A Band of Brothers and Sisters Who Refuse To Settle For Less

This is part 2 of answering the question: Why should I attend an ARC Gathering on the Empowering Presence of the Holy Spirit this year? Why should you attend? Why should you be intentional in inviting members of your church to attend? Because there is something powerful about gathering together with a band of brothers and sisters who refuse to settle for less than all God has for them. There is something powerful about gathering together with a band of like-minded brothers and sisters that raises our level of faith and expectancy. There is something freeing about being able to fully be who we really are with a like-minded band and not having to worry about “toning it down” or making apologies or playing theological word games for wanting more.

The Alliance of Renewal Churches is like a band of brothers and sisters. We are there to help one another stay focused on the mission at hand. We are there to stand shoulder-to-should, giving courage to one another as we engage in the great cosmic conflict of our age because courage has a relational component to it. We are there to pick one another up and carry each other through seasons of life that are challenging, discouraging, and painful. We are there to not allow one another to settle for less than all God has in store for us. We are there for one another because while alone we may be gifted, together we are a force to be reckoned with.

We can do none of this, however, without the empowering presence of Holy Spirit. He is the One who can transform us to be that band of brothers and sisters. He is the One who can bring healing to the broken parts of us, bringing forth wholeness out of our pain. He is the One who can set us free from strongholds we have run to and hidden in for too long instead of running to and trusting God. He is the One who can strengthen us and encourage us for the works God has called us to put our hands to. He is the One who can give us gifts to accomplish the tasks at hand and the fruit of character that make those gifts taste even sweeter. He is the One who can raise our levels of faith and expectancy. He is the One who can make us truly a team, not just a group of individuals who use team language. He is the One who can stir in us a holy boldness in place of a fleshly arrogance and sinful pride. He is the One who can impart to us a desire to lay down any and all selfish ambitions. He is the One who can stir in us a passion not merely to be leaders, but to be lovers of God who lead.

We need Holy Spirit. We need His empowering presence to have freedom to move in us and through us. This is one reason we will gather for the ARC Southwest (June 17-19) and Midwest (October 21-23) gatherings this year. We will gather to invite Holy Spirit to move in freedom and in power in our lives, in our families, in our congregations, and throughout the ARC. We will gather to invite Holy Spirit to truly make us a band of brothers and sisters who are there for one another, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, not allowing each other to settle for anything less than all Father God has for us. This is why we will gather and we will settle for nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else.

Why Should I Attend an ARC Gathering on the Empowering Presence of the Holy Spirit – Part 1

The theme for the 2010 ARC Southwest (June 17-19) and Midwest (Oct 21-23) Gatherings is: The Empowering Presence. We believe God wants to encounter us as we gather together with an experiential reality of the presence and power of His Holy Spirit. In the coming weeks I intend to write some postings on this blog site responding to the question: Why should I attend an ARC gathering on the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit? Today’s posting is Part 1.

In order to live fully into the destiny God has for us individually and corporately we must be experiencing the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit. I use the word, “experientially” intentionally. While every Christian has the presence of the Holy Spirit within them, not every Christian, not every Christian leader, is living in the power of the Holy Spirit. While we may have a theology of the Spirit, we do not always have an ongoing life experience of Him moving in and through us to continue the ministry of Jesus in the world today.

On the Alliance of Renewal Churches (ARC) website, under the posting of our non-negotiables we state: The ARC is a network in which the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit are celebrated, not merely tolerated. We are committed to fostering a radical dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

I like that statement. However, a statement does not reality make. We cannot settle for merely having a good theology of the Holy Spirit written down on paper or posted on our website. We cannot settle for giving lip service to the personhood and reality of the Holy Spirit; we need a real encounter, and multiple encounters, with Him. Theologian, Gordon Fee, writes:

"If the Church is going to be effective in our postmodern world, we need to stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and to recapture Paul’s perspective: the Spirit as the experienced, empowered return of God’s own personal presence in and among us, who enables us to live as a radically eschatological people in the present world while we await His return."

Fee also writes, “We too often treat the Spirit as a matter of creed and doctrine, but not as a vital experienced reality in believers’ lives.” Are you experiencing all there is to experience in your relationship with Holy Spirit? Are the leaders and members of your church? Am I? Are we really as fully yielded to God’s will in this aspect of our relationship with Him as we can be, and as He longs for us to be? Are we open to receiving and experiencing whatever He wants to do in us so He can do whatever he wants to do through us?

The stirring up of the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit is not just so we can have a “Holy Ghost feel good” experience. The stirring up of the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit in a follower of Christ is for the purpose of empowering us to continue the ministry of Jesus in the world today. God wants to empower us to continue speaking the words Jesus would speak and doing the things Jesus would do so that people can be saved, healed, set free, and empowered to live fully into their God-given destinies.

So why attend a gathering like the ARC’s this year? It is one way you can be intentional about restoring the power and presence of the Holy Spirit experientially in your life, not settling for merely holding to a theology of it. Coming to one of the ARC gatherings this year and gathering with like-minded brothers and sisters might just be one way you can say to the Lord, “I’m not willing to settle for anything less than all you have in store for me in my relationship with Holy Spirit.”

To register for the ARC Gathering in June, go to: www.robinwoodchurch.com. We'll see you there!

The Mary Prayer

I got some of you didn’t I? When you read the title of this blog posting you thought, “Oh man, is Mike going Catholic on us? Is he going to start asking us to pray to Mary?“

No, I’m not going to ask us to start praying to Mary; I am, however, going to ask us to start praying like Mary. Over a period of time God has been teaching me that I have become too adult-like in my faith in some ways that are not helpful or healthy. One of those areas is my prayer life. He has been teaching me through His Word and through encounters with young children like Anna Grace Sellers that He wants to restore child-like qualities to my life – particularly in my prayer life.

So, I took note as I read in O. Hallesby’s classic work, Prayer, when he referenced Mary, mother of Jesus, as an example for us to emulate in our prayer lives. Hallesby writes the following based on the account of the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee in John 2:1-11:

“Mary teaches us through her example that we do not have to try to help God fulfill our prayer...Notice what Mary says to Jesus. Just these few, simple words, “They have no wine.”…To pray is to tell Jesus what we lack. Intercession is to tell Jesus what we see that others lack…To most of us prayer is burdensome because we have not learned that prayer consists in telling Jesus what we, or others, lack. We do not thing that is enough. Instinctively we feel that to pray cannot be so easy as all that. For that reason we rise from prayer many times with heavy hearts, ‘Can God hear this prayer of mine? Will God heed my humble supplication? And how will he do it? Everything seems so impossible.’

…And when the answer is not forthcoming at once, we think that we must do something in addition to what we have done before God can hear us. Just what this something is, we are not certain of in our own minds. And this uncertainty causes that inner anxiety and worry which makes prayer so painful….And especially will our prayer life become restful when it really dawns upon us that we have done all we are supposed to do when we have spoken to Him about it. From that moment we have left it with Him. It is His responsibility then, if we dare use such a child-like expression. And that we dare to do!

Instead of our former anxiety and worry we will now often be able to experience a certain child-like inquisitiveness, having left the matter in the hands of Jesus. We will say to ourselves, ‘It will be interesting to see how He solves this difficulty.’”

Let us pray this year like Mary, and like children such as Anna Grace – shamelessly, persistently and expectantly (see Luke 11:1-13).

More Than Ever, Let This Be The Year!

While on vacation with my wife, Debi, I’m spending part of my coffeetime with Jesus reading a classic work on prayer by O. Hallesby. In it I read this morning the following:

“A child of God can grieve Jesus in no worse way than to neglect prayer.

For by so doing he severs the connection between himself and the Savior, and his inner life is doomed to be withered and crippled.

We go around at home and in the assembly of believers like spiritual cripples, spiritually starved and emaciated, with scarcely enough strength to stand on our own feet, not to speak of fighting against sin and serving the Lord.

I have sinned a great deal against my merciful heavenly Father since I was converted, and I have grieved Him a great deal during the twenty-five years that I have lived with Him. But the greatest sin that I have committed since my conversion, the way in which I have grieved my Lord the worst, is in connection with prayer, my neglect of prayer.

The countless opportunities for prayer which I have failed to make use of, the many answers to prayer which God would have given me if I only had prayed, accuse me more and more violently the more I become acquainted with the holy realm of prayer.”

May we in the ARC be known for, being a people of prayer; a people who are nurturing, not severing, the connection between God and ourselves. For this to happen, however, I must confess that my life in prayer needs to be transformed. Lord, let this be the year that it is. With the disciples, Jesus, I ask, “Teach me to pray.”

Will you join me in this adventure that we might become more than ever a prayer-saturated people? Let this be the year!

Ethics of the Dangerous Kind

My friend, and fellow ARC pastor, Graeme Sellers, exhorts us in his preaching, teaching, and writing to live as the Dangerous Kind - as Christ followers who are dangerous for the kingdom of God and a real threat to the dominion of the enemy. This is constantly before me as I read Scripture, and other books, now. So this week, as I am reading I come across the following which has to do with the ethics of men and women who would refuse to live complacent Christian lives, but choose rather to live dangerously for the Kingdom of God.

"The deeper difference between Jesus' ethic and that of the Pharisees was this: the Pharisees had an ethic of avoidance, and Jesus had an ethic of involvement. The Pharisees question was not 'How can I glorify God?' It was 'How can I avoid bringing disgrace to God?' This degenerated into a concern not with God, but with self - with image, reputation, procedure. They didn't ask, 'How can I make others clean?' They asked, 'How can I keep myself from getting dirty?" They did not seek to rescue sinners, only to avoid sinning.'

Jesus, in sharp contrast, got involved. He sought always and in all ways to help, to heal, to save, to restore. Rather than running from evil, He ran toward the good. And evil, in fear, fled. Look at Legion, the man under assault by a demon mob. Everyone else fears Legion, tries to banish him to the tombs. But when Jesus shows up, it's Legion who is afraid...

Jesus got close enough to unholy people for the spark of holiness in Him to jump. He took the tax collectors, the rough fishermen, the harlots, the demon possessed, and gave back to them dignity and life. He gave back to Legion his real name. The Pharisees avoided these people lest they were infected with their sin and overwhelmed by their evil.

The tragedy is that we have often preferred the ethic of the Pharisee to the ethic of Christ...The question Christ would have us ask is not, 'How will this or that affect my witness?' His question is 'What can I do to have effective witness?' The first question is rooted in the ethic of avoidance. But the second question is rooted in an ethic of involvement. With that question we're asking, 'How can I bring the salt and light of God's truth to bear on this life, this situation, this place? How can I cast out evil and clean up the place where it dwelt?'

'As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.' Jesus sends us as the Father sent Him. It means that we're to go in the same authority, with the same power, with the same heart, after God. It means we walk by the Spirit and become like Jesus from the inside out. The risk of avoidance is that in the end the one we avoid is Christ Himself."

By God's grace, let us live life like Jesus did, Beloved. Let us live life as ones who are dangerous for the Kingdom of God and a real threat to the dominion of the enemy; as ones who live out of an ethic of involvement, not avoidance.

The Danger of Self Deceit

I want to be more like Jesus. I really do. However, I also have a propensity - and I'll bet you do too - for self deceit. That's why I need the revelation Holy Spirit gives us, and a band of brothers and sisters who love me enough to help not get stuck in self deceit.

I came across the following quote on self deceit in a book I was reading recently. While it is specifically addressing sin and self deceit, it could also be speaking about our ability to ignore and deceive ourselves about the wounds of our past that are still influencing are present in unhelpful ways. What do you think of the following quote?

"Self-deceit is the unwillingness, even the inability, to face our own evil (or woundedness), and if we do face it, we can't accept the real reasons for it. Instead, we have a large repertoire of lies to tell ourselves to ease our consciences, to save face, to explain away...And here's the funny thing: The more sophisticated and educated we are, usually the more gullible we are. Solomon was reputedly the most knowledgeable man on earth. Perhaps because of that, not in spite of it, he was the most prone to self-deception...An educated liar, after all, has all the vast, complex repository of psychology and sociology to draw upon for his lying.

Like shyster lawyers, we can nimbly evade the bone-stark truth with a flurry of qualifications, technical maneuvers, semantic quibbles, procedural rigmarole, logic chopping, hair-splitting, murky jargon, fluff rhetoric, dodges, delays, diversions, revisions, aspersions. We pride ourselves on being able to see through every con man and pitchman, every quack and demagogue. We laugh derisively at the simple fools who fall prey to charlatans. We scoff at those who pay exorbitant sums for potions that promise to cure baldness (hey, that's hitting too close to home!), revive flagging energies, turn luck around. Laughing and scoffing at the fools, we meanwhile tell ourselves that sin (and woundedness) is something other than sin (and woundedness)."


Lord, please do not leave me, and my brothers and sisters, in bondage to self deceit. We have been called by you to be leaders for Your people and we know that our bondage to sin and captivity to old, unhealed wounds will eventually come out sideways on those we've been called to love and serve. Come Holy Spirit, through God's word, through spiritual gifts, through prayer and counseling, and through our band of brothers and sisters to set us free and make us more like Jesus. Amen!

A Call to High Level Commitment in Relationships

A Call to High Level Commitment in Relationships

I had the privilege recently of being asked by Pastor Graeme Sellers to preach at
Wonderful Mercy Church (an ARC church) in Gilbert, AZ. In praying and preparing
for the sermon, I believe the Lord impressed upon me to call all ARC leaders
and member churches to a commitment to live out relationships at the highest
level. Therefore, as the Director for the ARC, I am calling all ARC churches and leaders to a
commitment to live out our relationships with one another at the highest level
through the empowering and transforming presence of the Holy Spirit (see 2 Cor
3:18). I am calling us to this commitment because as followers of Jesus Christ, godly
relationships are not optional; they are a non-negotiable.

