Forgetting what is behind and pressing forward

Just been thinking a bit lately about how to persevere in faith for breakthrough in general and healing in particular. I think our enemy would like us to focus on past failures or times when things didn’t work out how we hoped, or prayed for.

I am feeling less inclined to give much time in my head for the past. It sounds odd as we talk about “learning from experience” but its just that I am more  enthusiastic about looking at God’s word. Experience will catch up at some point I expect.

Experience says no one gets healed when you pray, Gods word says “these signs will accompany those who believe they will lay their hands on the sick and they will get well, ask and you will receive, pray for one another to be healed, the prayer of faith will make the sick well, you may ask for anything in my name and I will do it, say to this mountain move and it will move, you will do greater things than these,…”. Its like Gods word is the water in a dam that is building up and up with increasing pressure against the wall. Cracks appear. It’s going to break any minute. We will see masses of people healed as God power crashes into our experience.

Another thing that can dampen faith is the thought, again based on experience, that it will take years of prayer and fasting and calling out to God, and a trail of failure and sickness and even death before we start seeing people healed. That’s rubbish. It squashes faith. It makes me think I’ve got to pray for people for over a year expecting nothing to happen until we have proved to God how keen we are or how faithful we are. No, the next time I pray for someone I expect them to get healed because that’s the expectation that Gods word gives me. Past experience can be consigned to the dustbin of history. These days failure seems to stimulate me to fiercer warfare and higher expectation as I see a larger gulf between my experience and Gods word. I want to move into the future looking at God’s word to shape my expectation. That seem to me to be a great way to persevere even if it does take time.

Bill Jonson says of people like Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee McPherson, A. B. Simpson, John G Lake :

“they were fed up with seeing one standard in the Bible and another standard in their experience”. He goes on “that discontentment caused them to move dangerously into territory that had been inhabited by violent beasts, if you will, and so they began to posses territory that had not been possessed by any one continuously since the days of the apostles. They did it at great personal risk and sacrifice, and entered into things that where completely unknown to the church at the time.”  page 158.

I too am very discontented. Didn’t Bill Hybles coin a term “Holy Discontent”? It very helpfully puts a label on the feeling you get when you see something and you know its not what God wants. When you start feeling that way it cannot stay like that for long. 

Another thing that can dampen faith is the thought that “God won't use me”. He will use someone else. It’s hard to “eagerly desire spiritual gifts” if you are thinking all the time that he won’t give you anything. There’s no faith in that at all. No, I should desire, then ask, then expect. I must not get too deflected back on my own merit and ability and even the need for prayer and preparation (although I find myself increasingly giving myself to these things these days). All that’s needed is faith as small as a mustard seed. Sure some demonic influences are only broken by prayer and fasting but the implication is that many don’t need that! There is power in the name of Jesus!

One final thing that sometimes tempts me to turn back from an attitude of faith for healing is the thought that I should be putting Jesus first and focusing on that. Its sounds very persuasive but its actually an accusation in disguise to distract me. It infers that I am not putting Jesus first which I most defiantly am. I will not be distracted from something Jesus was so clear about by thoughts that I am not loving him enough. I love him and honour him and put him first by stepping out in obedience in this key area. Of course there as several things we need to keep in balance as Christians. That’s why I am so excited about preaching on this as the other guys take up complementary key strands of biblical truth. It’s a very safe, balanced context to do it in. Every three weeks or so I will preach on healing while the other two weeks Toby will look at characters from Acts and Goff will look at living in Christ.  

A final word from Bill Johnson “its not normal for a Christian to not have an appetite for the impossible. Its completely abnormal. It’s a deformity that comes through disappointment and or bad teaching”. p.165 I am resolved to preach on healing for a year, teaching into it and stepping out in it .

Oh and one final quote. One of my favourites:

“the real tragedy is not unanswered prayer. Its un asked for prayer”.

