Tag Archives: bible

Discipleship and witness, Knowing God

Bread from Heaven (5): The Food that endures to Eternal Life

Leave a comment

“Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John 6:27)

We have seen how Jesus used the sign of the loaves and fishes to model a fundamental principle of His economy, which is, as the couriers sang way back in 1978 (thanks, for the link, CA!) that “God cannot put His riches into hands already full.” In addition, this sign demonstrates the management structure of the Kingdom of God: through Jesus, the bread of Heaven is passed on to the disciples for distribution. “Freely you have received, freely give,” He said when He commissioned the disciples to “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.” (Matt 10:8). We receive in order to give.

Sent to multiply
I think we can sometimes come to Jesus in gratitude and love for making a way at the cross for us to approach the Father, but then run there to soak up Father’s love and forgiveness without looking back to Jesus to ask Him what He wants us to do with it. But Jesus stands between us and the Father not just to represent us to Him, but to represent Him to us. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you,” He says in John 20:21, and when He is referring to Himself as the Bread of Life, He says: “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” (John 6:57) As His life on earth was the Father’s life, so our life on earth is His life in us. And life, in the natural order of God’s creation, has one purpose and one only, which is to bear fruit and multiply. Everything that grows exists to reproduce itself. Just as the first natural man and woman were told to “go forth and multiply,” (Genesis 1:28) the same mandate rests on spiritual man:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” (John 15: 1-6)

We have one purpose in Christ, and that is to bear fruit. We have the life of Christ in us so that we can impart it to others. It may be through salvation, through healing, prophesy or other spiritual gifts, it may be through material or financial blessing, it may be through all of these and more (1 Corinthians 12:11), but however the Spirit of God wants to use us, we live to give. Just as Jesus gave the loaves and fishes to His disciples to give to others, so we come to Him for “the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you” in order to share it with others. And in doing so, we find life for ourselves.

Feeding on Jesus
Central to this passage is the idea of “feeding on Jesus.” What it means to eat His flesh and drink His blood is so crucial to the Christian faith that the Church split over its meaning in the 16th century, with the Council of Trent in 1551 solidifying the dogma of transubstantiation and declaring that the elements of the Eucharist became the actual body and blood of Jesus. As a Protestant, I don’t hold to this doctrine, so this leaves me free to ask the question: what did Jesus really mean?

I think we can find strong clues in this passage, and if we examine them in the light of a few other sayings in John’s gospel I believe we can move towards an understanding of what Jesus may be saying to His Church. The starting place is the relationship between Jesus the Son and God the Father. Looking at verse 57 again, He says; “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” What does it mean to “live because of the Father?” One answer is of course that this is true in a very real way: the Son of Man was actually begotten of the Father. God sent Him from Heaven by creating a natural body for Him on earth. As Hebrews 10:5 says, “when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me.” However, although this is true, I don’t think it’s what Jesus meant by living because of the Father. If He says that we will live if we feed on Him, just as He lives because of the Father, I think we have to look and see if He too lives by “feeding on the Father.” If He does, it will complete the equation which He uses more than once, that says “as it is between my Father and Me, so it is between me and you.” (e.g. John 20:21 above, also John 5:21, and John 15: 9-12.)

Living in the Vine
And He does. The loaves and the fishes are not the first time Jesus refers to food as being more than a meal for the stomach. After the meeting with the Samaritan woman, He says to His disciples: “I have food to eat of which you do not know… My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (John 4: 32-34) He says again in John 6:38 “I came down from Heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the one who sent me.” Jesus feeds on the Father by doing His will. In fact He did nothing else: “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19) Because this was completely true, He could say to Philip: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (John 14:9) Jesus feeds on the Father by doing His will all the time, so He only lives because of the Father. Nothing in His life is directed by anything other than the Father’s will. And so it is true for us: if we feed on Him by doing His will, we will live because of Him. In doing so we abide in Him ((John 15: 1-6  above) We live because of what the eucharist remembers (Luke 22:19) but we don’t live because we eat it. Only He has the words of life (John 6:68) but we don’t live because we devour them: we live because we do what He says. As Jesus did nothing without the Father, we can do nothing without Him (that equation again). And when we do what He says we remain in the vine, the life of the vine within us multiplies, our prayers are answered (John 15:10 “You will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you”)  and we “bear much fruit.”

Servants of Christ
Jesus pointed to this with the parable of the unprofitable servant (Luke 17: 7-10) when the disciples asked Him to increase their faith: “So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.” There are many references to our status as servants of Christ, such as Ephesians 6:5, 1 Cor 7:22, and 1 Peter 2:16. I think Col 3:23-24 is particularly rich in meaning, (I have written about it recently in “Heart and Soul, Doing Everything for the Lord”): “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” Ephesians 2:10, which I’m sure I quote more than any other verse in the Bible, tells us that “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (NIV) As it was with Jesus, our food is to do the will of the One who sent us, and to complete His work.

