The Miracle of Ordinary Things!

I just returned from a GREAT conference on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! My friend Jonathan has summarized the conference well on a recent blogpost which can be found here! I agree with him wholeheartedly on the term “exciting celebration of the Gospel”, and am proud, yet again, to be a member of the Worldwide Church of God, where focusing on the basics is a GREAT STRENGTH of our denomination – NOW – due to our encouraging and transformational journey with Jesus!

I participated in most things that the conference had to offer and am still a little bleary-eyed from those late night/early morning Gospel Talk sessions 🙂 . However, having a little time to think through my experience at the WCG Gospel conference, and in contrast to another “gospel” conference that many others (including the media and many blogs) have been bringing to my attention lately, I can’t help but be struck by a contrast in presentation.

The “gospel” conference that the media and and many blog posts have been addressing a lot is the somewhat controversial “revival” services happening in Lakeland, Florida under conference speaker Todd Bentley. If you are wanting my basic take on the “revival”, here it is:

1.) Todd (and all of those listening to and following him), is included in the Life the Father shares with the Son, in the Spirit, and in Whom we are all included in Jesus Christ.

2.) To be qualified as a Gospel event I personally think that a Gospel proclamation should actually proclaim the Good News of Humanity’s Inclusion and Adoption into the Relationship of the Father, Son and Spirit in Jesus, in some clear, focused and intentional way to the audience. They should be bombarded with this Proclamation at every turn!!

3.) I sure pray that if people are actually being kicked, punched, and abused in ways that seem strange to me, that the Lord Jesus is indeed healing them, because they need his healing mercy more than ever after such abuse!! 🙂  I also believe that Jesus heals out of his mercy, compassion and love for us and NOT because of what we do or do not do. Jesus heals as he and the Father decide to, NOT simply because we believe in him or not! What human being shares in perfect faith or belief besides Jesus anyway??? NO ONE! Mark 9:24, Gal 2:20 KJV!

That being said, what I appreciated about the WCG conference in contrast to the Lakeland Revival is that it properly emphasized that we don’t have to go around believing that the Father has to be doing dramatic and “miraculous” happenings like healings or resurrections of the dead before we can have assurance in Him and know that we are all already included in His Relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit!

In contrast, much of the enthusiasm around the Todd Bentley happenings is centering around the false idea that you can ONLY know FOR SURE that things are TRULY of God because of supernatural and miraculous experiences people are having. Of course, that in turn has a way of making people think that God must not be with them because such miraculous things aren’t happening to them or to their churches. That kind of thinking then leads people to thinking that they don’t have the faith that God “requires” and they begin a herculean effort to muster up more faith through various spiritual disciplines OR, at worst, decide to give up on God entirely because they know they can never have the perfect faith that pleases Him! Yikes! (For more clear thinking on biblical faith in the Light of Who Jesus Christ is, see this post – QUICKLY!!!!!)

Quite frankly, and ironically, too much emphasis on the “miraculous” causes us to miss the miraculous!! Ha-Ha!! 🙂 I suggest that in going to see God in the miraculous, much of the crowd in Lakeland is completely overlooking the miracle of their Inclusion in the Life of the Triune God in Jesus that has been given to them and all of humanity, by grace, before they were born! That is something no one short of Jesus could have ever pulled off – and everyone falls short of Jesus Christ! Rom 3:23!

I am sure that many families are attending the revival, but I bet most parents there are overlooking the miraculous fact they are sharing in the Life of the Triune God in their fatherhood and motherhood. They are wanting to see huge miracles in the healing of a body and forgetting the greater miracle of their children who once were not bodies at all!  Children with bodies who are now relating with mom and dad in the miracle of day-to-day and “ordinary” life! From nothing to something!!! Can ANYONE outside the Triune God create and sustain this “ordinary” LIFE???? No! John 1:3-5, Colossians 1:15-17.

Many Lakeland revival attendees say they can see God in the miracle of a deaf person suddenly being able to hear (and Triune God is the ONLY ONE WHO does heal!), but they miss the miracle of the deaf person being able to walk up to the stage on their own two “ordinary” feet (when was the last time you designed a pair of human feet that were TRULY ALIVE and not prosthetic or drawn on paper??!!!). They may witness a “miracle” punch to the face that appears to heal cancer but miss the miracle of Jesus serving up “ordinary” fruit punch for his thirsty children in and through each other in our everyday, ordinary lives, homes, fairs and amusement parks!! When was the last time you designed and created food and drink with no prior physical or spiritual material to work with???!!!! Ha-Ha! What a laugh, hunh?! 🙂

 

I am sure you see the point by now! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TRULY ORDINARY THING!! EVERYTHING IS MIRACULOUS AND EXTRAORDINARY!! Can you create something out of nothing as the Triune God has done?! If not, then you can REALLY only stand with me in the awe that comes along with the utter helplessness of being able to even attempt such a thing, and in the awe that comes with embracing that the Father, Son and Spirit CAN do such a thing!! Wow!!!!!

If human life has become ordinary, it is ONLY because our perspective is distorted and we have lost sight of Who Jesus is and Who we are in Him! And, of course, we have lost our perspective! But thank God that in Jesus Christ humanity has had a proper perspective of God and self restored, and the Holy Spirit is working mraculously in our “ordinary” lives to help us see with Jesus’ exact sight!

I thank God for any truly good and merciful thing he is doing through his people at Lakeland, but I am especially thankful for the Good work he is doing through the people of the Worldwide Church of God in helping me and others to see Jesus everywhere, and in everything, as the Light of the World! John 8:12! There is a deeper and more assuring Truth to be known in the healing that Jesus Christ performed on all of humanity that, in my opinion, beats a kick in the face with a biker boot for healing, anyday!! 🙂

You can check out Todd Bentley here. You can check out a more full picture of the Gospel truth here.