Skip to main content

 

In Word and Deed

1 Thessalonians 1:5 “For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true. “

God validated His Word to the pagans in Thessalonica as He did to the pagans in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 “When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified. I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling.  And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit.  I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom but in the power of God. 

The Gospel came not just with clear declaration of the Truth about Who Jesus Christ is and what He has done through His crucifixion and resurrection but with the demonstration of Kingdom power by the Holy Spirit. It is just as it was when Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God; in Word and deed. 

The Holy Spirit validated the Word of God preached with signs and wonders. It is cultural arrogance and cultural ignorance for the church today to say, “Well, they needed those signs and wonders because they were a less enlightened culture than we are today. We have the Word of God written.” Well…when Paul, Silas, Timothy, Peter, James and John and all the other Apostles proclaimed Jesus as God’s Messiah and the Savior of the whole world, they preached from the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms. It was from the Word of God written that the Word of God made flesh was revealed and declared. Jesus fulfilled over 300 Old Testament prophecies proving He is Who He says He is! Miracles, signs and wonders confirmed that Jesus was Who He declared Himself to be. His Words and deeds matched and displayed the Kingdom of God.

We can see on the pages of the New Testament that the proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God were normative. The Holy Spirit validated the Word of the Kingdom of God with the signs and wonders associated with the Kingdom of God. Darkness and the effects of sin were being undone. Sickness and disease were being reversed as those who were sick were healed in Jesus’ Name. Demons were cast out, the dead were raised, the lame walked, the deaf heard, the blind could see again. That was and is meant to be normative in evangelism and Kingdom work.

The will of God and the purpose of God are ONLY accomplished by the Power of God, by the Holy Spirit. It is the same today because Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday, and forever. Our expectation of the Lord manifesting His power has been blunted by satanic lies that those things were for a season and have ceased for today. There is no where in Scripture that you can find any validation for that deception. The only time that these things will no longer be needed is when Jesus Christ, the Perfect One, returns at the end of the age. These ministry and mission manifestations of the Holy Spirit will no longer be needed for the end of all things will have come. But that is not the case now.

The manifestations of the Holy Spirit follow the proclamation of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead and salvation in Him alone. The Lord determines what He will do; we do not. Believers cannot manipulate the power of the Holy Spirit. He is Lord and we are not. But what is desperately needed in the Body of Christ today is a Word-grounded, ever-present expectation that the Lord will demonstrate the Power and Victory of the Kingdom of God over all things satanic, all deception, death, hell, and the grave.

Because the Lord Jesus lives His life within His followers by the Holy Spirit, it is not a huge step to conclude He intends to live His Life through us in ministry to the world. “The things I do, you will do, and even greater things because I am going to the Father.,” Jesus said. The Apostles taught nothing different under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration as they wrote their letters to the early church.

I believe the Lord wants us to have an anticipation and a hope that, as He leads us in ministry and on mission, that He will continue to confirm that what we declare about Jesus Christ is true by signs and wonders. He is stirring up His gifts deposited in the church to no longer be suppressed but learned to be exercised in decency and order…but to be done, nonetheless.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 HIS POWER...HIS PROMISE Helping people walk in the Spirit the devotional below is seminal! The devotion below is today from Oswald Chambers. I makes me think of some I have known that have assumed that the Lord doesn’t want them empowered by the Holy Spirit or that He won’t manifest Himself in them because they have reasoned otherwise. Given ministry opportunities to have the Holy Spirit confirm the Word of God with demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power, they rely on how they feel, their experience thus far and not on the reality that the will of God in mission and ministry is either done in the Holy Spirit’s Power or not at all. Our capacity to do what Jesus does has nothing to do with our imagined capacity, but upon the indwelling power of God through is. Now to Him who is able to do far above and beyond what we could ever imagine or think, by His power at work in us now, to Him be glory…   Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus told the parable of the bags of gold as a warning ...
Post a Comment
Read more
HEARING MUST BE UNITED TO BELIEVING Hebrews 3:16-19 “And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard His voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when He took an oath that they would never enter His rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed Him? So, we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter His rest.” I have heard people say, “If I heard the voice of God. I would not rebel; I’d believe.” Others have said, “If I saw a miracle, I’d believe.” We really do not have a grip on the capacity for unbelief that is resident in the human heart and mind. The children of Israel saw God decimate the false gods of Egypt in the plagues He sent through Moses. The Lord God who had called Abraham made sure that Abraham’s children saw that the gods and religious culture surrounding them for 400 years were not gods at all...
Post a Comment
Read more
 HE IS RISEN! IT IS FINISHED! After the Israelites had passed through the Red Sea by God opening the way for them to be saved, the whole of Pharoah's army, his horsemen and chariots pursued God's people into the opened way. Once they were all in, the waters flowed back into their place with suddenness and fury. Not one of the enemies survived. All perished in those waters. When Jesus Christ hung on the cross, all that sin contained, the full measure of the rebellion of mankind for all time, all the wickedness that was ever in human hearts were absorbed into the Lamb of God as He died our death, received our just judgement from God for all time, taking all that sin and death contained. In Him, sin and death died once and for all. They were overwhelmed, covered and drowned in the sea of His precious blood, poured out for the sin of the whole world. Not one enemy remained alive, all were stripped of their power to hold us in slavery to sin any longer. All their weapons were confis...
Post a Comment
Read more