The Holy Spirit is your Guide

 When Mary became pregnant, her fiancé Joseph was shocked because he was not the father. An angel of the Lord visited him in a dream and explained God's plans to him.

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). Mt 1:23 NIV

The Father was actually God Himself! We are familiar with this now, but imagine how staggering this was for Joseph! But Joseph believed God.

How often does God Himself intervene in this world, but devout Bible-believing Christians assume it must be from below? Conservative unbelief is a major obstacle for God in our generation, just as it was in the New Testament when the Pharisees questioned everything.

How can we distinguish between what comes from God and what does not? Bible knowledge is important, but the Pharisees in the New Testament were the world champions in Bible knowledge.

In the New Testament, lepers, corrupt officials and prostitutes recognised Jesus as the Son of God, but most Bible experts misinterpreted everything.

The Word of God is our standard in everything, but how we understand God's Word can often be miles away from God's wisdom.

We cling tightly to certain proof texts that confirm our beliefs, but why are we always so sure that our beliefs are always 100% flawlessly correct?

No one is flawless in this life. Is your faith based on the teachings of the Reformers? We find considerable disagreement among the leaders of the Reformation.

Calvin claimed that the supernatural gifts of the Spirit in the New Testament were only for biblical times. Many Reformed Christians believed the gift of prophecy was not intended for later generations.

The leader of the Reformation in Scotland was John Knox. His doctrine of salvation was exactly like Calvin's, but he was recognised as a prophet, and so was Luther.

Many Reformed Christians in our time do not believe in miraculous healings. Martin Luther didn't believe in it at first either, but later he prayed for miraculous healings and God healed.

If we cling inflexibly to doctrines, we can often be wrong.

God sent his Son from heaven to die for our sins and open the way to eternal life.

But before his death on the cross, Jesus was Immanuel, God with us. The Bible experts of his time had spread many erroneous doctrines, but Jesus rejected their faulty theology.

Then Jesus promised that after his ascension, God would still be with us.

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. Jn 16:13 NIV

This refers to the inspiration of the writers of the New Testament but not only that. The same Holy Spirit inspires all believers in all generations. We all need the Holy Spirit to help us understand what God is saying to us in prayer and in our reading of the Bible.

The Holy Spirit helped the Reformers and later theologians, but they, like us, were not flawless. Each of us needs the personal guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you don’t need anyone to teach you. Instead, his anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie; just as it has taught you, remain in him. 1 Jn 2:27 CSB

So should we ignore all Bible teachers and reject all theology? No. We must be teachable, but each of us must be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, just like Joseph, who experienced a visitation by God's angel in a dream and he obeyed.

Miracles Still for Today

 There is a highly questionable and controversial teaching that the supernatural spiritual gifts that appear in the book of Acts and 1 Corinthians were taken away by God in the first centuries of the Christian era.

This idea is supposedly supported by some verses in 1 Corinthians 13.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1 Co 13:12 NIV

This clear recognition is intended to point to the appearance of the New Testament. But neither Paul nor most of the Corinthians had seen the complete New Testament.

How many Christians in our day who know the New Testament have a clear recognition of God that so surpasses the revelations of the apostles themselves? This makes no sense.

This verse in 1 Corinthians is not a new idea. David had the same revelation in Psalm 17.

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness. Ps 17:15 NRSV

The psalmist was David, who believed that in his afterlife he would see God himself directly.

I once looked for this text in various Bible commentaries in a Christian bookshop. The commentaries were not Pentecostal, but they all explained that 1 Cor 13:12 is supposed to be a reference to our encounter with God in the next life.

David expected that he would meet God directly and visibly after his death. This had nothing to do with the appearance of the New Testament.

In our time, we need God's supernatural help like never before.

And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;

they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mk 16:17–18 NRSV

In our time, millions of Muslims are becoming Christians. In millions of cases, they are converted after seeing Jesus in a dream or vision, and in many others they are converted after experiencing healing miracles.

I know an Arab Christian who was formerly a Muslim. A Muslim Arab tried to kill him with poison, but he was unharmed. When the would be assassin saw him alive, he was shocked.