So we come back to our opening reference, “Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John 6:27) A transaction took place at the cross: we exchanged our lives for the life of Christ, which we received by the grace of God alone. But this is only His part of the transaction: our side is the manner of our response. We respond in love and worship, of course; but Jesus makes it clear that love is more than a feeling, and worship is more than singing: “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.“ (John 14:21)

God’s Seal
Jesus puts the food that endures to eternal life into our hands when we respond to His grace with our faithful obedience. He tells us that He can give us this bread because the Father has set His seal on Him. As we have seen, He gives it to us so that we in turn can give it to the world. Again we see here the “as with me, so with you” equation, because God’s seal on Jesus came in the form of a dove when the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the Jordan, and we too have received the same seal through Him: “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory”. (Eph 1: 13-14) It is by the Spirit that we receive the life of Christ, and it is by the Spirit that we impart it. Peter wrote: “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 4:10-11) God’s seal on us isn’t just a promise of our future inheritance: it is the mark of our authority and empowering to do the works that Jesus did, and greater. (John 14:12)

So we give out our bread with the ability that God supplies, handfuls feeding thousands. Those who operate in prophetic or healing ministry know what this looks like. A line of people, maybe two or three deep, maybe even more, depending on the size of the meeting, have all responded to an altar call and have come forward for ministry. Like the disciples standing there with a handful of crumbs you see the hopeful faces, all looking to the Lord to receive something from Him through you. Maybe you have a few crumbs of a word; maybe nothing at all. But you know Jesus is there, like that day on the hillside, so you look to Him, empty-handed, because that is all you can do. Then as each person comes forward for prayer, He puts fresh bread into your hand, and you see God’s abundance flow in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’ll finish with a story of how this worked out in a taxi recently, and it is particularly relevant here because it features the dove. A good way of keeping the mindset of serving Christ is to quite simply ask Him this: “Lord, have you got any jobs for me today?” Anne (my wife) prayed this while she was in a taxi not long ago, and felt that she was being asked to share her faith with the asian taxi driver. Wondering how to start the conversation, they drove past a church and she commented on the architecture. That proved to be the opening that the Lord had provided, and soon the conversation turned to spiritual matters. The driver said that he had given his life to Jesus as a young man many years ago, had been prayed for to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and had a real experience of the presence of God. He went home and told his parents, and they said: “Did you see the Dove?” to which he answered “No.” They said “It’s all rubbish then. You were just imagining it. If you didn’t see the Dove, it wasn’t the Holy Spirit.” Disheartened, He believed them, and went back to his old life without giving Jesus any further thought. But God had a work prepared beforehand for Anne, and He wasn’t letting the taxi driver go. She explained that the Dove had been specifically for Jesus, and that his experience of the Holy Spirit was real. She prayed for him in the taxi, and the Holy Spirit came on him again. When she got out of the taxi, the driver jumped out as well, ran round to her, and gave her what she says was the biggest bear hug she had ever received in her life.

“Lord, I’m your servant. Have you got any bread for me today?”

Living by Faith

Bread from Heaven (4): God’s Economy

2 Comments

“He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.”

It’s a much taught-on topic, but we cannot move on from the sign of the Bread of Life without considering the fact that the miracle happened in the hands of the disciples, not just through the hands of Jesus. For those who walk by faith Jesus is waiting with provision for the needs of the multitude, saying: “Take this, and give it out in my power.”

Riches in Glory
Imagine what it felt like for the disciples to have a small chunk of bread and a little bit of fish in their hands, to break pieces off, and see it just reappear in their hands, like water coming out of a tap. I wonder what it looked like? What it felt like? An unending flow of provision from Heaven pouring onto Earth by the Spirit to meet every need, in abundance. 2 Cor 9:8 comes to mind: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” Count the “abundance” words in this verse: all grace, abound, always, all sufficiency, all things, abundance, every good work. Seven times in one sentence, the Holy Spirit spells out just how sufficient are the riches in glory according to which our God will supply all our needs. (Phil 4:19)

So why can it so often feel that we are behind the door when the abundance is handed out? We can bring any number of spiritual “reasons” to why our need can seem to remain no matter how much we tell God that we are believing for His sufficiency, but I think we can find a key in James 4:3. “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James is not one to pull any punches. Does he mean that God is a Killjoy and doesn’t want us to have any pleasure? If God made all things for His pleasure (Rev 4:11), then surely we get to share in some of it? ! Tim 6:17 tells us that God “gives us richly all things to enjoy,” so it is certainly in His will that we have pleasure in our lives.

Pleasures and Priorities
The whole of 1 Timothy 6:17 says this: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.” It’s not that God doesn’t want us to have “things to enjoy;” but in this verse we see that He wants to have the pleasure of giving them to us Himself, rather than see us try to by-pass His will for our lives and help ourselves to the things that we want. It’s a matter of trusting Him to Know what’s best for us, rather than asking for our inheritance like the prodigal son and spending it on carnal foolishness.

But it’s also a matter of priorities. It’s when we seek first the Kingdom of God that “all these things” are given to us. It’s when we give, that “pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men pour into your lap.” (Luke 6:38) God’s economy is the reverse of the world’s. When we live as servants of Christ (which we are: 1 Cor 4:1, Col 3:24) our responsibility is first to Jesus: what does He want us to do with what He has given us? Like the unprofitable servants in the parable (Luke 17:10) our job is to do what we are told, and it’s the Lord’s job to reward us. He puts the loaves and fishes into our hands for us to distribute.

When I’ve read this story in the past I’ve tended to focus on the multiplication aspect: the boy’s lunch becoming food for the crowd, and all that we can learn from that. The teaching that I have listened to or read has tended to have the same emphasis, and the twelve baskets left over have been a bit of an aside. I’ve come across references to them being symbolic of the twelve tribes, and I’ve seen the instruction to “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost,” (v. 12) as referring to the theme expressed in v 37, where Jesus talks about gathering “all that the Father gives me.” But what I haven’t seen so often (if at all?) is that this is quite simply a demonstration of God’s economy in practice.

