Spiritual Weapons

The Spirit of God wants to use each one of us in different ways, natural and supernatural, to fight for good and light and life. Will we work with him?

Introduction

In my last post we examined how Christians believe that God is present with us through his Spirit and that the same Spirit works in us to do Jesus’ work in the world through us.

Jesus’ life, death and resurrection achieved lots of things. He came to show us how to live. He came to take the punishment for our sins – for the wrong that we do to God and to each other. Alongside this, however, Jesus’ best friend, John, wrote that:

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.[1]

The Son of God came as a one-man army invading the devil’s territory in order to destroy what he does.

Jesus explains a bit more what this means in a famous sermon recorded in Luke 4:18-19:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Jesus came to do Spiritual warfare against the devil in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what his life was directed towards. It is why he counselled people, why he spoke prophetically into their lives, why he healed people in miraculous ways, why he taught people to pray and explained what God wants for them. Ultimately it is why he died and rose again – to triumph over sin and death and the devil and to call us to follow him.

This is an exciting and challenging view of Jesus; the Bible presents him less as Gentle Baby and more as James Bond. Yet it goes further than that.

Jesus said that:

‘[W]hoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.’[2]

We are called to carry on Jesus’ work in the world.

Suggested Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Who is Our General?

We are called to be an army – a force with a mission. We aren’t a club for spiritual fun or interest. We are a people gathered together to do the work of Jesus.

The most important question for any army is: who is the General? Who is the one who animates the army, who directs its operation and gives orders to individual soldiers? That is the most significant person in any army because they are the one who determines the roles that everyone else plays. In sports this person is the coach or the captain.

Paul explains that the General for the Christian army is God in the person of the Holy Spirit:

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work…[3]

The one who determines our roles in God’s army is God. He decides how to use us and where we are deployed. He is the one who comes with us to make us able to fight sin and darkness and evil.

This has big implications, as we shall see. It means that there is no hierarchy between us. God may have determined that one of us should train troops, others should feed them, others should take a hill, others should drop from the skies. But he is the General, not us.

As Paul says:

All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.[4]

What Are Our Weapons?

What then are our weapons for this fight? The Spirit is present with us and he arms us to fight against the devil and his works, against sin and selfishness, greed and sickness, hatred and bitterness.

The Spirit empowers each of us to do the work of Jesus.

Paul gives examples of the weapons the church receives in verses 7-10:

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.

These are examples of ways in which we are empowered by God’s Spirit to build up those walking in light and to tear down the work of darkness.

We’re going to go through some of these in more detail in the weeks ahead. For now, though, I want to draw your attention to a couple of things we might miss.

We Need Them All

No one person has all of these gifts. But we as a community need them all if we are to do Jesus’ work.

• We need those who are wise – who understand situations and know how to apply the Bible and common sense to make good decisions.
• We need people of faith. This doesn’t mean some mystic sat on a matt saying ‘ohm’. It is those who are risk takers – who see opportunities for the gospel and for God’s grace and have the courage and faith to take them.
• We need to see people healed, to hear what God has to say about the specific situations we face, to be able to pray with more than just our minds.

We won’t all do everything. That’s why we’re not on our own. But together we can harness all of these gifts to do God’s work.

Natural and Supernatural

The second point is that these gifts are both natural and supernatural. If you look at each one of these, they have a natural dimension and a supernatural dimension.

Take, for example, gifts of healing. There is a gift of healing that is part of our natural birth. This is God working through human working. It is the norm that is reflected in the creation accounts when he commands humanity to ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’[5]

It is part of God’s gift to us as we are born and grow and work to be able to heal one another ranging from a mother putting a cold flannel on a child’s head through to chemotherapy in hospital. Part of God’s grace and his working with humanity is that we are able to treat one another.

Yet Paul and Jesus and others in the Bible also clearly heal people in ways that go beyond this. There are times where without treatment by human beings God intervenes as if to show that he doesn’t need us, however much he might choose to work with us.

This should not be a surprise. We see this pattern throughout the Bible. Jesus speaks, for example, of being born naturally and being born Spiritually.

Both are intended to be a part of human experience. Both are needed for the church’s mission.

We need to work at the gifts the Spirit gave us when we were born and we need to pursue the gifts he gives us when we are born again.

To put it crudely, we need every weapon – whether natural or supernatural – if we are to fight the Devil.

How Do We Fight?

So how, then, do we fight? It takes faith, courage, and teamwork.

We fight by seeking the natural and supernatural gifts of the Spirit and then using them for the good of the church and the community we live in.

Practically speaking, what does this mean?

Let me change my analogy slightly to explain.