I will not be enslaved by my past experience. Vindicate your word Lord God!

the tide will turn

God has also raised our expectation for healing. I went to the early morning prayer meeting this morning. Its starts at 6:30 so I tried going to bed as early as possible. 11:30pm. Not bad for us :-). Then I had that thing where you can’t sleep because you know you need to get to sleep quickly. Surely it’s the experience that the word irony was invented for. Anyway, it was great to be there and enjoy Jesus with others and humbling to be prayed for again. It would be great to be totally well again but my slight discomforts are easily forgotten when I think of others great need in this area. Let’s keep crying out to God to destroy cancers and MS and Parkinson’s and crippling arthritis. Isn’t that a key, tangible sign of the kingdom of God?

Even as I was writing these last few sentences I got a prayer request from someone suffering with a debilitating illness. Here is another irony. As I press into God for healing it seems I hear of more people getting ill. Surely the tide is about to turn and we will see breakthrough.

I’ve just emailed a couple of people who are seeing healing more and more for advice on how to move forward in this but I know I’ve got to step up my prayer life. Not simply to put the hours in but to release the burden to God, that his healing power would breakout among us.   

The nativity play

I went to Katie’s nativity play today and felt my eyes mist up as I watched her really enjoying playing the part of Mary. I couldn’t take my eyes of her or stop beaming back at her. I suspect she has no idea how much I love her and how delighted I am with her. Not delighted because she said her lines so well, nor because of her acting skills, but simply because I love her.

Does she know how much she is loved? I doubt it but it will protect her and provide for her, and each day strengthen her spirit and cause her to grow and flourish and thrive.

I really value these little glimpses you get as a parent into the love of God for us. He feels not just the same way about me as I do about my daughters but infinity more so. Purer and more enduring than I can imagine and completely independent of my “performance”. I do not, cannot know the extent of his love for me but I will flourish and grow in it.

I’m going to put on Jesus Culture again and enjoy God for a bit.

…And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

sometimes a very happy time

I came across a little book today as I was clearing up my study. It doesn’t look like much on the outside, it’s a small book, rather faded with an overexposed black and white picture of a smiling family on the front but as I flicked through its pages I became deeply effected by its contents. It’s called “Tortured for Christ” and its 128 small pages contain the testimony of Richard Wurmbrand.

When the Communists seized Rumania they started persecuting the church and Richard was arrested in 1948 for preaching the gospel to his people and to the Russian soldiers.

In his book he describes in detail some of the most horrendous tortures imaginable that were meted out to him and other Christians day after day, year after year in an underground dungeon. I was appalled. But listen to what he says:

“When I look back on the fourteen years of prison, it was sometimes a very happy time. Other prisoners and even the guards very often wondered at how happy Christians could be under most terrible circumstances. We could not be prevented from singing, although we were beaten for this. I image that nightingales too would sing, even if they knew that after finishing they would be killed for it. Christians in prison danced for joy. How could they be so happy under such tragic conditions?”

It’s in the very nature of a Christian to rejoice. But why? He gives three reasons:

i)                    Because their eyes, as well as having seen terrible suffering have also seen the saviour, Jesus.

ii)                  Because they knew the glorious end of the story, they “saw in the shabby and dirty and weak martyr…the splendid crowed saint of tomorrow”

iii)                Because some of the guards received Christ. “In those who watched mocking when Christians, smeared with excrement, were tired to crosses, we saw the crowd of Golgotha which were soon to beat their breast in fear of having sinned”. They experienced close up the transforming power of the gospel that “Where sin increased grace abounded all the more.”

Listen to this and see if it doesn’t stir your prayer life, increase your passion for Jesus, release you from unforgivness, and enlarge your love for the lost.

“In solitary confinement, we could not pray as before. We were unimaginably hungry; we had been doped until we became idiots. We were as weak as skeletons. The Lord’s prayer was much too long for us. We cannot concentrate enough to say it. My only prayer repeated again and again was “Jesus I love thee”. And then, one glorious day I got an answer from Jesus: “You love me? Now I will show you how I love you” At once I felt a flame in my heart which burned like the coronal streamers of the sun. The disciples on the way from Emmaus said that their hearts burned when Jesus spoke with them. So it was with me. I knew the love of the One Who has given his life on the cross for us all. Such love cannot exclude the communists, however grave their sins. Communists have committed and still commit horrors but “many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods down it”.  

 

I am reminded again of that song of the Jesus Culture album:

“Come be the fire inside of me

come be the flame upon my heart

come be the fire inside of me

until you and I are one”

Jesus be the flame upon my heart.