The Christian man quoted Mark 16:18. … and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 1 Co 13:8 NIV

When will prophecies and tongues cease? When we see Jesus.
What about knowledge coming to an end? We still need knowledge because we are not face to face with God.
 

God is Actively Involved

 In 1718, a Dutch writer described God as an all-powerful watchmaker who created the universe and then let it run by itself like clockwork.

William Paley (1743-1805) was an Anglican clergyman looking for good sermon illustrations. He popularised the idea of God as a watchmaker. Everything in the universe runs according to scientifically predictable laws, with no ongoing involvement of the Creator.

Science was becoming the new religion.

God was thus understood as an absent and insignificant creator.
If you believe in such a God, it makes no difference to your life.

But in the Bible, God does not appear as an absent landlord without compassion.  

God in the Bible is actively involved in this world. He intervenes again and again. 

Today, these interventions are understood as supernatural miracles or are explained away by humanistic theology. 

There are even conservative Christians who claim to be Bible-believing, but who quote Bible texts that supposedly teach that God only wanted to work miracles in ancient times.

But they still believe that God answers prayers. How do you distinguish between a miracle, which God supposedly no longer performs, and an answer to prayer, which is not supposed to be a miracle?

They then say that the greatest miracle is the salvation of a converted soul, which is true, but they then dismiss other miracles as unimportant.

This doctrine is full of contradictions.

If you pray for a job and get it, that's fine, but if your daughter is dying of cancer and is supernaturally healed, you shouldn't believe it. Really?

A conservative preacher prayed for a girl who was dying and God healed her. But that's not supposed to happen in his denomination because the age of miracles is thought to be long gone.

The preacher attended a conference where he asked a charismatic preacher for a biblical explanation. He wanted to know if he was praying correctly.

He got a completely unexpected answer:

Why don't you ask the little girl?

God is love. Jesus tells us that God is our loving Father.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Mt 7:7–11 NIVUK84

Knowing God or knowing about God

 Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.
But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him. 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 (NKJV)

I have read this passage many times, but it never really impacted me until just now. I just read these words by a pastor’s son.

• “I thought I was close to God because I knew all the answers. I could answer every question small group leaders or youth pastors threw at me about relationship with God. But I had fooled myself into thinking that was the same as relationship with Jesus. I still struggle with this to a degree.” 

John Piper's son tells his story.

Then I started to dig deeper and I found these words in the New Living Translation.

… But while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church.
Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much.
But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognises. 1. Cor 8:1-3

I recall a story told by a well known preacher.

    A Christian goes to his pastor with a difficult question. The pastor gives an apparently wise answer and the church member goes away happy.
    Meanwhile, in Heaven the Father turns to Jesus.
“Jesus, did you hear what that pastor just said? That is a new idea to me. Did you tell him that?

Knowledge is good, but head knowledge without deep heart understanding is dangerous in some areas of life.

A child may admire his father’s knowledge, but it will no good if he doesn’t experience his father’s love.

How many Christians believe in the love of God? They learn to know more and more about God, but they have little or no experience of the love of God.

Some even criticise Christians who talk about deep spiritual experiences. They say experiences can be deceptive and feelings are unreliable. The only safe ground to stand on is biblical truth. By this they mean Bible knowledge.

But if we read Bible truth in the Bible itself, we see that the heroes of faith all personally experienced God Himself. God spoke to them and they listened and believed. 

They were filled with the Holy Spirit. This was an experienced reality, not just a doctrine.

The God of much modern conservative evangelicalism only speaks through bible verses and bible knowledge. This is not the God I see in the pages of the Bible itself.

Of course, we need Bible knowledge, but Bible knowledge without experiencing God just makes you more religious. That is very dangerous. This was the sin of the Pharisees. It is still a huge problem today.

God Still Heals. Do You Need Healing?

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John tell how the Son of God lived on this earth for 33 years. 

• In his last three years on earth, Jesus preached and taught the people of Israel. 

  • One of the most prominent features of His teaching was the way He consistently performed miraculous healings.

And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Acts 10:38 (NLT) 

• This is how the Apostle Peter summarised the healing ministry of Jesus. 

  • He makes no distinction between exorcisms and healing physical sickness. 

