Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

Over at Parchment & Pen (a blog that often has thought-provoking and informative posts), a recent post comments on hearing the voice of God and specifically Jack Deere’s book of the mid 90s, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit.

I read this book many years ago and have returned to it from time to time.  I have found Deere’s own ‘journey’ somewhat analogous to my own and the book very helpful.

The blog contributor contends:

Back in early September, I visited the sites of the Seven Churches of Revelation and the island of Patmos.  Here are the posts: Patmos, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea.

Leading up to Christmas I am preaching through the first five chapters of Revelation. What a great part of Scripture! As well as having trip memories still so fresh in my mind.  I was quite impacted as I preached on the vision of the risen, glorified Lord Jesus from Rev 1:9-20.  And  yesterday, another passage that always deeply impacts me – the Letter to the church at Ephesus from Rev 2:1-7.

Here was, what appreared to be, a really good church – hard working, persevering, discerning, holding to right doctrine, and yet…..the Lord states:

⁴ Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.

So I’ve been thinking much about how we can seemingly easily grow cold in our relationship with Jesus.  The ones that come quickly to mind (but certainly not all inclusive) are:

• seeking to deal with the struggles of this fallen Age in our own strength.  The struggles are significant and multidimensional. But dealing with relationship breakdowns and/or relationship unfulfillment; financial and employment stresses; suffering and death are often towards the top of the stress list!  Even as followers of Jesus, we can seek to deal with such ‘stuff’ in our own strength (Luke 21:34).  Rather than responding to Jesus’ instruction:  ”cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).  Last week marked six months since the passing of my wife, Sheryl.  She was a vibrant Christian and we rejoice in the knowledge of her joyful, conscious presence with the Lord.  But death is painful.  And the complexities of family care as well as pastoral responsibilities are considerable. If I try and deal with all of this in my own strength I simply fail.  And spiritual vitality and joy rapidly dissipates. But as I look to the Lord for strength and comfort, He always delivers!  And in the midst of dark storms of life, my personal relationship with Christ becomes more intimate.
• paying too little attention to the process of sanctification and allowing the lusts of the flesh and eyes, and pride of life (1 John 2:16) to have their way.  That will certainly turn down the spiritual thermostat!!
• giving insufficient meditation to the perfections of God.  He is good and perfect in all His ways.  When we draw back from seeking His face and being fed by His Word, we should not be surprised by the negative impact on our relationship with God.  And,
• taking a reductionist approach to our Christian faith. We lose sight of the simple equation, Christianity = Christ.  We equate following Jesus with ‘right’ doctrine; with a set of ethical instructions for daily life; with a social club of other Christians.  Doctrine, ethics and Body life are all important.  But they do not equate to Jesus.  They flow from who He is, what He has done, is doing and will do.

So at the most basic level, staying in love with the Lord is very simple – we need to stay focussed on Him as the principal focus of our life and devotion.  But in practical terms it is not simple because of our flesh, the strategies of the kingdom of darkness and the impact of the world.

That’s why we need to live, moment by moment, in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Chapter Four: A Violin Called Messiah

The focus of this chapter is on God becoming flesh (the Incarnation) and what this means for the follower of Jesus.

The big point of this chapter is that “being a follower of Jesus does not involve imitaiton as much as it does implantation and impartation.”

Our authors describe the Incarnation as “the most shocking doctrine of the Christian religion.  It is the mystery of God’s self-emptying in Jesus Christ so that we could one day be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.”

Sweet and Viola coin the phrase ‘a gotcha moment’ to describe “when Jesus gets you for life.”  How will we know if this has happened?  In the author’s words, “you begin to live out of Jesus-love” – our behaviour is directed and impacted by the presence of the indwelling Christ, and not commandments.  In elaborating this key point, Augustine’s quote: ‘Love God, and do what you will’ is explained as follows:

“If you love God, or love another, the one thing you cannot do is what you will, for love bends the will.  To live in God’s love is not license for hedonism, but liberty for sacrificial living where we’re all working off the same brief, which reads, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another….”(John 13:34)”

The authors state that the theology of becoming “more Christlike” cheapens the gospel.  I don’t think their case is well argued as they put up a strawman of ‘likeness’ (human effort) and then dismantle it.  However Sweet and Viola are surely right when they stress the sharing of Jesus’ resurrection life in His followers and the call on His followers to manifest Jesus’ presence.

The chapter finishes with the reminder that the call on us to radiate Christ is an all-encompassing call (ie. regardless of the circumstances of our life).  And in my experience, this radical call is definitely something that requires me to keep in step with the Spirit, through His empowerment and presence (Galations 5:25).  When I step out of His ‘footsteps’ into my own, the radiation of Jesus through me falls away very rapidly.

As we come towards the end of Raised with Christ, we’ll briefly look at two chapters:

Chapter Fifteen: A relationship with the Risen Jesus?