The Kingdom Equation
I see it like this: Jesus gives a visible handful of resources to His disciples, with the instruction to distribute what they are holding to the needs He has shown them. What they see in their hands is ludicrously insufficient, but what they need to believe and see in the Spirit is Philippians 4:19 and 2 Cor 9:8. When they obey and step out into the crowd, Jesus fulfils His part of the Kingdom equation, which, broadly expressed, is “His abundance always equals our need.” So far so familiar. But once the ministry is over, there are twelve baskets of fragments that weren’t needed by the crowd to gather up. And they may well have a symbolic and spiritual significance: as with all of the Word, there are many layers to every detail. But I think there is a more concrete and immediate application to this part of the story: twelve baskets, twelve disciples. One basket each. They began with crumbs, which, like the widow of Zarephath, (1 Kings 17:12) they shared out; and they ended up with plenty, pressed down, running over, poured into their laps.

We know God’s promises are true, but I think there is more to receiving God’s abundant supply than just knowing the words and declaring them. Jesus Himself tells us why: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11: 28 NIV) In these days of crumbling world systems and collapsing international order we are increasingly going to find ourselves in the place where Jesus is our only source of supply. And this isn’t just so that we can keep what He gives us for ourselves: it’s so that we can feed the hungry crowd with it first.

Christian Life, Pursuing Love

Heart and Soul: Doing Everything for the Lord

1 Comment

“Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3: 23-24)

What  does Paul mean when he instructs us to do things “heartily?” I like the NKJV, but in this instance the translation doesn’t do justice to the depths of the Greek meaning. We think of heartily as being “full on,” sincerely, genuinely, warmly, enthusiastically, vigorously; sometimes completely or thoroughly. However the Greek word used here is the noun Psyche, usually translated as “soul,” and it’s used in the genitive case which indicates possession ( a random fact I remember from doing Latin at school 60 years ago!), so it means “of the soul,“ or “Belonging to the soul.“

Peter writes: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.” (1 Peter 1: 22 NIV) Paul’s words in Colossians 3:23 are an instruction that calls for obedience. To obey the instruction to do everything “heartily“ means that we apply our whole purified heart to whatever we are doing. The heart of a born again child of God is the new heart that our Heavenly Father has given us, the heart of flesh on which He has written His law (Jeremiah 31:33). Peter doesn’t separate “obeying the truth“ (and coming to faith in Jesus) from “sincere Love of each other. ” In other words, the very purpose of the new birth which, by the grace of God, is what purifies our souls, is to direct our new hearts towards loving one another deeply, “from the heart.”

This brings us back to the original verse from Colossians, in which we are instructed to do everything “heartily.” We are to put “heart and soul” – new heart; purified soul – into everything we do, and we do this “because we serve the Lord Christ.” Jesus told us to “love one another as I have loved you.“ We serve the Lord by loving one another: what Paul says to us through his letter to the Colossians is, quite simply, to do everything from a heart of love, because in doing so we are serving the King of Love every minute of the day, and are therefore fulfilling the purpose for which He created us anew.

“Let everything you do be done in Love” (1 Corinthians 16:14), “whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17) and Colossians 3:23 above are all the same command. Paul reminds us more than once “to put off” the old ways of the flesh that we were born into, and to “put on” the new ways of the Spirit. If you are of a similar vintage to me, you will probably remember the old Steppenwolf song, “born to be wild.“ Indeed we were. But we were born again to love.

And here’s a practical tip to help you check how you are serving the Lord: put a reminder on your phone to come up at any time of the day, asking: “Am I doing what I am doing now heartily?” I wonder what my week’s score will be out of seven …

Knowing God

The Wings of the Morning

Leave a comment

The Clouds
The Lord said: “Look at the clouds. They are full of water, and they are being blown along by my wind, sometimes gently, sometimes fast. But they are moving, they are always moving, just like I am always working, and they change shape as they go. The wind blows where it wishes, and you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. I want you to be like these clouds, lifted high into heavenly places, blown along by my spirit, ready to go where I am blowing, ready to change as you feel my breath, carrying nothing except the water of my spirit which I will cause you to release onto the dry earth where and when I say. Do you see clouds rolling along the ground? No. And so you must let go all that will hold you down, every weight, and let me lift you into the place where you will be blown in the direction that I choose to be moulded by my spirit, releasing what I give you upon the Earth.”

The Air Balloon.
“Lord,“ I said, “My hand reaches down and grips the roots in the soil. Will I be able to let go of the worldly and carnal things that sometimes it seems that I hold so tight? Can I be lifted as you say, or will I stay here below, gripping onto the things of the world?

“Yes,“ He said. “You won’t be able to help it. You are attached, because I have attached you, to my air balloon. And as I rise up into high places, I will take you with me, and you simply won’t be able to hold on because the pull of my presence will be so much stronger than the pull of the ground.”

The Beauty of the Lord
“Consider the beauty of the natural world. From the light reflected in the small liquid Diamond of a teardrop to the grandeur of the mountains, the freshness of a leaf in spring, the rumble of a distant waterfall, the leap of a gazelle, the wings of a seagull. Were not all these things made through me? All that you can see, hear, and feel was made through me. So in me is all the splendour and variety of the natural world, for it has all come out of me. Can I not draw you unto me?”

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
It is high, I cannot obtain it.

Where can I go from your Spirit,
or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there,
If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning,
Or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there your hand will lead me,
And your right hand shall hold me.