(Photo by Steve Bardens/Getty Images)

On Saturday I went to see the mighty Spurs at Wembley. The teams were diverse; there were defenders, goalkeepers, defensive midfielders, strikers, people changing position, left-footers, right-footers, giants, speedsters. Yet every player on the pitch had at least one thing in common: they had decided to get into the game.

This is the most difficult and yet the most important part of using Spiritual gifts: deciding to get in the game.

A lot of us find it easier to sit on the sidelines and watch. And we’re right; it is easier. Ben and Sam and I had an easier 90 minutes than the players we watched. But we also had almost no impact on the outcome of the game. Nor did we contribute anything to the team save the knowledge we were there.

We can do the same thing with the Spiritual battle going on around us. But this isn’t a game; it is our lives we are spectators in. It isn’t a sport; it is the future of our families, our communities, our church and friends.

To watch is easy – you don’t need to risk anything. Spiritual spectators will never succeed in the Christian life because they never risk failure. It requires courage to pray with someone who is hurt. It requires self-discipline to cultivate a gift of knowledge. It requires faith to share what we believe God is saying to someone and offer to help them.

When you’re working out what to do this week, this is the overall point: it doesn’t matter where you play, but get in the game.

Once we have decided to get in the game, we need to begin to find out what our natural gifts are and what supernatural ways the Spirit is wanting to use us. This isn’t an exact science. It takes time to find out where on the pitch you are best suited to playing. But here’s how you can make a start: Take 5 minutes out each day to follow this process:

• Pray a simple prayer asking God to show you how he wants to use you.
• Then think back over the past day or days.
• What excited you and made you want to do more? What terrified you and made you want to run a mile?
• Then ask God to use you.

After that, start to take part. When you see someone hurt or upset, ask if you can pray for them. If you find your passion is knowledge, begin to study and contribute in Life Groups. If you sense God is wanting to share a message through you, text me and Heather and we’ll check it out and work with you to encourage others. Ask God to give you the ability to pray in another language.

My friends, we are in a great battle but our general is in control and he wants to give us the weapons we need to fight for good.

The Spirit of God wants to use each one of us in different ways, natural and supernatural, to fight for good and light and life. Will we work with him?

[1] 1 John 3:8.

[2] John 14:12

[3] 1 Corinthians 12:4-6

[4] 1 Corinthians 12:11

[5] Genesis 1:28.

Warriors: Introducing the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is God with us giving us power to worship, our work and war for the kingdom of God.

Where do you think God is?

It’s the sort of question I am asked by the children I work with. It’s actually a good question and one which gets at the heart of various problems with how we think about God.

Many of us grew up with an idea of God that was a bit like this painting of God the Father by Cima da Conegliano, the Italian Renaissance artist.

There are various problems with this depiction of God, not least that he is portrayed as an old white man. Yet one of the biggest is that he is distant from the world he has created. We can think of God as ‘up there,’ as if he is the same as us but bigger and a long, long way away.

I’m not sure where this idea came from but it does not reflect a Christian understanding of God.

For Christians God is both transcendent – over and in and above all things – and immanent. He is ‘up there’ but he is also ‘down here’. He is the God of eternity, in whom all things exist, yet he is also present in every place and filling everything.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. We believe that Jesus, is God incarnate. In the words of the creed, he is light of true light, true God of God. Yet he is also a man.

God is different from his creation but he is not distant from it.

We know God. We experience him. He actively sustains us and upholds our lives. He makes life itself possible. He is the reason we exist and the means by which we do so. He is the great organising principle, the thing that stops entropy from undoing all creation, the one who stands behind waterfalls and tears.

How can this be? How can God be the one in whom everything exists and yet also here with us now?

Part of how we explain this is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

We believe that the Spirit of Jesus moves in the world and that we can encounter him, have relationship with him, be filled with his power, and be used by him. To receive him, to be united to him, is to become truly alive; it is to find purpose and wholeness.

Lots of people intuit that this is the case – that there is something beyond us, beyond the merely material, which is a spiritual aspect of life.

The big question is how we recognise what experiences are from the Holy Spirit. How do we cultivate a relationship with him? What is it he wants to do through us? These are the themes Paul addresses in chapters 12-14 of 1 Corinthians.

Suggested Reading (1 Corinthians 12:1-11)

Spiritual Worship

The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus and leads people to him.

This is the defining test of whether a spiritual experience is from God or not: does it, directly or indirectly, lead us to Jesus. More than that, does it lead us to worship him with our lips and our lives?

The Holy Spirit is present in every moment of every day, in every molecule of every meter of life, working to bring us back to God through Jesus. He opens our minds and enlivens our mouths. He inspires prayer and praise and draws joy from our hearts.