Chapter Sixteen: Assured by the Resurrected Christ

At the end of Chapter Fifteen, Adrian Warnock suggests we ask ourselves: “Do I really love Jesus?  Am I aware of His love for me in such a way that I have a strong desire to be holy?  Am I devoted to Jesus?”  These are very pertinent questions and ones that, although perhaps phrased a little differently, regularly cross my mind.

Our author notes that the goal of the Apostle Paul’s life was a relationship with the resurrected Jesus.  The testimony of Scripture and that of saints of old is that we can experience living in resurrection power.  Martyn Lloyd Jones dismisses a purely intellectual approach to the faith as “dead orthodoxy” and warns against setting experience and doctrine against each other.

In Chapter Sixteen the focus is on the ministry of the Holy Spirit in believers’ lives.  It was the risen Jesus who gave us the Holy Spirit.  Adrian emphasises a truth that I often chew on: we receive the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

Our author then gets into a discussion about receiving the Spirit, baptism with the Spirit and receiving the Spirit.  In wrestling with these important aspects of the Spirit’s work, I find the following works particularly helpful:

• God’s Empowering Presence by Gorden Fee, and
• He Who Gives Life by Graham Cole.

I really connect with Adrian’s appeal towards the end of the chapter:

“Let’s resist becoming sidetracked by our various differences over these matters and instead simply cry out to God for more awareness and evidence in our lives of the power that raised Christ from the dead.  Then we will know the joy of living our lives not in our own strength but in God’s enabling.”

If you have appropriated the peace dividend, how then are we to live?  That’s the very practical question addressed in the next chapter of God the Peacemaker by Graham Cole:

Chapter Eight: Life Between the Cross and the Coming

How should followers of the Lord Jesus live?  By faith.  And our author gives an excellent exposition of what walking by faith, and not by sight, looks like.  Living by faith means:

• always trusting God, including in the age to come
• living a life of love (Gal 5:6)
• the opposite to living by fear and by sight (Matt 8:26; 2 Cor 5:7)
• giving our total allegiance to the One who won our redemption (1 Cor 6:19f)
• responding to Christ’s love in a “self-donating lifestyle” (eg. Phil 1:13-26). Simply put, Christ is worth it!
• living as a true servant (“worthy of the Gospel”), exemplified in the Lord Jesus’ “great stooping both in incarnation and atonement” (Phil 2:5-11)
• being prepared to suffer for Christ (2 Cor 11:23-28; 1 Pt 4:12-16).  This is the reality for so many of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world
• attracting spiritual opposition from the demonic.  The devil has not disappeared; he is behind human hostility to the gospel and is to be resisted (1 Pt 5:8f).  The armour against his attacks are defensive (shield of faith, breastplate of righteousness, helmut of salvation) and offensive (the Word of God).  Prayer is crucial.  It needs to be specific and gospel focussed (Eph 6:14-20)
• living now, in the reality of what we will be – “Spirit-impelled resurrection life.”  In the most practical of ways, this means worshipping the Lord through the offering of our whole person as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1-2).  The individual believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20) as is the corporate Body (1 Cor 3:16-17) and that’s what needs to be displayed – not a physical Temple.

Living by faith (I think of it as being ‘up close and personal with Jesus, as we walk around the Sea of Galilee together’) means living as Kingdom people.  Graham zeroes in on two of the beatitudes in Matt 5-7: ‘blessed are the merciful’ and ‘blessed are the peacemakers.’  When we are ‘shalom-bringers’ we are acting like God in character.  And active peacemaking will be in sync with justice – reconciliation requires that wrongs are confronted and acknowledged.

As those who have appropriated the peace dividend (ie. those who are caught up in God’s reclamation project), we have a story to tell the world.  And it is undertaken by:

• evangelists, gifted by the risen Christ and equipped by His Spirit (Eph 4:11-13) to tell the story.  Our author gives a succinct account of the gospel content and proclamation approaches in the Acts of the Apostles.
• witnesses.  Every believer is not gifted to be an evangelist but every believer has a story to tell – of God’s ways and deeds.
• apologists.  Again, every believer has the task of answering questions raised by the gospel (1 Pt 3:13-16).  And we are to do so with gentleness and respect – if there is offence its source must be the gospel itself and not our manner!

Life between the Cross and the Coming is a life lived in the Spirit - the great applier of our salvation.  Graham provides a helpful overview on “filling” as seen in Luke/Acts.  And then in considering the Spirit’s role (in relation to the Trinity), he comments:

“…the Holy Spirit…uses our evangelism, witness, apology, shalom-making and mercy-showing…to bring to fruition the divine plan.”

