Category: Holy Spirit

5 Ways to Start a Revolution (of Prayer)

The foundation of following Jesus is prayer. This deep personal communion, this spirit-to-spirit connection with God is at the same time a privilege unique to Christians and a part of any serious life of faith. The Bible encourages prayer by invitation (if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways… [2 Chronicles 7:14]) and imperative (Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened. [Matthew 7:7]). The centrality of prayer in Christ’s church is a settled matter and few Christians would stand up and say otherwise. We agree at each of these points in theory and by doctrine, but does your church show this commitment in action?

Prayer is said to be one of the most difficult ministries, and this challenge might be your experience. Meaningful prayer requires a compliant heart, repentant and believing that God will answer petitions. Prayer does not require eloquence of speech, but it does demand a heart guided by the Holy Spirit and fed by scripture. Distractions must be put aside; prayer cannot be engaged at the same time the television is on. Prayer is demanding, but the Christian who discovers the spiritual treasure that awaits them through this relationship can’t help but long for more.

If you want to ignite a revolution of prayer within your church, the first thing to remember is that it starts with you. You need to be fully committed to a life of prayer, with both a practice and an experience of regular, deep prayer with God. In fact, without this prayer life, it’s unlikely that you will have the desire to ignite a change in the prayer ministry of your spiritual family. The desire will come when your holy dissatisfaction peaks and you are moved by the Holy Spirit to do something about it. And when that happens, when you’re motivated by the Spirit, move immediately! Here are five ways to bring people into the movement with you.

Model Prayer

One thing that keeps well-intentioned people from praying is the fear that they will somehow get it wrong. The fear is that they will use the wrong words or someone will not understand their prayer. You can address this by modeling simple prayer. Use the structure and words of the Lord’s prayer to show that eloquence doesn’t have to do with complex syntax and a lofty vocabulary. Show that passionate prayer comes from the heart. Show that prayer begins and ends with a clear recognition of our relationship with God – Our Father in heaven. The more we can emphasize this simplicity, the more people are invited to prayer.

Lead On and In Prayer

If the Holy Spirit has motivated you to take the lead in moving your spiritual body into a deeper prayer life, then every step that you take should be preceded by and sustained in public petition. Be up front that this motivation you are sharing with your brothers and sisters is not an idea of your own, but that it comes from your commitment to prayer and the prompting of God the Spirit. Show the perseverance power that you enjoy comes from continuing in prayer, publicly seeking the power of Christ for ministry, and showing your trust that He will deliver.

Publicly Share Answers to Prayer

This should be a regular part of the life of the Lord’s church, as it is one of the great encouragements to God’s people. Answers to prayer show those growing in their confidence that He is at work in countless ways, that He does answer our petitions. When we are public about giving God glory for the answers that we see to our prayer, it works in the hearts of those at the edges of the congregation who want to know this same power. Doing this also serves evangelistically, showing, without preaching, the inestimable power of our God and His love for His people.

Pray Deeply

Praying simply and directly invites others to join in as it knocks down the barriers to public, congregational prayer, but if we want others to grow with us in their maturity and the depth of their prayer life, we should also make it a point to pray deeply. This will mean different things in different situations, but a good place to start is to pray the scriptures back to God. Go beyond the well-known verses to the deeper well of the Bible, showing the importance of the full counsel of God. Trust the spirit and be open is sharing your concerns, your heartbreaks, your pleading for grace in the lives of the unsaved. Your transparency encourages others to pray in the same way.

Teach Prayer

We’ve heard the saying that habits and actions are “more caught than taught.” The first four points of this list have to do with leaders taking action, for example, praying in the presence of others. But, as much as we would like to teach by example only, we must not forgo supplementing our example with sound biblical teaching. The Bible is filled with lessons about prayer and its importance, and an entire library of books can be built on that topic alone, so use these resources to preach and teach on the importance of prayer and its benefits while you lead others to add their voices to the prayer chorus.

