From Everywhere to Everywhere

One of my favorite aspects of the house of prayer and missions school that we are planning in Thailand is the cultural cross-pollination that we will see.

We envision a missions school in which half the students will be Thai believers, and the other half will be internationals - from America, Europe, Latin America, East Asia, or wherever. 

The international students will come for ACTS School just like they would come to Kansas City, but they will get something Kansas City cannot offer. 

International students in our school will live together with Thai students.  They will pray together in the prayer room, minister together around  northern Thailand, and play together on their days off. And then they will go out for a 10 week outreach together. The window into another worldview and the cultural immersion experience that they receive will be priceless.

And our Thai students will find that the Gospel, the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit are unrestrained by cultural barriers. The same Holy Spirit that empowers the Church in America empowers the Church in Thailand, and He wants every tribe, every tongue, and every culture to be redeemed in the kingdom of God.

Missions in this time of history is no longer about Westerners going to the East or Northerners going to the South. It is truly a global Christian movement now, and workers are being sent from everywhere to everywhere.

I am excited to see what God will do in the Thai church with Thai missionaries trained side by side with internationals, and what God will do in the hearts and minds of young adults from the West when they pray and live and witness with Thais who know Jesus from a perspective they never thought of.

Answering Honest Questions about IHOP

Almost 5 years after posting “Is IHOP a cult?” I still get hits every day on that page and on the follow-up I posted 3 years ago, “Why I won’t defend IHOP.”  I have now graduated from IHOPU, and am part of the staff of the ACTS School (ActsSchool.com), which is a missions and prayer ministry that was born out of IHOP-KC.

Because of those posts on this site, I occasionally get questions from people who are drawn towards the house of prayer, but have read accusations on the Internet about IHOP and are worried that they might be deceived or hurt if IHOP really is a dangerous organization.  A few months ago (actually while I was in Thailand in the fall leading an ACTS School outreach), I got one of those emails, and felt stirred to write a reply.  Afterwards, I felt like what I wrote was worth sharing with others who may be in the same position of asking honest questions and having honest doubts.

From: Jeff [Jeff (at) TodayAndThatDay.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 10:22 AM
To: “J”
Subject: RE: ihop questions

Hey “J”,

I totally understand your situation… I went through a season very similar to what you describe right before I did my Fire in the Night internship.  I was reading websites that were accusing IHOP of all kinds of things and I started having big doubts about the wisdom of what I was about to do… but it all lasted about 2 days when I actually got there.

My primary piece of counsel to you is to not let another person tell you what you shouldn’t even consider.  I know there is such a thing as brain-washing and there really are cults that prey on the emotionally vulnerable, but there are clear signs of what cults do and IHOP doesn’t match up with any of them.  In fact, Mike Bickle did a great message on how to discern cults and false teachers, which is available for free on his website:

http://mikebickle.org/resources/resource/1729

Here’s a summary of his notes… 7 characteristics of a cult:

1. Cults oppose critical thinking and insist that members take the “party line” without asking difficult questions.  The Bible teaches people to test everything and cling to what is good.  The Bereans, who searched the scriptures to find out whether what Paul was saying was true, are held up as a “noble” example. (Acts 17:10-11)
2. Cults try to separate people from their families and become a replacement family.  The Bible puts family in the highest position, second only to loyalty to God Himself.
3. Cults isolate members from the outside and penalize them for trying to leave the cult.  The Bible exhorts leaders to make their first priority that the people under the leadership follow God’s will for their own lives (even if it means leaving their ministry).
4. Cults emphasize special doctrines outside of scripture instead of “the main and plain” doctrines of the Bible.  The Bible declares that the Word itself is the final authority for the church and is infallible.
5. Cults encourage inappropriate loyalty to their leaders instead of connecting people to Jesus.  The Bible declares that our ultimate loyalty is to Jesus alone.  It is right to submit to an honor leaders that God has given us, but we must constantly remember that every leader is a sinner who is prone to weakness and even grave sin.  Leaders must be held accountable too.
6. Cults cross Biblical boundaries of behavior (e.g. to permit leaders to engage in sexual immorality and covetousness).  The Bible makes it clear that no one is exempt from God’s standards of holiness and being free from the love of money.
7. Cults disparage the church and encourage people to regard their group as the only legitimate people of God.  The Bible exhorts us to love and honor everyone who names the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  While we must confront error in other denominations and congregations (e.g. when churches condone sins that the Bible condemns, like homosexuality), we must never point out differences or deficiencies in other ministries. 
   
   I particularly encourage you to listen to what Mike says about this point and a “culture of honor” in the message.  It’s one of the most important and profound things I think I’ve ever heard about unity in the Body of Christ.

Another thought for you: for about a year before I came to IHOP-KC, I was listening to teaching series by Mike Bickle regularly during my commute.  I wrestled with a lot of stuff, and never did fully agree with him about some things, but I also grew tremendously during that time.  It became the primary way I was being spiritually fed for the year or two before I moved to Kansas City.  In no way did it dishonor my local church, or even make me dislike them – in fact, I became more involved than ever with my local church, and when I left, they started supporting me as a intercessory missionary, and still do 4 years later.  But when I came to IHOP, I already knew a ton about what Mike taught and a little bit of what IHOP was like, because I had been listening to all the teachings.