Passion for people

As you know we are believing God to see the church grow over the next year. We want to break through 400 and strike out towards 500. Can you believe God for 1 person your small groups knows to be saved and added this year? Two people?

Sometimes talking about numbers can seem a bit impersonal. I watched again recently the ending of Schindler’s list. He is surrounded by the hundreds of Jewish people he saved from the gas chambers. He bought each one from the Nazis to ‘work’ in his factory. He starts to break down thinking of the others he might have saved:

This car. Goeth would've bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people, right there, ten more I could've got.

Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would've given me two for it. At least one. He would've given me one. One more. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. One more. I could've gotten one more person I didn't.

Although we worship a Sovereign God and don’t need to be crushed under a weight of guilt I want to capture something of Schindler’s heart to save people. What has God given me that I can use in the service of the gospel - my time, my energy, my all. Numbers are not impersonal when you have a passion for people. Please God give us more living stones, more precious people bought with your blood. Build your church Lord Jesus! May we grow in number this year!

Preach it John!

Oh, you have got to see this! John Piper who wrote such classics as “Desiring God” and “When I don’t desire God” (available free online www.desiringgod.org), speaks about the importance of small groups and following up the preached word.

I came across it while thinking about producing a couple of booklets for the church. One on small groups for people wanting to find out more about them and one for people who might be thinking about helping lead a group.

Anyway listen to this:

“I preach, God is merciful often to take the word preached and pierce and open and save and heal. But the church is designed to do another thing as well as preach, namely gathering little assemblies and ask the prophetic question “go get your husband”. I can’t come down out of this pulpit and go to every single person and say “go get your husband”. And that’s the next step often needed after I commend living water and you’re locked up and nothings happening and you leave and go nowhere. Because small groups are designed to take the word and by supernatural wisdom and gifts and holy Spirit power penetrate where I didn’t. That’s the way the church is supposed to work. So I’m pleading with you. Don’t play games by making this a preaching point. We are not hear to entertain people who jump from church to church. We want to gather saints and do church the way Jesus designed for us to know each other love each other and take the word of God preached and push it into the recesses of each others hearts and hold on to people and never let them go five marriages or what. ..please please live in community as we try to help you, in small groups.”

It’s 10 times more powerful when you hear him say it so why not visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC4pmIZ5GhA  or go to youtube and type in “Piper small groups”. Actually you could spend a very productive time just typing “John Piper” in to youtube.

Back to preach preparation. I’m looking at “Calling on the name of the Lord”. It’s a little verse right at the end of chapter 4 about Cain and Abel. Its like hearing the bubbling of a spring in a dry land. What a beautiful noise. So soon after the fall and the curses and the thrones and murder, we come across people calling on the name of the Lord. And its only in chapter 4! 

Loving Jesus

I was at a conference recently and someone recommended I listen to some of the “Jesus Culture” worship songs coming out of Bill Johnson’s Church. Thanks to itunes I quickly downloaded an album.  I wasn’t immediately taken by it but you know how it is with some Albums and the more I listened the more I began to enjoy it and get caught up in worship and finding myself singing its simple lines over and over during the day. As my friend said ‘its big on loving Jesus’. Too right it is. Listen to this:

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves us,
Whoa! how He loves.

Verse 2:
We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
….

Bring it on! But why is worship such a wonderful life giving experience? Its because we focus on the wonderful one who is the source of life itself. I love imagining the day when Jesus comes back and every eye is on him. The stars depart their job done. Light floods the earth. A noise rises like the crowd at a football match only global in magnitude and intensity. We see him! Our hero, our saviour, our king. Come Lord Jesus. What joy that my sin is paid for. What ecstasy to be loved so much. Eyes like blazing fire. I’ve got the track “You won’t relent” on at the moment.

“For there is love that is as strong as death
Jealousy, demanding as the grave

waters cannot quench this love!

come be the fire inside of me

come be the flame upon my heart

come be the fire inside of me

until you and I are one”

Got some prep still to do but going to enjoy being with Jesus for a bit. Can’t wait to worship tomorrow with the church. Whoa! how He loves.