We cannot be thankful for something until we have thought about it. You cannot thank the Lord without thinking about what Christ did for you in His death, burial, and resurrection. God redeemed and reconciled you for the purpose that we too would reconcile and forgive, as well. That’s something to be thankful for!

Image: Kevin Turcios

When we are thankful, this action keeps our priorities straight. This thinking helps us trust in the Lord and allow Him to be God in our lives. The Bible says in Psalm 22:3 that God “inhabits the praises of the people.” Our thanksgiving to God cultivates an atmosphere which moves us forward in life.

Next Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in America. Let us spend time thinking about who God is and how good God has been to us. Then let us thank God for what He has accomplished in 2024 and will do in 2025!

Pastor Cletus

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.

James K. A. Smith, associate professor of philosophy at Calvin College and executive director of the Society of Christian Philosophers, engages the subject of hermeneutical philosophy and presses the boundaries outward to make room for a distinctly pentecostal perspective. He examines philosophical ideas from Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer, laboring to remind the reader of their foundational concepts on language and communication. In this regard, Smith divides the book in two major sections by first exploring the classical pentecostal worldview and then by exploring communication theory, in order to propose how the phenomena of glossolalia might expand Christian philosophy. The first three chapters will be readable and comprehendible for the college graduate, but the second three chapters wade into deep waters of hermeneutical philosophy, which may disorient many of the uninitiated or novice philosophers. Smith concludes the book in an open-ended manner, inviting conversation on his newly proposed conceptual framework. Herein, we recognize that Smith’s targeted audience is the academic community rather than the average person in the church. It has been said that academics take simple ideas and talk about them in complex ways. Thus, in this review we will attempt to do the opposite, to unpack Smith’s difficult words and restate them in simple ways.

In the first half of this book, Smith offers five ways to define the pentecostal worldview. The first of these is fairly straightforward; pentecostals are open to God doing new things. Pentecostals regularly expect a prophetic word to start with the phrase, “Behold, I am doing a new thing” and pentecostals anticipate that God will not always do things as He has done in the past. Second, pentecostals recognize spiritual realities in every area of the natural world. Angels and demons are active participants in our everyday life. Demonic influences motivate people to do evil. The Holy Spirit guides the believer to do good. Third, pentecostals know that the work of Jesus on the Cross accomplished both the salvation of the soul and the restoration of the body; by his stripes we are healed. Pentecostals read the birth-of-the-church Pentecost story in Acts 2 and the healing of the lame man in Acts 3 as being examples of the normal Christian life. Peter did not lead the lame man to salvation and leave him lame; he healed his body then brought him to salvation. Thus, pentecostals expect both supernatural and natural blessings. Fourth, pentecostals place high value on salvation and miracle testimonies. These stories build faith and validate spiritual reality and blessings from God. They are foundational to faith and they take first place in theological understanding. Theological epistemology may not be clearly written, but the pentecostal worldview includes space for “I know that I know that I know.” Fifth, pentecostal philosophy is oriented toward doing the right thing for the poor, the needy, and those who have never heard the gospel; mission is taken seriously.

In the second half of this book, Smith explores theories of languages and philosophies of interpretation. For the most part, these chapters labor to build a theoretical foundation that the final chapter can build upon. Once Smith has established his philosophical basis, he will finally say what he has wanted to say from the start. Speaking in tongues, be it an exhortation with an interpretation or a private prayer in tongues, is more than simply strange words. Smith’s challenge to pentecostal philosophers is to consider the question “What does this prayer do?” over what do these strange words mean (144). He opens the door for philosophers to consider that “tongues” DO something regardless of whether they make any sense or not. It is here that Smith’s purpose becomes clear and exciting; in the arena of language theory there must be a legitimate place for unknown “tongues” to communicate something beyond the rationality of known words. He presses the practical question (What do tongues do?) to the harm of the theological proposition question (What do tongues mean?). “Tongues” effect and affect God. Likewise, “tongues” open other people to an expectation of the miraculous.

Douglas Jacobsen, Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), xvi + 418 pages, ISBN 9780253343208.

This is a book long overdue, and places us all in debt to Douglas Jacobsen, Distinguished Professor of Church History and Theology at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. While a large volume, it is nevertheless very focused and precise. On the one hand, Jacobsen limits his survey of early pentecostal theologies to those articulated during the first twenty-five years or so of the movement. On the other hand, Jacobsen is the consummate narrator and historian of theology in these pages, describing early pentecostal theologies with immaculate detail and allowing the theologians he is presenting to speak with their own voices, all the while keeping his own theological perspective effectively muted. He hopes in the concluding chapter that “this book will help contemporary pentecostal theologians and church leaders engage each other in constructive ways, reminding them that a vigorous diversity of opinion has been part of the pentecostal heritage from the very beginning of the movement” (p. 355). This work accomplishes the author’s objectives admirably, in this reviewer’s opinion. Let me mention three reasons why.

First, as Jacobsen notes, is the very important reminder regarding the diversity of pentecostal theologies even among the earliest thinkers of the movement. The six chapters present twelve theologians: the “original visions” of Charles Fox Parham and Richard Spurling (later influential in the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee); the Azusa Street era theologies of William J. Seymour, George Floyd Taylor (later of the Pentecostal Holiness Church), and David Wesley Myland (a convert to pentecostalism from the Christian Missionary Alliance); the Finished-Work theology of William H. Durham and the Holiness Pentecostal theology of Joseph Hillery King; the Oneness theologies of Garfield T. Haywood and Andrew David Urshan; the Afrocentric and anti-racist theology of Robert Clarence Lawson; and the “boundary” theologies of independent evangelist Fred Francis Bosworth and mystical thinker Esek William Kenyon. The plurality of early pentecostal theologies should be evident simply given this listing. Jacobsen’s gift to contemporary pentecostal theologians and church leaders is to provide a coherent narrative demonstrating the interconnectedness of these various ideas and systems of thought without compromising their distinctive contributions and perspectives. Here, as in the day of Pentecost, we have a plurality of voices giving testimony to the wondrous workings of the Spirit of God.