Regularly returning, remembering, and refreshing how we live out the basics is important for spiritual growth. This workbook by Don Allen was originally published as a guest article on the Pneuma Foundation website, the legacy site for the parent organization for PneumaReview.com.

Image: Samuel Martins

Remember the Basics

“Keep it simple, when you get too complex you forget the obvious.” – Al McGuire

 Al McGuire was a leader both in basketball and in helping change men’s lives. “He led Marquette to 11 straight post-season appearances and a 295-80 record. As the Marquette coach from 1964 to 1977, McGuire placed himself among a select group of coaches to win both the NCAA (1977) and NIT (1970) championships. In 1971, McGuire was named Coach of the Year by the Associated Press, United Press International and the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) following Marquette’s 28 -1 season.”[1]

One basketball historian noted that 26 of McGuire’s players went on to play for the NBA, a major accomplishment for any coach. Yet Al McGuire stayed focused on helping men become better individuals both on the court and in life.

Over the years I have attempted to make my Christian Walk too complex. I have spent time focusing on other people’s opinions of what Godly men should be like, how I should praise Him, what passages of Scripture I should study, which church I should attend, and even sometimes worrying if I’m wearing the right clothes – clothes that would make others happy.

A man’s Christian walk is not complex. It actually needs to be very SIMPLE. Focus on the obvious, first and foremost on your personal walk with Christ. I have found that the old adage “K.I.S.S. … Keep it Simple Somehow” (or as others define it, “Keep It Simple Stupid”) should become a very vital part of a man’s Christian walk.

In my opinion we need to focus on the obvious things in our walk. We should identify three things that we should attempt to focus on daily. I like to think of them as our daily “PAC” (Prayer, Attitude, Commitments). Keeping It Simple Somehow (KISS) has to be a central part of life.

P – Focus on my personal Prayer Time

There are hundreds of opinions of what our prayer time should look like, from kneeling in your prayer closet, speaking in tongues at the church altar, spreading out prostrate on the floor, crying our eyes out and any number of other things. And there is nothing wrong with any of these.

• When you are in your personal prayer time, how do you choose to pray most often?

However, prayer is truly an individual opportunity to spend time with “the King of King and Lord of Lords.” It is our personal time away from others with only us sharing our innermost thoughts with HIM.

Find that place of Prayer that works for you.

• I have heard of men who spend hours in their cars commuting back and forth work. They pray as they drive, and their car becomes their place of solitude and communion with God.
• Some men rise at 4 or 5 in the morning and pray in their basements to start the day.
• Still other men go into their offices extra early and shut the door for 30 to 40 minutes to pray before their workday begins. Some pray at work during their lunch hour.
• Others find a quiet place at night at home and pray.

Marian L. Tupy, “Globalization and Poverty’s Unprecedented Decline: The last forty years have seen a massive and historically unprecedented decline in global poverty” HumanProgress.org (November 22, 2016).

Reminder of good news: This article was originally published in 2016, but this under-reported good news is worth repeating. “[T]he economic liberalization and globalization that started in the late 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s, has led to a massive and historically unprecedented decline in global poverty. Contrary to much of the public perception, liberalization and globalization have not led to an increase in U.S. poverty rates, which continue to fluctuate within a comparatively narrow and, by historical standards, low, band. … In 1981, the year Ronald Reagan became America’s 40th President, 44.3 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty (i.e., less than $1.90 per person per day). Last year [2015], it was 9.6 percent. That’s a decline of 78 percent.”

“While overall violence has declined in 2018, conflict is spreading” ACLED (December 21, 2018).

This Press Release from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project has both good and bad news. Thanks to our friends at Brigada for suggesting this article.

Ed Stetzer, “Three Markers for Discipleship” EdStetzer.com (April 23, 2018).

In case you missed it: A practical article on discipleship.

Peter Gräbe, “Do These And You’ll Always be Successful!” PeterGrabe.com (June 30, 2018).

Cletus Hull wrote, “My PhD adviser at Regent University asked me to share something for his blog and I believe it can pertain to healing and the Lord.”

Geir Lie, “The Origin of T.B. Barratt’s Concept of ‘Missionary Tongues” Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research #26 (November 2018).

