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.

Christ : Supernatural 1 – Holy Spirit

Unpredictable. Dangerous. Powerful.

This is the Holy Spirit, and when it comes upon one in power, watch out.

There are precedents for it, certainly. Samson, Elijah, Moses. All were men filled with the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit.

And then there was the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the believers gathered in Jerusalem.

This is the Counselor promised by Christ, the Helper who will attend to the believers after His ascension.

Here’s where the ground gets tricky, because this is probably the most unsettling experience of the believer’s supernatural. The Holy Spirit cannot be predicted, and it will not be stopped in its course. It has also been the most abused of the charismatic doctrines, in my opinion, and has led to more exclusionary tactics than any other. At the same time, it’s also a part of any true revival ( a fraught term), in various ways.

The heart of the matter is, however, that I believe the Holy Spirit does still work in power, and that it does do wondrous things. It is also very dangerous ground to base a theology on, because if you allow a prevailing belief in the primacy of the Spirit in worship or in defining what makes one ‘Christian’, you are throwing wide the door to experiential theology, removing Christ from its center and allowing a great latitude in what is defined as spiritual, and as Christian. And that, my dear readers, is heresy in the making.

Remember: In C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, Aslan is never SAFE to take for granted; oh no, not that.

But he’s GOOD.

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