He is the reason any of us turn to God in the first place. He leads us to Jesus. He is the reason we are able to say – and to mean – that Jesus is Lord.

All true worship comes from the Holy Spirit and without him no true worship is possible. Moreover, if you want to go deeper in worship, to experience more joy and peace; if you want to understand Scripture in a living way and pray from the heart, then you need more of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Spiritual Service

So the Spirit inspires worship. Yet he also inspires and empowers service.

Every true work of the Spirit is directed at building up and strengthening others, usually in the church. His work is other-focused.

Again, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Another name for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, the same Jesus who said that he came ‘not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.’

A Spirit-filled life is one of other-centred, God-empowered, service.

At the centre of all of the Spirit’s work is this turning away from self-interest and seeking to build up others whether through the normal actions of everyday life or more unusual ones like praying for them to be healed or sharing what you think God might be saying to them.

This has implications for us. The power we receive, the privilege we have in knowing and being filled with the Spirit, is not for our own good but the good of others. We sense this should be the case. It is a regular motif in modern myths.

With great power, Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker in Spider-Man, comes great responsibility. The comic book writers are not intending, I imagine, to make a theological point. But they can’t help it. We intuitively know that we are given life, given power by the Spirit of God, to serve others.

God wants to work through you to care for others, to fight for them. God wants to empower you to fight sin so that you might reveal him to others.

Spiritual Warfare

This brings us to the final characteristic of the Spirit’s work.

What is it that he wants to achieve through us? It is the same thing that Jesus came to do. As it says in 1 John 3:8:

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

Christ came to fight for us. He came to undo evil and its consequences and strengthen good.

The Holy Spirit does the same thing in us and through us.

This is what lies behind the list of the Spirit’s activities Paul gives in verses 4-7. The Spirit makes us men and women equipped and given power to resist evil – by choosing well, acting in faith, healing sickness, speaking truth, determining when something is good (and needs to be affirmed) or evil (and needs to be stopped).

This is exactly what Jesus did. He strengthened and encouraged and taught that which was good. He confronted and resisted that which was evil even at the cost of his life. The Spirit wants to do the same thing with our lives.

I am not just talking about what we call ‘supernatural’ things here. God heals through penicillin as much as through prayer. It is the same God who works in all things. Yet it is in those parts of life where God does something unusual that we see him most clearly.

My point is this: we are saved from something but also for something.

Your life has a purpose – to become united with God; to become a whole human being, filled (as you were designed to be) with God’s Spirit, fleeing sin and death, and doing good. The Eastern Church calls this theosis – to become like God and united with him.

It takes faith, it takes discipline, but more than anything else it requires that our lives be full of the Holy Spirit.

Application

What does this mean for us?

Let me give three practical applications.

First, if any of us are involved in spiritual activity that doesn’t, ultimately, lead to the worship and glory of God through Jesus then we need to stop it. If it doesn’t end up at Christ then it is not God’s Spirit who is leading it. Experimenting with other forms of spirituality is not harmless – it can be spiritually and personally destructive.

Second, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit; to have him overwhelm and flood our lives.
The path to being filled is easy and yet hard. In Scripture there are three stages:

• Is there anything between you and God that you need to stop and say sorry for? If so, do it.
• Believe that God loves you and that he wants to be with you, to transform you, to fill you and then to empower you to do his work. Ask him to fill you with his Spirit – to come into every part of your life and give it meaning and purpose.
• This means faith – it is accepting that when we have asked God to do what he has promised, he does it. If you have repented and believed that he wants to give you the Spirit then accept it and act in faith.
  It can help to pray with someone.

Third, go and do the Spirit’s work and continue being filled. Begin the discipline of asking God what he wants in each conversation and action. Then resolve to do what you sense him telling you.

The Holy Spirit is God with us giving us power to worship, our work and war for the kingdom of God.

Should Women Be Silent In Church?

Spoiler: The answer’s ‘no’.

Every so often I get asked questions about how to understand Christianity and read the Bible that I think lots of people are asking. I want to provide a space where some of those questions can be answered. If you have a question you would like me to think about and help with then feel free to email me  or send me a message on Facebook. I will always keep the identity of the questioner anonymous.

I received this question from a friend of mine, Janet.[1]

Dear Phil,

I’ve been enjoying reading 1 Corinthians and thinking about how it applies to my life. I’m puzzled by what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.

Does he mean that as a woman I ought always to be silent in church? If so, how can I pray and prophesy or even sing? If not, what is he talking about?

