My ongoing battle to find balance with the reality of Spiritual Gifts...

I feel a deep restlessness in my inner being today.

It is not caused by temptation…I know the churning of that vice all too well.

It is not the oppression of living in a fallen world…though all vexation to a degree starts there.

It is not the attack of the Enemy…at least not in the traditional sense of the thought.

No, this restlessness comes from confusion in the ranks.  Seeds are being sown in the church from well-meaning people who have been influenced by other well-meaning people that cause dis-ease in my spirit. I feel a check in my soul as discernment seeks to decipher what is the source of the spread and how to deal with the fallout.  My conscience tells me something is wrong, but it is not wrong in the sense that it is blatantly sinful.  This is the paradox of the orthodoxy I’m watching spread in the church.

There has been a growing hunger for supernatural occurrences, a miraculous movement of God, esthetic gifts of the Spirit.  I cannot say that I don’t long for these things myself…in fact, I pray for them and experience them on occasion.  But that is the difference, I experience them on occasion.

I cannot conjure them, nor do I want to.  I can’t and won’t manipulate people to experience them, I don’t dare.  I don’t seek them with daily ardor.  I long for them to occur when God needs them to occur for his purposes and His glory.  I have been wounded by illusionists who have imposed the spiritual expectations upon me in the name of God.  I have witnessed cheap tricks seeking to mimic the miraculous and people responding to the power of suggestion made by the perceived leader.  I have been violated by people forcing themselves and their spiritual world views upon me in an attempt to get me to receive “the anointing”, “healing”, “deliverance”, “tongues”, etc..  I have even pretended to experience these things in the past so that the badgering would stop and they would move on to the next person of interest.  It’s injured my soul…and I’ve talked to scores of people who have undergone this spiritual abuse that struggle to recover from the blatant exploitation of the Spirit for fantastical purposes.  I can’t say that the motives of the people were to deceive, but deception occurred and the name of God was drug through the mud, besmirched.

So to say that I’m leery of tricksters and “super apostles” is putting it mildly.  I try to protect people from being preyed on by these kinds of “church people”.  I have sought to lead a church that stands in desperate need of God’s Spirit without standing in desperate neediness of the super-spiritual to survive.  I’m ok with normal and natural ministry without the obsession with paranormal and supernatural ministry.  I actually think God can work through organic conversations and granular interactions with more power than ginning up environments of emotionalism mixed with superstition.  These are strong words, but after decades of watching the church world and being a part of assemblies of all sorts, I have found some middle ground on the whole issue of spiritual gifts.

For those that are cessationalists, I push back wholeheartedly that God no longer works through the gifts of the Spirit in this dispensation.  For those that are sensationalists, I push back wholeheartedly that God constantly works through the gifts of the Spirit to accomplish His Kingdom come.  I find myself offended that proponents of either side use a selection of chapters and verses to justify their belief system born out in their standard operating procedure.  I’m aware enough and humble enough to know that I possess a hermeneutic that informs my behavior as well and that I’m ever editing what I thought I knew about God and what I think I know about God.  So this is not to say that I haven’t misunderstood and misconstrued truth along the way.  I have, which makes me all the more tentative to tendencies that remind me of this human condition.

I especially feel the need to stand for the spiritually curious, the unchurched person trying to seek truth. Though some would be drawn to the mystical and mysterious nature of the sensational aspects of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, I Cor. 14 indicates that more confusion comes when an outsider comes into our assemblies and encounters tongues as opposed to prophecy. Paul makes this distinction in a pseudo-defense of those who find it absurd and off-putting, even though these are the very things that insiders find normal and even essential to their faith. What’s crazy is that I’m the pastor of a church and I am put off by environments that focus on supernatural obsessions rather than spiritual questions.  No doubt there are some who move from spiritual desperation into supernatural deliverance by means of ecstatic experiences very quickly and fluidly, but in my view, they are the exception to the rule, so I stand on the side of the standard soul seeking truth and meaning.  I’ve also found that desperate people will indiscriminately try anything to find freedom from their condition, so their defenses are down and their discernment suspect, thus, they are often the ones who are victimized in religious settings most easily.  They will give all their money if the preacher tells them to sow a seed of faith to experience a miracle harvest.  They will subject themselves to whatever the authority tells them to do to escape the bondage and baggage that consumes them day in and day out.  This is all the more reason to handle their hearts with custom care in my view.

As far as long-standing believers, I’ve noticed a malcontent that begins to form that causes them to chase after the unusual or uncommon as well.  They’ve gone to church, they’ve read their Bibles, they’ve prayed countless prayers, they’ve served and tithed…and they are hungry for something extraordinary to happen, something surprising, something adventurous.  They are tired of the same ‘ole same ‘ole.  They are bored of showing up and nothing happening that is unpredictable and unconventional.  Believe me, I get it.  This is me on many days.  I want to see a move of God!  And if I’m not careful, I’ll harness my personality and my passion and my gift of persuasion and make it happen just to scratch the itch in my spiritual quest. Faithfulness isn’t enough. Obedience isn’t enough.  I want more.  I need more.  Or else.

