Exercising Faith I – Supernatural Gifts

Jesus rebuked his disciples for having little faith, and I wonder if we should not take that a little more seriously. I have a dear friend whose contention is that the faith which we profess is that faith which allows for the use of the same supernatural powers as Jesus Christ in all believers, and I happen to have some issues with such a broad categorization. In fact, I come from a background that seems to hold that the supernatural gifts displayed in the Bible by Jesus Christ and later his disciples passed away from the world with those disciples. I’m not sure where I stand on the gifts of the Spirit in their supernatural form. I’ve heard too many testimonies about healing and prophecy to entirely discount the possibility, but at the same time I can’t say that I’ve had the opportunity to witness supernatural gifts in action. Let me just preface this discourse by putting that out there.

What I’m thinking about is how people recognize the reality of God’s supernatural presence in their lives, and how they can be influenced in different ways by their own perceptions of that supernatural presence. You see, I find that I can give names to traits and abilities that I see in people, believers and non-believers alike, by referring to spiritual gifts. Is it possible, do you think, to exercise the gifts of the Spirit or to be given gifts of the Spirit as a non-believer? My answer would have to be no. People have gifts, yes. Even secularists don’t deny that. But from whence do those gifts come? And to what purpose are they to be used? In non-believers, I’d have to say that the gifts are designed to be deceptive, to entrap people by giving them a sense of the use of spiritual gifts as something produced of their own abilities. In believers, the issue becomes trickier. Because false teachers exist (and I’m going to go on a tear about false teachers before too long), so too do false uses of spiritual gifts, or uses of spiritual gifts that propagate satanic (and here I’m using the word to connote selfishness) teachings. The trouble lies in discernment, and in false discernment contention arises between those who claim to be brethren. So I say God forgive us for contention about the ways You choose to manifest yourself, and give us discernment about what You want to accomplish with Your gifts.

Here are some links to older posts I’ve done on the subject of supernatural gifts:

Christ: Supernatural 1 – Miracles

Christ: Supernatural 1 – Gifts

Christ: Supernatural 1 – Holy Spirit

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

A World Apart – Letting Go

As people tend to do, we hold on to things. We try and manage everything, control everything around us and pretend to ourselves that we have the power to do so. That even includes what might traditionally be understood as missional work. We try and control what God does in the lives of the people we seek to save. Missionaries, of course, will laugh at this statement, because they know better. They know that God’s the only one who decides what God will do. Look, for example, at Matthew 8:1-4:

“When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. and behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately he leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.’”

I understand this to say that it is entirely under the sovereignty of the Lord to heal or not heal as He sees fit, and I consequently extend this to point to the necessity of letting go of those things we want to hold up and say ‘look, I did this’ or ‘look, have I not been blessed to do this?’ The point I want to make is simply this: The job of a Christian is to live according to the new life in Christ that he has been given, and let God do the work of getting a hold of the heart. I have friends who say that the chances of fully converting them are slim, but present, and at that I smile inwardly and say, God, I’m just here to do the work I can. I can seek to become more Christlike, to share Him as he lives and works in me, but I can’t do the work in man’s heart to incline it towards Christ, or to remove it and give him a heart of flesh. That’s what the world doesn’t really understand with hope. That while many things are beyond our control, they are not beyond God’s.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Christ : Supernatural 1 – Gifts

In tackling gifts, it’s important to make it clear where I’m coming from

By gifts, I mean the existence of gifts on two distinct levels: Supernatural gifts – prophecy, speaking in tongues, angelic ministry, miracles, and supernatural discernment form one level, while gifts of character and of spiritually-empowered abilities form another.

It’s an imbalance between these two levels that is in part the cause of many turning away from the church. Debate rages about the place or non-place, and the importance of, supernatural gifts in the West, while the gifts of character and abilities that could enhance or transform the churches are often unremarked upon or, even worse, ignored completely. As a result, congregations dwindle in ignorance because they are not equipped with every good thing to perform their ministry. So we have huge buildings designed to hold hundreds of people, now home to a few souls whose abilities may perhaps be forgotten, or whose lives could be so much more fulfilled if given a chance to exercise their spiritual giftings.

After all that, I say that the supernatural gifts have not ceased in the West, and most certainly not in the larger world, but that they have been corrupted by sinfulness and relegated to horror stories. Prophecy becomes fortune-telling, angelic ministry becomes angel worship and New Age transcendentalism, tongues becomes gibberish and perverted isolationism, miracles become magic tricks. We live in a world where sin is active, where Satan is active, and where nothing divides one from another so strongly as perversions of good or holy hypocrisy. And that’s where the gifts cease. Not in the Lord’s good plan, but in the crooked and sinful generations of man, who start to claim powers not their own and lord them one over another.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Christ : Supernatural 1 – Miracles

Why is it so hard to see miracles?

In the West, I would argue that it’s because we don’t want to, but also because we are presently under the sentence of Romans 1:18-32. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll note it again.

As an offshoot of being under the wrath on the unrighteous, we are given supernatural works by charlatans and heretics, and the time of the magicians is coming on us again. But what we need to recall is that, though there’s a lot of tricky ground, miracles are Biblically precedented, as are supernatural occurrences among believers.

I wanted to do a mini-arc on the supernatural because it’s been a subject of long debate for me. I know it exists outside of the church, but I believe that any outworking of the supernatural outside of Christ-centered, Biblically-mandated miracles or supernatural occurrences is Satanic. This position is one that’s tricky to define easily, because there are many churches that claim supernatural occurences and experiences that are not Christian by virtue of the fact that their congregations are not Christ-centered. So I’m going to start at the foundation…Christ.

The conservative evangelical megachurch Mars Hill in Seattle is one example of a congregation that accepts Christ’s presence in the entire Bible, the summation of all of God’s revealed word and the metanarrative for the entire Christian holy Scriptures. This is where I’m going to start, because it’s a position that I hold as well.

I believe that Jesus Christ is present throughout the entire Bible, in various forms and guises that were not the revealed Jesus of the Gospels. He is the commander of the Lord’s army in Joshua and in 1 Kings, the rock and refuge of salvation and the deliverer in the Psalms, the fulfillment of prophetic words in various books of prophecy found in the Bible, and
the prefigured atonement sacrifice even as early as Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. He is unprecedented, yes, but not unrepresented. As such, the miracles he performs are not unique to New Testament understanding of Christianity, but are shown throughout the Bible. For example, the feeding of the nation of Israel in the desert is only one example of the future feeding of the five thousand by Christ.

Similarly, I believe that miracles continue to happen in the present age, and that there are precedents for them. As the Old Testament prefigured and included Jesus, so has Jesus’ historical ministry prefigured His work today. It is a continuous story. But ultimately, it’s all for Christ’s glory. And that must be the foundation of any ministry of the supernatural in this age.

So the ministry of miracles is an acceptable one, but it must be accomplished in the right heart. None of this is ours except by grace, and none of it is deserved. Miracles are not for my glory, nor are they even for the glory of those who witness them or are transformed by them, but they are Christ’s alone.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer