Coming Out of the Hangar: Confessions of an Evangelical Deist
Maturity comes with practice; I doubt if mastery ever comes, because there is no standardized technique.7 Every ministry situation is unique and personal. God’s originality and newness is never exhausted.
“But I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Have you ever seen a child imitate their mother or father? It is often comical. They do not know what they are doing either. They just want to be like Daddy or Mommy. They want to do what they do. There is a bold fearlessness about a child’s ventures. I am a child in ministry, but I am going to try to pray like Jesus prayed. I am going to watch Jesus and do what he did.
I urge you in your day-to-day ministry, do not pass up any opportunity to pray for someone who expresses a need to you. Pray for healing, for provision, for a job. Pray for a blessing, for a fruit or gift of the Spirit. We do not do miracles; God does them, as we pray in faithfulness and obedience.
Seek the Lord. While much of our discussion here has been about more effective and faithful ministry, the real goal is God. Knowing God in a more intimate way, experiencing a more immediate sense of his presence. For evangelicals, this means a reorientation in the way we typically worship, pray, and do Bible study. We need to consciously, intentionally make room in all our habits of grace for meeting God.
What do we need to do to hear God address us more directly and personally? We may need to be quiet in prayer and listen. We may need periodically to stop studying the Bible and start listening to it. We may need to worship in a way that we regularly hear God say to us, “I love you”—and allow ourselves to be moved by it. And to say back to God—I mean, really say it, “Lord, you are indeed the compassionate and gracious God. Full of love. And I bless you. I praise you. You are my God. You are my glory. Your mercy and goodness overwhelm me. You are worth everything to me. Lord, I love you.”
This may involve a major shift in our worship from participating as narrator or spectator, to having a genuine heart-to-heart encounter. Less talking about God and hearing about God, more hearing God and seeing God and meeting God.
As a practical step, I suggest listening to contemporary praise music, especially recordings of live worship and music that addresses God directly in praise and love. To sing these songs in a spirit of worship often facilitates a powerful and intimate encounter with the Spirit of God.8 The evangelical may object that this is simply giving rein to our emotions, that it’s not a spiritual encounter at all. But emotions are an integral part of our humanity and an important piece of equipment, like our intellect, which God has given us to relate and respond to him: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). The Psalms are full of expressions of emotional and spiritual exhilaration. It’s time evangelicals learned to engage their emotions, and no time seems more appropriate than in worship.
In all of this, we are not seeking an experience of God so much as we are seeking God himself. Seek him in prayer and worship with the same persistence and boldness as the psalmist: “To you, O my heart, he said, ‘Seek my face.’ Your face, Lord, I will seek.” (Ps. 27:8; see also Pss. 24:6; 27:4; 63:2; 67:1; 42:1-2; 84:7; 105:4).
Pray boldly for the fullness of God’s Spirit. Boldly, because it’s God’s will. “That you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” is Paul’s prayer (Eph. 3:19). Ask God to reveal to you, in you, and through you the reality and power of the Holy Spirit. “If you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)
You are seeking from the Lord’s hand the same experience as the apostolic church, and you are seeking it as a faithful and obedient response to the word of Jesus who commissioned all his disciples to do this ministry (Luke 9:1-2; Luke 10:1-24; Mark 16:17-20; Acts 1:8). Do not be ashamed to ask for this. The apostles asked boldly not only for the courage to proclaim the gospel but for power to confirm the preaching by healing and wonders performed in Jesus’ name (Acts 4:29-30; see also 1 Cor. 2:4-5).
Keep praying for God’s fullness. In my own experience, the Lord has filled me in steps, perhaps in response to my own timidity and tenuity. “Lord, fill me,” I’ll pray, and in my heart I’ll say, “but not too full.” Pray continually that God will break through the stubborn spirit of unbelief and fear that grips us and that continually urges us to retreat from God and any higher spiritual ground.
Bring your church along gently. Your church and lay leaders need to know your faith has a growing edge too. Bring them along gently. You know best how different people are going to respond to your explorations and experiments. Find people, especially those in leadership, you can honestly share with about what you are learning and how you are growing.
Encourage some of your lay leaders to read a book or attend a conference and then report back to you. What did they learn? What new experiences did they have? How did they respond? Your own lay leaders may be used by God to prepare the way for this new orientation in ministry. Lay people are often more open to the Holy Spirit’s doing something new than the pastor is. And congregations can tolerate newer views from lay people than from their pastor. When you deputize people to go off and learn something from God, you are empowering them for ministry. They will often return to teach, challenge, and stretch your congregation—and you.
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Notes
1 These and the following statistics are reported in David Watson, Called and Committed: World-Changing Discipleship (Harold Shaw, 1982), p. 2. They are based on a survey conducted by Center for Study of World Evangelization in 1979.
2 A. Richardson, The Miracle-Stories of the Gospels, London: SCM Press, 1941.
3 H. van der Loos, The Miracles of Jesus (Supplements to Novum Testamentum, vol. 8), Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965.
4 An excellent 30-page summary of John Wimber’s theology, blending personal testimony and Bible study, is his chapter, “Power Evangelism: Definitions and Directions,” in Wrestling with Dark Angels (Ventura: Regal, 1990), edited by C. Peter Wagner and F. Douglas Pennoyer.
5 White has been published by InterVarsity Press for years.
6 In our community, there are two Presbyterian churches—one that’s more contemporary in style, one that’s more formal. Can they both be Presbyterian? Yes.
7 There is no standardized technique, but there are good models. There is nothing like hearing and observing a good prayer warrior. Attending workshops on prayer where I could observe effective models of intercessory prayer (especially for healing and deliverance) have been especially beneficial to me.
8 A more ideal arrangement would be to attend a worship service with a first-rate praise team, where 30-40 minutes of the service is dedicated to singing love and praise songs to God and where there’s room for some free expression, such as standing, kneeling, lifting your hands up, clapping, and so on.
Note from the Editors
Those familiar with The Kingdom & the Power may wonder why the chapters by Roger Barrier, “A Pastor’s View of Praying for the Sick and Overcoming the Evil One in the Power of the Spirit” and Lloyd D. Fretz, “Healing and Deliverance—Because of the Cross: Seeing the Power of the Gospel at Work through Prayer for Healing and Deliverance” have not been reprinted in The Pneuma Review. The subjects of these chapters remain controversial for many readers of The Pneuma Review, and the editorial committee did not feel it appropriate to engage this subject without offering multiple perspectives. The editorial committee hopes to address these topics in the future.
Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the NIV®.
This chapter is from Gary S. Greig and Kevin N. Springer, eds., The Kingdom and the Power: Are Healing and the Spiritual Gifts Used by Jesus and the Early Church Meant for the Church Today? A Biblical Look at How to Bring the Gospel to the World with Power (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1993). Used with permission.
Category: Living the Faith, Spring 2008
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