(Psalm 139: 6-10)

Knowing God, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Bread from Heaven: 3

Leave a comment

And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. (John 6:11)

He knew what He would do
In our attempts to bring up our children to say “please,” the parents among us might well have said at times: “And what’s the magic word?” However in the Kingdom it’s not please, it’s thank you. Jesus didn’t ask the Father to multiply the loaves and fishes; he thanked Him for them. This miracle, along with its “twin“ where the 4000 are fed in the accounts of Matthew and Mark, is one of only three occasions in the New Testament where Jesus gives thanks to the Father. The Greek word used for giving thanks is eucharisteo, and Jesus uses it when He feeds the multitude, when He thanks His Father for always hearing His prayers at the raising of Lazarus, and at the last supper, when He gave thanks for the bread and wine.

Eucharisteo: We use the same Greek word ourselves when we remember the cross at the Eucharist, and for me, this is the key to understanding much of the significance of this miracle. Andrew looked at the loaves and fishes with eyes of flesh and asked: “What is this among so many?”, but Jesus looked with the eyes of the spirit and saw the riches in glory that would meet the need of the multitude above all that the disciples could ask or imagine. He could see the limitless creative powers of heaven, and He knew that “all that the father has is mine,” (John 16:15) so it is no surprise that John’s account of the miracle tells us that “He himself knew what He would do.” (John 6:6)

In everything give thanks
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul exhorts us to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.“ (Philippians 4:6) We know that Jesus had direct access to the Father’s provision because of who He was, and there are no barriers to our faith in that regard. But it is much harder to believe that we have the same access to that provision, because we know who we are as well. We can, and do, believe that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, that in Him we are seated in heavenly places, and that all things are possible through Him; but we also know that we have only experienced the boy’s family picnic when faced with a multitude, and not the feast.

When Jesus gave thanks at the feeding of the 5000, I don’t think He was thanking His Father for the loaves and fishes in His hand, but for the provision that was in heaven. Demonstrating what He told His disciples in Mark 11:24, He believed He had received it, gave thanks for it, and it was done for Him. His Father passed the food to Jesus, and He passed it to the disciples to give out.

God wants us to give thanks in everything. Whether we are faced with abundance or lack, and whether or not we are petitioning heaven for something, we are to be thankful at all times. Paul expresses this sentiment in his letter to the Romans:

“… He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and He who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us die himself. So if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:6–8).

Our Inheritance
As I have mentioned, the only occasion outside of feeding the multitudes and giving thanks for the bread and the wine at the last supper, was when Jesus thanked the Father for hearing Him at the raising of Lazarus. His Eucharist there was more about His relationship with the Father than what He was about to do. Our constant thanksgiving to God is not for what we do or don’t eat – or do, or receive -, but it’s for a relationship with Him which we can indeed be thankful for in all things. We can be thankful to Jesus every moment of the day for the fact that we are His, and what we have is His. But more than that, amazingly, what He has is also ours:

“And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham‘s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”(Galatians 3:19)

“And because you are sons God has sent forth the spirit of His son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!“ Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son than an heir of God through Christ.” (Galatians 4:6–7)

We are heirs of God through Christ. We have an inheritance to be forever thankful for. Just as everything that the Father has belongs to Jesus, everything that Jesus has is ours in Him. Of course this does not mean that my neighbour’s house, or wife, or goods belong to me because they are His: the key phrase is “in Him.” “In Jesus name” is not just a phrase that turns a request into a prayer, but it’s the declaration that what we are asking for in prayer is something that we are requesting on His behalf because He has told us that He wants us to have it, whether it’s to accomplish His Kingdom purposes through us or for us. Whatever we are doing, we have an inheritance to be thankful for, and which is at our disposal all the time we are walking alongside Him. What is His is ours. If I am sitting at the dinner table with my wife and I ask her to pass the salt, she is not going to question my action: the salt on the table is a shared possession. Of course she is going to let me have it.

Paul makes this clear in his first letter to the Corinthians:

“Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come – all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)

Just as Jesus is the transition from earth to heaven for our spirits, He is also the transition for us from heaven to earth for our inheritance. So whatever the loaves and fishes or the starving crowd may represent, what do we have available to meet the need? Jesus can make our lack into His abundance if we remember to thank Him for our inheritance. Pass the salt, please, Lord. Thank You.

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Pursuing Love

Bread from Heaven: 2

Leave a comment

Make the people sit down
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says that what matters most of all is “faith working through love.” So here we are on the mountainside. We have kept in step with the Spirit; we have lifted our eyes with love, we are aware of how God has led us to and provided for this moment, and so we believe that Jesus wants to meet the need that is now before us. Even though He knows what He is going to do, we don’t. What next?

Jesus says, “Make the people sit down.” Some miracles require preparation, and that preparation has to be in obedience to what the Lord has asked us to do. The disciples could not see with their natural eyes what might happen next, but they got their instructions and complied with them. Like the unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10), they simply did what they were told to do. And more than that, they had to do so with authority. 12 men had to exercise crowd control on 5000, many of whom had their families with them, and all of whom were ravenous and will have wanted to be first in the queue for whatever goodies Jesus was going do dish out. We have probably read and heard the story many times, but if you imagine the scene and do the maths it’s not hard to see that the first miracle was actually getting that crowd ready to receive the food in the first place. When I was a teacher I found it hard enough to control a group of thirty, so I needed to exercise authority – and that was when I knew what it was I was going to deliver.

The disciples could organise the crowd because the Lord had clearly given them the mandate to do so, and they put their trust in His authority without question. I wonder what they thought He was going to do? Elijah and Elisha both worked miracles of multiplication, but the nearest thing to supernatural provision of food at this level that they would all have known of was the manna in the wilderness. It was a story that they would have heard many times, and it was deeply embedded in their culture. Maybe when they heard it they wondered what it was like, and now they were thinking, “Wow, we’re going to see manna! Awesome!” How often we have one expectation, and God does something completely different, often meeting our need at a deeper level. But one thing we do know, is that God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” (Eph. 3:20) We can be expecting manna when God has multiplication in mind.

