Victory: Why the Resurrection of Jesus Matters

The resurrection of Jesus is the greatest, most certain, and most hopeful fact of human history. It changes everything.

Introduction

Why should we believe that there is good and that it will triumph over evil?

Over the past few months, I have looked at a whole range of issues from a Christian perspective including sexual ethics, marriage, politics, joy, how we can experience God’s presence and be used by him, predestination and freewill. These are all big issues but they receive meaning from this one question.

I’ve noticed that it is common for people to share or comment phrases such as ‘love wins’ or ‘love trumps hate’. Whenever I see these posts or t-shirts or banners I want to ask why the person believes it to be true.

People do seem to believe that good will win. In the big stories we tell ourselves, good seems to triumph over evil.

I am very fond of superhero movies and so, it seems, are a lot of other people. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken somewhere in the region of $17.5 billion. That isn’t even taking into account Star Wars or the DC movies. Every single one of these movies (save where they are the first of a two part story) has good triumphing over evil usually through someone behaving like Jesus. Even Wonder Woman ends up refusing to judge humanity according to what they deserve (showing grace) before being raised up into the air in the shape of a cross and destroying the devil (don’t believe me? Check out the movie from 2:04 onwards).

My point is that even in a society in the West that is losing touch with its religious and philosophical roots, we keep telling ourselves the story of Jesus but putting different clothes on it.

We tend to believe that good will triumph over evil but increasingly we are not sure why. We need a good reason to believe that it is not the person with the biggest stick or ego who will ultimately win the day. We need some foundation for believing that it is not simply the strongest who win, that hate will not triumph, that darkness will not prevail, that life will triumph over death.

This becomes particularly pressing when we are confronted with real evil or despair that seems to confound our optimism.

Christians believe that the resurrection of Jesus provides us with that reason.

Suggested Reading: 1 Corinthians 15

The Resurrection Happened

Christians believe that Jesus Christ really did rise from the dead.

It is tempting to think of Christianity as a body of great moral and philosophical teaching. It is one of the greatest traditions of thought in human history. If we include the Jewish Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament), it dates back thousands of years. Many of the greatest minds in the history of Western and Middle Eastern philosophy and theology have contributed to it. But it is not simply a great tradition.

It is tempting to think that Christianity as a great social movement. Wherever it has spread, Christianity led to improvements in medicine, schools, science, social conditions, and the position of minorities. For example, the Christian roots of the Enlightenment and contemporary Western society are well understood (however convenient it might be to overlook them).[1]Similarly, social scientists and historians have demonstrated that areas where Protestant missionaries have had a significant presence are on average more economically developed, have better health, higher educational attainment (particularly for women), lower corruption, greater literacy and on, and on.[2]Christianity is one of the greatest social movements in human history. But it is not merely a social movement.

It is tempting to think of Christianity as a great mystical spirituality. At our church and at others we have documented people being healed of sicknesses, people being spoken to through dreams and other supernatural means, and people being comforted and given spiritual strength to face the challenges of ill-health, bereavement, joblessness and heart-break. Christianity is a great mystical movement. But it is not merely a mystical spirituality.

Christianity is, above all, a claim about something that really happened.

For Christians Jesus really did live, really was dead, really was buried and really did come to life. We are aware that this belief sounds weird but it happens to be true.

There have been 2,000 years of hostile critics from outside Western Europe through engagement with the other great religious faiths and latterly with the noisy but shrinking phenomenon of atheism. The central way almost everyone has sought to undermine Christianity is by attacking the truth of the resurrection and in 2,000 years no one has come up with a plausible explanation.

Most of the time we avoid thinking about it. I want to challenge anyone who has taken the trouble to read what I have written and never thought about this, I want to challenge you to do so. You can check it out in a number of ways. There are plenty of books that have been written by people who were skeptics and were converted when they explored the evidence. You could try Frank Morrison, Who Moved the Stone, Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, Josh McDowell, The Resurrection Factor, or (if you are feeling up for a challenge) William Lane Craig’s The Son Rises (be warned – he has many phDs in theology and philosophy).

The Resurrection Matters

If this is true, why does it matter?

It matters because death is defeated.
If Jesus rose from the death then there is good reason to believe that death is defeated. It shows that God can, has, and will overcome death. Death is the great enemy of humanity. 1 in 1 will die. From every tradition, creed, colour, race, gender, we will all face the same enemy at the end. We can’t hide from it.
Because Jesus Christ is alive we can know that death is not the final word on humanity. There is hope because Jesus is alive.

