I am not sure I have ever successfully blogged a series nor am I sure that enough people read my blog to warrant a series since most visitors come, look, and leave. Nevertheless, this has been something that I have given great thought to over the last couple months and since I am almost the only person who reads this blog, it might as well have writings that I enjoy reading! I plan to touch a plethera of third rails but since I do not rely on donations to keep this blog active I can do that.

Note: I am not Adrain Warnock. The majority of my postings are stream of thought type. I am not putting forth a systematic theology though I think I am right on these issues. Chew the meat, spit out the bones.

So I will post a series on modern distractions from the Gospel. These are the little foxes that eat at the vine. They seem well and good but neuter Christians from our mission.

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I went to a meeting for an internationally known minister. It was held in an arena and it was all I thought it would be. The worship was incredible and the miracles were real. I had never seen that many people crying out for the real presence of God in one place before and it was awesome. Unfortunately, I had another first in that meeting.When the time for the “offering” came I got my first real offering shakedown. The man doing the stickup shakedown witchcraft manipulation offering message was a well know tv guy in his own right. He began to talk about the “special blessing” that comes when a person gives at the $1,000 level. I turned to my wife and told her that I must have missed that scripture. He began to then get supposed words of knowledge,

There is someone over on the right. And you say, “I only have enough for my mortgage.” God is telling you that if you give what you have, I will bless you. And someone over on the left is thinking that they only have $1,000 to your name. If you give like the widow . . .

I was really aghast. I thought that this only happened in church parodies. I had no idea that people would put up with this. When the usher handed an envelope to me I kindly refused. I did not want my money mingled with any of this.

I am a little older now. I have seen more of modern Christianity since that day and unfortunately this is not as uncommon as I thought.

For in the ensuing years I have seen a theology that puts men in control of God. No longer is He the author but we are. He is not the potter, we are. For, no matter God’s will, if we do not tithe then God is unable to bless our finances this new theology teaches. Likewise, if we sprinkle the offering plate with our magical fairy dust tithe check, all our wishes will come true regardless of God’s plan. Whether it be in ignorance or deceitful gain does not matter. This is false teaching.

But more than the sin of the minister who manipulates the congregant to give, is the sin of the congregant who allows their faith to shift from Jehovah Jireh, the God who Provides, to their own ability to tithe. It now seems that whatever we need is accessible in the offering plate. Whether it be greater finances or a mate, all that is needed is to be faithful in giving money to the church and God will do it.

Is there any more clear definition of an idol?

This is how the before mentioned preacher was not hissed off the stage. The idol of the tithe sanctifies greed. The idol of the tithe tells us that we never have to go without and never have to trust God. The idol of the tithe tells us that it is in our own power have our desires fulfilled.

Right now my wife and I are crying out to God that He bring a buyer for our house. It is all that is standing in the way of our going into full time ministry. A well meaning relative told us about some people that they knew who buried statues of Saint somebody in the yard and then the house sold within a week. One person was Jewish, another was an atheist and it worked. I told my relative that I would rather never sell my house then gain by the power of witchcraft. God is my supplier and in Him alone will I trust. How different is the popular tithing message these days? Is it much different than appeasing saints?

For the record I tithe. My wife and I always have. As far as I can predict, we always will. Why? God told us to. That ended the conversation for us. But we don’t do it to leverage favor with God.

The point of tithing is to be a blessing, not to get a blessing. This is the Gospel.

I wonder how much more the finances of the church would increase if we would simply put our trust in Him? Surely the giving would not be as predictable, but it would be cleaner and more toward His purposes.

Galatians 6:7-8 Listen

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

I may have linked to this article before. Since I was so shortsighted to take down my search function I can’t find out.

Anyway, a recent exchange with Michael at Charismatica led me back to this article by Loren Sanford. If you function in the prophetic, are in prophetic circles, feel called to the prophetic, or just want to see more order in the prophetic, this is a must-read.

