Category: Holy Spirit

The Importance of Humility, Openness, and Generosity toward the Holy Spirit in Reading Scripture

We need to be ever humble before God and ever humble in our reliance on our own understanding

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In my last blog post, I wrote about the crippled woman Jesus healed in the synagogue, to the synagogue leader’s chagrin (The Danger of Being Too Set in Our Interpretation of What God Requires and What He Is Doing). The synagogue leader thought Jesus shouldn’t be working/healing on the Sabbath, so he instructed the crowd that they could come any other day of the week to be healed, but not on the Sabbath. (Luke 13:10-17)

It seems ridiculous to us, but who knows what doctrines, dogmas, understandings, and ways of thinking we have that get in our way of recognizing God and what He is doing in our present time. If we shrug our shoulders at the seeming insignificance of the Sabbath concern, we will miss the weight of this encounter.

The keeping of the Sabbath was a sacred tradition that goes all the way back to Genesis, when God rested after the six (6) days of creation. (Gen. 2:2-3) Moses passed on the commandment directly from God when the Hebrews were delivered out of Egypt: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work….” (Ex. 20:9-10)

The Sabbath was reinforced by Moses as part of the covenant relationship established by God with the Israelites. Many centuries before Jesus, God told Moses:

“Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy. Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.” (Ex. 31:13-14)

Can you see why the first century Hebrews held so tightly to their Sabbath doctrine? It was a commandment; it was sacred; it was an intimate sign of their covenant with God going back many centuries; and the penalty of violating the Sabbath in the Mosaic law was death (or being cut off from the people).

For that reason, the Jewish leaders added strict protocols to the observance of the Sabbath to be sure that no one violated it, even inadvertently. Thus, when Jesus did something highly irregular, like calling a crippled woman forward in the synagogue in the first place, and then healing her, the synagogue leader was legitimately concerned, in his mind, about a violation of that sacred commandment.

Yet, in his concern for not offending God and for observing law, he failed to recognize God in the flesh standing right before him! Ironically, the Law that was intended to point the Hebrews to God got in the way of the him recognizing God.

God commanded them to keep the Sabbath at the risk of death and exile! Thus, they believed they couldn’t be too careful! What are we to make of this?

One clue is in the details of the response by Jesus. He called the religious leaders hypocrites because they untied their livestock and took them out to get water on the Sabbath. (Luke 13:13) If they believed that caring for their animals on the Sabbath was ok on the Sabbath, they should have recognized that healing a person was ok also.

“Yes, but God commanded!”, the synagogue leader might have said. I suppose Jesus might have asked in return, “Commanded what?” The synagogue leader might have protested further, “But we cannot be too careful! These things are not to be taken lightly. We need to err on the side of caution, lest we step over the line!”

These things should not be taken lightly, no doubt, but the synagogue leader obviously missed something of essential importance. What he missed, I think is better understood in the context of some global criticisms Jesus expressed toward the religious leaders of his day (which likely are as applicable today as they were then):

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matt. 23:23-24)

The Law and all of its rules were not meant to be the end all be all. Paul says the law was a guardian or tutor to lead us to Christ. (Gal. 2:24) Perhaps partially, to help us recognize our need for Christ in our inability to keep the Law. Perhaps, partially, to provide rituals by and through which a relationship could be established with God. Perhaps, in other ways as well.

The point is that the Law was never meant to define the totality of God’s relationship with people. What God wanted, which is what the Law was intended to teach, was for the Hebrews to love Him and for them to love each other.

Jesus said as much when he said the Law can be summed up succinctly in two phrases: Love God, and love your neighbor.

This was not a new concept when Jesus spoke those words, though. Jesus was once asked, “What is greatest commandment?”, by a teacher of the Law. When Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor, the teacher commended Jesus for the answer, demonstrating that the teacher of the Law knew the answer, himself. (Mark 12:28-34)

When the teacher of the law commended Jesus for the answer, Jesus told the teacher that he answered “wisely” and, therefore, is “not far from the kingdom of God.” (Mk. 12:34) In other words, the key to unlocking the “mystery” of the Law is to understand that it is meant to teach us to love God and love our neighbors. If we fail to see that, we are missing the boat

When we hold too tightly to our doctrinal constructs to the point that we miss the ultimate point, like the synagogue leader did, we fail to understand God; we fail to recognize God when He is acting in our midst; and we risk being on the “outside” with God, though we may be good, religious people in every other way.