It matters because evil will be overcome.
When Jesus died, everything that humanity does to each other was at work in his death. He was the victim of injustice, he was executed by a people who loved violence, he was the subject of bitterness and hatred, he was betrayed for the sake of jealousy by a man who was greedy.
Lest we be tempted to throw stones we should examine our own hearts and see the seeds of each one of these evils there. And yet the resurrection of Jesus shows that God is capable of absorbing all of that hatred and bitterness, jealousy and envy, unkind words and unkind actions and overcoming them. It was as if God stood there and said ‘do your worst and was left still standing.’
Because Jesus is alive we can know that the evil and injustice of this world can be overcome by God. Moreover, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection our part in that evil can be forgiven. This is not a just world but there is hope because Jesus is alive.

It matters because love is ultimately triumphant.
The final word on humanity is not hatred but love. The love of God cannot be defeated. Love is a winning strategy.

The Resurrection Changes How We Live

Why am I writing this? If Jesus Christ is alive it changes everything.

It teaches us to repent and have faith.
We should stop doing wrong and start living differently. If Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, if hope triumphs over despair, love over hate, life over death, then we should align ourselves with love and with Jesus. Join the winning team. Why stay on the side of death if Jesus is alive?

It teaches us to choose hope.
Whatever is happening in the world or in your life is not the final word. There is hope because Christ has overcome death. So be hopeful. Don’t despair. Set your face to worship even in the worst of time.

It prompts us to love.
It may not always be met with joy and gratitude; Jesus was not always welcomed. Nevertheless, we should set our faces to choose love.

The resurrection of Jesus is the greatest, most certain, and most hopeful fact of human history. It changes everything.

[1]Nick Spencer, Enlightenment and Progress, <https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/02/20/enlightenment-and-progress-or-why-steven-pinker-is-wrong >; Ross Douthat, The Edge of Reason, < https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/opinion/sunday/steven-pinker-reason.html >

[2]For example, Robert D. Woodberry, ‘The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy’, American Political Science Review,106.2 (2012), pp.244-274 < https://www.academia.edu/2128659/The_Missionary_Roots_of_Liberal_Democracy>; https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html

The Gift of Prophecy

God wants to speak through each of us to show us he loves us, build us up, and challenge us to become like Jesus.

Introduction

Prophecy can be a difficult subject for us to get our head round. I wonder how many of our difficulties come from how we instinctively picture a prophet or someone who prophesies. We can unconsciously think about someone with a booming voice holding forth in King James English about the terrible things that will happen in the future.

I want to suggest that those images are not particularly helpful if we want to understand what the New Testament teaches about prophecy.

Prophecy shouldn’t be something weird or distant. It isn’t reserved for strange outsiders with questionable personal hygiene. Despite my best efforts, it isn’t even necessary to have a beard.

Prophecy is intended by God to be a normal, helpful, and encouraging part of our Christian lives. It is an extremely powerful tool for how we grow as a Christian community in love and holiness and how we reach out in God’s power to others.

Suggested Reading: 1 Corinthians 14:1-5, 20-40

How Do We See God?

When we talk about prophecy, we mean God communicating with people now in a way that has particular relevance at this time. It is God’s communication to us of what we need to know in this moment.

How we feel about that idea will reflect how we see God. If, even unconsciously, we see God as someone who is distant either in space (he lives a long way away) or in time (he worked and spoke a long time ago) then we will struggle with the idea that he speaks now.

That view of God as distant in time and space is very common. It is the ‘Big man on the cloud’ idea. I imagine lots of people hold to it either consciously or unconsciously.

It isn’t, however, the way that Christians understand God. Within Christian thought – in the world of the Bible – God is understood to be present with us, acting and speaking, now.

We’ve thought about this a lot over the last few weeks. God didn’t set the world going and then just leave it to develop and evolve by itself. He is active and working at every moment of creation. In the words of Psalm 104:

All Creatures look to you…When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.^[1]

God is active and engaged with life on the earth as it is now. He sees and works and speaks into your life and into mine. The flowers and foxes and fields and fountains are renewed because God continues to will it.

There is something unrepeatable and unique and authoritative about what God has done in the past.  In this life we will never be able to see what God is like better than looking at Jesus. We will never have any teaching as authoritative as the Bible.

But God is still speaking and applying the truth of Christ and the Scriptures in a way that applies to our lives now.

Prophecy Should Be Desired

When we understand what prophecy is – the God of all time and space speaking to your life and mine, to reassure us, challenge us and guide us now – it becomes obvious why St. Paul says that we should eagerly desire it, be eager to see it, and not despise it.^[2]

This touches on the second reason we find it hard to get our heads around prophecy in today’s world. We can easily imagine that prophecy is essentially a prediction of doom and who wants that?

That isn’t how Paul sees prophecy at all. In 1 Corinthians 14:3-4 he says:

[T]he one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort…the one who prophesies edifies the church.

When God speaks to us it is good.