We need to move from mere sanctified psychic reading into the genuine spirit of prophecy which, according to Jeremiah 1, tears down and builds up, uproots and plants. It is the word of God to accomplish His purposes.

No wonder he is not a big conference circuit speaker.

Cleansing the Prophetic Stream

In a voluminous 233-page, 11-country study on Pentecostals, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirmed the global reach of what they call “renewalist Christianity,” ranging from nine percent of the population in Chile to 33 percent in Kenya. However, one of the most surprising conclusions of the study–and one that bears some serious interpretation–is the claim that, in “six of the 10 countries surveyed, at least four-in-ten Pentecostals say they never speak or pray in tongues.“

I can’t tell you how worked up this gets me. I see men walking around the church like they lead John the Baptist to Jesus yet have never once prophesied the Word of the Lord, never once saw a man healed, never once acted in faith and manifested a miracle.

I wish it wasn’t so easy to be called Pentecostal. What if the Apostles and Prophets had to come to your congregation and test your meetings against the Word of God before you could use the label? What if they judged your sermons against the sermons in Acts before you could be called a Pentecostal preacher? My God there would be men crying out for the presence on Saturday nights and sinners crying out for salvation Sunday morning!

Pentecostal preacher, no matter how successful your church growth strategy, no matter how well financed your building campaign, no matter how well respected you are at the city minister’s breakfast, you will not be fulfilled without the manifest presence of God in your meetings. You have been called and set apart to pray down revival. Tongues is a stubling block but so is the cross. Preach the whole Gospel.
Let God be true and every man a liar!

I was reading a story in The New York Times Magazine this weekend. There was an article about a manchild who was taken in by a Christian High School and how his life was changed. At the end of his tenure there his GPA was not high enough to get an NCAA scholorship due to his record before he went to the school.

To counter this they found out about a program at BYU that gives High School replacement credit for correspondence courses. After completing the courses there was some difficulty getting the NCAA to accept them to which BYU bent over backwards to help the student out.

The NY Times reported that Sean Tuohy, one of the student’s benefactors said of the the people at BYU,

“The Mormons may be going to hell,” Sean says. “But they really are nice people.”

I laughed out loud when I read that. I reread it to my wife and she said,

That sounds like something my husband would say.

Hear me out for a minute. I don’t fit in. The problem is, I don’t think I want to.

I did not grow up in church. I grew up heathen. I was lost in my sin and thought that God was ok with it. I knew that Jesus was the son of God who died for my sins on that cross. I knew that he rose from the dead. I knew that He was and is God. That seems to be enough these days, but it did not seem to be enough for God.

One day I encountered the living God. He absolutely invaded my life and knocked everything else off of the pedestal of my life. At that moment He became the pearl of great price Matthew 13:45-46 for which I traded everything else in my life for. That was it.

So I find myself today in a Christianity that seems to have had some other entryway than I went through and I wonder to myself if I missed something.

When I am around other Christians I would like to talk about Jesus. If I ever find myself in another men’ meeting that looked no different than any other business networking event I will simply go home and play with my children. At least I would have done something with eternal value.

I believe that we should sin less tomorrow than we did today; and that should not happen by chance. That should be a primary focus. Love God hate the devil. One or the other is not enough.

I was recently accused of being weak and offendable because I said that a new believer should not be allowed to invite his lost friends to get onstage with him to lead Sunday morning worship. I could not believe that this was debatable.  Is this the best the church has to offer? And if so, do I have to accept that?

Am I religious because when I go to a meeting of the called out ones I want people who have answered the call to be separate to lead the meeting? If someone is not close enough to Christ to realize that his lifestyle if filthy I don’t think they should be in a place of ministry. Does that make me a Pharisee? I don’t buy into the notion that all sins are the same. The thought that it doesn’t make a difference if we simply thought about a sin or are currently in it without repentance is total nonsense to me. I think Jesus was making the point that we should strive to be more holy because none are perfect. Not that holiness is futile. Does that make me a works-centered humanist?

