“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
—Acts 1:8

“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”
—Acts 2:17-21

And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.
—Acts 6:8

For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience–by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God–so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ….
—Romans 15:18-19

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
—1 Corinthians 2:1-5

For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.
—1 Corinthians 4:20

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
—2 Corinthians 10:4

…for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
—2 Timothy 1:7

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
—James 5:16

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
—Hebrews 2:2-4

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
—2 Timothy 3:1-5

Thank you for reading those verses. I pray that they blessed you.

My son and I have been reading through Acts together. What continues to strike me about the Church was the power that operated through it. Healings, resurrections, miracles—they are part and parcel of what defined the Church and what made it a threat to those who opposed it.

Today, my son and I  read how the Holy Spirit instructed a normal Christian named Ananias to go to a certain street, to a certain house, to lay hands on a certain persecutor of the Church, so that man might receive his sight again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

I read that true account with awe. Sadly, that awe had more to do with the disbelief I see among so many who call themselves Christians but who readily dismiss anything miraculous in the Christian life. Theirs is a weakened, powerless Gospel.

I’m tired of reading blogs that tell me what a weak sinner I am but fail to tell me what  a Spirit-empowered saint Christ has made me because I am a new creation who sits with Christ in the heavenly places.

I’m tired of hearing people who say that all “that stuff” has passed away when the Bible tells me that I will receive power to be Christ’s witness to the ends of the earth, noting that the “ends of the earth” are still unreached in some places today. Those same people blithely ignore that the prophecy of Joel of the Last Days, filled as they were with signs and wonders, was to persist till the Great Day of the Lord.

I don’t get how people can leave out that the Bible teaches that the Gospel is accompanied by power, by signs and wonders, that these things attest to its truthfulness.

I don’t understand how people can read the Bible and come away thinking that raising the dead is just a figurative spiritual expression.  Or how people can turn off God’s voice so that He can’t give specific instructions to Christians to do this or that in ways that can’t be gleaned from  the pages of Scripture. So that Ananias does not know where to go to find Paul or that he should even lay hands on anyone in the first place. Or that Philip never hears from God to go over to that specific chariot and speak to that specific eunuch.

I’m sick and tired of a Church that walks away from its birthright of power because it is afraid, badly taught, foolish, or deceived.

You can’t read the Bible and not believe in the kind of power we see demonstrated so readily in the Church in the Book of Acts. You just can’t.

“No one ever just picked up the Bible, started reading, and then came to the conclusion that God was not doing signs and wonders anymore and that the gifts of the Holy Spirit had passed away … If you were to lock a brand new Christian in a room with a Bible and tell him to study what the Scriptures have to say about healing and miracles, he would never come out of the room a cessationist … The doctrine of cessationism did not originate from a careful study of the scriptures … [but] … originated in experience.”

- Jack Deere, former cessationist

And what is the experience Deere speaks of ?

[Jesus] went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.
—Mark 6:1-6a

It is the same unbelief we see in the pious people who told a certain blind man to be content in his blindness and suffering:

As [Jesus] drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.
—Luke 18:35-43

It is the experience of rationalization and excuses, of misplaced familiarity, simple unbelief, and faithlessness.

It is the kind of mentality that Paul warns of when he talks about people who have a form of godliness but deny its power. Certainly the people of Jesus’ hometown attended their synagogue and seemed pious. They had a form of godliness. The only problem was that they denied its power. And the mighty works were diminished, even at the hand of the Lord, because of their dismissive unbelief.

Those dismissive people anger me. And they are everywhere in the Western Church, a Western Church born of the Enlightenment that denies anything and everything supernatual.

On my wall is a picture of a missionary. His name is Rachapalli, and he labors in India, his homeland. He is a Christian today because a pastor came to his home and laid hands on Rachapalli’s paralyzed father and did what all the witchdoctors could not do: healed him by the power of God. The words of God were confirmed to that family because of this healing, and they gave their lives to Christ.

The Gospel is going forth in power in nations that are not ours because those people in those nations still believe. We, however, have our best Bible teachers telling us that all that stuff passed away.

This explains much about the destitution in the American Church.

What about you? Do you believe the Bible? Or do you believe people who have a form of godliness but deny its power?

And when the men had come to [Jesus], they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’” In that hour he healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind he bestowed sight. And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
—Luke 7:20-23

This feed is from Cerulean Sanctum (http://ceruleansanctum.com), a blog by Dan Edelen that covers issues facing the American Church.

An Appearance of Godliness, but Denying Its Power

Churches and police have stood arm in arm against gambling. Church leaders cited the studies that showed without a doubt that gambling destroys families.The Ohio Fraternal Order of Police was relentless in detailing the studies that prove that casinos lead to exponential jumps in crime.

But that was then. Now the police endorse the casinos.