Authority follows the Anointing
So when God gives us an instruction, we don’t know what we are being prepared for: all we know is what we have heard and the One who is doing the preparing. But because we have had the instruction, we have the authority to carry it out. I have a friend, Andrew, who tells the story of a meeting when he stepped up to preach at a conference towards the end of the worship time, and the Holy Spirit said to him “The anointing isn’t on you; it’s on the lady who is ministering with the flags.” He knew the Lord’s voice well enough and had the humility to obey, laying down his message and releasing the flag ministry to become the focus of that part of the conference. Authority followed the anointing.

In how many churches, every Sunday, is manna on the programme when God has multiplication planned? Our meeting this week will be basically the same format as last week. And the week before, and next week. We know what to expect, and we know what we will do: it’s time to gather the manna.  We prepare our sermon or our worship set and it’s what we do. If we are Pentecostals or charismatics we probably ask God to anoint it, but what we are much less likely to do is to ask Him to replace or change it if He wants to. If it’s a smaller group we might be more likely to be flexible, but a hungry crowd at a conference, waiting to be fed? Will we put down the important message we have spent a week preparing and praying over, and move aside for the flags? Andrew did just that, the power of God fell, His manifest presence came into the room, and lives were changed. Andrew didn’t know what was going to happen: he just “made the people sit down.” If we will hear God’s word in faith and act in authority, He will provide more than we can ever ask or imagine. All we have to do is lay down our lives.

Manna, or Mission?
We have sometimes hosted gap year students from Germany who have come to spend the year as interns working with the children and young people in our church. We have kept in touch with most of them, and recently one of them, David, invited us over to his wedding. We accepted the invitation, and decided to visit two of the others while we were in Germany. We weren’t driving and it meant quite complicated travel arrangements, but we knew they would like to see us, and we wanted to see them. (We were actually hoping to arrange a visit to a fourth family, but the travel arrangements just didn’t work in the time we had available. There was no grass in that place…) One of our friends referred to our trip as a “mission.” That’s a bit high-sounding, I thought – we are just going to a wedding and visiting a couple of other young friends and their families. But God had plans that we knew nothing of, because we walk in works prepared beforehand. (Eph 2:10)

What God had prepared for the young man we visited first of all was to organise an outreach in his town three days after we arrived, which gave us time to prepare and pray with him and spend time with his family. We went into the town with the outreach team, met some of his friends in his church, identified a spiritual stronghold over the town and pulled it down in prayer.  Next we moved on for David’s wedding. We had two days there, but couldn’t stay at the venue on the night of the reception because it was fully booked, and we were going to have to stay in another hotel a few miles away. But God! The owner/manager of the venue gave a free room, already paid for by guests who had not shown up, and even arranged to collect our luggage from the other hotel, where we had already taken it that afternoon. This enabled us to have a precious time of prayer with David and his new wife the following morning as well as some good conversations with his unsaved aunt and uncle, which wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been able to stay there on the second night.

After the wedding we went to see our third and most recent gap-year student, to find that her father, an elder in their village Lutheran church, was considering leaving it because, as he put it, ‘the pastor just gave history lessons and didn’t preach Jesus.’ We prayed with the family and were able to encourage them, and we had a lovely day together on a Rhine cruise, which further cemented our friendship. The mission didn’t end there, because we called in to see our daughter on the way home back in the UK, and our visit coincided with a visit from one of her friends who had been planning to go to her house for months, who had been wanting to meet us, and who, again, was in need of prayer.

No-one got dramatically healed, no-one got saved – although someone did on the outreach – but love took us to Germany, we did what we were told, there was “much grass in that place” (including a free hotel room), and Jesus did some building in His church from plans that we knew nothing of. A bit like the disciples, who were probably just expecting some time out with Jesus in the hills and found themselves managing a large-scale outreach, we just thought we were going on a trip to celebrate David’s wedding and visit two other families; but it turned out that God had planned the three sets of circumstances to coincide in different parts of Southern Germany for us to walk in a mission that He had prepared beforehand. Potentially, every day can be a mission where loaves and fishes are ready to be multiplied. So are we in the promised land yet? Because when we arrive, the manna stops.

Knowing God, Living by Faith

The name of the Lord is a strong tower.

Leave a comment

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)

I am not someone who likes to do “actions“ with songs in church, and this proverb is the chorus of a song (“Blessed be the name of the Lord“ by Clinton Utterbach) that is often used (in the UK at least) to get a congregation – particularly children – engaged in praise. Personally, I like to think about the words as I’m singing them, and I can’t do that if I’m running on the spot and waving my arms about, but I guess that’s just me. And there’s actually some great stuff to think about here.

The lyrics of the chorus are slightly different from the proverb. The lyrics are “the righteous run into it and they are saved,“ but the proverb tells us that the righteous run into it and are safe. It’s the word “safe” that struck me when I looked it up. It doesn’t just mean in a place of safety, nor is it specifically just “rescued.” The Hebrew word śāḡaḇ means “too high for capture.” The place of safety isn’t created by the walls, but by the elevation. The person who runs into this strong tower is lifted to a place that is inaccessible to the enemy. And if we know Ephesians 2:6 we know that the place where we have been raised up to is together with Christ in heavenly places. When we are raised up in the spirit, we are inaccessible to the enemy.

