Stroke gives way to the power of God

We were surprised to hear the news that Mai Privilege (Mai = Mrs or Mother of) of Mabvuku High Density Suburb had had a stroke. Such a thing can come without much warning. They said it was serious and she was not even speaking or able to do anything.

After a few days, we were able to visit her with the intention of praying for her. We found her sitting in the lounge eating from a plate and when we greeted her, she spoke to us quite normally. Moreover, she was able to get up and walk around. We could not even tell whether she had been afflicted on the right side or the left.

I asked her who had prayed for her and she replied that the supportive group had prayed for her. The local group of BLCC members in that area, led by Mai Madembo, had come to hold their meeting in her house since she was sick and had praised God and prayed strongly until she got up and began to move around.

This was good news to me, more wonderful than if we had prayed for her ourselves. This is what we need; this is the objective of BLCC. God’s church should surely be a church of believers who are equipped for ministry and able to find help from God in a time of crisis.

[I’m trying to get this done tonight in order to have at least one posting for January, but now there is a power cut and I am working from a battery. So let me post this quickly now and edit it later]

Immanuel - God is with us

Matthew 1:23 ‘“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”’ (NKJV)

Isaiah 7:14 ‘“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”’ (NKJV)

Judges 6:12-13 ‘And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour!” Gideon said to him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”’ (NKJV)

Philippians 2:13-14 ‘Therefore, my beloved … work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure.’ (NKJV)

One of the things people come with for counselling and prayer is that things are not working out in their life; they seem to be always going to work out, and then something comes down and stops them. It is so frustrating when our life is in the hands of the Midianites like that, and it can happen to God’s good people.

It can make us feel that some sort of spiritual warfare has overtaken us and that we are helpless against it. The Gideon in us asks, ‘How can we say God is with us, when it seems more as if He has abandoned us?’

Paul says we have to work out our salvation. It is not enough to say Jesus has saved us; we also have to work out our salvation on a daily basis. Jesus is our Saviour every day. We have to bring salvation into those difficult areas and overcome those blockages.

Working out our salvation does not mean we have to do it all ourselves. I am not my own saviour. If I am looking for salvation in any area of my life, there is only one place I can go for salvation, and that is to Jesus. I have to ask Jesus to be Saviour in that particular situation.

The angel called Gideon a mighty man of valour, and he says in verse 14:

“Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?” (NKJV)

Gideon was the least in his tribe, a small tribe, but the angel called him a mighty man of valour because God was with him. If Jesus is your Saviour, Immanuel, God-with-us, you are that mighty man or woman of valour. God is in that might of yours and God will save you from the hands of the Midianites.

Isaiah 63:1 gives an insight into how Jesus makes us mighty in valour; it is because He himself who is with us is that mighty man of valour.

‘Who is this who comes from Edom, from the city of Bozrah, with his clothing stained red?

Who is this in royal robes, marching in his great strength?

It is I, the Lord, announcing your salvation! It is I, the Lord, who has the power to save!’ (NLT)

On Christmas day, we celebrate the birth of Jesus with a Mass, or Eucharist, at which we remember the death of Jesus. The message is the same, whether in his birth or in his death: Jesus is Immanuel, God-with-us, and He comes to us with the power to save.

Should I wish you a merry Christmas? In this country, this year, I prefer to say, ‘Have a simple Christmas’. However, if Jesus is truly your Saviour, you can go in that might of yours and have a happy Christmas and a fresh new start for the New Year.

Chantelle, Confirmation, & Tongues

Confirmation is one of the seven sacraments and baptism in the Spirit is the basic Pentecostal experience. How do these relate?

Chantelle surprised us when she started praying in tongues. She had come to the Community House seeking help and when we prayed for her, she began to speak out strongly in tongues.

She was a new person so we did not think she had been baptised in the Spirit and we asked her if she had prayed in tongues before. She replied that she had; it was the day of her confirmation. The bishop had explained before the ceremony that he was confirming people in order for them to receive the Holy Spirit.

She took this seriously and prayed for the Holy Spirit; she carried on after the ceremony and even into the night. At around 12:00 midnight, she prayed in tongues, as she had this day, but did not really know what it was.

Chantelle was baptised in the Spirit, with the evidence of praying in tongues, following the reception of the sacrament of confirmation. Just imagine!

Whether this was from the power of the sacrament, or from her earnestness in seeking the Holy Spirit, is hard to tell; perhaps it was a bit of both.

So what is the difference between the sacrament of confirmation and prayer for baptism in the Spirit? People are afraid of that question. They know that one is the official ceremony that only bishops or designated priests perform, so they do not like to question it. The other is God coming in unofficially, using anyone who is ready, and generally using him or her effectively. Both, however, have the same objective, that people receive the Holy Spirit.

