Growing up , my perception of God was that He loved me, but that he was distant and that he hoped I wouldn't embarrass him. So, I kept my sins as private as possible and worked hard on managing them. Whether or not I felt like a "good Christian" was based on how I was doing with that effort, how faithful I was attending and participating in church activities, how I was doing with having a consistent "'quiet time" with God, and how much I was sharing my faith, which amounted to occasionally telling someone how they could become a Christian...like me. Over the years, several verses of Scripture haunted me. One is found in Matthew 7:21-23 where Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' Reading that made me ask the question, "Do I really know Jesus? Am I really one with Him or am I just going through the motions of religious practices?
Another one is John 14:12, when Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." Gosh Jesus, you raised people from the dead! How could that be? Then there are those verses at the very end of Mark's gospel where Jesus says, "And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well." I certainly wasn't seeing all those signs and wonders following my life, and to be honest, I kept my distance from anyone who said they saw them following theirs!
One day something clicked, and I don't know exactly when or how it came about, but something became clear regarding what a disciple really is. Jesus took on apprentices and taught them to do what he did. He even sent them out on a test run before he went to the cross, giving them his authority. Remember what they said when they got back. "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name!" Jesus had a process for making disciples. He lived with the people and said this: Watch me. Now you! And it wasn't just, "Here's how you tell other people how to get saved." That was part of it, but there was more. It was, "Here's how to establish my kingdom on earth. Here's how to return things to the way I intended them to be when I created the earth." Brokenhearted people were made whole. Captives were set free. Blind people could see again. Lame people walked. Dead people were raised. People burdened with shame were unburdened and walked with eyes full of life and love and passion! When Jesus talked about his upcoming death and resurrection in John 12:24, he said this: "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." Jesus died, was resurrected and sent his Holy Spirit in order to multiply himself and his presence over all the earth.
So at some point in my story over the last several years, I embraced as truth, that Jesus wanted to re-present himself through me and all Christians in a very literal way, and I decided to reject as false, the teaching that the Holy Spirit doesn't still work as He did in Acts. I began to ask Father to allow me to see and experience Christ embodied in a very powerful and literal way. Something has begun. In the past two weeks, I've seen Jesus, with my own eyes or the eyes of my brothers and sisters in Christ, deliver a young man from shame from sexual abuse he received as a boy and from the way he acted out because of that abuse. I've seen Jesus heal a man from a torn rotator cuff. I've seen him cast out foul spirits that were tormenting a woman. I've seen him set people free from bondage to pornography. I've seen Jesus express "words of knowledge," (things that would not be known if God hadn't revealed it) that showed people that their Father saw the pain and bitterness they had carried for so long, and then saw Him pray for them, touch them, and release them from it. Last week as I prayed about how Father wanted me to lead our gathering this past weekend, I had no peace when I went to prepare a message or pick out songs. All I sensed Him saying was, "Watch this." So I started out our gathering with these words, "I find myself in new, blessed and exciting territory today. I have no plans! No message. No songs picked out. Just some questions to you in whom Christ's Spirit dwells: What is it that is on your heart to say? What is it that is on your heart to do? What is it that you want and is on your heart to ask for? Then I sat the microphone down. We then had two hours of testimony, praying for one another, listening to God and speaking truth into one another's lives. We watched Jesus heal, encourage, hug, laugh, eat, even fish! Jesus is so good! He is alive! And He is here! And He lives through us!
Several weeks ago, we celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I just wanted to share with you that Jesus is more alive than I ever realized. He is able to minister to every need we have. His mission is to reconcile us to our loving Heavenly Father, to restore our broken hearts to our true identity as a children of God, to renew our minds with life-giving, freedom bringing truth, and then to release us to re-present Him to the world. And He is willing to express himself through us, no matter who we are and no matter what we have done. We are loved! We are forgiven! We are His!
