In the beginning, the Method was, “Get the Holy Ghost.” Seems like some still believe that. article written by shane at Wesleyblog. I like his writings.
Many evangelicals in the mainline are busy working for renewal, yet I wonder if we even agree on what renewal actually means. A lot of talk in conservative circles is focused on two things: orthodoxy and social issues. Now these are obviously important, but I can’t help but think that we’re missing something bigger. Even if we get all of our theology right and steer the UMC in the right direction on abortion and homosexuality, have we really gotten what we want? (or better still, what God wants?) Would we have something to celebrate or would we have simply traded heresy and sin for dead orthodoxy? It’s something we should ask ourselves.
I’ve been preparing a 20 week study on Acts and I continue to be floored by how God used ordinary people to do supernatural things. My conviction is that God wants to do these things today- and I think it’s partly our lack of willingness to pursue them that has relegated Christianity to a “just another religion” status in our society. Take healing for example. A teenager in our church once noted that we talk a lot about praying for the sick, but the sick list in the bulletin only seems to grow longer every week. He has a point. So why aren’t people being healed regularly in our churches today? To get the answer to that, I think we should first ask ourselves: (1) How are we instilling faith in our congregations so they’ll expect people to be healed? (2) What are we doing to help people who have various gifts of healing (see 1 Corinthians 12) discover those gifts? (3) Have we taught people how to pray for healing, or do we just talk about prayer a lot? (4) Have we prayed that the power of the Holy Spirit would be released in people’s lives or do we assume that being on a church roll will bring that anointing? (5) Have we bought into the false doctrine of cessationism (the teaching that God stopped working miraculously and giving supernatural spiritual gifts when the canon was completed or when the last apostle died)?Part of the problem lies in our understanding of what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Conventional Christian wisdom tells us that the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us at conversion. That’s true to a point. I lean toward the idea that while there is a measure of the Holy Spirit inside every true Christian, it doesn’t necessarily follow that every Christian has realized the fullness of the Spirit’s power. Scripture is full of examples where God deviates from our idea of the “theological norm”. The first one that comes to mind is the “Johannine Pentecost”, which took place when Jesus appeared to the disciples in John 20:
19On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
John 20:19-22 (ESV)
The obvious question is, “If the disciples received the Holy Spirit here, then what happened in Acts 2 at Pentecost?” Some liberals gleefully point to this as a contradiction within scripture, but I think there’s a better way to explain it. The Holy Spirit was received in one sense in John 20, but came in demonstrable power later. To me, this is totally consistent with Wesleyan theology, and it also helps me wrap my mind around the concepts of prevenient grace and justification. The Holy Spirit simply works at different levels in the different stages of salvation. All this, of course, is speculation, and I’m still figuring out how this fits with the idea of Holy Spirit baptism being a post-justification event. Wesley himself was inconsistent on the whole topic of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts, mostly because his writings were done over a period of decades, and people practicing ministry tend to let their theology be colored by their experience. (I’ve only been at this blog thing for 7 months and I already wish I could go back and delete some of the posts!) No matter what your terminology, I think scripture is clear that we should want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and that we should continually ask to be filled. Whether or not we want to isolate the initial filling and call it baptism seems peripheral to me.
It all comes down to this: there is a power available to Christians that many of us have not received. Whether it’s a result of pride or just plain bad theology, I’m convinced that we aren’t walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, at least not as a body. The church should be a place where people live differently and change the world around them. Our church buildings should be overflowing with saints and pagans alike who are wanting to receive a touch from this holy, awesome and supernatural God that Christians worship. When people get sick, we should lay hands on them (with their permission of course) and boldly pray to God, expecting them to be healed. Whether or not they’re all healed is God’s decision, but if we aim for nothing (which a lot of us are doing) that’s exactly what we’re going to get. God responds to radical faith and prayer. The task for our churches is to find teachers who have this kind of faith and charge them with instilling it in others.
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