Why? Sadly, I can reduce the answer to one character on the keyboard: $

Not only will law enforcement get two percent of the casino tax (which would make their share $19 million a year), but they will certainly drain additional money from taxpayers when crime increases—along with the need for more police to contain it—and the casino tax mysteriously fails to cover the added expense, as “We Who Know How These Things Work” know it will. It’s the ultimate in cynicism from the police. Rather than seeing crime as evil, they now see it as job security, their fair share of the filthy lucre, plus an additional shot at more funding. And my momma always told me I could trust a policeman. Ha!

Honestly, it’s a short trip from there to endorsing street drug sales. And prostitution. Heck, why not let the state’s legislators run a human organ trafficking ring out of the capitol building? Next thing you know, the state budget will be met by selling your liver and kidneys or mine to the highest bidder.

No bottom exists when money becomes the raison d’être. Today, morals and ethics take a distant third to money and lining one’s own pocket with it. I hate to be a cynic, but our culture as a whole in America is doomed if the answer to everything always comes down to cold, hard cash.

Look at the Roman Catholic Church and abortion. The RCC itself is staunchly anti-abortion, but the people in the seats are, by majority, for it. Big disconnect. So it’s not hard to imagine protestant churches as entities being strongly against this vice or that, but later finding that the individuals within are less inclined to match the doctrinal line. And money is a big divider.

The churches in my area are standing against the casinos, but when you talk with people outside their hallowed sanctuaries, many of them are mumbling the mantra of the casino marketers: more jobs, money for schools, and on and on. They wonder how any of that can bad.

We equate our jobs with money, so we let our jobs define us. “So what do you do for a living?” is usually the second question we ask someone after “What is your name, please?” A person’s answer usually tells us all we need to know about his or her salary. And from that we decide whether this is a person with whom we can be friends or who can benefit us as we claw our way to the top.

Heaven knows we need the right people in our churches. We make the business owner an elder and relegate the convenience store cashier to dumping out the Sunday nursery diapers.

And it’s all about money.

Truth is, Jesus doesn’t define us by what we do for a living. In other words, you are not your job. Nor does Jesus care all that much about how many earthly riches you and I have, for He looks on the richness of the heart.

I think I can also say without qualms that Jesus doesn’t like it much when we stand for money more than we stand for truth. I once visited a rich church comprised of a number of fast trackers to the upper echelons of management in one of the largest companies in town. Those men talked a great deal about stopping this vice and that in the name of Jesus. But when their own company took an antithetical position on a vice issue, these fellas shut up pretty quickly rather than risk their ascent to the corner office.

And that’s pretty much how each of us would have played the same hand, if dealt it. We really do love our money more.

What this economic dive has taught me more than anything: When it all comes down to it, we Americans will always choose money over Jesus. That’s the real American Christian either/or. And it’s only becoming more apparent as our societal restraints unravel. (Which is why it’s no coincidence that Hollywood is rolling out a timely new movie based on the old question of whether or not a person, for a large sum of money, would push a button guaranteed to anonymously kill some random person in the world. Answer: I think most people would, regardless of their religious beliefs. Of course, Hollywood wants to impose unrealistic consequences for the sake of suspense, but you and I know that most people would not spend more than 30 seconds pondering consequences. Everyone dies eventually, right?)

Honestly, I’m shocked that a few churches in Ohio haven’t publicly allied with the police to tout the need for casinos. If the casino referendum should—miracle of miracles—go down to defeat, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some churches lobbying for gambling next time the vote comes up (which it seems to every two years). If things get bad enough, we can always find ways to put a Christian spin on just about everything. Besides, selling your soul doesn’t hurt much when you do it one small chunk at a time.

I mean, we all have our price, don’t we?

This feed is from Cerulean Sanctum (http://ceruleansanctum.com), a blog by Dan Edelen that covers issues facing the American Church.

The Money God

Did we in our own strength confide
Our striving would be losing…
—Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”

One of the phenomena I continue to watch within some Evangelical and charismatic circles is an extreme dependence on the Old Testament, almost to the detriment of the New. I see people routinely going back to the OT to craft esoteric theologies made pointless by the death and resurrection of Christ. And I watch people fall into a weird, mystical legalism that seems superspiritual but in the end is nothing more than a negation of the work of Christ.

And this is everywhere around us.

It’s as if we don’t know what the Gospel is or what it says. Instead, like so many aspects of our obsession to redeem culture, we’re on a mission to take the OT Law and Christianize it.

While it’s a dangerous thing to try to sum up the entirety of the Gospel in a few verses, I will attempt it here (and may God’s Spirit lead me). My purpose is to show how simple the Gospel is and how much it covers:

And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
—Luke 4:16-21

Now I [Paul] would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
—1 Corinthians 15:1-5

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
—Romans 3:21-28

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
—Galatians 4:4-7

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
—Romans 8:1-2

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:17-18

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
—Colossians 3:3-4

Jesus came to meet the needs of the oppressed, sick, broken, and hopeless. We tried to obey God’s Law, but could not; no matter how hard we worked righteous works of the Law, our sin and guilt remained. But Jesus died as a perfect, sinless sacrifice in our place on the cross to pay for our sins with the blood demanded. Jesus rose again and conquered death. He puts His own Spirit into any who put their faith in Him. The Spirit in us is a sign and seal of our adoption into the household/Kingdom of God. Jesus’ Spirit in us frees us from bondage and condemnation and transforms us into who we were always meant to be, as our old self has died and is being replaced by the image of Jesus. And when Jesus returns, we will join Him in glory.

