unifying theme. This theme was the
Viewing things from the
perspective of the
8. The
To
understand the gospel, one must understand the
Romans
14.17, the
The
Kingdom – here but not fully. Incompleteness : even Jesus did not manage to
convince everyone that he was the Messiah, and it is the same with the current
ministry of the HS through us. The age of the Kingdom is the age of grace –
people can accept or reject it.
Jesus’
view of end time determined how he lived here and now. So should ours. Newbigin
on the kingdom: ‘it is not the lantern which the traveller in the dark carries
in his hand; it is the glow on his face which reflects the coming dawn’, 101.
9. Evidence of the
Billy
Graham was asked if he would run for President, and said no. Why, was the job
too big? No, it was too small; God had called him to something much bigger…
10. Conflict of the kingdoms
Bible
acknowledges there are powerful spiritual forces at work on this planet; there
are 2 kingdoms. Matt 12.22-28, where they accuse Jesus of driving out demons by
Beelzebub – he says there is not one kingdom but two, Satan’s kingdom and the
o Human relationships
o Work and economics
o Sex
o Our innate desire to worship
God
o The church
Few
refs to Satan in the OT, lots in the NT – as if the coming of Jesus flushed out
Satan and revealed the degree to which his kingdom had influenced this planet.
Light showed up darkness, and demons screamed in the presence of God.
11. Money, materialism and the
A
pastor from
Money
is a resource – see the parable of the shrewd manager in Luke 16.
Non-Christians are shrewd in how they use their money to further their causes.
We aren’t.
Test:
when we need say a new car, we ask ourselves ‘what can I afford’ – and money is
making the decision. Should we spend all we can afford to?
The
power of money is due to 3 reasons:
In
1988 someone calculated that Christians gave 1.7% of their income to God –
almost all to work in their own country of origin. Yet as we spend millions,
Christianity in the West declines.
Some
statistics
* 250,000
people go blind each year for the want of 10 cents
worth of
vitamin C.
* 40,000
children around the world die each year from the
lack of simple
needs.
* 100,000,000
children around the world are living on the streets today.
* One billion
people around the world are destitute.
* The 37
poorest countries in the world have recently been forced to make a 50% cut in
health and a 25% cut in education because of the high interest rates to the
West.
* Half the
world goes to bed hungry each night.
* By the year
2000, one quarter of the world’s population will be living in city slums or
squatter settlements.
* North
Americans consume 5 times more grain than Asians; use twice as much protein
than their bodies need and 80 million of them are overweight!
* One quarter
of the world’s population controls four fifths of its resources. Putting it the
other way, three quarters of the world’s population has to get by on one fifth
of the world’s resources.
* 6% of the
world’s population consume 40% of its resources and many of these are
non-renewable.
God
gives us his perspective:
o At creation : God gave Adam
and Eve 4 instructions:
1. conservation – ‘replenish’
2. exploration – ‘subdue’
3. administration – ‘rule over’
4. cooperation – ‘dress and
keep it’
Deut 17, kings should not aquire lots of horses; of
wives; of silver and gold (16-17)
o through the laws of
o through the prophets
o through John the baptist,
Luk 3
o through Jesus – Jesus spoke
about this issue more than any other. Refs p.140-41
Riches
exclude people from the kingdom; strangle their growth; blind us to the needs
of others; compete against God’s authority; enslave us; supplant our values;
create anxiety; desentitise us towards our spiritual needs; are addictive.
Advice:
o live more simply
o resist advertising and
develop sales resistance
o reject credit
o budget carefully
o give regularly
o abandon wrong use of
possessions
o break the cycle – give stuff
away.
A
prayer : Prov 30.8-9 – give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food
that is convenient for me, lest I be full and deny you .. or lest I be poor and
steal and take the name of the Lord my God in vain.’
12. The church and the
The Greek word most often
used to describe the Church in the New Testament is ekklesia.
Unfortunately in translating
this as church’ we have lost
something of the real meaning behind the word. Literally the Greek word means
‘the called
out ones’ and was commonly
used in the first century to describe a group of people who had come into a
public place
for a particular purpose.
The Greek version of the Old Testament also sometimes uses the word kklesia to
describe
the people of
13. Putting it all together
We
need a new congregational model, one which:
o embraces a theology of the
o is open to the continual
renewing work of the HS (recognising that the gifts of the Spirit are given not
just ot produce to a healthy congregation, but so that a healthy congregation
might seek to bring God’s restoring activity to the surrounding society)
o is involved in social
concern
o is committed to evangelism
o reduces congregational
activities to an essential minimum
o identifies and releases
people’s gifts (in both congregation and in community)
o has a radical view of
money/possessions
o assesses results in terms of
the
His
church has lots of community ministries – people trying to use specific gifts,
skills, trades, to minister to specific needs within the community. There are
some important principles here: autonomy, adaptability, self-sufficiency,
spirituality (must be a spiritual dimension), seeking opportunities for prayer
with people; networking with other community ministries.
People
can get involved at different levels – personal, family, small group,
congregational, multi-congregational. Prorities should be biological family
first, church family second, world family third.
How
to start – assess the needs, the resources you have, what God wants you to do
and whether he wants you to do it now.
Appendix
3 gives examples of community ministries.