Jesus said,

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Matthew 6:22-23

How do we apply this? How do we make sense of the things God has commanded us without missing the forest for the trees? How do we take a lesson from the synagogue ruler? I am no theologian, but I have some thoughts.

Continue reading “The Importance of Humility, Openness, and Generosity toward the Holy Spirit in Reading Scripture” →

The Critical Difference between the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Fruit of the Holy Spirit

The Corinthians had spiritual gifts and were using them, but they were not exhibiting the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

kevingdrendel4 Comments

I wrote recently about the way Paul dealt with the messiness of the church in Corinth – Why did Paul Go to Corinth with a Demonstration of the Spirit’s Power? Paul observed that some people want signs before they will believe, and other people want “wisdom” (to be persuaded by intellectual argument). The Greeks fell into the second camp.

I have been reading 1 Corinthians in light of the recent happenings at Asbury University. Some people call it a revival, and other people question whether God was even involved. Perhaps, both ends of the spectrum are not quite right. Some people are quick to think that signs are evidence of God’s stamp of approval, and other people have are quick to box God out of anything that doesn’t fit their theology.

In a previous article, I shared what I see in 1 Corinthians that is relevant to the subject. Because Greeks desired to be persuaded by argumentation, Paul came to them with nothing more than the simplest Christian doctrine (“Christ and him crucified”) in order to rely on a “demonstration of the Spirit’s power”.

If Greeks demanded wisdom, and Jews demanded signs, I am left to conclude that God doesn’t give us what we demand. (Though, He actually gives is both if we are willing to acknowledge it.) He doesn’t dance to the tunes we play for Him:

“To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:

“‘We played the pipe for you,
    and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
    and you did not mourn.’

Matthew 11:16-17

The Pharisees completely missed God incarnate standing before them because he didn’t meet their expectations. He healed people on the Sabbath; he hung out with sinners; he didn’t come from Bethlehem (or so they thought); he challenged them, instead of affirming them, and their theology was too rigid to account for him.

Some people observing the Asbury phenomenon concluded it couldn’t be a move of God because: there was no preaching (though there was); it happened outside of church; the denomination of the University ordains women; LGBTQ students may have led worship; people laughted and spoke in tongues; and similar things I heard people say. The lack of preaching, though, was a common critique.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he says went to Corinth with the strategy to refrain from preaching anything other than Christ and him crucified – the most fundamental of all Christian doctrines. Instead of relying on great preaching, he came to them with a “demonstration of the Spirit’s power” so that their faith would not rest in the persuasive powers of speech. (See the article linked above.)

It’s not that Paul came to them with no message. In the same way, it’s not like no message was preached at Asbury. The Asbury “revival” began with a message in the chapel on a Wednesday morning. Students and faculty got up front throughout the more than two week continuous “chapel” to read from scripture and give short messages, but the messages (the preaching) was light – just like when Paul went to Corinth.

The issue at Corinth wasn’t that the Greeks were demanding signs of God’s presence. They had the spiritual gifts and were using them (though not very well). Their primary issue was their lack of unity and quarrelsome boasting and disagreement about who they followed. They were divided and argumentative.

After identifying the problem of their lack of unity and two potential errors (a demand for “signs” and a demand for “wisdom”), Paul diagnosed the core problem with the Greek Corinthians – their desire to be persuaded with speech. Thus, he concluded that more speech wasn’t going to solve the problem. He needed a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that their faith would not rest in the persuasive words of men.

This is what I addressed in the last article, but I want to move on to the second error, now. Different expressions of the body of Christ tend toward different errors. If the Corinthians erred in relying too much on persuasion, the Jews (Paul admitted) erred in relying too much on signs – demonstrations of God’s power. (Though, ironically, the miracles performed right in front of the Pharisees were explained away!)

I find it instructive that Paul did not exhort the Corinthians to abandon the spiritual gifts. No, he encouraged them to desire the spiritual gifts! At the same time, he instructed them to put the spiritual gifts in perspective and use them for the mutual benefit of the whole body.

