Pardon Me While I Repent
People love it when preachers get in trouble. Newspapers and TV newscasters always like to play it up when some well-known preacher runs off with his secretary or the church offering.
Well — I haven’t done either one of those things, but I still need to repent anyway. What I have done is worse.
After 25 years and more of pastoring up here in the Klamath–Trinity region of northern California, I got caught not doing something, and now I have to own up to it.
A couple of weeks ago I read something for the first time in the Bible. Oh — I “read” it before, but never really “observed” it. It’s in the Letter to the Church at Corinth (chapter 4) and the Apostle Paul is rebuking some religious teachers in that city.
Paul had actually helped start the Church in Corinth. He’d been their first teacher. Then he left to start churches in other cities. After Paul left Corinth, different people started pretending like they were “bigger and better” than Paul. They began to put him down, claiming that their teaching was better than Paul’s teaching or even that some other teacher (like “Apollos”) was a “better” teacher or apostle than Paul.
Once in awhile, someone would say, “You better watch
Here — let’s read it from the Bible in 1 Corinthians 4.18–20:
“Some of you have become arrogant, thinking I won’t be coming back to you. But I am coming to you very soon, if the Lord is willing. Then I’ll find out not only how these arrogant people are teaching, but I’ll see what power they have. For the Kingdom of God is not simply cheap talk, but Power.”
There it is. That’s my sin. Still, you might ask, what exactly is this sin?
My sin is — posing as an “instructor” in the things of God, but doing it with lots of “words” instead of lots of “power”.
Let’s put it this way. Ever hear people say, “He’s all talk and no walk”? It means a person has a great line of gab, but doesn’t back up what he says by his actions. I’ve hired people who’ve told me what wonderful workers they are, only to have them cost me a lot of money and do really weird and worthless things.
Reading this verse about preachers with “cheap talk” without demonstrating “power”, makes me wonder, “What’s the ‘power’ I’m supposed to be demonstrating?” We can get an idea of it by looking elsewhere in the New Testament for some examples of this thing called “power”. I want to know if I have “power” or just a gift
One possibility is found in Luke 10.17-19. It tells a story about Jesus and His followers: “And His disciples returned to Him rejoicing, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons obey us through Your Name.’ And Jesus answered them, ‘When you cast out the demons, I saw Satan fall like a bolt of lightning from heaven! Open your eyes! I’m giving you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you!’”
Hmmm… Jesus has given me “power” — just like Paul says I should have — and He calls it the power to crush demonic powers under my feet.
Am I “crushing demonic powers” under my feet here in northern California where I live? Or am I just gabbing about “spiritual things”?
Another possibility about what is “power” comes from the apostle Paul himself. Near the end of his letter to the Church at Rome, Paul writes that he has “fully proclaimed” the gospel of Jesus Christ “by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit.”
The New Testament book
I’m sorry, but however I read the Scriptures, I’m guilty. Paul says that there are all these “spiritual instructors” talking about God, but that he coming back to Corinth soon to examine these “talkers” — not by the words they speak but by the power they demonstrate — because “the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” I’d hate to be in that group being examined by Paul!
The four Gospels show us how God filled Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. Then Jesus says to all His followers “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.” [John 14.12] And there are other biblical ways to “show the mighty power of God” — such as in supernaturally transformed lives, bondages broken, broken hearts healed, etc.
Still, I’m guilty. No — I haven’t run off with the church secretary or the church offerings. Yet as I “weigh myself” in this matter, it seems to me that there have been more “words” in my life than “demonstrations of power”.
Jesus said that “these signs will follow” everyone who believes in Him: “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 suppose the real issue here is not whether I can do miracles. It’s whether I believe Jesus — and therefore quit talking so much and instead focus on demonstrating the powerful Life and Love of Jesus in this community!
© 2008 by Emil B. Swift
“KingdomScribes” is a ministry led by Emil and Michele Swift. Their website can be found at KingdomScribes.net/
The Swifts have been called by God to minister together uniquely to the Body of Christ and share a revelatory teaching ministry - gifted in the Spirit to teach mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven in a simple, direct fashion. Emil and Michele are “Kingdom Scribes” whose hearts are to raise every Believer into living and ministering in the power of the Spirit and the Word as “scribes of the Kingdom”. A passion to engage the hearts, souls and spirits of their listeners has led the Swifts into a teaching style characterized by its lack of religion, rituals and church jargon. They minister in words easily understood by those to whom they speak.
Tags: bible, Christian, church, Equipping, Kingdom of God, love, morality, New Wine, peace, Prophetic, teaching