I ask these questions but I do not know that I care about the answers. I am on fire for Jesus. I know that my sin is a reproach to Him. I am going to continue to tell other believers that their sin is the same. I want to be around others who will tell the same to me.

I have no desire to be in a church that sets the bar so low that any unconverted person feels at home. Church meetings are supposed to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. Not a place where convicted consciences are soothed with soft words of a false hope. From my perspective that’ what lots of people are advocating. And I simply do not want to go along with it.

Maranatha!

I have never prayed for a gift of prophecy. Not once. I have never been to a prophetic conference. I don’t read prophetic websites. Most national prophecies that I hear of just sound like fanciful thinking. (Is it ok that I wrote that? Does anybody think that is judgement?)

There was a time that I knew a man who had run a school of the prophets. They taught people to start prophetic words with certain words and end with other certain words. I went to a meeting where a class that had graduated would minister as part of a final internship. I got a funny feeling about the whole thing. I saw a twenty something year old boy begin a prophetic word to an elder in the church with,

“The Lord says, ‘Son …

I kind of got the willies. Later, I heard a lady give a prophetic word about some gobily gook, begin to walk away, then turn around and say,

“Oh yeah. Thus says the Lord”

Selah

It was about that time that I wrote off the entire prophetic training thing for good. Now I continued to allow the Holy Ghost to train me. Especially because the only thing that the leadership of my church wanted me to do was shut up. They had a new accusation against me every week and the answer was always the same. Shut down the prophetic gift. Undaunted, I went on with the Lord, stood as a witness against that ministry, and in the Lord’s timing moved on. Halleuijah!

Now I find myself in an awkward position. I have a small group of young boys and they are all beginning to operate in the gifts. I find myself discipling them on the difference between what is God, what is the flesh, and what is delusion. One night I was talking with a father of one of the boy’s and he said,

You are doing a mighty work in these boys. I had really been praying that he could be instructed in a school of the prophets.

Inwardly I said, “huh? Is that what I am doing?” I shrugged it off and went on. After church yesterday I had several people who waited around to talk with me seperately. They all had questions about the ministry of the prophetic in some way. Some want clarification on a word, and others want to know how to minister what they are getting. (the answer is almost always, “In love”) I shared some of the small amount of wisdom that I have. Each seemed to be blessed and strengthened in their situations while gaining insight as to what is motivating them to act the way they have.

I still do not endorse the idea of teaching someone to prophesy. Loren Sanford has a book titled Purifying the Prophetic: Breaking Free from the Spirit of Self-Fulfillment. I have read an excerpt and it is excellent. You can follow his postings in the forums at Openheaven.com where he is calling national prophets on the carpet for wrong words. This is vital.

The most important lesson is that the gifts are for the benefit of all. If you think your gift places you in some elite category, you are wrong. Be it prophecy or teaching. And if you are not open to having peer level accountability, please do not step out in ministry.

Adrian posted this on his blog and I am quoting it in it’s entirety.
More importantly, if tongues were never intended biblically to be a prayer language and all the gifts were meant to stop, then I have a number of questions for my cessationist friends about what the Bible says about them:

• Why does Mark 16 (even if it isn’t in the original autographs, but is instead an early addition to the text) say that those who believe will speak in new tongues; why is there no sense in these words that this experience is limited to the disciples?
• Why, in Acts 2 when some heard the first outpouring of tongues did they say, “They are filled with new wine.” What was it about the disciples that made them seem drunk?
• Why does the passage Peter then quotes speak of the Spirit being poured out on “all flesh” in the “last days” if we cannot experience this? Are we now living in the days after the last days? If the gifts were only to authenticate the Apostles, why the wide extent detailed here?
• How do you explain it when Peter says at the end of his speech that the promise “is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” He is clearly referring to the same thing that they had experienced that day? Peter says (to quote the KJV) “this is that,” and yet we are not allowed to experience “that” according to the cessationist and in direct contradiction to Peter’ universal promise.
• What exactly is it about 1 Corinthians 13 that leads some to assume that the cessation of gifts is tied to the completion of Scripture rather than to the return of Christ?
• Why does Paul clearly state in 1 Corinthians 4:5 that he wants them all to speak in tongues? Why, if tongues is only ever intended as a proof to the unbeliever would he want them all to do it? Why would he need them all to do it? At most, one or two would suffice to get the point across, and given the moral state of the church in Corinth, desiring still more people to speak in tongues seems almost irresponsible!
• Why, on the one hand, are we at liberty to ignore Paul’s clear commands to the Corinthians to “eagerly desire spiritual gifts” and to “not forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:39) when, on the other hand, we are expected to accept all of his other commands to local churches as applying to us today? If these two commands do not apply to us, which other of Paul’s commands also do not apply? How are we then meant to decide which of Paul’s commands we are going to obey and which we are going to ignore?
• If tongues are always human languages and never unintelligible, what function did they serve in the churches and why would God use them to communicate a message to His people in some way? (1 Corinthians 14:5)
• If tongues is not ever a private prayer language, why did Paul say, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.” (1 Corinthians 14:18), and for that matter, why does he say, “The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself” (1 Corinthians 14:4)? What possible good would a tongue€”meant solely for an unbeliever whose language is different to that of the speaker€”provide for the one speaking in the tongue?
• Why is it assumed when Paul condemns the disorderly speaking in tongues (which sounds like it was a competition for several different people to be heard at the same time) that his instruction prevents the congregation from, in an orderly manner, praying together at once, either in their own language or in tongues? If this is prevented by Paul’s instructions about tongues “in the church,” then we should also surely prohibit the whole church raising its voice to pray together, as is described in Acts 4:24 where “they lifted their voices together to God.” If nothing else, if tongues is a prayer language, and lifting your voices together to God is ok, then why not praying in tongues? The commands of Paul do not relate to praying to God, but rather to speaking to the church. In addition, Paul’s instructions relate to when unbelievers are present, so surely as a minimum is it not reasonable for the charismatic to apply them to the church’s prayer meeting?
• If Romans 8:26 is not referring to praying in tongues, then to what exactly is it referring? “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
• What exactly does 1 Corinthians 14:9 mean if it doesn’t mean what it appears to mean €” “So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air.” It sure sounds like something unintelligible to me!
• Why does Paul speak specifically about praying in a tongue€””For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.” (1 Corinthians 14:4)€”if tongues are only ever human languages for the purpose of unbelievers hearing a message?
• Why does 1 Corinthians 14:26 make clear that tongues are one of the gifts for building up the church if they are only ever real languages for evangelism?
• Why do so many cessationists actually argue for the exact opposite of what Jesus Himself says in Luke 11 (see the whole context). Jesus ends the parable by saying, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” The cessationist has to deal with the fact that millions of people today have asked God for an experience of the Holy Spirit, and that in direct contrast to what Jesus Himself said, by definition, if cessationism is true, they have not received the Spirit, but rather something else. Where they have asked for the bread of tongues, they have been given the stone of foolish gibberish. Where they have asked for the fish of prophecy, they have been given the serpent of hallucinatory delusions worthy of a madman. This cannot be right, in my humble opinion, as it makes Jesus Himself into a trickster. At the very least, God should have given us clearer directions in the Bible to manage our expectations and help us ALL to realise that cessationism is the biblical teaching. This issue has clear implications for the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture. If Jesus Himself appears to tantalise these people with an offer to give the Spirit to those who ask and really means something very different to the gift of the Spirit we see in Acts, then surely He would have told us!
• Most importantly of all, if the Bible never intended that we get the impression that gifts are for today, why are there not any real “killer verses” to make it clear to us that this is not the case?

