This was forwarded by Randy Clark. It is a 55 page defense of the activities of the Lakeland outpouring. Here is a selection from page 5:

Normative New Testament evangelism is accompanied by God’ power

A simple perusal of the following passages shows that true biblical revival always involved word and deed, the preaching of the gospel alongside people ministering and experiencing (not just talking about) God’ healing and miraculous power: Matt. 4:23; 9:35-36; 10:1, 7-8; 11:5; 12:15, 18; 15:30; 19:2 (cf. Mk. 10:1); 21:14 (cf. Lk. 21:37); Mk. 1: 38-39; 2:2, 11; 3:14-15; 6:12-13; 10:1 (cf. Mat. 19:2); Lk. 4:18; 5:17, 24; 6:6-11, 17-18; 7:22; 9:1-2; 10:9, 13; 13:10-13, 22, 32; 14:4, 7ff.; 21:37 (cf. Mat. 21:14); 16:15-18, 20; Jn. 3:2; 7:14-15, 21-23, 31, 38; 10:25, 32, 38; 12:37, 49; 14:10, 12; Acts 1:1; 2:22; 3:6, 12; 4:29-30; 5:12-16, 20-21, 28, 42; 6:8, 10; 8:4-7, 12; 9:17-18 (cf. 22:13), 34-35; 10:38; 14:3, 8-10, 15ff.; 15:12, 36; 18:5, 11 (cf. 2 Cor. 12:12; 1 Cor. 2:4-5); 19:8-12; Rom. 15:18-19; 1 Cor. 2:4-5; 11:1; 12:1-11, 28-31; 14:22-25; 2 Cor. 12:12; Gal. 3:5; Phil. 4:9; 1 Thes. 1:5-6; Heb. 2:3-4; 6:1-2; Jas. 5:13-16.

Indeed Paul said in Romans 15:18-19 that only the proclamation of the gospel that is accompanied by healing, signs and wonders, that display the power of the risen Lord, represents a full proclamation of the gospel: Rom. 15:18-19 (NIV)€” I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done€” by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. [italics and boldface mine]

Read and be blessed.

The suggested donation is $3-$5 to be paid to Fresh Fire to finance the work in Lakeland.

Every Tuesday morning for several months now I have had a breakfast meeting with Nathan from Independence Church. I first met him when the Holy Ghost led me to attend their launch.

Every Tuesday we meet outside a bagel shop for a blueberry bagel, lightly toasted with cream cheese, a cranberry bagel, non-toasted with cream cheese, and two large coffees.

We discuss all things Christianity. Here is the funny thing. Nathan is one of those latte coffee serving pastors that is hosting something between the tonight show and a college brainstorming session. (admin note: Please note that this was meant tongue in cheek.  They do preach the gospel.)  I don’t feel like I have had church if I am not soaked in sweat and without a voice at the end of the night. A few bodies twitchin on the floor is a given.

I think he should get all his people praying in tongues for 15 minutes or so before service. He thinks I should prepare my messages more than a day before the meeting (btw, I already know what I am preachin Friday!).

Yet we are able to put aside methodology because in the end we both want to reach our respective communities for Jesus. I wish more of the heretic police would try to focus on Jesus more. It really makes life more enjoyable.

Our only problem lies in communication. When Nathan has issues, it is my job to rebuke and challenge as needed. When I struggle, I want him to commiserate, yet he rebukes and challenges me.

As a church planter, if you don’t have this, pray that God makes a way.

One of my disciples asked me the other day about a “national prophet” that had given a specific prophecy regarding a rapper that did not come to pass.  He questioned how this national prophet could have been so wrong.

I restated the question asking how people who are wrong so often are regarded as national prophets.  The prophetic ministry in America has a serious lack of oversight and accountability.   I have remarked in the past about the abundance of homosexual sin in the prophetic movement and I truly believe there is a link here.

I personally know less than a handful of people that I would consider prophets.  I see lots of people who consider themselves prophets but I think the fruit does not bear witness.  If we are going to be a New Testament church, we have to use the New Testament as the measuring stick.

Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians that the five-fold ministry was for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry.  For too long we call people who prophesy real good prophets.  I do not believe that is the case.  You can have a deep and strong gift of prophecy without being in the office of prophet.   And just because you can’t tell who is calling without looking at the caller id and you don’t see the voice of the Lord in ever headline out of Jerusalem does not mean you are not a prophet.

I take the call of the prophet to come from Jeremiah 1:10

See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”

And I think that this is the test of a prophetic ministry.  IT would seem that the test of a prophetic ministry these days lies in the ability  to tell the head of a church you are visiting how much God favors your church over the one down the street and how special that pastor is.

Do prophets prophecy?  Of course they do.  Does a person in the office of prophet get it wrong now and then?  Of course they do.  Not every pastor give the perfect counsel every time.  Sometimes the evangelist gets it wrong when witnessing.  Sometimes the teacher doesn’t fully understand a scripture.

But the pastor is held accountable for bad counsel.   The teacher is held accountable for false teaching.  The evangelist is held accountable for bad doctrine.  So too the church must not be so enamored with the prophetic to keep from demanding accountability for those who minister the “Word of the Lord.”

Prophets, by the nature of their call, should be more open to confrontational accountability and should demand more from the Church then we are seeing.

No, I am not a cessationist. If you don’t believe what the Bible says about the gift of prophesy and you are looking for someone to blaspheme with you will be really disappointed with this post.

My primary giftings surround the prophetic. But much of what I see today is just plan pathetic. In the next couple days I will outline what I see wrong with the church regarding prophetic ministry. Much of which is encapsulated in this little video.