We do not have permission from Scripture to rationalize this away by saying that we are focused on doing God’s work, focused on the mission task He’s given us, even as we may be leaving a trail of damaged relationships in our wake. For you see, Beloved, for followers of Jesus: RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE TASK. Jesus Himself tells us this in John 13:34-35:

So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples (Jn 13:34-35).

How we live out our commitment to relationship with one another will say important things to others about who God is and about what He can or cannot do in our lives. If we cannot learn to live in right relationship with one another, we do not have much of anything important to say to a culture that is relationally broken, cynical and distrustful.
How we live out our commitment to relationship with one another can give others hope that through God’s grace and power there can be a different way, a better way to live; a way that is marked by unconditional love, grace, forgiveness, and trust, rather that unforgiveness, distrust, shame, and pain.

How we live out our commitment to relationship with one another can give others hope that God does intervene in the affairs of human beings and that He does have the desire and power to change us. The way we live out our relationships with one another can show people that God is able to set us free from old habits, unhelpful ways of thinking, and hurtful ways of responding and relating to one another. How we live out our commitment to relationships with one another speaks to the world around us. What is our commitment saying?

Beloved, moving forward together in a commitment to nurture and maintain relationships at the highest level is something that our enemy fears because he knows, that alone we may be gifted, but together we are a force to be reckoned with.

Because relationships are our task as followers of Jesus Christ, IT IS NOT SURPRISING THAT RELATIONSHIPS WILL BE THE VERY PLACE OUR ENEMY WILL ATTACK. Make no mistake about it, as followers of Jesus Christ you have one who loves you with a love that is unshakable and extravagant – you are the Beloved sons and daughters of God. But just as much as you have One who loves you, you also have one who hates you and schemes to steal from you the destiny God has for you (see John 10:10; 1 Peter 5:8; Eph 6:10-12). You and I have an enemy who wants to sow and provoke unforgiveness, bitterness, chaos and division in our relationships, because if he can succeed in this he can succeed in disrupting God’s purposes in and through us to continue the ministry of Jesus in the world today.

If our desire in the Alliance of Renewal Churches is to be an alliance where relationships are a commitment that we desire to live out at the highest level, then we can be certain that those relationships will be a target of the enemy - in our homes, in our churches, and between churches and leaders. One author rightly reminds us:

“The enemy is ever drawing us to find fault with one another. Interestingly, the Greek word for ‘demon’ – means, ‘to disrupt, to rend and tear.’ The enemy attacks our minds and seeks to rend our relationships through faultfinding, often with and by those closest and dearest to us…In all manners of ways, the enemy seeks to estrange us from one another, perpetually attempting to sow discord and division.”

Beloved, let us do everything we can to zealously guard and protect our relationships with one another. Let us be ruthless in guarding against the strategy of the enemy - to deceive us with accusing thoughts of one another in order to lull us into hanging onto unforgiveness toward each other. The Apostle Paul told the followers of Christ in Corinth:

“Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes (2 Cor 2:10-11).”

To hang onto unforgiveness is to make a choice to put ourselves in jail and to turn ourselves over to the torturers as Jesus says in Matthew 18. To hang onto unforgiveness is to surrender our freedom as Paul reminds us in Galatians 5:1 where he exhorts us, “For Freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” To hang onto unforgiveness, Beloved, is to choose to settle for less than all God has for us.

Living with unforgiveness toward one another is never spiritually permitted, though the enemy will attempt to deceive us into believing that it is, even using Scripture taken out of context as a rationale and justification for doing so. Let’s reject that and instead, let us have the courage to own our stuff in a ruptured relationship; let us humble ourselves and be the first one to say, “I was wrong. Please forgive me.” Let’s not settle for less, Beloved. Let’s do spiritual warfare and cut the enemy off at the knees by walking in love, grace and forgiveness toward one another.

If you are a member of the ARC, I am “calling you out,” and calling myself out at the same time. I am calling us out to live out a commitment to relationships at the highest level this year. I am praying that God will grace us with a humility that the world and the devil sees as a weakness, but that God sees as a strength. Let us be amongst the most humble Christian leaders in our cities, our regions, and in our country. Let us be leaders and church members who will dare to take the first step and say to another, “I was wrong, please forgive me.”

If we will do this, we will see ruptured relationships restored, and we will see our witness to a relationally hungry world increase. Living out our relationships at the highest level will make us dangerous for the Kingdom of God and a real threat to the dominion of the enemy.

In God’s Unshakable and Extravagant Love,

Mike