The Corinthians lack of unity and order was evidenced not only in their argumentation; it was also evidenced in the haphazard and selfish ways they used the spiritual gifts. Paul doesn’t tell them to stop using the spiritual gifts, just as he doesn’t tell them to stop preaching. Instead, he urges them to follow the “most excellent way” – emphasizing faith, hope and love, but above all love

I imagine we might say of the Corinthian church in those days that they were experiencing an “outpouring” and the “moving” of the Holy Spirit because of “the demonstration of way they “moved” in the spiritual gifts (to use a modern term). Not only were they “moving” in the spiritual gifts, but Paul came to them with his own demonstration of the Spirit’s power.

Some segments of the modern church would say the Holy Spirit was really moving in that church. Maybe they would have even called Paul’s visit a revival, an outpouring, or an awakening.

Here is the thing that strikes me, though, as I read Paul’s letter in light of the Asbury “revival”. While it may have seemed like the Holy Spirit was “moving” in their midst, the Corinthian church was being torn apart by quarrelsome arguments, tensions, sexual sin, broken interpersonal relationships, and strife. Though they were “moving” freely in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, they were lacking in the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

What does that mean for us?

Continue reading “The Critical Difference between the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Fruit of the Holy Spirit” →

Of the Holy Spirit, Truth, Tares, and Wheat at the Asbury Revival

“[N]o one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

kevingdrendel3 Comments

I listened to Voddie Bauchaum summarize what is wrong at Asbury recently. The video title is (Wow) The Asbury Revival is NOT of God. His summary is similar to other skeptical takes I have heard, so I will summarize his summary here. (You can also watch the video and hear what he says for yourself.)

Bauchaum said he listened to four testimonies of students who attended the “revival”, and they “confirmed exactly what I figured was going on.” It’s a small sampling size, but I have no reason to believe he didn’t hear what he heard.

His conclusions were more in number than his sampling size. First, he said, “This event is nothing more than strange fire.” (The whole event.) For proof, he offered what the students said in their testimonies: One student admitted said he experienced a “fit of laughter”; another student claimed his mother began speaking in “unknown tongues”. (If Bauchaum supplied a summary of the other two testimonies he heard, I missed it.)

The phrase, “strange fire”, is a reference to Leviticus 10:1-3 an incident in which two priests put incense into censors and offered “strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not.” (KJV) Those men were consumed by fire from the Lord, the passage says. Therefore, Bauchaum is comparing the people at Asbury to the two rogue priests who presented offerings to God they were not instructed to give and were killed for it.

Clearly, Bauchaum is suggesting that “this event” is not of God; it is “unauthorized” worship; and God views it like He viewed the priests who offered strange fire and were killed for it.

As further proof that this event could not be from God, he said, “A lot of this took place out of the church!” He added that “the university ordains women for ministry, so there is a lot wrong here.”

He went on to explain to say that he was looking for a man of God taking the pulpit to open the Bible and preach the word of God, “and it never happened.” Though he didn’t say it, I am left to assume that revivals must happen only inside church buildings, and then only when a man of God preaches the word of God from a proper pulpit.

I note that he didn’t do much research if he only heard four testimonies, as I found testimonies all over the Internet, including many statements by professors and school administrators. The happenings at Asbury took place over roughly a two-week period, so there was a lot of footage to see and many people who were there talking about it.

I also note that the chapel service began with someone preaching, but, then, I don’t know if he was “a men of God”, and I don’t recall whether he used a pulpit. (Sarcasm alert.)

Bauchaum warned that Satan tricks people with music. As anecdotal proof, he recounted his own experience attending a Pentecostal church a few times when he was a new believer. He recalled feeling emotional, on the verge of tears, because he felt like God was moving, but he determined it was “nonsense” after reading the Bible for himself for several weeks.

To his credit, he said that he “matured really fast” during during those few weeks. (I am not being sarcastic now. These were his words, not mine.) He said he desired to hear someone preach the Word of God because he was hungry for preaching.

To be fair, I can appreciate. I have been in his shoes before when all I wanted was to hear a meaty sermon that dug deep into God’s word.

Bauchaum recalled an old Paul Washer sermon in which people were moved by the preaching of the word, not by the music. As proof that this is the way it should be done, he quoted Romans 10:17: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (No issue there.)