This is another aberration that the Enemy uses to take a desire for God to move and twist it into what can only be described as a lust for God’s movement.  Lust makes people do dysfunctional stuff.  It takes ordinate desires and turns them inordinate.  And I’m not saying it doesn’t work.  I think a mob mentality can ‘gin up’ about anything you want to ‘show up’.  I think I’ve participated in this before to my shame.  And what has shown me the legitimacy of the power of those moments is the fruit they bore over time…I’m not talking about days, weeks, or months…I’m talking years.  I think this is why Paul warned of people who had “zeal without knowledge”, he knew that people follow zeal and zealotry.  But it must be anchored to truth, God’s Word, spiritual authority and accountability…or it goes off the rails and leaves people more than disappointed, it leaves them disillusioned.  And disillusioned people are the hardest to get back into the church to give God another chance.  They have seen the smoke and mirrors.  They have watched atmospheres be adulterated and people spellbound only to come out the other side spiritually raped.  All in the name of God and freedom.  All under the leadership of zealous people desiring “more” spiritually, the “greater things” that Jesus promised they would do because he was leaving earth and sending The Holy Spirit.

I sometimes wonder if the “greater things” had anything to do with miracles at all.  The people of God had seen it all…worldwide floods, burning bushes, splitting seas, bread from heaven, glowing leaders descending holy mountains, floating ax heads, water out of rocks, a hornet that would wipe out armies before they even fought battles, prophets whisked to heaven with fiery chariots, miracle after miracle after miracle…it produced nothing but entitlement and rebellion, for when the sign and wonders stopped, they murmured and wanted to go back to the way things were…this is the insufficiency of the supernatural as a “steady” diet.  People must be weaned off this ‘high’, detoxed even, so that they can learn to live in the ordinary faith and faithfulness of everyday life.  The places where they must exercise the fruits of the Spirit without something “out of this world” to happen.  They need to learn to be ok with the “down to earth”. Love, justice, compassion, care, suffering, perseverance, self-control…you know, the not-so-fun stuff of character.

Jesus came and spent 30 years in relative anonymity.  He made his public entrance and performed his first miracle and the people flocked to him. But it wasn’t too many miracles in when he saw the fleshly affect they have on people when he said, “He wouldn’t commit himself to the hearts of man because he knew what was in man’s heart.” He knew their worship was weak-willed, spoon-fed, and miracle-dependent.  He didn’t want a large crowd addicted to his tricks, he wanted their unconditional love that wasn’t reliant on the next cool phenomenon, his ‘wonder-working power’ as the old hymn described it.  In fact, there were times he would turn every away who wanted nothing but the next buzz and would clear the crowd from 4000 to 12 without batting an eye.  He didn’t want fans…he wanted followers. Supernatural stuff attracts fast-fans, longsuffering faithfulness in the mundane attracts followers and really, true friends.

Jesus went on a rant one time when everyone was seeking a sign and he blew off some steam when he said, “A wicked and adulterous generation you all are, always demanding a sign!”  Almost as if to say, “What perverts to take what I’m talking about and reducing it to a side-show!”  I love what he told Thomas when he said “Blessed are those who don’t see the sign and still believe.”  Peter wrote later in his letter, “Though we don’t see you, we love you.  And though we don’t see you now, we are filled with a joy unspeakable, for we are receiving the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls.”  There is something powerful about not seeing, feeling, experiencing, and still loving and believing.  Can I just say that to a generation that is stir-crazy and thrill-seekers like never before?

So when Jesus says greater things, he’s not saying, “So I walked on water, waiting until you see what you’re going to be able to do” as if he was talking about defying gravity by flying through the air.  I think he was simply saying…I was only able to take the gospel 50 miles from my hometown during my lifetime.  I was only able to live with you, but my Spirit will live in you and you’re going to take the gospel to the whole world.  I need to get out of here so that the Holy Spirit can take you where I am insufficient to go and to do what I am insufficient to do as one solidary person confined to one body in one place.  It’s going to be greater than you could imagine.  Yes, of course they performed miracles, but not with the frequency we contrive and command.  Yes, they saw signs and wonders, but if you read the epistles, the emphasis was not on signs and wonders except for a couple chapters and most of the content of those was guiding and guarding from confusion and misuse…most of it was living the hard truth in the hard places with the hard people and being faithful while doing it. It was not performing feats of strength unless you mean staying faithful in obscurity, and contrary to popular opinion, the early church wasn’t just miracles, it was a mess.  And all the leaders, save John the Apostle, died a martyrs death.  Prayers for intervention and deliverance didn’t deliver in the sense that we expect…God didn’t show up for them and rescue them.  He was honored as they gave their lives for the love of him.  A love that was based on faith, not fantastical mountaintop experiences, though they had some of those milestones to look back on. Most of their ministry was excruciating and their encouragement to their brothers and sisters was to stay faithful under fire.  They weren’t prompting them to tap into their superpowers.  They just weren’t…they were encouraging them to tap into their love for the one for whom they would die, with or without a sign.

I believe with all my heart that God is a God of miracles.  But I also believe that he is the God of the mundane…and like it or not, teaching people to be faithful in the mundane is a whole lot more useful than teaching them to crave the next ecstatic experience, legitimate or contrived. Only children need this sort of entertainment to stay amused.  It is my prayer that we will move from milk to meat in our church, learning to be more human instead of more superhuman.  I have no appetite for the latter and I have no intention of leading in that direction.  I want a church, not a circus.