Prophecy is aimed at strengthening, encouraging, and comforting us. Even when we are challenged by God, that challenge is aimed at building us up, not breaking us down.

How encouraging is it to know that God sees your life and knows your circumstances? How helpful and comforting is it to have someone speak to the hurt you have suffered in the past and allow it to be healed, to provide insight into the challenges you are facing in the present, to provide guidance that shows God is holding our futures?

We should eagerly desire to prophesy because prophecy is good and builds us up.

What Does It Look Like?

If prophecy is good and desirable and reflects God’s active interest in our lives, how do we do it? What does it look like?

How We Hear

This is a pressing question. Am I defending hearing voices or encouraging you to do so?

How should we share prophetic words: do we need to work on our beards, or practice a really deep voice, or learn how to use ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ instead of ‘you’?

Thankfully neither hearing things nor growing facial hair is essential to eagerly desiring prophecy.

God speaks to us in a variety of ways. There is an enormous number of ways that God speaks something to us for us to share with someone else.

He might give you an impression of something when you’re praying for someone or talking to them. Or it could be a picture or vision you see with your mind’s eye. Or maybe a recurring thought that you’re not sure where it’s coming from. Or an awareness of something, just feeling like you know something about a situation or a person. It can even be something in the natural world that God uses to speak to you about something.

John Wesley describes the way God’s Spirit speaks to us as ‘an inward impression on the soul.’^[3]

We are all different and God can speak to us and use us to speak to others in different ways.

How We Should Share

When we feel like God wants to say something through us we then need to ask if it is going to be encouraging, strengthening or comforting for the person we are sharing it with.

Sometimes we share stuff during a worship service or in a small group. Often, however, the most helpful times for prophesying and sharing what we feel God is saying is when we are praying with someone or for them.

If something seems critical or a warning then I would always take it to someone else to check it out and then share it in private rather than public.

Finally, we should always remember that this type of prophecy is not infallible. We are limited and broken and make mistakes and so we will inevitably get stuff wrong at times. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:9, we ‘prophesy in part.’

Whenever someone shares what they think God is saying in a particular moment, we need to test it.[4]In particular we need to test it against what we see taught in the Bible. The Bible is the gold-standard; it is God’s word and it is true. He won’t contradict himself. Anything that is really from God will be consistent with Scripture.

Practical Application

I want to finish this reflection by sharing some practical tips for how to begin to move in the prophetic.

First, this is a supernatural gift of the Spirit. It is something God does, not us. So if you want to be used to share what God is saying to someone, stay close to God. If you have never been filled with the Spirit, then seek it.

Second, ask God to begin to use you to bless others in this way. If we want God to start to use us then we need to ask him.

Third, begin to speak. What is the worst that can happen? If you think God is saying something and it is encouraging, strengthening and comforting for someone then why not share it? Don’t be afraid to look weird – it is more important to build others up than look good.

Fourth, don’t feel the need to over-explain. Just share the one thing that God has put on your heart rather than trying to elaborate or over interpret.

Finally, give the sense of what God is saying rather than describing exactly what happened to you.

God wants to speak through each of us to show us he loves us, build us up, and challenge us to become like Jesus.

[1]Psalm 104:27, 30.

[2]1 Cor. 14:1.1 Cor. 14:39. 1 Thess. 5:20.

[3]‘The Witness of the Spirit I’, in Sermons: An Anthology, ed. Outler, p.149

[4]1 Thessalonians 5:19-21

Praying in Tongues

Praying in tongues – with the spirit instead of the mind – is one of the best ways to engage with God, pray through situations and develop an effective prayer life.

Every week in our house we watch Match of the Day. It’s not a universally popular choice but there is a solid voting majority for watching it, so on it goes. We watch the teams play and then we watch the pundits analyse their performances. They are frequently asking this question – where does the team’s power come from? What is its chief weapon? How does this team keep winning?

So, for example, the mighty Spurs are having their best start to a season ever. As we watch them, week in, week out, we ask: why? What is the weapon Spurs have that allows them to keep defeating other teams?

It’s a useful question to ask if you want to be effective in what you’re doing. If we want to be effective spiritually – if we want to fight sin and the power of darkness in our lives and families and communities – then we need to know what our best weapon is.

In other words, where does the power of a spiritual warrior lie? The answer is prayer.

The Power of Prayer

Prayer is the single best source of power and joy in the Christian life.

In Ephesians 6, when Paul describes how a Christian is to stand against the devil’s schemes he gives a long list of the spiritual qualities we need to fight. He finishes it with this:

‘[P]ray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.’^[1]

Paul tells us to be varied in how we pray. An effective prayer life incorporates different types of prayer.