I don’t know if Bauchaum is a cessationist (someone who believes the “gifts of the Holy spirit” have ceased), so I don’t want to make any assumptions. If he is a cessationist, then it would not matter if people had limbs grow back: a cessationist has already determined God doesn’t do those things anymore.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, I can admit that his concerns might be just as validly expressed by someone who is not a cessationist. His concerns do suggest a need for some circumspection, but I have greater concern over his conclusions than any of the spectacle he described that took place on the Asbury University campus for over two weeks in February of 2023.

Continue reading “Of the Holy Spirit, Truth, Tares, and Wheat at the Asbury Revival” →

Why did Paul Go to Corinth with a Demonstration of the Spirit’s Power?

“My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power….”

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Ruins of Ancient Corinth in Peloponnese, Greece

Over the couple weeks that I was paying attention to what happened at Asbury University in Wilmore, KY (and other places now too), and considering the people criticizing it or cautioning us about it, I have prayerfully considered the matter. I have written about the “Asbury revival” a handful of times, so I am not going to rehash what I have written.

I continue to mull over the seeming positive development of 20-somthings worshiping, publicly confessing sins, praying for each other, and exalting the name of Jesus while people have been critical of what was happening and questioning God’s involvement in it. At the same, I have been drawn in my daily Bible reading to the concern Paul expressed in most of his letters for unity in the body of Christ.

This focus that has been impressed on me as I read the Bible and meditate on it predates the Asbury thing by many months, but it is directly relevant to it. The lack of unity in the American Church stands in sharp contrast to Paul’s emphasis on unity in the body of Christ. Our lack of unity has been publicly demonstrated in the vitriolic responses to the “He gets us” commercials aired during the Super Bowl and now to the Asbury “revival”.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is all about unity and order in the local body of believers in Corinth. At the same time, the Corinthian Christians seemed to lack no shortage of what we might call the “outpouring” or “movement” of the Holy Spirit. None of Paul’s letters deals more with “the spiritual gifts” than this one.

I need to comment that the free exercise of the spiritual gifts, and God moving in peoples’ hearts and minds do not necessarily go hand in hand, as we will see, Paul also did not discourage the Corinthians from using the spiritual gifts.

This is the problem, though: while the spiritual gifts were demonstrably evidenced in the Corinthian church, they Corinthians were not producing an abundance of the fruits of the Spirit among. This lack of the fruit of the Holy Spirit was the problem in Corinth.

As a key indicator of that lack of fruit, Paul focused on their quarrelsome cliques: one group followed Paul, another group followed Apollos, and other groups of people claimed to follow Cephas, or simply Christ. That local body was being torn apart by arguments over who they should follow and other aspects of the Christian life, like whether they should be eating food sacrificed to idols. Meanwhile, they were ignoring other problems in their midst like sexual sin, relational issues, and other things.

They exhibited the spiritual gifts abundantly. Those exhibitions of spiritual gifting might be called today a “movement” or “outpouring” of the Holy Spirit, but the fruit of the Holy Spirit was lacking. Whether the Spirit was “moving” or people were simply exercising gifts given by the spirit are two different things.

I have experienced that incongruity myself. A lack of harmony between a hyper focus on the spiritual gifts and a lack of unity, faithfulness, maturity, and holiness in the local body of Christ has caused many to pull back from Charismatic and Pentecostal forms of Christian expression. Me included.

We sometimes fail to appreciate the difference between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We think that a demonstration of the gifts of the Holy Spirit means that we are blessed by God, and everything we do is approved by God, but that isn’t necessarily true.

If those two things went hand in hand, Paul would have had no issues with the Corinthian church, because the Corinthians experienced a liberal “outpouring of the Spirit” characterized by prophecy, speaking in tongues, miracles, etc. Though the Corinthian church was demonstrably Charismatic (or Pentecostal), it was woefully lacking in unity and personal holiness.

Having acknowledged that, we need to notice that Paul’s issue with the Corinthians wasn’t (primarily) their misuse (or ineffective use) of the spiritual gifts. The more serious concern was their prideful, boastful, quarrelsome lack of unity and toleration of sin in their midst.

Something else occurs to me that I hadn’t noticed before, and this is the focus of my writing today. The Corinthians were Greek, of course. Paul famously says to the Corinthians that Greeks demand wisdom, while Jews (his people) demand signs.

Both of these things are forms of error, but the Corinthians, being Greek, were particularly prone to err along the lines of their particular, cultural bias. They valued discourse, argument and persuasive oratory. Thus, Paul said,

“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.”