    • Jesus saw demon possession, deafness, blindness and physical sickness as manifestations of evil.

When John the Baptist was in prison, he was tempted to despair of his faith. He sent his disciples to Jesus, seeking reassurance.

 

And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 

• the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. Mt 11:4-5

Clearly Jesus also saw Healing as a central feature of His ministry.

• When Jesus appointed His Apostles, the first thing He did was to give them authority to heal.

 

And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. Mt 10:1 (ESV) 

 

If we look at church history and examine the practices of many churches in the Western World, we see only some churches emphasise healings and miracles.

• Many other churches consider this unbalanced, and yet they read the same Bible that shows Jesus was a healing evangelist. 

• For Jesus and the early church, healing the sick was an essential part of the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

Where did the Western church go wrong? 

Why have we strayed from the ways of Jesus so clearly presented in the New Testament?

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the Europe, most people were poor and illiterate. 

• Faith in the Word of God was replaced with faith in religious traditions including prayers to saints and bathing with holy water. Healing and miracles became associated with very unbiblical practices.

When Luther and Calvin restored the Bible as the only source of spiritual authority, they rejected the papacy. They also condemned faith in miracles obtained by prayers to saints or touching sacred objects. This was idolatry.

• However they made the mistake of rejecting all healing miracles. 

  Calvin taught that the miraculous ministry of Jesus and the Apostles were not a model to imitate.  

  • He taught they did miracles to prove that Jesus was the Son of God and to confirm the truth of the Gospel of salvation. 

    Once the church and the gospel were established, they considered miracles were no longer necessary but were counterfeit miracles associated with Roman Catholic idolatry. 

Once the miraculous element was banished from much of Western Christianity, faith in scientific materialism was blended with biblical belief. 

• Faith in human reason began to supplement and then replace faith in the Word of God.

This is why many Christians in Britain, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand find it difficult to receive divine healing or to exercise faith for miracles. 

Our whole culture has been corrupted by systematic unbelief in God’s supernatural power.

• Faith is a personal matter but it is also corporate. Faith is contagious but unbelief is also contagious. 

Conservative Protestant tradition and academic theology  have made unbelief respectable in in Europe and North America.

• The result has been a catastrophic decline of faith amongst professing Christians and the abandonment of Christianity by the majority of Europeans.

But God has not changed and the Bible has not changed.

God loves you. 

He knows you are broken and wounded in many ways. We all are. 

• We all have emotional issues that cause us pain and prevent us from being all we could be. 

• We all get sick from time to time and many of us have bodily functions that don’t operate as they should.

God wants to heal you, to change your life, to set you free of the painful limitations that stop you fulfilling your potential.

GOD GIVES SIGNS TODAY

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you."

• He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Matthew 12:38-39 (NIV) 

What a strange thing for the Pharisees to say! They had been witnessing the most amazing miracles day after day but they asked for a sign from heaven as though they had seen nothing unusual at all.

In the Gospel of John, we read that the many miracles of Jesus were signs from God.

Of course the Pharisees knew all about miracles that Jesus worked but they refused to recognise them as signs from God. 

However, even amongst the religious leaders there were some who were humble enough to recognise the hand of God at work.

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 

This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” John 3:1-2

So it is today that many Christians who believe in the Bible are like the Pharisees who saw themselves as the defenders of Biblical truth. 
When evangelists today pray for the sick, many are healed but quite a number are not healed. There are also some who are apparently healed but then get sick again or go back to their wheelchairs. Then there are others who are healed but not converted.
So many pious Bible believers today point out these apparent failures and accuse men and women with miracle ministries of being fakes and frauds.

However if they sought out the many people who really were healed and stayed healed they would change their minds but clearly they don’t want to change their minds.

I was privileged to hear a wonderful man of God preach in Germany. He was a pastor and evangelist from West Africa. He leads a church in Düsseldorf where there are over 750 baptised members who converted from Islam, mostly because they had received miraculous healings or seen their friends healed by the power of Jesus. 

But the critics are not interested in success stories. They are only looking for evidence to discredit miracle ministries and prove themselves right, just like the Pharisees.

