People Sharing Jesus

One undeniable fact of Scripture is that the message of salvation through Christ was accompanied by miraculous phenomena.  All bible believing Christians agree on this fact.  From Pentecost throughout the Apostolic era there were miraculous events that confirmed the credibility of the message and the messengers of the gospel.  Jesus had revealed Himself as the Son of God through signs and wonders and in the apostles He was at work through the Holy Spirit to reveal His continuing presence in the world.  These miracles also gave credibility to the Scriptures of the New Testament since they were of an Apostolic origin.  The much debated issue of today is whether or not the sign gifts have ceased.  Do people still sometimes speak in languages they have not studied by the power of the Holy Spirit?  Do people have supernatural ability to interpret languages they have not studied?  Do people have the capacity to perform miracles in the name of Jesus?  Does God still heal diseases miraculously through the ministry of gifted servants?  Does God communicate knowledge mystically and mysteriously to certain servants of His in our own time?

          My own opinion and experience is that much of what is passed of as “speaking in tongues” today is really just gibberish.  Languages have syntax.  Syntax is the structure which allows a language to communicate ideas.  There is no structure in much of the “tongue speaking” that is done today.  However, I would stop short of saying that God does not still provide miracles of communication.  The real issue of the tongues at Pentecost involved two important realities.  The multiple languages were a sign of Judgement on Israel for their failed opportunity to respond to the Christ.  The multiple languages also caught the attention of the numerous people in Jerusalem for the feast and heard the message of God in their native tongue.  I am confident that God can still enable people to communicate who have barriers of language.  I am personally aware of many such instances.  I also see a giftedness in the lives of those who can study a language without benefit of any written notes and decipher the language.  Some actually invent a written form for languages that are spoken on earth and have never been written down.  They then teach a people who had no written language to read their own language and read Scripture in that new language.  If that is not something of a miracle then I am puzzled that there are so few who are so gifted as to do this. 

    Neither Jesus nor the Apostles healed every sick person they were around.  Neither Jesus nor the Apostles paraded themselves as faith healers.  Each healing was a special event involving a specific purpose of God.  First Corinthians speaks of the gifts of healing rather than the gift of healing.  Each healing is a gift.  The gift may experienced by the individual or the Church.  Yes, I believe God still miraculously heals, but He and He alone should receive the glory.  Other miracles still happen, but they are rare.  They seem to happen with more frequency in settings where God’s messengers are seeking to get a hearing for the gospel.  I am aware of dozens of such occurrences in the lives of people that I personally know.  I have been directly involved in some instances.  Again, I do not think that there are miracle workers today so much as that God still works miracles today.  More to come.

Dan Wooldridge

      God has given spiritual gifts to all of his children.  These gifts are for the benefit of the whole church.  Many Christians have spent very little time thinking about spiritual gifts and have no idea as to what their own gifts may be.  I want to spend a few moments laying some ground work for the discussion of spiritual gifts. 

       Spiritual gifts and talents are very similar, but not exactly the same.  Let’s take music for example.  A person may be very talented musically and yet not have a spiritual gift related to music.  For those who are discerning, the difference is obvious.  That which flows from a gift of the Spirit magnifies Christ.  That which is solely a talent magnifies the performer.  Sometimes a talented person does not know the Lord, and therefore the talent is a latent gift.  The Holy Spirit could take that talent and transform it into a spiritual gift.    Sometimes a talented person may know the Lord, but needs to grow spiritually and experience the work of the Holy Spirit in fulness before the talent is transformed into a gift.  Always remember the Spirit’s work is to glorify Christ and only those abilities that glorify Christ are the work of the Holy Spirit. 

   There are basically three categories of Spiritual gifts:  1. Sign gifts, 2. Support gifts, 3. Service gifts.  In the following blogs I will make some observations from my own experience concerning these groups of gifts.   I will concentrate primarily on those gifts mentioned in Scripture.  I am not convinced that every single spiritual gift is listed in Scripture.  I base that assertion on the fact that no two listings in Scripture contain the entire list.  There are actually four passages that list spiritual gifts.  They are Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 and 12:28, Ephesians 4:11, and 1 Peter 4:9-10.  These lists seem to be representative rather than exhaustive.  Tune in later for my take on the sign gifts. 

Dan Wooldridge

One element of my remarks tonight in our prayer service will concern the tendency people have to keep score.  This is great for sports.  In fact it bothers me that there is an emphasis in many children’s sports not to keep score.  I fear we will fail to teach our children that life’s contests are real and losing is possible.  

Keeping score in relationships is another matter entirely.  Relationships are not games.  Human beings inevitably have a sinful nature.  When God saves our soul, we still must be on our guard concerning the sinful nature.  Romans chapter seven makes this point quite clearly from the fourteenth verse to the end of the chapter.  Flawed men and women simply must learn to forgive one another, or life will end up in loneliness and isolation.  Some people will quickly object that those who wrong us do not deserve forgiveness.  Does anyone?  I realize that there are times when things cannot return to complete normalcy, but a heart of hostility and bitterness will kill the body and kill the soul.  Our very experience of God’s grace for ourselves is tied to whether or not we express God’s grace.  Jesus clearly connected our forgiveness of others with receiving God’s forgiveness for ourselves.  It seems to me that the kind of person who can forgive is humble enough and broken enough to sincerely seek to be forgiven.  Think about it.

Dan Wooldridge

After being at Howard Payne on April 22nd and Hardin Simmons on the 23rd and 24th, I was at Baylor yesterday.  I am on the board of the Center for Effectiveness in Ministry.  We had a panel of ministers who represented a variety of styles of ministry and evangelism.  They were each very different, but they had very much in common.  Each of them wanted greatly to glorify Christ.  They were all committed to making a difference in the name of Jesus.  One of the speakers was a prominent Methodist pastor.  He said over and over that we need to reach all kinds of people and that we need to reach the people who live around us.  He also emphasized that the Bible needs to be the basis for all we do. 

     We need all kinds of churches and all kinds of pastors.  We need Jesus, and we need each other.  I for one am weary of battles between leaders who are more alike than they are different.  Doctrinal error is another matter entirely.  We simply have to challenge and correct false doctrine if we can.  What I often find is that leaders don’t seem to identify the difference between disagreements over culture or style and those that involve heresy.  Christian practice and Christian doctrine or not the same thing.  Orthodoxy is important.  Orthopraxy is important also but not so much as to break all fellowship.

Dan Wooldridge