This is a post from a young guy who says that post modernism coupled with an entitlement mentality has corrupted the move of the Holy Ghost.  He details these things then follows up with:

You put that together with a generation that expects everything to be handed to them and what do you get? You get a movement of young people who have been told by culture that everything is okay. They’ve been told by church leadership that it is up to them to “usher in” the Second Coming of Jesus. They’ve been encouraged to do away with discernment concerning mystical experiences. They’ve been told that they are “forerunners” of Christ in the same way that John the Baptist was. They’ve been told that the orthodox views of Christianity are weak and it’ up to them to restore the “true” message of the Gospel, using their new “powers from God” to start a revival that will win souls for the Kingdom. When you put all that expectancy on a group of people, you know what you get? You get pride since you have the “raw Gospel” and everybody else isn’t as sincere as you. You get laziness, because the winning of souls will come when the annointing comes, so all you have to do is wait for that instead of actually witnessing. You get a group with dangerously little discernment and an equally dangerous reliance on a leadership construct centered on the questionable teachings of one man. Or worse, you get disillusionment because in reality, you’ve tried to sustain your spiritual existence by jumping for one experience to the next in hopes that something will stick.

God has been doing a work in me lately and I guess it is time to start to announce it. Steve Sjogren touches on the subject and comes to the conclusion that some people need to stop going to church. No he does not favor home church, he says they should stay away from Church all together.

Growing Edge Buzz: Some people shouldn’t go to church, pt. 1: Crabby is not a fruit of the Spirit: “After following Jesus for over 30 years now, I have come to the conclusion that there are some people who do great damage to the cause of Christ because they continue to come to church week after week. I have no idea what they are hearing in their various churches, but their behavior, based on what is on display in the restaurants they frequent immediately after their church experience, is exactly the opposite of the attitude of Jesus as described in the Gospels.

The Church has become so academic and doctrine centered that we have made the real test, the fruit of the Spirit, a sort of secondary factor in our Christianity. As I posted yesterday, there is a move among some of us to test what we have been preaching and what we look for as confirmations of a move of the Spirit.

I am Pentecostal. I believe in all the manifestations in the Bible (1 Cor 12:7-10) and many others that are not. Yet I am beginning to long for what the original Pentecostals were searching for when they received the baptism, holiness (1 Peter 1:16). They sought to be sanctified. Today that is preached as a sort of byproduct, not a goal.

If we receive the baptism in the Holy Ghost, pray in tongues, declare visions, see the sick healed, yet do not see a work of the Spirit in our own live as manifested in holiness have we really been baptized in the Holy Spirit (Acts 3:19-20)? Or has He just come upon us to do His will (Isaiah 61:1-3)?

God has really been challenging my doctrine and I have avoided writing about it because I am not quite prepared to defend it but God is stirring up a word in me and I cannot deny it. I have spent years praying for greater anointing, deeper visions, a more clear calling, deeper intimacy and I have received all of that. Yet at the same time I have avoided latent sin in my life and fear has kept me from descending into the basement of my soul and dealing with some long held fears. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a mistress and I am not laying in bed for days with depression but sin is sin none the less.

If the Spirit of God is sent to convict the world of righteousness sin and judgement than I do not know how one can claom to be full of the spirit and still live in sin. I am convinced that I am not going to find out! I have been on my face seeking His righteousness and He has been faithful.

In the last several months I have been unable to do things that would not have bothered me before. To that I give God the glory. But I still have to recconcile what I preach with what God is showing me. He is still desiring a Holy people (1 Thess 5:23).

hattip the merge

I found this on the church website of the Mission in Vaccaville, Ca. What is so exciting is the humility in which it is written. I absolutely love it when Christians declare truth humbly but with boldness (the two are not mutually exclusive).

Basically, this church decided that they would admit that the Christianity that they were professing did not match with the Christianity that they were practicing. Their response was not to change their profession to match their practice, but instead declare that they Christianity they live will line up with what they preach. They were so determined that they wrote it down and put it on their website:

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