March 31, 2015
Relax
Five people went forward for
prayer and the laying on of hands. While both of those things happened, I
sensed the pastor would have liked for at least one of them to be slain in the
spirit. Taking one person at a time the pastor mixed prayers for healing with, “Relax. It’s okay, just relax.” The pastor’s assistant braced
himself behind each person ready to catch them if, or when, they collapsed. As
though to encourage a physical reaction the assistant was instructed to put
his hand on the individual’s back, or shoulder. When the individuals remained
erect, others in the audience were invited to come forward in prayer support. I
can find no biblical reference that ever tells believers to “just relax.” On the
contrary, we’re told to put on our armor, “And pray in the Spirit on all
occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert
and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Eph 6:18 NV).
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Gail;
-----The darkness of this world is perilous. Even though we are alive in the Lord and indwelt by His Spirit (of Whom Bill O’Reilly was talking on his program last night,) Paul assures us that we yet see dimly as in a mirror. Inside us our regeneration has happened. Our spirits are made alive and joined with His. Yet our hearts and minds are a vast, desert-like, expanse for our spirit’s regenerated effect to cross. We don’t just automatically feel it.
-----Still, people want the reality of their regeneration validated. People are not good at gathering the large amounts of widely scattered information resulting from the realities God’s Word describes. They are worse at assembling various bits of information into the picture a completed puzzle conveys. Their minds are highly capable for the task, but life demands more mental time spent on survival than allows for thorough investigation and tedious contemplation. So, rather than careful research into the dimness for what brightly evidences the Word of God’s reality expressed amongst the seemingly infinite traces of man’s activities, people go straight to the mystical experience for spiritual validation. The more mentally lazy a society becomes, the more it emotionally tampers with mysticism.
-----Yet an easier validation sits all around them. Everywhere in this dark world are places dried up and thirsting for the reality of God’s truth, not for academic or intellectual realities, but practical and living realities. The Bible holds up a complete array of behaviors and attitudes both generated by resignation to the Lord and conducive to more. Amazing things happen when these are taken onto the streets in practice. Evidences of not only His reality, but also of His nearness and involvement in our very mundanity begin to show up in things that happen as a result of other things done with scriptural accord.
-----It isn’t that the mystical type gone forward to see if he’ll get slain in the spirit tonight does not take the Word’s advice to the streets of his life. He does. But he looks to the irrelevant circumstances of mysticism for some, if not much, of the validation God wants to give us through simple, practical obedience.
-----It’s like Christ was here to do His Father’s work. The things which validated His reality were effects of that work, thousands fed by a few fish and bread loaves, lepers healed, demons cast out, even people raised from the dead, including Himself. He didn’t need a moany-groany preacher to put a hand on his forehead and push Him over. He just needed something to do for His Father. Then He did it with purposeful class.
-----And that’s all we need. If we ever did it just to its sufficiency, there would be more mountains in the sea.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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