"I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you." ~ Luke 10:19
Last week some of my friends from TNT and some of their friends from KSU started meeting for a college Bible study. (I think just about all of us are involved with the Wesley Foundation at each of our schools (UGA, Tech, KSU, Georgia State, and App. State), so that was an easy way to connect.) Today our topic was spiritual gifts, but we were all over the place. We stayed on topic, but very loosely. Anyway, Steve, the high school pastor, was there "supervising" (he was there to make sure things stayed under control and just in case we got stumped on something, but he had a lot of insight to offer), and he started talking about prayer and our authority in Christ. I had never really thought about it this way, but when Hebrews 4:16 tells us to boldly "approach the throne of grace with confidence," that doesn't just mean ask for the impossible, although that is more than encouraged. It means, "Stop praying so passively, saying, 'God, please do this,' and "Please do that,' and start praying with authority! Pray as if you have the authority to make it happen, because Jesus has given you that authority." When you pray over someone for healing, speak healing into them. Command their spirit and their flesh to be healed by the power of Jesus Christ. When facing temptation, command Satan to leave and give up his efforts. If you carefully follow Jesus' public ministry, He doesn't pray, "Father, heal this man or woman," or "Father, please cast out this demon." He speaks with authority: "Be healed!" "Evil spirit, come out of this person!" Jesus had this authority because He frequently spent time with His Father and because the Holy Spirit was in Him. He left His requests for His alone time with God.
Wait a minute... Don't we have the Spirit in us too? And shouldn't we be in constant communion with God, "[praying] continually" (1 Thessalonians 5:17)? And didn't Jesus say, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father" (John 14:12)? So shouldn't that mean that we have the authority (through Christ) to speak truth into being? We ask people if we can pray for healing over them, and we say, "I believe God wants you to be healed," and then we ask God to heal them. That's fine, but why waste time? I understand that walking up to a non-Christian and saying, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, be healed," may be weird for them, but when dealing with fellow Christians who are deeply rooted in their faith, just get to the point: "Our Father has a message for you: Be healed, my child."
I just thought that was a really cool concept. And I think it has a lot to do with pride, which kept coming up throughout the night. The "greater gifts" of prophecy and tongues have to do with edification by complete surrender to the work of the Spirit. While the other spiritual gifts of wisdom, healing, teaching, etc. are also edifying and require the Spirit, they also edify the human mind and body. Prophecy and tongues, however, are predominantly for spiritual edification. When a person prays in tongues, he surrenders himself to God, allowing the Spirit to pray through him. Romans 8:26 says, "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." Praying in tongues is kind of a new, weird topic for me because I never really looked into it until this year, but here's what I think about it: When I don't know what to pray, when I simply cannot find anything to pray about, I'll ask God to pray for me, and then I'll pray in tongues; and by praying in tongues, I give the Spirit a voice—not that prayers need to be spoken in order for God to hear them—and by allowing the Spirit to use my voice to say His prayers, I affirm His prayers. The Spirit prays silently, but when I pray in tongues, I am saying "Amen" to the Spirit's prayer. But the weird thing about praying in tongues is that I don't know what I'm saying—or, more accurately, what the Spirit is saying. It just sounds like gibberish. I can't even be positive that it's actually a real prayer language. I could just be making it all up... but even if I am, I'm going to offer it up to God in worship as if it really were the language of the Spirit speaking through me. (One thing I thought was really cool about the Bible study tonight was that Steve's description of his experience with praying in tongues was exactly like mine, which cleared up a lot of my doubt about the authenticity of my prayer language. He even used the same words I used to explain it. Haha. As soon as he said "gibberish," I knew we were on the same page.) And because it's so easy to doubt that your "prayer language" is real, it forces you to lay down your pride. If you're going to use it, that is. Of course, I do believe that the Spirit moves in people in ways that forcibly draw prayer out of them in unknown languages without their realization, but my experience with praying in tongues has been by my conscious decision. And so when I pray in tongues, I have to humble myself. After all, who can be prideful when they're talking gibberish? Even in private, carrying on a conversation with God in gibberish is weird. So by humbling yourself so that you can allow the Spirit to pray in tongues, you surrender yourself completely to God's will. (That surrender is also seen in the fact that, by simply giving the Spirit a voice, you are saying, "I agree with everything You have just prayed over me. Let Your will be done.")