Building a prayer culture within the church is not an easy task. It takes teaching and practice and being intentional about giving God’s people opportunities to put their prayer into action. They will be encouraged by hearing about answers to prayer and further encouraged to hear of your own struggles in building your prayer muscles. One of the most important things we teach and show is perseverance. A revolution starts with a spark but rarely catches fire overnight. Start, take the first step, even if you find yourself alone. To borrow from Edward Hale, “I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” Be committed to seeing it through, because the rewards are eternal.

3 Signs Your Church Needs Spiritual Renewal

A church may be filled to overflowing week after week, with visitors regularly adding to the attendance and pushing the numbers ever higher. The generous giving of all those people may account for a budget that builds a grand edifice and fills it with the latest technology to stream the pastor’s message around the globe. During the week, there may be programs scheduled every day, enough to fill the family’s wide and varied interests. From the outside, the church gives the appearance of success, and yet, it might be a valley of dry bones on the inside.

Despite the external measures of health that many churches use–attendance, budget and program reach–it may be the case that internally the church is in deep need of spiritual renewal. The same metrics used by a baseball team to judge success are not the same measures that determine the spiritual vitality of a church. We measure her health on a different scale and by a different authority. The Church’s health is measured in the spiritual life of the people of God. Here are three signs that point to a need for renewal within a church.

3. Discipleship Does Not Transform

The outcome of disciple-making is the third measure of spiritual health. Discipleship should transform. To disciple is to affect the obedience of a Christian and shape their spiritual lives as their Christlikeness grows. Influenced by the world, much of discipleship has become knowledge acquisition in programmatic chunks. People, for example, participate in a program on improving marriage, fill out the study guide, have a potluck at completion and put the book on their shelves. Very few marriages are transformed, but, hey, the participants can recite from memory 5 bible verses about relationships. If the discipleship within a church does not transform the lives of Christians, it is not serving the needs of a body on mission.

 2. Worship is Not Inspired

Any worship where there are performers and an audience is most likely not inspired. If no one is convicted of their rebellion while singing choruses of God’s incredible grace, spiritual vitality is diminished. This measure of inspiration requires keen insight because it’s possible to confuse emotion with spiritual practice and they might look a lot alike. Singing 5 prom-songs to Jesus can lead the ‘worshipper’ to a feeling of euphoria without once drawing attention to the lingering sin of a “wretch like me.” Singing praises to God or praying over the congregation or even standing to read the word of God should give a spiritual lift as we see and hear and feel the grace of God. At the same time that we are in awe of His mercy, we should be convicted of our own spiritual condition in His presence. Worship that does not remind us of the undeserved grace that redeems the Christian from destruction is empty.

1. The Church Doesn’t Pray Together

As Leonard Ravenhill said, no man and no church will be greater than their prayer life. Praying together, voicing our praise and petition and penance aloud in the hearing of other Christians is a unique and transformative experience. It’s also an experience most likely to be avoided by church members, and the lack of congregational prayer is usually (but not always) indicative of little individual prayer. If the Lord Jesus relied on prayer to carry Him through life, who are we Christians to say that we don’t need this discipline in our lives? The lack of a vibrant prayer life is the greatest sign that spiritual renewal is needed.

The encouraging news is that none of these traits are fatal. God encourages even the slightest move toward Him, rewarding the Christian with a new sense of spiritual depth. If this spiritual growth is recognized, it has the effect of becoming self-motivating, drawing the whole church into the life-giving practices. As the church is drawn toward a transformative discipleship that includes a vibrant life of prayer and deep, God-glorifying worship, the dry bones of the church click and clack as they come to life. The vine grows and bears fruit. The church is invigorated and returns to the gospel mission. The world is changed. Isn’t this worth it?