I have also just been reading the prayer of Jabez, which is in 1 Chronicles 4:10. He prayed “Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!“ When we pray the Lord‘s prayer, we also ask Him to deliver us from evil. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of this in terms of keeping me safe so that evil things don’t happen to me. Jabez isn’t praying selfishly here: he turns it round to say “keep me safe from evil so that I don’t bring it upon anybody else.” If we bring this reflection to our safety in the name of the Lord, we get an added dimension to the proverb: when we run to the place of safety, the people around us are also protected from any pain that the enemy would seek to cause through us.

So how do we run into the name of the Lord? As I have said elsewhere, (and not just me of course!) to be “in the name” of Jesus isn’t just about a position of faith, but it’s about where we are putting our feet in actuality. The name of the Lord isn’t just what we call him, but it’s who He is, and to be in His name we have to be true to Him. If we have spent the day following our own selfish desires we can hardly expect to pray “in the name of Jesus” at the end of it, because we haven’t been in His strong tower; we have walked after the flesh and not after the spirit, by sight and not by faith. It’s the righteous who run into the strong tower: righteousness is only ours by faith, and “all that is not of faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23).

So when we are walking by faith we are lifted into the heavenly tower of the name of Jesus, out of reach of the enemy who has no access to our spirits, and a blessing, not a danger, to those around us.  Where are you today? Are you up in His strong tower? If not, start running, before anybody gets hurt.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Knowing God

I Will Build My Church

Leave a comment

The Kingdom Of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17)

I woke up this morning singing a song we had in church on Sunday:
“Father let Your kingdom come,
Father let Your will be done,
On earth as in heaven,
Right here in my heart.“

It is, of course, one of several settings to music of the Lord’s prayer, and it’s one of my favourites. But it’s got me thinking about the Kingdom Of God (never a bad thing) and how we perceive it. In particular, I’m thinking about our experience of the Kingdom In our church situations, and the relationship between the two. If you are feeling at all disappointed in, critical of, or hurt by what’s going on in your church at the moment, then this is for you. That probably means all of us at some time or another.

We can all get lost in our own imaginings of what the Kingdom Of God is like in heaven, but what do we know about the Kingdom Of God on earth? We know it is within us, we know that it’s eternal, we know it’s wherever we see the rule and reign of the Lord Jesus manifested, and we know it’s “righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” if we think about the rule and reign of Jesus in the light of John 10:10, we know that the kingdom is manifested when we see the works of the enemy destroyed and life in abundance established. And if we think of the heart’s desire of the King himself, we have to land on John 17:21 and His prayer in Gethsemane that “That they all shall be one, just as you, my Father, are in me, and I am in you, so that they also shall be one in us.”

Paul is clear about the ultimate purpose of the church and how to attain it in Ephesians 4: 15-16, which is that “speaking the truth in love, (we) may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” When the body of Christ has attained this goal we will have become the answer to the Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane and to the Lord’s prayer that He gave us on the Mount of Olives: His kingdom will have come on earth.

Unfortunately, it can seem at times that some people in our churches are either writing chapter 7 of Ephesians, or have never read the epistle at all. The Holy Spirit reminds us in Isaiah 26:3 that “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in You.” To live in the good of this verse, we need to remember Matthew 6:33: “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” whether we are finding it in church or not. Ephesians 4:3 tells us that we find the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, so if we have peace in our hearts about our bonds with other members of the church, we know that we have done our part to maintain the unity of the spirit with them, and our hearts are prepared for the rule of the Kingdom of God.

The Ecclesia
Jesus is building His church in truth and love, because truth and love are who He is, and the church is His body on earth. My Church isn’t, but His church is. Where there is truth and love in the assembly of the saints we find His body, and when we are in truth and love we are part of it, whether we are in my church, your church, their church, or someone’s church on the other side of the world. Jesus said I will build My church, not My churches. Paul says we are one body, not many bodies (1 Cor 10:17), and that we are being “built together as a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22) Peter says: “You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ…(who) has become the chief cornerstone.” (1 Peter 2:5-7)

The word that is used for this building, the church, is ecclesia. In the Christian context, ecclesia refers to a gathering of believers called out from the daily concourse of society to worship God, but the prime meaning of the word refers to an assembly of people called out of their houses to convene at a meeting place for the purpose of deliberation. So there is an implication of government here: when we meet to worship God, we also assemble to administer the government of His Kingdom. In fact Psalm 149 reminds us that our praise is integral to establishing His rule on earth. When Jesus says that the gates of hell won’t prevail against His church, He is saying that the councils of the powers of darkness won’t prevail against the government that is on His shoulders.

The government of the cross
And here’s the thing: Isaiah ‘s prophecy (Isaiah 9:6) wasn’t just a metaphor: Jesus did, literally, carry the government of His kingdom on His shoulders, when He carried the cross to Calvary. When we carry our cross as Jesus instructed and genuinely die to self, we are also carrying His authority to rule. We are part of the governing ecclesia of His kingdom on earth. Neither the many churches in your city nor the 45,000 denominations on Earth today are meant to be little microcosms of the Church of Christ: they are simply parts of it. More than that, they are only parts of it where they reflect the life of Christ and the government of the cross.  And since, according to 1 Corinthians 13:13,  it’s faith, hope, and especially love, that are the only things that last forever (“remain” or “endure,” depending on your translation), they have to be the three elements that make up the DNA of the everlasting life of Christ. Alongside those three it’s the word of God that endures forever. The cross, the DNA of the life of Christ, and the word of God: if we want to find the ecclesia of Jesus where His kingdom is governed, this is what we look for.