The sacraments work on the ‘ex opere operato’ principle. This means that the effectiveness of the sacrament comes wholly from the performance of the sacramental rite, and not from the worthiness of the minister, or from what the minister preaches on the occasion, etc. This is very convenient. You just have to believe there is a change in the person. If you cannot see it now, you will see it in the next life.

In a Life in the Spirit Seminar, you have to work hard to prepare people for baptism in the Spirit. A Seminar can sometimes be more effective and sometimes less; it can even fail altogether. It very much helps if the persons giving the Seminar are living a good life and are operating in the Spirit.

We see the results from the phenomena that can be there when the Spirit comes upon a person, including tongues, and more importantly, from the change for the better in a person’s life. If there is no change, we presume that nothing has happened.

We have heard since that the ministry we did for Chantelle is bringing her a big blessing. If the Holy Spirit is at work, something wonderful will happen. Would something wonderful happen, if we approached the administration of the sacrament of confirmation in the same way as we approach a Seminar?

They knew Him in the breaking of bread

In the gospel of Luke, the first vision we have of the resurrected Jesus is with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. At the end of the day, they recognise Him in the breaking of bread.

If we understand this ‘breaking of bread’ as the Eucharist, the last thing He did before He died becomes the first thing He does after his resurrection. This gives it some importance.

The Eucharist takes on meaning with the resurrection. When we celebrate it, we enter into the new covenant in the body and blood of Jesus. Our part in that covenant is to recognize and accept Jesus, or to believe in Him. God’s part is to give us Jesus as our Saviour, together with all that goes with that, including the resurrection life He won for us.

How much is that resurrection life a reality for us while we are still in this life on earth? Is it possible for us to have something like a firstfruit of risen life?

The presence of Jesus that comes with the Eucharist will be the presence of the risen Jesus and will be effective in us as Jesus’ risen life touching our life on earth.

This will touch us first in our spirit, which will then pass on the blessing in some way to soul and body.

If this happens, there could be something of that experience of the two disciples, an awareness of our hearts burning within us as He walks with us, and as He speaks to us, or makes his presence felt to us, on the way.

Things hard to understand

It is a good thing for some of us that people will not get into heaven according to how much they understand of the deep theological truths of Christianity. Even Peter found the letters of Paul difficult in some places. (See, 2 Peter 3:15-16)

We need to read the letters of Paul, difficult as they are. You may not always understand everything you read, but it will point you in a direction.

Just because we do not fully understand a thing, does not mean it is not true. If there is something we do not fully understand, we have to just carry it. God has the answer; we will come to it some day.

If we take all the mystery out of our world, we will take God out of it. That is not an answer.

We do not need to dogmatize our opinions of the deep things of our religion. Church leaders have done this in an attempt to prevent people falling into error on a faith or intellectual level, but it has brought hordes of people into the moral error of disunity, fragmenting the body of Christ over definitions.

Yet we do need to try to fathom the richness that we find in the word of God. It needs an approach that is humble enough to acknowledge our limitations; and it needs an insight that includes the perception of our spirit together with the understanding of our intellect.

In Romans 8:16 we read, ‘The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.’ Note that it says the Spirit bears witness with our spirit, not to our intellect, though of course, the intellect will also want to grasp it.

The Eucharist

(This is going back to earlier this year.)

Yesterday, on 18th February 2007, I attended Mass at the Cathedral and after receiving communion and returning to my place it just came upon me that God had done something in this Eucharist. God had acted and man had received.

I saw it as something like a power encounter and it affected in some way everyone who was there taking part. No matter how well the priest and the people had performed the Eucharist, or how poorly, God had acted and his power had come somehow into people’s lives and into their families.

It did not come upon me so very, very strongly, but enough for me to sense it and pick it up. This gave rise to some questions within me.

In God’s church, or in the kingdom of God, is there such a difference between charism and sacrament?

Are they all power encounters?

Are the sacraments ritualized charisms?

Are the sacraments power encounters that have lost most of the power by repeated ritualistic action and authoritative over-regulation?

If God is sending the Holy Spirit upon his church to renew it, that will include as well the renewal of the sacramental life of the church.

I have been waiting a long time to see how the Renewal is going to affect the sacraments. The bottom line may turn out to be, ‘sacraments are for believers’, no great problem there. Or, ‘for the sacraments to be genuinely effective in peoples’ lives, those who take part in them must be born-again, Spirit-filled Christians’, I do not think some of the churches could take that one, not for the moment.

The opposite of ‘genuinely effective’ would mean, not excluding some basic action of grace, yet lacking anything that can easily be seen to make a difference in a person’s life. Some see this as the difference between the sacraments as practiced in the traditional churches and the charisms as experienced in the Renewal.