And then there's prophecy. The most common understanding of prophecy is just a religious version of fortune telling: make a prediction, put Jesus' stamp of approval on it, and you've got a prophecy. But that's not the only purpose for prophecy. While much of the Old Testament demonstrates that kind of prophecy, Paul says that prophecy is meant for the edification of the church (1 Corinthians 14:4). I don't know about you, but if I were to go to a fortune teller, I wouldn't go because I want to feel good about myself; I would go because I want to know what's coming in my future. (I don't go to fortune tellers though.) So Paul must have had a different idea of what prophecy is. I liked the way Steve explained it tonight: Prophecy is when God reveals something about someone, when He tells us what He sees in us and what He wants to see in us. For example, God is working in me to make me some kind of teacher, whether it's a small group leader, a band director, a missionary, or whatever. I know because 1) He blessed me with this blog, 2) I'm a Music Education major, and 3) He sent two people to tell me so in the same night, one right after the other without any communication between the two of them on the matter... and without any prior knowledge of who I am.
Paul actually explains exactly what prophecy is in 1 Corinthians 14:3: "But everyone who prophecies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort." Prophecy is for the strengthening of our faith, for encouraging the pursuit of the Lord and His gifts and blessings in certain ways, and for comfort in doubt and in tough times. (I just want to thank God for revealing the reason Paul mentions both strengthening and encouragement, because I couldn't figure it out until He told me.) Comfort is obvious: sometimes a person will be going through a hard time and someone will say exactly what they needed to hear to let them know that "God is watching, watching over you." (Sorry, I've been helping with VBS this week. Haha. The songs are catchy.) Encouragement may look like this: I have a friend from my Jamaica trip (nickname: Mags) who is so filled with joy. Even before I matched the name to the person, if you mentioned the red-haired Freshley small group leader who's always smiling, I would know exactly who you were talking about. So if I were to go to her and tell her just how contagious her joy is and how great a listener she is because she always seems interested and happy to listen, that would be a prophecy of encouragement. Especially if I had told her when I first met her. And then there's prophecy for strengthening. This example is a little unusual because the prophecy was about the person making the prophecy, but it still strengthened a lot of people's faith because of the amazing faith he had that the prophecy would be fulfilled. This is where future predictions come into play. I said that "fortune telling" isn't the only form of prophecy, which means that it is still one of the forms, and my friend Josh (the same one who was in the ManVan on our 23-hour road trip) is living proof. He applied to be a Resident Assistant at UGA. He believed that God's plan was to make him an RA. He had no back-up plan for housing. Dorm sign-ups were done, and the deadline to rent an apartment was closing in fast. He was determined to either get the job or live on the streets for a year, but he just knew he would get the job. He was denied. He wasn't even on the alternate list in case someone decided to decline the job. He had no chance. Almost two months passed before he told me about his firm belief that God had promised him the job (I didn't really know him very well before then). A week later, he was in. He had heard a promise from God, accepted it, and held on to it firmly until God gave him what He promised. Not only did the fulfillment of the prophecy strengthen his own faith in knowing that God keeps His word, it also strengthened the faith of everyone around him. We all got to see how reckless faith can work miracles.
In all of these forms of prophecy, a surrender of pride is necessary because nobody wants to make a prediction that turns out to be wrong or try to comfort someone who doesn't need comforting or compliment someone on a characteristic they don't possess. We don't want to make mistakes. But because we're all human, we're going to make mistakes. So we have to let go and trust God to give us the words to say, even if we misunderstand God's voice.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:1, "Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy." By laying down our pride and stepping out in faith, by taking a risk in prophesying or speaking in tongues, we are seeking to obtain those gifts. By testing ourselves to see if we have the gifts, we find that we do have them. But they take practice. The gifts themselves don't take practice, but surrendering to God so He can use the gifts in us does.
So... Yeah, that's what I learned from the college Bible study tonight and from my own studying afterward. I only meant to write the part about authority, but then I knew I had to mention the gifts too... I just didn't realize how much I had to write about it. Haha. But anyway, I hope this was helpful to someone.
Until next time, God bless!
Michael
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"Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way." ~ 1 Corinthians 14:39
"Do everything in love." ~ 1 Corinthians 16:14
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