Gordon Govier, “Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2018: A glimpse at the important excavation work revealed this year” Christianity Today (December 27, 2018).

2019 Risk Map from ControlRisks.com

What areas of the world are projected to be the most dangerous in 2019?

Caleb Courtney, “Researching Canadian Pentecostalism” CalebSourtney.com (January 30, 2019).

Author of A History of Bethel Pentecostal Church in Sarnia, Ontario writes about the rewarding but often neglected work of recording and sharing history.

This chapter is an excerpt from David Joannes, The Mind of a Missionary: What Global Kingdom Workers Tell Us About Thriving on Mission Today (Within Reach Global, 2018).
Read the review by John Lathrop

The Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong is one of history’s great anomalies. It was, in fact, a world unto its own.[i] Two governments claimed jurisdiction, but neither actively administered it; anarchy reigned while secret societies presided over the no-man’s land. High-rise apartments situated atop a labyrinth of dark, filthy corridors. A mere six acres sheltered the estimated 33,000 people who resided within the Walled City, swelling the population density to 3.25 million people per square mile.[ii] It was the most densely populated spot in the world. (In contrast, Manhattan has the highest population density of any city in the United States at 27,000 people per square mile.)[iii] Crazy-angled apartment blocks obstructed water pipes; without proper sanitation, excrement had to be emptied into the stinking alleys below. At street level, two toilets served all 33,000 residents. The “toilets” consisted of two overflowing cesspools—one for men and one for women. Damp, narrow alleyways with open drains harbored drug peddlers, addicts, pimps, and prostitutes. Triad gangs operated openly in the favored secret hideout; criminal activity ran rampant. Newcomers were immediately recognized and suspiciously monitored; few outsiders dared venture into the heart of the city of anarchy.

The history of the Walled City traced its roots back to the Song dynasty (960-1279) when the Chinese established an outpost to manage the salt trade. For hundreds of years afterward, little took place at the lonely fort, until 1842, when China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain by the Treaty of Nanjing. As a result, the Qing Dynasty authorities felt it necessary to bolster the fort, check British influence, and maintain a stronghold opposite the harbor. In 1847, the construction of a formidable defensive wall finalized.

The Qing-era Kowloon Walled City, circa 1868.
Image: Wikimedia Common

The Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory of 1898 leased additional portions of Hong Kong (the New Territories) to Britain for ninety-nine years.[iv] The lease excluded the Walled City, which at the time had a population of roughly seven-hundred people. The British government allowed Chinese officials to continue there, given they did not interfere with the defense of British Hong Kong. The Qing dynasty ended its rule in 1912, leaving the Walled City to the British.

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, refugees fled mainland China, seeking protection in the Chinese territory surrounded by British land. By 1947, two-thousand squatters occupied the Walled City. After a failed attempt to drive them out in 1948, the British adopted a “hands-off” policy in most matters concerning the Walled City. The city was left to its own devices, and to develop, as Governor Sir Alexander Grantham described it, into “a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, brothels, and everything unsavoury.”[v] The Kowloon Walled City began its transformation into the squalid enclave of vice for which it later became notorious.

Advances in healthcare have led to increase in worry over one’s own well-being, wasteful spending, and a lack of concern for the well-being of others in our community. Indeed, we have come to view health as a commodity to possess and control. Commodities run out; thus, the fear of loss causes us to focus only on what we have and can maintain, rather than on ensuring everyone has enough.  Cutillo urges us to view health and healthcare from the margins, with those individuals who are often unable to afford and thus acquire healthcare. By so doing, we can resist the flow of healthcare as only a multi-billion-dollar industry and pursue justice in the distribution of healthcare at the local level. Moreover, instead of keeping medicine and faith apart, Cutillo argues for a complementary relationship, using Christianity as a means “to explore how we pursue health and practice healthcare” (p. 16). Indeed, this is the purpose of the book.

The book is divided into four parts: The first part discusses how individuals have come to see health as something to control; while the second part suggests that medics need a new way of seeing the patient. Part three addresses the fear of death and how we can view dying differently, and the final section offers a way forward to viewing healthcare as a gift that should be shared within the wider community in light of the intersection of medicine and faith.