This is a great chapter, linking biblical theology with helpful historical theology examples, with a focus on the way we live out our daily lives now, in this age.  There will be wonderful benefit in chewing on the contents of this chapter with our Bibles open, and hearts submissive to the Spirit’s transforming work.

You don ‘t plan for great movements of God, but you must prepare for them.  That’s the bottom line of a talk by Perry Noble of New Spring Church.

At Deep Creek we’ve just enjoyed a Celebration Dinner, looking back at the great things God has done in and through us in the last 12 months.  And then we looked forward to the next year.

So with plans and strategies on my mind, I found Perry’s talk refreshing and a good corrective to keep plans and strategies in their appropriate place under God.  Here’s what caught my attention in the talk:

• Church leaders trying to plan a movement of God are mistaken!  Planning and strategy are fine.  But we can’t dictate to the Holy Spirit.  And we can’t duplicate what He’s doing in another church.
• But we must prepare.  Eg. In Acts 2 we see a massive work of God.  But the foundation of Acts 2 is Acts 1.
• We must listen to the voice of Jesus.  Acts 1:8 paraphrase of Jesus’ words: ‘I’m not here to do what you want Me to do.  You are here to obey Me.’
• As leaders, we must keep this in mind.  This is not our church.  It is Jesus’ church.  And He loves it way more than we do.  And He knows more than us.  And He’s more powerful!
• So as leaders, don’t spend our time telling Jesus what He has permission to do.  But instead be on ‘our face’ before a holy and awesome God, and say, ‘God, this is Your church; these are Your people.  What is it that You want to do here?’
• “Leadership is as easy as listening to God.”
• After listening to Jesus in Acts 1, the disciples deal with the leadership challenge (of Judas).
• So as leaders, ‘Are we dealing with the leadership challenge in our church?  Do we have the right people, in the right places, doing the right things?  Or do we have a benevolence ministry?’
• How silly to schedule revivals!  Rather come before God, listen to Him and prepare the right foundations for a great movement of God – in His time and according to His purposes.

I was prompted to again reflect on the Holy Spirit’s presence in a believer’s life as I read Adrian Warnock’s post, Spurgeon on Second (& Third, Forth and Fifth) Blessings.

Many books have been written, especially in the last 40 or so years on the baptism of the Holy Spirit [sometimes simply referred to as 'blessing (s)'].  I took a quick glance on my shelves and came across Baptism in the Holy Spirit by James Dunn (1970), a Pentecostal response to Dunn, Conversion-Initiation and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit by Howard M Ervin, Peter Master’s treatment Only One Baptism of the Holy Spirit (1994) and the relatively recent publication Perspectives on Spirit Baptism: 5 Views (2004).

When I was preaching on 1 Cor 12 at the beginning of 2009, I found Gordon Fee’s analysis thought provoking and biblically sound (as I often do!).  Fee comments:

“The Spirit is the key to all of Christian life, and frequently Paul implies there are further, ongoing appropriations of the Spirit’s empowering….[Gal 3:5; 1 Thess 4:8; Eph 5:18; Phil 1:19]…All of this suggests that perhaps too much is made on both sides of single experiences.  For Paul, life in the Spirit begins at conversion; at the same time that experience is both dynamic and renewable.” God’s Empowering Presence, 864

Spurgeon takes a similar view, and expresses it in memorable prose:

“No matter what level of spiritual maturity we are on, we need renewed appearances, fresh manifestations, new visitations from on high. While it is right to thank God for the past and look back with joy to His visits to you in your early days as a believer, I encourage you to seek God for special visitations of His presence. I do not mean to minimize our daily walk in the light of His countenance, but consider that though the ocean has its high tides twice every day, yet it also has its spring tides. The sun shines whether we see it or not, even through our winter’s fog, and yet it has its summer brightness. If we walk with God constantly, there are special seasons when He opens the very secret of His heart to us and manifests Himself to us – not only as He does not to the world but also as He does not at all times to His own favored ones. Not every day in a palace is a banqueting day, and not all days with God are so clear and glorious as certain special sabbaths of the soul in which the Lord unveils His glory. Happy are we if we have once beheld His face, but happier still if He comes to us again in the fullness of favor.

I commend you to be seeking God’s second appearances. We should be crying to God most pleadingly that He would speak to us a second time. We do not need a reconversion, as some assert. If the Lord has kept us steadfast in His fear, we are already possessors of what some call the higher life. This we are privileged to enjoy from the first hour of our spiritual life. We do not need to be converted again, but we do need the windows of heaven to be opened again and again over our heads. We need the Holy Spirit to be given again as at Pentecost and that we should renew our youth like the eagles, to run without weariness and walk without fainting. May the Lord fulfill to His people His blessing upon Solomon! ‘That the Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as he had appeared unto him at Gibeon.’”

- C.H. Spurgeon, Essential Points in Prayer, The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Life ed. Robert Hall, Emerald Books.