Keep in Step with the Spirit by J.I. Packer

The Missing Element

In a blurb commending the book, Ray Ortlund says this about J.I. Packer, “When we face a debated theological topic, we need a guide who has no ax to grind, who is fair, honest, reasonable, and—above all—carefully biblical. We Christians do debate the ministries of the Holy Spirit. But we have a reliable guide in J.I. Packer.” I read that in opening the second of my 10 out of 5 books from 2021, and found small dispute with Ortlund on this point: Packer does take sides in debate. In the volumes that have enriched me, Mr. Packer always takes the side of the biblical text. Unlike so many other authors, he does not read his theology back into the text, instead allowing his position to be discovered inductively. This trait (exhibited by so many of our senior scholars and theologians) makes reading a pleasure and his positions trustworthy.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Galatians 5:25

So Packer enters the theological scrum concerning a biblical understanding of the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. His aim in this book is to restore the centrality of the Holy Spirit in the Church, a ministry that is often tossed and torn between the intellectualism of theologians and doctrine and unrestrained charismatic practices. Packer envisioned the book as a corrective to these extremes, a biblical call to Christians to restore the place of the Spirit and His gifts in their faith and lives. Unlike other authors that plant both feet in their camp and refuse to consider positions other than their own, Packer takes a much more irenic tone, insisting that the Bible speak louder than he does.

A point that Packer makes that is important for the reader to engage is that the Holy Spirit is not a discrete ministry on His own. The Spirit is inseparable from the Godhead and will always act in concert with the Father and the Son. He mediates Christ (John 16:14) to us. All the Spirit’s power and gifts are  Jesus working through the Spirit in us. It is in the self-effacing nature of the Spirit’s ministry that we gain the perspective to evaluate spiritual claims attributed to the movement of the Spirit. He will always be directing attention back to the Son, and anything that does not achieve that end is to be considered much more carefully.

The mediation of Christ to His people involves the Spirit in spurring on holiness in their lives. We often refer to this growth using the term sanctification, and it is yet another idea that gets drawn to the edges of the Church. In some quarters it is a practice through which we grow intellectually through Bible study and discipleship. At the other side of the yard, the term sanctification points to a growing perfectionism in behavior. Packer draws the idea back to the center, saying that holiness in the Bible is evidenced by growth in the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit conforming us to Christlikeness and our pursuit of holiness is governed by our beliefs about the Spirit.

Packer takes this axiom to his examination of modern charismatic theology and practices, giving support where appropriate and critique where warranted. This evaluation includes a valuable chapter on different schools of thought and practice pursuing holiness. This part of the book is valuable from two different directions. First, when we locate our generalized tribe within the chapter it helps the Christian to see where their beliefs on this subject derive from. The reader that approaches the text fairly finds a second benefit in learning where other tribes have come from as well, preventing some of less loving criticisms that find their way into our speech. It seems to be Packer’s hope that brothers and sisters in Christ will find their own attitudes becoming as irenic as the one he displays in his words.

Keep in Step with the Spirit is a valuable contribution to the church and written at a slightly above popular level. It is worth every effort in working your way through the text, bible close by so you can read the many references in full context. More than reading the text and placing the book on your library shelves, let it affect your meditation on the Holy Spirit and His work in your life. He was never meant to be divisive within the Church. His ministry is to draw us all closer to Christ as we grow together in the Lord’s image. If this book contributes in some small way to unity within the body, Packer’s efforts will be the blessing it was intended to be.

Planting Seeds of New Life in Prayer

Matthew Henry wrote, “When God intends great mercy for His people, the first thing He does is to set them praying.” History affirms this maxim, as the great revivals that God has sparked around the world have always been launched by prayer. There may have been grand movements of Christians joined in crying out to God that brought the revival, but it hasn’t always been so. In countless instances, the hearts of just a handful of people united to plead with God for new life in their community, their country or their church were the passion to which God responded. It is not the size of the group praying that matters as much as the depth of that group’s heart. They need this depth for the perseverance in petition that renewal often requires. God does not put a shot-clock on these prayers, and He may respond to them at once, or it’s more likely that revival comes after a season of souls persevering in long hours of communal prayer.