Unrealistic Expectations

Bob Cutillo

Cutillo shows how even from the Genesis account, we have the proclivity to want to control our circumstances. Although God has declared all creation good, Adam and Eve sought more—the knowledge of good and evil. Since then, humans have had to make decisions based on what they understand of good and bad. We don’t want what is bad, and because society deems sickness and disease as bad, we try to control outcomes so that we can avoid them at all costs. In turn, we become anxious about those outcomes. Cutillo points out that because God is active in the world, he “is able to incorporate even the things we assume bad into a greater plan [that can] change the way we pursue health and face sickness” (p. 68). Thus, we don’t have to waste our energies in worrying about our health but focus on living.

Disembodiment

Medical students are trained to see the body in parts, but by breaking the whole into parts, they can lose sight of the whole altogether. When healthcare practitioners dissect the human patient into discrete parts, they no longer see the needs of the human before them, only their disease. Moreover, the propensity to tick the heuristic box of symptoms to diagnose disease avoids the altogether larger issue of how the individual is in other contexts of being and disallows the uniqueness of individuals to assist in both diagnosis and remedy. The result is that we separate the body from the soul.

Probably “criticism” is the greatest power in the hands of an enemy. Because human beings become conditioned by a constant pattern of enforcement through repetition, frequent criticism tends to be a popular way for “control freaks” to control a good leader. A smart leader must be careful by evaluating what they hear. It’s probably a good idea to consider all criticism as a tool that can be turned into something good. For example, a person may criticize you for driving a Mercedes. However, it might be smart to examine the reasons why this person is criticizing you before you trade in your Mercedes for a Volkswagen. On the other hand, if several people have made similar comments about your car, it would be unwise to altogether ignore these negative remarks.

Image: Dylan Gillis

You may be totally destroyed if you consider every critical remark as the Gospel truth, but ignoring them is equally dangerous. It’s a good idea to have an accountability group with whom you can discuss such matters. Make sure the people in the group are objective, loving, godly, wise, and above all, have your best interest at heart. This kind of group can help you evaluate the ideas, comments, and criticisms of others within your sphere of influence.

This article originally appeared in the March 2019 issue of The Grapevine, a publication of AEGA Ministries. Used with permission.

Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle will both educate and resonate well with its intended audience. One who has heard Gordon Fee preach can hear him preaching in this book, passionately communicating the fruits of his exegesis in language that can profit nonscholars as well as academicians. As I noted in my comments to the publisher, the book is “intertextually rich and theologically provocative,” inviting readers “to rethink traditional academic constructions of Paul’s theology in light of the primary data provided more conspicuously by Paul’s own letters.” While not ignorant of wider scholarly opinions, in this book Fee plunges the reader into more immediate contact with Paul’s own words.

Fee’s extensive Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Hendrickson, 2007; Baker, 2013), which treats all the present work’s questions in far greater detail, is not on a level accessible to the average reader (sort of like my four-volume Acts commentary). By contrast, Jesus the Lord offers a more accessible introduction, in the way that his Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God (1996) complemented Fee’s larger academic tome on Pauline pneumatology, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (1994).

Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle is certainly accessible. The foreword also is a touching tribute from Fee’s daughter Cherith Fee Nordling, a theologian in her own right.

As an exegete who has written commentaries on 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, the Thessalonian correspondence and the Pastorals, Fee systematizes some elements of Pauline Christology only after inductive study of the biblical text. Granted, he displays unabashed theological commitments, but they are commitments ably articulated and defended, reflecting carefully considered convictions. For example, although he sees Jesus as divine, he rejects application of the title “God” to Jesus in Rom 9:5 (124n1).

Some of the convictions that he articulates are less widely shared than others. As defended in his Pastorals commentary, Fee accepts a thirteen-letter Pauline canon (albeit with a different amanuensis and thus different vocabulary in the Pastorals; cf. Jesus the Lord, 125n1). Nevertheless, Fee establishes his central case for divine Christology more than adequately from the undisputed letters. (Given their distinctive content, the Pastorals do not figure as heavily in this work as do the earlier letters in any case.) For those of us who do accept the more disputed letters as Pauline at any level, however, Fee’s treatment of ideas there, alongside those in the undisputed epistles, may prove very enlightening for interpretation.