Best wishes,

Janet

Dear Janet,

This is a great question. It’s brilliant that you are reading the Bible and that you are thinking so closely about what it means and how to live it out. These are difficult verses to understand and apply for various reasons, not least that they come shortly after Paul has commanded women to speak in church.

Whenever we are trying to understand the Bible and apply it in our lives, we are asking two questions.

1. What is being taught?
2. How should that affect the way we live?

What is Being Taught?

The first, and most important, principle when we are trying to understand what is being taught is to read carefully and in context. That means trying to understand the type of writing it is (eg is it poetry, a letter, a history, a polemic etc) and then reading the bits around our passage to understand the argument the writer is making.

When we do this for 1 Corinthians we find that:

1. The big context 1 Corinthians is that it is a letter. This means it was written to address a specific people with specific problems. While Paul gives big principles that apply everywhere, therefore, we might expect his application to relate to the situation of the church in Corinth.
2. Paul specifically approves women actively speaking in worship both in prayer and prophecy and provides for how that should continue (1 Corinthians 11:1-16). He therefore not only has no problem with women speaking in worship, he commands that they continue to do so.
3. There is, however, a specific problem in Corinth with people misusing gifts of prophecy and tongues. As a result the meetings are becoming chaotic (1 Corinthians 14:26-33).
4. The answer Paul gives is for there to be good order and for people not to talk over one another (1 Corinthians 14:30).
5. He then specifically says that the women present should keep silent during the meeting and ask questions at home instead, commenting that they should display an attitude of submitting (presumably to the rest of the congregation)(1 Corinthians 14:34-35). More broadly, we note that submitting to one another is the mark of everyone who is a Christian in the church (Ephesians 5:21).

What seems to have been going on, therefore, is that men and women were addressing the meeting to pray or share what they felt God was saying to the church. That was good. However, those speakers were talking over one another. Moreover, there were several women who were heckling with questions. Unsurprisingly, Paul says this has to stop and they should save their questions for later.

This is also the view of most of the commentators I have read.[2] In passing, we should note that most of 1 Corinthians deals with factions and division in the church, including the arguments about Spiritual gifts. It is very easy to imagine that people heckling and asking pointed, unhelpful questions would be a major part of this problem. Men undoubtedly do this sort of thing too but in Corinth it happened to be some of the women who were the hecklers. Again, we must remember that according to 1 Corinthians 11 the speakers they were heckling were both men and women.

How Should We Live?

What should this mean for us? The application is pretty easy. Both men and women should be encouraged to contribute prayer and prophecy to church meetings. Nobody should heckle speakers in the church. If there are questions about what someone is saying or teaching it is unhelpful and inappropriate to shout over them. Wait until later.

I hope that helps. Keep on pursuing God even as he pursues you.

With love in Christ,

Phil

[1] Janet is not a real person but a the question is real. ‘Janet’ is the name given to the computer assistant in the wonderful, The Good Place.

[2] For example, Anthony C. Thiselton, 1 Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical & Pastoral Commentary, p.250; Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth, p.287; Keener, Paul, Women, and Wives, p.81ff.

How to find Joy: Heather’s story (2)

I’m hosting a series of guest posts from the wonderful Heather Fellows. You can find the first one here.

The Joy of Salvation

 Matt 13:44, Jesus says this:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

 I was meditating on this passage this week and a few things struck me about it.

Firstly, the treasure was hidden and the man had to find it.  Sometimes to find something really special we have to put in a little bit of effort.  We have to seek to find it.  A relationship with Jesus can be like that.  When Phil first told me about his faith in Jesus and I began to wonder what it was all about, I could easily have stopped there and not taken it any further.  I had to be willing to find out more.  To read, to pray, to go to church and find out more.  I had to respond to the news of the treasure by going in search of it.  And as Jesus promises, if you seek, you will find.   (Matt 7:7)

Secondly, when he found the treasure he didn’t want to lose it – he protected it by hiding it again until he could buy the field.  Having found a relationship with Jesus, how much do we treasure it?  How well do we protect it?

Thirdly, it brings him joy – he is happy that he has found the treasure.  It brings us joy to know Jesus doesn’t it?  Saint Augustine said ‘If I were to ask you why you have believed in Christ, why you have become Christians, every man will answer truly, “for the sake of happiness”.’

 And lastly, it was worth giving up everything for – the man sells all that he has to buy the field where the treasure is.  Such was this mans joy that nothing was worth more to him than having it.  Isn’t knowing Jesus like that?  Can you remember when you first believed?  As the great hymn Amazing Grace goes, ‘how precious twas the grace I found, the hour I first believed.’  