1 Corinthians 2:1‭-‬5 CSB

Paul says he did not come with brilliance of speech or with persuasive words. He came with “a demonstration of the Spirit’s power”. As I will show below, Paul’s focus is on the Greek tendency to err in demanding “wisdom”, not the Jewish tendency to demand “signs” (though the Corinthians experienced no shortage of “signs”). This is interesting to me in the light of the Asbury University phenomenon.

Continue reading “Why did Paul Go to Corinth with a Demonstration of the Spirit’s Power?” →

Asbury University and the Manifest Presence of God

I am cautioned, at the same time, by the words of Jesus to the woman at the well that we need to worship God in spirit and truth.

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I don’t recall where I obtained this capture, but I am grateful for it.

I woke up thinking about the phrase, “manifest presence of God”. I am not sure where I even heard that phrase. I had not thought of it in ages, but the phrase popped into my head when I slipped from my dreams last night into a brief state of consciousness.

I would say that the so-called “Asbury revival” is an example of the manifest presence of God. What happened there was completely organic. It began after Chapel ended. it began after a very ordinary sermon on a very normal Wednesday morning.

It wasn’t planned or orchestrated. There was no leader. Some students simply lingered. They did not want to stop worshipping. They began praying for each other. Then someone felt the need to repent openly for sin. Others did the same.

One thing led to another. At the same time, students who left the chapel began to make their way back to the Chapel for reasons they could not express. Other students heard that Chapel hadn’t ended and began coming to see what was going on.

Administrators found out something was going on, and they investigated. They recognized that something special was happening, and they had the wisdom to give their blessing to it, not to take over leadership of it, but to let what God was doing simply unfold.

The ongoing Chapel was student led from the beginning. Most of the time, the students leading worship were off to the side. People playing instruments came and went. No one was the center of attention – only Jesus who was lifted up in reverent, tender worship one moment and exuberant praise in the next.

Administrators stayed in the background and supported the students. They protected them when outsiders came flooding in, and they prayed with them. They kept Christian celebrities from taking over the stage and they kept news media out. The University President described it this way:

“What we have experienced since that Wednesday morning has been a current of immeasurable goodness flooding our community and quickly moving into other regions of the world. Words fail any effort to communicate the abundance of experiences and stories that will leave us forever changed.”

The routine chapel service that started on February 8, 2023, was officially ended on February 23, 2023, fittingly on the National Day of Prayer.

God’s manifest present was demonstrated in the repentance of sin, the deep and abiding sense of God’s peace, love, forgiveness, and healing. People spoke of physical healing and deliverance, but it wasn’t front and center. There was little to no spectacle.

The atmosphere in the Chapel was reverent and convicting, but uplifting at the same time, and Jesus was at the center of it. God God was exalted, and Jesus was lifted up as people confessed their sins to one another and to God, repented with tears and weeping, found forgiveness and new joy, prayed for each other and worshipped God. All without a program, or a plan, or a person directing what happened.

Many people would say this was a revival. I don’t know, but it was an example of the manifest presence of God. God simply “showed up”. Not that He was not already present; rather His presence was manifest. To individuals and to all who worshipped corporately.

As I think about the idea of the manifest presence of God, I am reminded of Psalm 139. We can go nowhere that God is not present. We cannot escape him. If we ascended into the heavens, or even to hell, He is there!

He is intimate with us. He knows our innermost thoughts and the intents of our heart. He can even number the hairs on our head, and He knows the words we speak before we even say them.

God is present with us, but his presence is not always manifest. We do not always feel the presence of God. Sometimes, we go long (weeks, months or years) with no sense of the presence of God in our lives. Sometimes, we have trouble even giving mental assent, if we are being honest, to the fact that God is present with us.

When we do feel or sense or see evidence of the presence of God in our lives, we are encouraged, inspired, comforted, and renewed by it. Those times when we are aware of God’s presence can sustain us through the longer, wilderness times. We need to know God in this way.

Jesus is the Bread of Life and the Living Water! What bread that we eat does not satisfy our hunger, and what water that we drink does not quench our thirst? How much more should the Bread of Life and Living Water fill us up and sustain us?!

Continue reading “Asbury University and the Manifest Presence of God” →