That’s the Gospel in a nutshell. A handful of Scriptures and one summary paragraph lay it all out.

You’ll have to agree, that’s pretty simple. Which is why I grow so disquieted when people start adding to that simple Gospel.

Anyone familiar with the Old Testament knows that God had a lot of rules handed down to the Hebrews through Moses. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are packed with rules. And those same Hebrews found ways to add even more of their own takes on those laws, getting into minutia that would drive an ordinary man crazy if he attempted to keep them all perfectly.

Now the rules God gave were intended to keep the Hebrews in line. But that line was so strict and level that it only proved how far out of whack the Hebrews were in their practice of those laws. And that’s because mankind was bent out of shape by sin. In a way, it was a losing proposition, as no one was righteous enough—until Jesus came along to keep all the Law perfectly.

And this is why I’m troubled when I see Christians and churches going back to the very Law no one could keep perfectly, then trying to keep those laws perfectly by being their own substitute Jesus. Seems like a big waste of time if Jesus already kept them all perfectly and now we’re in Him.

One of the most stunning passages in all of Acts is so because of what is missing from it. Originally, the Church Jesus founded started within the Jewish community, the ones who had labored under the Law for centuries. But God never intended His Spirit to dwell inside converted Jews only. He wanted to pour out His Spirit on those who had no idea what the Jewish Law was. After God baptized with His Spirit those believers who were not Jews, the apostles understood the truth about their faith: It was for everyone, both Jew and non-Jew (Gentile). This is what they wrote to the Gentile believers concerning how they should live as Christians:

Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers, with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.” So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement.
—Acts 15:22-31

The major question here: Where is the Law? Well, it seems like a large chunk of the Old Testament never got transmitted to the Gentiles, including the Law. They didn’t get rules on circumcision, ceremonial cleansing after menstruation, who should marry widows, the proper disposition of agricultural increase (the tithe), the correct dimensions of artifacts used in the worship of God, or anything else found in the Law. Instead, what they got was the Spirit of Jesus living inside them and an encouragement that Jesus’ yoke was easy, His burden light, and that they had taken one very large step back toward the Garden of Eden.

You see, when mankind started off, God gave Adam and Eve a very limited set of laws to live by:

• Be fruitful and multiply.
• Take dominion over the earth and steward it.
• Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

That ideal that God set forth back then applies still. Adam had God’s Spirit in him before the fall, and we now have that blessed gift restored. God is taking us back to the Garden in a way. He’s taking us back to a time when life was not a set of laws but was evidenced by Himself dwelling in and with man in perfect communion.

Today, we still live in world that reeks of Adam’s fall. We know physical death, too, something Adam never should have tasted. But God will take care of even physical death when Christ appears. The new heaven and new earth to come will be governed by two simple commands, the same commands that we Christians must always live by:

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
—Mark 12:28-31

That’s what God is taking us back to. That’s the extent of the “Law” that we Christians must abide by. All the other minutia Christ fulfilled. In fact, He even loved God and our neighbor perfectly for us, so there’s grace even when we fail in those simple commands.

So why is it that so many Christians and churches fail to know the freedom that comes from the Gospel of Grace, choosing instead to pile up laws upon laws of things we should and should not do? Why are so many Christians buried under the guilt of failing to keep those improperly imposed laws when Jesus freed us from that burden?

We may say that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” but too many Christians don’t live that way. Instead they live broken lives, always striving, always attempting to do better, trying harder the next time, slaving to get it right—until it kills them.

But that’s not the Gospel.

Too many church leaders egg people on to do better. Often they impose man-made rules on people or attempt to resurrect the Law that Jesus fulfilled as if it were not completed by the Lord. How sad! People so burdened have no idea what freedom in Christ is. They never hear that Jesus came to proclaim freedom to those held captive by works of righteousness that were not righteous enough and never could be.

Last year, as part of the Bible reading plan I champion here at Cerulean Sanctum, I read through the entire book of Galatians each day for a month and truly meditated on what the Holy Spirit says in those pages. That month of reading so profoundly deepened my understanding of grace and the burden of the Law that I would have to say it was the best study I ever did in my life.

I recommend the same to you. If you’re in a church that spends too much time rehashing the Old Testament Law, I encourage you to read the entirety of Galatians every day for a month.

Christian, you are free. Don’t live under the Law. Live under the Gospel of Grace.

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
—Galatians 3:10-14

Amen and amen!

This feed is from Cerulean Sanctum (http://ceruleansanctum.com), a blog by Dan Edelen that covers issues facing the American Church.

Law Church, Gospel Church