This makes sense intuitively. We know that to be effective, an army or a sports team cannot always do the same thing. They need to vary their attacks – to employ different types of weapons to break down their enemies. So it is with prayer.

There are lots of different ways of praying and as a church we need to learn how to use them all if we are going to be effective.

Praying in Tongues

This is part of what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 14.

‘For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding. Otherwise when you are praising God in the Spirit, how can someone else, who is now put in the position of an inquirer, say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since they do not know what you are saying? You are giving thanks well enough, but no one else is edified.
I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.’

Paul describes two different types of prayer.

He prays with his mind or understanding. That’s the type of prayer I imagine most of us are used to. It is the prayer that we pray when we think about what we are going to say and then say it. Everyone can understand what we mean by what we’ve said. It is perfectly intelligible. It might have been written down before we said it or thought of on the spot. But it is prayer that comes from the mind.

This type of prayer might be difficult to do but it is easy to get our heads around.

The second type of prayer Paul describes is different. He describes it as praying with his spirit and not his mind or, to put it another way, as praying in tongues or languages.

This is prayer that can’t be understood by other people. It is between the person speaking and God and it is a gift from the Spirit.

Paul explains it this way in Romans 8:

‘In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.’

It is as if God’s Spirit prays through us with our spirit and helps us to pray things that we could never put into words either because we don’t understand what we are praying about or because we don’t know what to say.

Obviously if no one else can understand it, it isn’t that helpful to do it publicly. That is why Paul says that in public we should prefer to pray with our mind, but in private he prays with his mind and his spirit. If we do pray or sing in tongues in public we should try and interpret what is being said so other people can understand and engage with it.

Why Pray Like This?

We might be tempted to ask why we should want to pray like this. After all, it is one of those things that seems just odd.

I understand that sentiment. I am, for the most part, rational and unsentimental. Yet I (like Paul) would strongly encourage us to eagerly desire this gift.

First, it is prayer with the whole life and there are times when we need that. Our minds cannot be relied upon to be able to pray in every situation. There are times when we are too tired or too upset to find the words to pray. There have been times in my own life when I have suffered badly with depression and the very idea of finding words to pray was too much for me.

At times like these – when we are weak – being able to pray with our spirits rather than our mind is invaluable. It provides a connection with God that doesn’t rely upon our minds working properly.

Second, it is prayer with God’s power.

Prayer is where we access and are transformed by the power of God. And praying in tongues is deep prayer.

Paul, one of the most effective and powerful Christians in history, says that he prays in tongues more than anyone else.

If you are facing difficult situations or strongholds of darkness and don’t know how to pray about them, then praying in tongues is one of the most effective ways of engaging with God. To paraphrase Paul, when we don’t know how to pray about something, the Spirit comes and prays through us.

I can’t explain why this is effective prayer. It is just my testimony, and that of others, that it is. If you want to see first hand stories of how praying in tongues has helped to empower effective evangelism and release people from addiction and illness, I recommend checking out Jackie Pullinger’s book Chasing the Dragon and the Channel 4 documentary about her, The Law of Love.

How Do We Pray in Tongues?

So, if we want to be able to pray in this way, how do we go about it?

We can’t do it naturally. Naturally we are bound by the limits of how we express ourselves. We can only speak with our minds. It is God who enables us to pray in this way. He prays through us. It is his gift.

If you want to receive this gift, then go and ask for it.

More specifically:

• Draw near to God. That is, ask if there is anything that needs to be put right in your life.
• Believe that God wants to fill you with his Spirit and give you gifts.
• Ask first of all to be filled with the Holy Spirit. As with every Spiritual gift, it is the Spirit who fills us and then works through us.
• Ask to be able to pray in tongues. Remember, as with praying to receive the Holy Spirit, asking sometimes involves persistence.
• Then step out. Begin to pray. This is often the hardest bit because our pride rises up and accuses us of behaving in a ridiculous way. There is no alternative but to persevere through that.

Mike Pilavachi puts it this way:

“For all of us, there comes a point where if we want to speak in tongues, we have to step out in faith and take a risk. You have to start speaking and trust that the Holy Spirit will begin to enable the words…

When you begin the devil will probably whisper in your ear, “You’re just making this up.” When he said that to us, the two of us said, “Lord, even if what I say is gobbledygook, may it be gobbledygook to you.” It may sound childish at the beginning, so don’t focus on what you’re saying, focus on Jesus. Your prayer language will develop and grow.”^[2]

Becoming like Jesus and fighting darkness is a serious battle and we need the big weapons to engage in it.

Praying in tongues – with the spirit instead of the mind – is one of the best ways to engage with God, pray through situations and develop an effective prayer life.

[1] Ephesians 6:18

[2] Mike Pilavachi & Andy Croft, Everyday Supernatural, p.106.

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.