And I can attest that.  When I first believed in Jesus I could not get enough.  I was insatiable.  I read my Bible everyday, I went to church twice a week, I went to conferences and talked to Phil for hours about Jesus.

But then after a while that first rush of excitement can fade a little.  So how do we remain joyful?  After all Paul tells us to ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice!’ Phil 4:4. That’s the subject of my next post.

 The joy of relationship

 Joy comes from being in a faithful and loving relationship with Jesus.  Learning to abide in His love for us and to love in return.

Jesus said in John 15:9:

‘As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.  If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.  These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.  This is My commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.’

 Faithfulness brings joy.  To abide means to remain, to continue, to tarry.  We need to stay close to Jesus – to learn to remain in His love and keep His commandments if His joy is to remain in us.  Put simply, we are happiest when we are most at peace with Jesus, when we know we are living as He wants us to live and loving others in response.  How is it with your soul?  That’s the question we ask ourselves at the end of our Life Groups each week, and the reason we ask it is because it matters how we are doing with Jesus.  If we feel distant from Him then we need to draw closer to Him.

How do we do that?  Like in any relationship we have to take time over it.  In a relationship with Jesus we need to take time to talk to Him, that is to pray and to learn to hear His voice in response.  Not a literal voice but that sense in our hearts that as we pray we know what God is stirring in us is His response.  We need to read the Bible – everyday if possible.  It is God’s book – His word.  It tells us about Jesus.  Sometimes it can seem hard to get into the Bible, it’s a big book, some parts aren’t that easy to read, but I have to tell you it is worth persevering with.  When I first became a Christian I wanted to read the Bible and meditate on it and try to understand what it meant for me, but it was really hard.  And so a few months down the line I asked God to fill me with His Holy Spirit and the next morning when I woke up and opened my Bible it was like rivers of water pouring out of the page and into my heart.

‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you fill find, knock and it will be opened to you.’ Matt 7:7  This is Jesus’ promise to us concerning the Holy Spirit.  Ask Him.  If you don’t know the power of the Holy Spirit filling your life, then ask.  He is God’s promised Helper, given to us to help us follow Jesus.  We can’t live this life in human strength alone.

The Joy of serving God

 As we continue in our relationship with Jesus we begin to recognise His call on our lives to serve Him and to share our faith with others.

In Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus tells one of His parables, the parable of the talents.  He tells the story of a master giving three different servants coins.  To one he gave 5 coins, to another 2 and to the third 1 coin. The first two invested their coins and gaining 5 and 2 more respectively.  The third buried his 1 coin and returned only 1 coin to his master.  To the two servants who invested their coins and gained more the parable says this:

“Well done good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.  Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

 And I have to tell you the parable doesn’t end well for the servant who just buried his coin.

It matters what we do with our lives.  If we want to know the joy of walking with Jesus then we have to walk with Him.  And that means following Him and doing something with the life He died to give us.  Jesus died so that we could live for eternity with God in heaven.  Isn’t he worth following?  Doesn’t this parable teach us what we know about any relationship?  The more you put into it, the more you are going to get out of it.  If we invest, faithfully in our relationship with Jesus, we will enter into His joy!  Our joy will be full! Don’t you want to be full of joy?  I know I do.

And the most precious joy comes when we partner with Jesus to see others come to faith in Him.

Paul says this in 1 Thes 2:19-20:

‘For what is our hope, our joy, or crown of rejoicing?  Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?  For you are our glory and joy.’

 Have you ever partnered with God in leading someone into a relationship with Jesus?  Have you ever seen that dawning moment when they realised they are loved by God?  I can tell you that it is the most precious and incredible thing you will ever experience.  There is no joy, like the joy of another experiencing the joy of the Lord for the first time.

Conclusion

 A relationship with Jesus is not always easy.  He never promised it would be.  We didn’t get to it today but we are even told to count it joy when trials come, knowing that the testing of our faith fill produce a greater endurance and that in all our suffering Christ is with us.

There is great joy to be found in Jesus.  Will you enter into that joy?  Jesus so wants us to be full of joy.  He doesn’t want us to be miserable, reluctant followers, but to take joy in every moment.

Take joy in the knowledge that Jesus loves you, He loves you so much that He died for you so that you can know God.

Take joy in a relationship with Jesus.  He is right here with us, talk to Him, open the Bible and get to know Him more, ask the Holy Spirit to come into your heart and be your helper.

And lastly take joy in walking in Him.  Jesus has a call on your life.  He has work for you to do in His kingdom and people for you to share Him with.  Walk with Him and partner in the unsurpassable joy of seeing new life flourish.

Further Reading

If you want to read further about joy and the Christian life, I highly recommend John Piper’s wonderful Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.