• Please don’t think I am an arrogant and aggressive Pentecostal. I dislike this brand of Christianity myself. I am not against non-Charismatic Christians in general but I will not tolerate the negative unbelief of the people who are completely anti Charismatic and do nothing but criticise and attack.

Years ago there was a pastor in a very conservative denomination who was taught not to pray for miraculous healings. 

He was called to minister to a little girl who was terribly sick with a terminal condition. He was moved with compassion, just as Jesus often was. The pastor prayed for the little girl to be healed and to his astonishment God raised her up and healed her completely. 

The conservative pastor was very confused and troubled. Was the doctrine of his church right after all? Had he done the right thing?
When the pastor attended a preachers’ conference he told his story to the famous evangelist, Oral Roberts. He asked Oral Roberts: “How can I know if I did the right thing?”

God gave Oral Roberts a supernatural inspiration in the form of the “word of wisdom”. He said to the confused pastor: “If you are not sure if you did the right thing, why don’t you ask the little girl?”

The revelation was a like turning on a light. The pastor went around the conference telling everyone the story and repeating the wise words of the evangelist: “Why don’t you ask the little girl?”

GOD STILL HEALS. HE WANTS TO HEAL YOU.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John tell how the Son of God lived on this earth for 33 years. 

• In his last three years on earth, Jesus preached and taught the people of Israel. 

  • One of the most prominent features of His teaching was the way He consistently performed miraculous healings.

Acts 10:38 (NLT)  And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

• This is how the Apostle Peter summarised the healing ministry of Jesus. 

  • He makes no distinction between exorcisms and healing physical sickness. 

    • Jesus saw demon possession, deafness, blindness and physical sickness as manifestations of evil.

When John the Baptist was in prison, he was tempted to despair of his faith. He sent his disciples to Jesus, seeking reassurance.

Matthew 11:4-5 (ESV)  And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 

• the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

Clearly Jesus also saw Healing as a central feature of His ministry.

• When Jesus appointed His Apostles, the first thing He did was to give them authority to heal.

Matthew 10:1 (ESV)  And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.

If we look at church history and examine the practices of many churches in the Western World, we see only some churches emphasise healings and miracles.

• Many other churches consider this unbalanced and yet they read the same Bible that shows Jesus was a healing evangelist. 

• For Jesus and the early church, healing the sick was an essential part of the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

Where did the Western church go wrong? 

Why have we strayed from the ways of Jesus so clearly presented in the New Testament?

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the Europe, most people were poor and illiterate. 

• Faith the Word of God was replaced with faith in religious traditions including prayers to saints and bathing with holy water. Healing and miracles became associated with very unbiblical practices.

When Luther and Calvin restored the Bible as the only source of spiritual authority, they rejected the papacy. They also condemned faith in miracles obtained by prayers to saints or touching sacred objects. This was idolatry.

• However they made the mistake of rejecting all healing miracles. 

  Calvin taught that the miraculous ministry of Jesus and the Apostles were not a model to imitate.  

  • He taught they did miracles to prove that Jesus was the Son of God and to confirm the truth of the Gospel of salvation. 

    Once the church and the gospel were established, they considered miracles were no longer necessary but were counterfeit miracles associated with Roman Catholic idolatry. 

Once the miraculous element was banished from much of Western Christianity, faith in scientific materialism was blended with biblical belief. 

• Faith in human reason began to supplement and then replace faith in the Word of God.

This is why many Christians in Britain, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand find it difficult to receive divine healing or to exercise faith for miracles. 

Our whole culture has been corrupted by systematic unbelief in God’s supernatural power.

• Faith is a personal matter but it is also corporate. Faith is contagious but unbelief is also contagious. 

Conservative Protestant tradition and academic theology  have made unbelief respectable in in Europe and North America.

• The result has been a catastrophic decline of faith amongst professing Christians and the abandonment of Christianity by the majority of Europeans.

But God has not changed and the Bible has not changed.

God loves you. 

He knows you are broken and wounded in many ways. We all are. 

• We all emotional issues that cause us pain and prevent us from being all we could be. 

• We all get sick from time to time and many of us have bodily functions that don’t operate as they should.

God wants to heal you, to change you life, to set you free of the painful limitations that stop you fulfilling your potential.