What if we don’t find it, or if or own church seems to be missing the mark? This doesn’t mean we spend our lives in the ranks of the spiritually homeless. On the contrary, God puts us into imperfect fellowship to teach us how to love one another, and to prepare our hearts to be carriers of His Kingdom. Our churches are training grounds for the government of His ecclesia, whether we govern in our local church or not. We can’t cause growth of the body by speaking the truth in love if we have no-one to speak it to, no relationships in which to exercise Kingdom values, and no arteries where the life of Christ can flow.

I was in a meeting the other day when I sensed the Holy Spirit showing me that His church was like an orchestra, with different instruments scattered far and wide, but where all the instruments were in tune with each other, all eyes were on the conductor and everyone was playing the same piece of music. The prophetic word He was giving me was that He was changing the (musical) key to a higher pitch. In my spirit I found myself looking at a violin that was far away. Just at that moment I received a phone call from a friend who pastors a church in East Germany. Not a coincidence, I felt, but a confirmation of what the Lord was showing me about His church.  

Pillars and sandcastles
People are hurt and Churches fail or divide when they become houses of the government of man and not of the government of Jesus, building castles of sand instead of being built as living stones. The church at Philadelphia was clearly of the latter type, and Jesus makes this promise to those that would “hold fast to what they have:”

 “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.” (Revelation 3:12.)

This is the reward for those who belong to the ecclesia of Christ. By contrast, a sandcastle is recognisable by its turrets and not by its pillars, and in the turrets flags are sometimes planted, where men like to write their own names. When someone seems to be waving their flag in our faces, we don’t want to snatch it out of their hands, but we need to pray that they, and we, will be pillars in the temple of our God where He can write His own name on our lives. If someone tells us how to “eat and drink,” we respond with righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Because a wave is coming when the sandcastles will be washed away, and only the pillars of the ecclesia will stand.

Living by Faith

Bread from Heaven

Leave a comment

After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do. (John 6: 1-6)

Jesus lifted up His eyes
When Jesus saw the crowds coming towards them and asked Philip “Where shall we buy bread, these might eat?” (John 6:5), He knew not only the eternal words that the Holy Spirit had spoken through Isaiah hundreds of years previously, but He also know what He was going to say to the Jews the following day, and, more significantly, what He wanted His church to learn from it from that time until His return.

John introduces the narrative by presenting Jesus on a mountain with His disciples. This must be every believer’s favourite place: a mountaintop experience with the Lord, in the company of a few close friends. When we are in that place, we want it to go on for ever. Eventually it will, but John also tells us that “a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased.” (John 6:2) If we are spending time with Jesus on Earth, the crowds are never going to be far behind.

It’s all about the harvest
When He met the Samaritan woman, Jesus said to His disciples: “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (John 4:36). Now John echoes this exhortation in his account of the fourth sign, reminding us that it is not just about the significance of the Lord’s supernatural power to multiply bread, or even about His compassion for the hungry: it’s all about the harvest. Jesus lifted up his eyes. So one challenge to us as we consider this sign is this: how much time do we spend with our eyes on the ground instead of lifting them up to the harvest?

If you are the same as me, you probably equate ‘lifting your eyes’ with Psalm 121 – lifting our eyes to the hills, and seeing that our help comes the Lord “who made heaven and earth.” Although Jesus clearly does get help from heaven here- a lot of help – He is not looking away from His circumstances and comforting Himself, as we do, with eyes of faith: He is looking at the circumstances with eyes of love so that He can comfort the people He can see. If I was on a mountain and saw a hungry crowd below me, I would either want to go further up the mountain, or round to the other side, and down. Quickly. But He is not thinking about how the circumstances affect Him; He is only thinking of how He can affect the circumstances. This is a standout Kairos moment of His ministry, and He knew what He would do.

Facing the hungry crowd
As for us, there are times when we are on that mountain and there is a “hungry crowd” coming towards us. It might only be one person, but we know what it will mean: they will make demands. Certainly our time and energy, quite probably our money and/or resources, possibly our emotions, but one thing we know is true: they are hungry, and we’ve only got a few loaves and fishes. But the other thing that is true is that we are there with Jesus. We know that He only did what the Father told Him to do and didn’t always minister to everyone He met, and it might be that the He tells us not to get involved and to get down off the mountain. But assuming He doesn’t, how do we face the “hungry crowd” with the crumbs that we have to offer?

“He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”

I don’t think that He was testing Philip on his knowledge of Isaiah 55. Jesus wanted to know if Philip was starting to see with the eyes of the Spirit, or if he was still limited to the material world. At this stage, it looks like his score was zero (which is encouraging for us, as the same Philip completely by-passed all the confines of the material world in the power of the Holy Spirit when he preached the gospel to the Ethiopian Eunuch!). I think Jesus is regularly testing our faith. Since He said “Will the Son of Man find faith on earth when He comes?” (Luke 18:8), it makes sense that He will be putting us in situations where He can see where we are on the faith-o-meter. He wants all our readings to increase.

There was much grass in that place.
God knows what our faith is ready for, and He also knows whether or not this is a Kairos moment for us, where He has got everything lined up for us to operate in the power of the Spirit. Wisdom says “ponder the path of your feet.” (Prov 4:26) The hungry crowd is approaching. Where has the “path of our feet” led us? Are we on a rocky slope, or is there “much grass?” People will be filled if they are in a place where they can be sufficiently at peace to receive from the Lord. If they are struggling just to keep on their feet and stay upright, it is less likely that we are going to reach into their situation, and that God hasn’t planned for us to try: if that moment hasn’t yet arrived we are just going to be emptied ourselves, and no-one is going to get any bread.