God uses our commitment to prayer to prepare us for receiving the life-giving power of the Spirit, and this preparation is two-fold. He first sets out to prepare our hearts to burn for revival. The Christian must be able to see the dry bones of the church or the distracted hearts of their community and then believe that spiritual life can come to them if God moves. This hope is the second area in which the heart is prepared because these prayers for new life can require extraordinary perseverance. Revival may appear like a single cloud on the horizon, no bigger that a fist, and prayer warriors must be patient in the time it takes to blossom into a drenching storm pouring down torrents of living water. Without preparation, our hearts would often fail to have the vision needed or the strength to carry on when answer is not immediately forthcoming.

“From the day of Pentecost, there has been not one great spiritual awakening, in any land, which has not begun in a union of prayer, if only [among] two or three. No such outward, upward movement has continued after such prayer meetings have declined.”

A.T. Pierson

The prepared heart prays in complete honesty [JAS 5:16]. Christians recognize that the spiritual vitality of their church is not what it should be and the prayers that issue forth confess as much to God. Sin, cold fellowship, poor leadership – whatever the list of known deficits holds is boldly and openly laid before the Lord for his correction. Genuine repentance in revival prayer forges a heart soft and malleable for God to turn and shape, addressing these things so that new life does not germinate in rocky soil where it cannot flourish. When we pray for our community and for salvation to come, we are open with God about those areas in which we have not reached out or cared for. He may take the first step of turning our attention to knowing our neighbors and serving this community before He sends the Spirit with revival for the hearts of the lost. Honesty starts in the humbled heart, and a humbled heart is prepared by God and committed to Him above all other things.

Longing for Revival

I passionately believe in the possibility of renewal in the church, particularly the legacy church where the devotion to the Missio Dei has grown cold in favor of comfort and familiarity. I believe that the best way, but not the only, for revival to come to the church is through a return to first principles, a devotion to prayer and worship.

As a matter of regular meditation, I consider the list of things I believe:

  • The eternal God of the Bible created, sustains, and has a purpose for the universe and my life within it
  • Jesus gave His life to atone for the sins of the world (Mark 10:45) and by vesting belief in Him, people are saved (1 Corinthians 1:21)
  • The Holy Spirit of Christ miraculously indwells redeemed people (1 Corinthians 6:19)
  • The Colorado Rockies will win the World Series (someday, no scripture reference)
  • Many churches need and can have revival

I passionately believe in the possibility of renewal in the church, particularly the legacy church where the devotion to the Missio Dei has grown cold in favor of comfort and familiarity. I believe that the best way, but not the only, for revival to come to the church is through a return to first principles, a devotion to prayer and worship. A renewed sense of the mission of disciple-making results from the first sparks of spiritual life that ignite, giving evidence to my belief. I believe these things are Scripture honoring and God glorifying.

There are doubtless many reasons that churches fall into decline, some beyond their control. As we talk about revival, it’s important to distinguish between spiritual and material poverty as a contributing factor. Geographic factors and demographic shifts can be the reasons that churches find themselves in material decline, making closure a choice that has to be made. We can identify numerous other external factors as reasons for the death of a church, and we need to be clear-eyed in assessing these realities. Conversely, spiritual decline has but a single source, the dimming of the passion of the members of a body for the gospel mission. Jesus spoke of this as forsaking “your first love” (Revelation 2:4).

While external factors may be beyond the control of a local church, the spiritual fire they exhibit is not. I believe that the Lord’s promise to be with His Church always (Matthew 28:20) assures us that any spiritual spark can be fanned into a roaring flame through His power. What does it require? I believe this inferno lies at the juncture of a return to heartfelt worship and the restoration of the Church as a house of prayer. Does this guarantee revival? Perhaps not, but it ensures that any ministry that emanates from a church is glorifying to God.