Without being unkind, the woman shows an obvious lack of self control, flows in judgment, behaves like a complete loon, and in the end, the woman does not really stand for anything.

I believe that the church in America would be better served if it followed the Bible.  I know that the church of Fox News has the Church convinced that Jesus’ plan to keep America safe is to torture and or kill our enemies but I would like to shine the spotlight in another direction.

Paul made this little plea that we should remember the poor.  Once you see Jesus’ heart for the least of these you really cannot look past them again without pain.  I challenge you to read this post in its entirety:

shaun
We went to lunch and I bought her a hamburger.  She only ate half and when I asked her if she was full she told me she wanted to save the rest so her little sister back home could eat it.

She fell asleep on the ride back to the hotel, her sweaty brown cheek squished up and buried in my t-shirt.  And I prayed, asking God to forgive me for not giving away more of what he’d given me in my lifetime.  “Forgive me” was all I could say holding a child who ate once every three days before Compassion saved her life, didn’t go to school before Compassion educated her, didn’t know she mattered until Compassion told her how much God loved her.  Forgive me.

We have got to return to the Gospel as a church.  I am not talking about a social works gospel.  I am talking about returning to a place where we can be affected by the love of God in a way that it changes how we look at the world around us.  How many people do you know that live below their means for the sole purpose of being able to give?  What are we doing with all this money?

TBN has over $300 million in the bank.  Why do people keep donating to it?  Because they think it will get them rich!  This is perversion!

What will it take for us to have a Gospel centered Christianity in this country?

I stumbled onto the hermeneutics quiz from the merge. I scored a 49. They labeled this as a conservative. This is clearly a perfect score but here is what they have to say about my grouping:

First, the conservative hermeneutic group scores 52 or lower. The strength of this view is its emphasis on the authority, ongoing and normative authority, of all of Scripture. It tends to operate with the line many of us learned in Sunday school: “If the Bible says it, that settles it.” Such persons let the Bible challenge them with full force. Literal readings lead to rather literal applications. Most of the time.

The problem, of course, is that very few people are completely consistent here. At times one suspects something other than strict interpretation is going on when the conservative is willing to appeal to history to suspend the commandment to observe a Saturday Sabbath, but does not to appeal to history on other issues (e.g., capital punishment or homosexuality).

I know a church that has declared that for them, 2008 is the year of prayer. That makes me wonder a few things:

1. What was last year?
2. What will you move on to next year?
3. If you didn’t pray before, were you a church? (Mark 11:17)

Prayer is supposed to be the key to other things. It is not a goal unto itself. If the goal of the church is to get people to pray then we have come up waaaaaaay short of the call.

1. 1 Corinthians 12:28. “And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues.” God has appointed, ordained, commanded, tongues to be exercised in the church, with or without denominational approval. There is no such thing as an “apostolic-Church” and a “post-apostolic-Church”. Jesus established one Church for all time. Period!

2. Mark 16:17. “And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues.” In this passage, tongues is wholly a matter of one’ relationship with Christ through personal believing; the gift has nothing to do with the death of Apostles or canonizing of Scripture. Observe that in this case, believing is the same requirement as given to the Philippian jailor, Acts 16:31, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” And Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart.” In each case, belief is the foundation of relationship with God. It is dangerous to predicate such relationships upon historical events or chronological dates.

(more…)

Bob Hyatt has taken on George Barna’s book titled Pagan Christianity. I heard George speak at a minister’s conference last year. According to his research nobody in the room was saved (except for him).

He went on and on about how people were becoming disconnected with Christianity except for a little subset of Christians called Pentecostals.

I never read this book. I have run into enough people who agree with it to know that it is not of interest to me. That’s why I am glad someone like Bob has taken him to task chapter by chapter.  The series is worth reading just for the laughs you get out of finding the nonsense that people get paid to write in books.

You know those churches that God inhabits when people gather to worship Him? You know, the ones that He saves people in, touches their hearts causing them to fall in love with Him and give their lives to His cause? Apparently God hates those places according to Barna.

Maybe one day Barna can bend a knee and ask the Father what He thinks about the situation.

I was on a Christian jewelry site and saw a link to their doctrine. My first question is to wonder why a jewelry site needed to post their doctrine. I looked however and came down to the last point of the section titled:

IV. PNEUMATOLOGY: THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

4. The Spirit bestows gifts, however the sign gifts (e.g. tongues, miracles) gradually ceased as the New Testament Scriptures were completed and their authority was confirmed (1 Cor. 12:4-11; 2 Cor. 12:12; Eph. 2:20; 4:7-12; Heb. 2:1-4; 1 Thes. 5:1).

Now, for the sake of being a good Berean lets take a little look see here:

1 Corinthians 12:4-11 Listen

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

Says that there are gifts and goes into detail listing them.

2 Corinthians 12:12 Listen

The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

Ok, signs attest to the office.

Ephesians 2:20 Listen

built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,

The foundation, these gifts must be pretty important.

Ephesians 4:7-12 Listen

But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says,

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.”

(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

More gifts given to men by the Spirit of God.

Hebrews 2:1-4 Listen

2:1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

God bares witness to doctrine with signs and wonders. Very important indeed.

1 Thessalonians 5:1 Listen

5:1 Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you.

huh? Not sure what this has to do with anything.

But I did not read anywhere in this list of Scripture that says it is ok to rip out whole chapters of the New Testament with a doctrine that is contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Does someone else see it in here?

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Now playing: Extraordinary – Hear Us From Heaven