Verse 10 tells us that “There was much grass in that place.” For the miracle to take place the crowd needed somewhere to sit down and rest so that they could receive and partake of what Jesus was going to give them. Jesus hadn’t yet drawn on His heavenly resources, but the natural setting was in place – indeed it had been developing ever since that grassy plateau on the mountain had been created through Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16) at the beginning of time. Part of the convergence of that moment was that the hungry crowd should be there with Jesus just where there was provision for them to stop and sit down: not on a rocky slope or a narrow path, but on a flat area where “there was much grass.” If God can provide that visible abundance in the earthly realm just at the right time, how much more are heavenly resources available?

The Kingdom of Abundance
Paul writes to the Ephesians: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph 3:20) Jesus is Lord over a kingdom of abundance. “God does not give the Spirit by measure,” (John 3:34) because there is no limitation in the Kingdom of God. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that the earthly tabernacle and its rituals were a “copy and a shadow of heavenly things.” (Heb 8:5). There are clues in Scripture that this applies to the rest of the earthly creation as well, and that the temporal is a shadow of the eternal. The earthly Jesus is the Son of Man who goes to the cross, and we get a glimpse of the heavenly Jesus when He appears on the Mount of Transfiguraton. We have the Jerusalem of Israel, and the “New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven;” (Revelation 21:2) and we have John’s revelation that “it does not yet appear what we shall be.” (1 John 3:2).

The disciples could only see five loaves and two fishes, but Jesus could see the bread of heaven. When we pray for the Kingdom of God to come “on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for limitless heaven to come to limited earth. So when we lift our eyes and sense that Jesus is showing us a need that He wants to meet, and we know that there is “much grass in that place,” we can look with the eyes of faith and see that the single packed lunch which is the most our brains can grasp will convert to 5,000 by the power that works within us. At least.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The prayer of agreement

3 Comments

I think that one of the most overused verses in the Bible is Matthew 18:20 “For if two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” and one of the most disappointing is the verse immediately preceding it, which promises “If two of you agree on anything you ask, it shall be done for them by my Father in heaven.“

Verse 19 – if two of you agree – is often quoted to encourage people to pray together in pairs or small groups. “God promises to answer!” is the exhortation. Unfortunately, experience often proves otherwise, so the encouragement to meet is without substance. How many times do two or more pray together, yet what we’ve asked for isn’t done for us by our Father in heaven? Yet God’s word is true and His promises are trustworthy, so if our experience does not line up with the Word we must look more deeply into Scripture to see what our experience is missing, not hold up our experience as the truth and dismiss the Word.

The problem here is that the words do what they say on the tin: agree means agree, shall be done means shall be done. There is nothing in the Greek that suggests that they do not mean exactly what they say: there is not even a let out in the tense as there is in Matthew 7:7, where the tense of “ask and it shall be given” actually means ask persistently and it shall be given. The tense of “ask” means just once is enough.

So we gather, we agree, we ask, and yet nothing seems to happen. Why is that? One reason could be that we simply don’t wait long enough for the answer: we give up, and faith (if it ever really existed) evaporates. The promise doesn’t say when it will come, and the Bible has much to say about waiting. In fact “Wait” can seem like one of God’s favourite words. But although I think that can be true at times, I don’t think it is the main point here. I think the reason that a lot of “prayers of agreement” seem to go unanswered is in the first word of verse 20: “for.” Jesus says that the promise of answered prayer is a consequence of two or three being gathered in His name. Only when that is the case does He say He is present in the gathering, “there in the midst of them.“

First of all, what is it to be “gathered together?“ The Greek word means anything from being drawn together like fishes in a net, or assembled as a crowd, to the idea of those who were previously separated becoming one. Given that the heart of Jesus as He prayed in Gethsemane for us “all to be one,” and that the thrust of much of Paul’s teaching is that we are one body in Christ, I think the meaning of “gathering” tends towards the last definition. And “In His name“ does not just mean wearing our church name badges: the Greek word onoma means everything He is; His whole identity. To be in His name means to be the fullness of who we are in Christ. I think that to be gathered in His name means to be one in the spirit, not just in theory, “in faith,” or according to our theology; but experientially, in the lived reality of that moment. If this is the case, and since verse 19 (“when two of you agree…“) is conditional upon verse 20 (“For if two or three of you are gathered…”) the concept of agreement is elevated from being one of verbal and intellectual consensus to a shared understanding in the spirit of a prayer request that we know by revelation is in the Father’s will.

In those conditions we are together in unity according to Jesus’s prayer of John 17:21: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  When our hearts are in agreement like this and there is no doubt or discord, we are already in the Father’s will, so the answer to our prayer is standing right there with us.

I was in a prayer meeting this morning, when a brother mentioned that there was a photo in a ministry prayer letter from a meeting we had both attended that included me a girl that I had been praying with in. I had my hands raised in a posture of worship, and she was on her knees. I guess it made a good photo. We prodded at various things throughout the morning, then just as the meeting was ending (how often has that happened?) The Holy Spirit fell powerfully. At that moment, my friend showed me the prayer letter with the photograph. In hushed voices, we agreed in prayer that the Lord would grant that girl her petition, and we knew immediately that the prayer was answered. Jesus was there “in the midst” according to Matthew 18:20: we could feel His presence.

When Jesus promised that He would send the Holy Spirit He said “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:18) But I think we pray like orphans far too often in our corporate prayer times. Instead of meeting the conditions of “gathering in His name,” we talk to a Father who isn’t there, and then we wonder why He doesn’t appear to be listening.