Although a more popular work includes much less documentation than the academic work on which it is based, it can sometimes also provide a more mature synthesis of the issues, highlighting the issues that further reflection deems most central. In Jesus the Lord, Fee develops the central elements of his case clearly.

The general theme this year was “Christian Unity,” but other topics were presented. This CLF meeting was one of the most important in years. Its presenters gave information about to new breakthroughs in Christian unity and charismatic growth. The most important item discussed, an impending radical turn of the Catholic Church towards a universal charismatic manifestation, will be discussed below.

The 2019 CLF met in Augusta, hosted by the Alleluia Community of that city. CLF personnel were hosted by members of the community at their homes. I found this aspect of the CLF meetings particularly pleasant, as I had the pleasure of meeting Christian families who were dedicated to living in a community covenant, as in Acts 2. (This would be a separate article by itself).

The meeting began with a fellowship dinner on Monday night at the Alleluia Community School’s cafeteria, where all the meetings were held. The chow was especially good at this CLF, and one of the participants quipped that “People think we come here to learn about what is happening in the charismatic churches, but we really come for the food.”

The CLF Coordinator, Scott Kelso, led off with an exhortation to not forget the doctrine of the Second Coming and preach it regularly. This was followed by a presentation by Chuck Hornsby, an elder of the Alleluia community, on spiritual warfare. His talk was an appendix to the teachings from last year’s CLF and was an excellent one. He stressed several ways that Christian can come under demonic influence. These include not believing in the demonic realm, or having spiritual habits like unforgiveness and bitterness. Pride is a great entry, and Hornsby suggested an unusual remedy to this: purposely lose an argument or two you have with a Believer.

Session three was dedicated to highlighting books published the previous year by members of the CLF. A representative of Derek Prince Ministries brought a case of a new book by Derek Prince, Pride Versus Humility, which were given out free,[1] This was unexpected as Prince, who had often come to the CCC, has been dead for over a decade (he died in 2003). What happened was that Rev. Prince’s many radio talks, mission talks at CFO’s etc., are now being edited and brought out as new books. Pride Versus Humility was an example of this. Derek Prince really was one to the most outstanding teachers of the Charismatic Renewal, and these new works are excellent resources for adult Bible study groups or any form of Christian adult education.

Eugene Bach: I travel more than 300 days a year for ministry and see a lot of different types of Christians. I speak at big churches and small churches. I work with underground house church Christians in Iran and traditional conservative churches in Europe and as different as they are all are, there is a common thread that binds us all together – our desire to see revival.

It is a universal desire among Christians world-wide.

I have been working in China for almost 20 years and during this time I have witnessed the world’s largest revival. Being involved with grassroots missions in China has thrown me into the fires of cultural immersion and allowed me to experience this revival firsthand as it was happening.

Traveling with Chinese missionaries into many closed nations has provided me with a unique perspective of the pain that exists in nations where revival has tarried.

Six years ago, I decided to start from the beginning, trace the history of revival, identify it’s characteristics, and see what we could learn to help push forward into the nations that have not yet experienced revival.

PneumaReview.com: The word “revival” means many things to many people. How would you define it?

Eugene Bach: I want to be very careful to not create a rigid definition of revival that excludes a movement of God, so for our road trip Bible study, we start in the book of Acts chapter 1 and follow what happens in the first century church.

During our road trip Bible study, Chasing Revival, we found this definition to be more accurate than others.

We believe that revival is not necessarily spontaneous – appearing out of thin air, but is rather continuation of what Jesus promised in Acts chapter 1. The revivals happening in China today are not new, but their roots can be traced back to Acts 1 in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

PneumaReview.com: What are some of the places you traveled to while making Chasing Revival?

Eugene Bach: We started in Jerusalem and followed the book of Acts into Judea, Samaria, Asia Minor, and to the “ends of the world.” This led us in a mainly western direction.

