Rejection, Revival and the Power of the Spirit
Introduction
This Sunday is the Day of Pentecost, and in preparing a sermon I have been pondering what is impeding the coming of the Spirit in power on us like on that glorious day. Why, after so much praying and seeking is there no revival? (Some friends who were ministers in revival settings, Elcho Island and East Malaysia, testify how the Spirit came suddenly and unexpectedly.) In his classic Why Revival Tarries, evangelist Leonard Ravenhill argues that “The only reason we don’t have revival is because we are willing to live without it!…Revival comes as a result of a cleansed section of the Church, bent and bowed in supplication and intercession….The price of revival is travail.” But where is the prayer, the brokenness, the seeking after God today? This diagnosis is a valid historical explanation of our deficiencies but is not sufficiently Christ-centred to satisfy me. The Lord has been speaking to me about theological truths in the last few days. Given there are probably no assemblies like those in the early chapters of Acts in Perth, when the visible fruit of the Spirit was, “all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:44 cf. 4:32-37), what are we missin? There are congregations with excellent Evangelical preaching, plus churches where the presence of God is vital and dynamic, but something is missing which was dynamically present from Pentecost onwards in the life of the Early Church. The following explanation is one answer to what is lacking.
Read Your Heart
An outstanding characteristic of Old Testament prophecy is the difficulty of knowing who is speaking, the prophet or the Lord e.g., Jer 9:1-2. This ambiguity flows from the prophet carrying inside himself the divine burden of concern (Jer 23:21-22; Mal 1:1). In Jesus the Word made flesh who is the Prophet of God (Deut 18:15; Acts 3:22; 7:37), the two are one, what Jesus feels God feels (John 10:30). This makes a genuine Christian prophet a “spiritual barometer” of the heart of God. As such, something happened within my experience the other day, which when explored in prayer, has opened a testimony of Jesus (Rev 19:10) for the Church. I was deeply troubled in my heart from what I sensed in a phone call from a non-believer. I experienced it as a personal rejection, but when I started to dwell on my miseries, I knew I needed to pray. As I prayed, I started to sing, and sensed an answer coming because the person the Father was hearing petition him was Jesus. Going deeper into this testimony I sensed the Spirit speaking to me about a truth far more profound than my narrow personal experience, that as our mediator with God Jesus is “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28; Eph 1:23; 1 Tim 2:5).
Jesus is the Centre
We often sing “Jesus Be the Centre” (https://vineyardsongs.com/songs/be-the-centre/) as if this was something we had to make happen. God’s objective truth however is that he has made his Son central to all things, so that the challenge is to recognise his sovereign “pre-eminence in all things” (Col 1:19). St Augustine applied this truth thoroughly to the relationship between Christ and the Church. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelled among us; to that flesh is joined the church, and there is made the whole Christ (totus Christus), head and body.” (On the Epistle of John 1.2). To say that the Bible is Christ-centred means that it is also Church-centred, for Jesus and his Body make one new reality. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:12-13). This organic unity expounds various biblical statements. Christ declared, “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’” (Matt 25:40, 45), Acts 9:5 records these words of the Lord, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 5 “Who are you Lord?”…“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” John puts it in this way, “as he (Jesus) is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). It was dreadfully egocentric of me (Gal 2:20) to feel that I was the central person being rejected (John 15:18). Sadly, we often live as if the head of the Body (Eph 5:23; Col 1:18; 2:19) has been decapitated!
Receive the Spirit
Whilst personal feelings of rejection “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Eph 4:30) by denying Jesus his central place, we need to see that when we ask for the Spirit in Christ’s name it is the same as Jesus asking. This was Peter’s explanation for Pentecost, “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he (Jesus) has poured out this (on the disciples) that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” (Acts 2:33). The apostles had complete faith at Pentecost because they knew the Father answers Jesus when we pray “in my name” (John 14:13-14 cf. 1 John 5:14-15). Trusting in the reality of our complete union with Christ assures us of the gift of the Spirit from heaven as our Head promised, “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”” (Luke 11:9-13). Multiple times across the decades (http://cross-connect.net.au/a-prophetic-picture-for-perth/) the Lord has assured me that revival will come to Perth when the Church is at rest. It is time to rest in Jesus and his finished work that has healed us in him of all our rejection reflexes. “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.” (Isa 65:24 cf. Matt 6:8), “whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24).
Honouring the Pentecostal Pattern
As Luke-Acts is a two volume work we must pay attention to how the Gospel ends before Pentecost fully arrives: the disciples’ hearts were opened with expectancy as “they worship Jesus with great joy, 53 and were continually in the temple blessing God” (Luke 24:52-53). Blessing God is not a passive condition state but a realisation that we are complete now and forever in Jesus, “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.” (Col 2:9-10). This means Christian ministry is not about telling people how to become what they are not yet, but always lifting the Church up to who they already are in Christ (Eph 1:3; Col 3:1-4; Heb 12:18-24 etc.). The implications of this realisation are profound.
Conclusion
For example, I have stopped asking the Lord for a new ministry to replace me at our local church, the Lord has heard our many petitions, instead I have entered into a season of thanks for whom he is sending (1 Thess 5:18-19). Let’s keep Jesus our exalted King as the centre of all our concerns, and the power of his kingdom, with “all things”, will be sent and received, in the Spirit (Matt 6:33). This is the secret of the Pentecostal miracle.