Unnatural HOLINESS

Holiness is a word and a subject that’s a part of our Christian vernacular. The Lord is holy. We have holy space. Our literature is filled with the word. So, define it. Right now.

I’ll wait……..

If you answer is in any way rules based, then you are in good company. In the modern Christian style guide holiness has become synonymous with following the rules so as to remain in God’s good graces. Whether it be the Commandments, any parts of the Levitical code  or even fashioning a rule book from the Sermon on the Mount or one of Paul’s sin lists, holiness, like a lot of Christian practice, has become a human-oriented and crafted practice. It is not a state of being. Rather, it has become a way of measuring how close to the boundary lines we are walking.

And that is to our detriment.

When holiness becomes adherence to the rules, we attempt to be holy under our own power and guidance. The Holy Spirit is left to His other duties and plays no role and the outcome is not the holiness of the Bible. It is a completely natural holiness, one that we have pressed and prodded into our own image.

The holiness of the Bible, on the other hand, is completely unnatural.

The holiness of the Bible is in no way possible within our fallen state. The state of holiness as declared by God is that of being fully set apart. Not in the Benedictine monastery sense of hiding within the safety of stone walls, tucked away from the influence of the world. Instead, the holiness of which the Bible speaks is a holiness in which His people demonstrate their radical set-apartedness while living within the culture and influencing it. The holiness of the Bible is demonstrated in radically living out the Great Commandment—loving God with all your heart, mind and soul and loving your neighbor in the same way. Loving others in such a sacrificial way that there is no natural explanation for your ability to do so. Loving others in such a way that the only possible explanation that those who are not yet God’s people can offer is divine intervention.

Holiness is an unnatural love. It is not the acquisitive love of the world: do for me and I’ll do for you. Holy love is I’ll do for you despite what you do to me or what you can do for me. The love of holiness demonstrates unequivocally that the Holy are set apart, that they have moved their existence to a different plane. The Holy are living a life of service in response to the magnitude of the Sacrifice, seeking to please the Sacrificer at every step; unconcerned with the approval of the world while loving those in that world at the same time. Holiness declares the divine power of the Spirit within rather than our human efforts to follow a rule book. Holiness is unnatural and unmistakable.

The Spirit Comes Bearing Gifts

imageThe wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. (John 3:8)

Doctrine regarding the spiritual gifts is a generally accepted component of the life of the Church. It is recognized that the Holy Spirit empowers redeemed individuals with abilities useful to building up the Body. Individual Christians may be the recipients of one or more of these gifts, evidence of the work of the Spirit in their lives.

Minor intramural skirmishes occur over the enumeration of the gifts and whether Apostle, Teacher-Pastor and prophet are gifts or offices. When it comes to the miraculous gifts – tongues, prophecy and knowledge- however, hard lines are drawn between those who interpret the Scriptures to say that these gifts have ceased and brothers who insist that the Spirit continues to grant these gifts today.

If the boundaries surrounding this theological disagreement were hard and fixed, the various positions would not demand discussion. The problem that arises again and again however, is that the fluid nature of the boundaries creeps from non-essential territory into the categories of core doctrines. The cessationist position may insist that belief in the continuation of gifts shows a sloppy doctrinal position that they assume is present in other facets of one’s theology. A Pentecostal segment of the body states unequivocally that without evidence of glossolalia, your very redemption is in question. Each represents an extreme, but both affect the witness of the Church.

In a series of posts to follow, we will look at four general positions along the continuum of belief. In general, the positions break out as follows:

  • Cessation – The miraculous gifts have ceased being given.
  • Pentecostal/Charismatic – The miraculous gifts continue to be given.
  • Open & Cautious – The gifts may be given by a sovereign spirit as He desires. Their issue is not normative.
  • Third Wave – The proclamation of the Gospel is always accompanied by “signs and wonders”

Grace and peace to you.