Eccentric Prophets

Some people try to justify their conclusion that it is spiritual to act strange by pointing to the eccentric behavior of prophets in the Old Testament. For example, Isaiah walked around naked (Isaiah 20:1–4)—some scholars say, wearing only an undergarment—and Ezekiel lay on his side for 430 days (Ezekiel 4:4–6). Some also point to Saul, who “changed into a different person” when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he prophesied (1 Samuel 10:6, 10).

These examples, however, don’t prove that one should expect to act strangely if one is to be truly spiritual. First of all, Saul might have just “changed into a different person” in the sense that “God changed Saul’s heart” before he prophesied (v. 9).

The Frantic Prophets of Baal

Furthermore, when you read about the prophets in the Old Testament, you don’t get the sense that the prophets were usually ecstatic and acting strangely. To illustrate the point, when Elijah had his standoff at Mount Carmel, it was the prophets of Baal who “danced around the altar they had made,” shouted, slashed themselves with swords, and engaged in “frantic prophesying,” while they endeavored to get Baal to send fire on their sacrifice (1 Kings 18:26–29). By contrast, when Elijah called on God to send fire on his sacrifice, he merely “stepped forward and prayed” (v. 36).

Strange or out-of-the-ordinary things might happen when people experience the Spirit—like speaking in tongues, dreams, or visions (Joel 2:28)—but such experiences are not the primary indicator of spirituality. That is a myth!

Spirit with Hardships

Another myth some Christians believe is that people who are really Spirit-filled will always experience victory. This belief is a cousin to the idea that if you have enough faith you will always experience health and wealth.

Just as faith doesn’t guarantee a life free of disappointments and hardships, the Spirit-filled life is not a life free of disappointments and hardships. Jesus is the epitome of spirituality, but he never became an earthly king. Instead, “through the eternal Spirit [he] offered himself unblemished to God” so his death might give us life (Hebrews 9:14).

In the Bible, “the one who is victorious” (Revelation 2:11) may suffer and face poverty (v. 9). Their victory is that they resist their culture’s anti-Christian values and are “faithful, even to the point of death” (v. 10). And their “victor’s crown” is eternal life, not achieving success in the eyes of the world around them (vv. 10–11).

Abstract: The cross of Christ crucified symbolized the central theme of Paul’s ministry. In his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle commenced his correspondence with “the message about the cross” and “power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18, NRSV). The proposal for this book utilizes the method analogia scripturae. Set within the wisdom motif of the Greco-Roman world, this study is dedicated to the examination of the apostle’s Christology in the context of 1 Cor. 1:18-25 and the Pneumatology in 1 Cor. 2:9-16 as both pericopes are juxtaposed in his epistle. Essentially, the thesis concerns the grounding of the Pneumatology of Paul with his Christology in 1 Corinthians. The Corinthian church required clarification and pastoral wisdom with their pneumatic experiences; thus, Paul recognized that a strong theology of the cross complemented their encounters with the Spirit. The question for biblical studies involves a lively tension of the Pneumatology of the Spirit with a robust Christology. Because the power of God throughout this passage has the cross as its paradigm, the structure of the paper leds to the significance of the apostle’s pneumatological contribution of the cross and Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:18; 2:2). For this reason, a strong Christology must ground the Pneumatology of the Pauline corpus. This study in biblical literature commences a new discussion in ecumenical dialogue between pneumatic experiences in the church and christological issues in scripture.

There is power in the cross of Christ. In this excerpt, pastor, theologian, and historian Cletus Hull introduces us to his new book, The Wisdom of the Cross and the Power of the Spirit in the Corinthian Church.

It is the power of God that uses all that the Cross of Christ represents to separate those that are being rescued from those that are lost. This excerpt Cletus Hull’s book, The Wisdom of the Cross and the Power of the Spirit in the Corinthian Church, is an exegetical study of First Corinthians 1:18-21.

What are some of the practical implications of a theology of the cross and the Spirit in the realm of healing and ministry? This excerpt comes from the final chapter of Cletus Hull’s book, The Wisdom of the Cross and the Power of the Spirit in the Corinthian Church.

The Wisdom of the Cross and the Power of the Spirit in the Corinthian Church: Grounding Pneumatic Experiences and Renewal Studies in the Cross of Christ by Cletus L. Hull, III (Pickwick, 2018).