Regarding what life at IHOP is like, again, your thoughts about “what it might be” are very normal.  On one very important level, being at IHOP really is glorious and a privilege that occasionally almost brings me to tears… I get to be a part of community of people whose job is to exalt Jesus day and night, to sit at His feet and say we love Him and He’s worthy… it’s so cool.  And not only that, but the people God has sent to Kansas City to join IHOP are incredible.  You hear story after story after story of amazing ministry and sacrifice and profound salvations and encounters with God.

But with all that said, life at IHOP is also extremely mundane.  As soon as the newness wears off, everyone hits a wall where the Prayer Room feels boring and difficult.  People struggle with all the same kinds of things they do in any church – loneliness, bad self-image, habitual sin, half-heartedness, frustration and doubt with God’s leadership of their lives, etc.  And add to that that most people come to IHOP intending to be intercessory missionaries but having unrealistic ideas about how God will provide for them – and so after a year or two they’ve spent all their savings, ended up in debt, and need to start working part-time so they can pay the bills.  The number of people who give up on being intercessory missionaries after a couple of years because of money is astonishing.  IHOP actually started a Partnership Development department to help people learn how to raise support effectively. It’s having good results, though they’re just building it right now.

Anyway, that was a pretty long response, and rather rambling.  I guess I felt like responding because your questions were so honest and your journey so familiar to me.  Hope all of that is helpful.  BTW, what I mean when I say I won’t defend IHOP is that I won’t try to argue against attacks or answer accusations.  Answering honest questions is very different from self-defense.

Grace and peace to you… praying for you as I send this!

Jeff

Fully Equipped Laborers for the Harvest

At the beginning of the IHOPU Student Awakening in 2009, the Lord put a prayer in my heart that would grow into a significant mandate for me. 

In the first days of that move of the Holy Spirit, when I was a third year student, there was a “Student upper room,” where we kept an intercession set going while ministry was going on in the main auditorium.  As I thought of the large numbers who were experiencing the joy of the Lord, being set free from self-hatred and besetting sins, and getting healed downstairs, the following verses captured my heart:

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:35–38)

I prayed this prayer earnestly in the days and months that followed. In my campus ministry years, I had been taught that the word “laborer” in this verse meant an ordinary, untrained field-hand.  The implication was that anyone could be a laborer if they would merely do something for Jesus.  But as I began to pray this verse, I realized that this interpretation did not hold up to scrutiny.  If “laborers” were untrained and common, why did Jesus say there were “few” of them?  And why was the primary command not simply to “go,” but to “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out” laborers?  In fact, the word translated “send out” is a very forceful word – it is usually used in the New Testament for casting out demons!

Furthermore, the fact that Jesus saw the crowd as “sheep without a shepherd” strongly suggests that the laborers must be well-equipped for their task.  The language of “shepherding” in the Hebrew Scriptures refers to leaders of the people – the prophets, priests, and kings of Israel. (e.g. 2 Sam 5:2, Ps 78:71-72, Jer 23:2, Jer 50:6, and esp. Zech 10:2).  Laborers who would solve the problem of sheep without a shepherd suggest the promise in Jeremiah 3:15 of “shepherds after My own heart” (cf. Acts 13:22).

I have come to believe that this prayer for laborers represents the Lord’s desire to send out ambassadors who know Him so well that they accurately represent Him to people around them.  They will be “after His own heart,” because by knowing Him, they will feed others with the knowledge of God.  I see three dimensions of a fully-formed laborer after God’s heart:

• His word is in their mouths.
• His compassion is in their hearts.
• His power is in their hands.

Two and a half years later, that prayer continues to burn on my heart.  I believe that God desires to finish the task of evangelizing the nations in partnership with people who are “after His heart,” who, like Paul, have counted every lesser thing as rubbish in comparison to the excellence of the knowledge of God, and have become ambassadors trained and equipped to cry out to all nations, “Behold your God!” (Isaiah 40:9)

The answer to this prayer is not simply more missionaries graduating from Bible college and seminary.  Deep Bible study is necessary, but contemporary theological training is not, by and large, producing men and women who know their God and do great exploits (Dan 11:32, NKJV).  Fully-equipped laborers will be formed as the first apostles were – sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to His word.  Prayer, not education, will be the first priority of these laborers.

The Danger of Labels

Some years ago in an adult Sunday school class, I remember an illuminating misunderstanding taking place.  A dear older servant of the Lord, who had given over a decade of her life to missions in Central Asia, commented that, measured by conversion growth, Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world.  Another class member, a college professor, asked what kind of Christianity she was referring to.  She replied, “Evangelical Christians.”  The professor’s response was “That’s scary.”  The missionary lady looked a little taken aback but said nothing.
The church was an American Baptist congregation with strong Willow Creek influences.  The messages that were presented from the pulpit were Biblically based and upheld the authority of scripture and faith in Jesus as necessary for salvation.  So what was going on in this particular situation?  Was there a fundamental difference of perspective, or were the two parties missing each other in communication?

Although I did not interview these people after the fact, I strongly suspect that the real issue was not doctrinal difference, but different understandings of labels.  In missions circles, it is common to define the term evangelical like this:

[Evangelical Christians] are all who emphasize and adhere to all four of the following:

• The Lord Jesus Christ as the sole source of salvation through faith in Him, as validated by His crucifixion and resurrection. 
• Personal faith and conversion with regeneration by the Holy Spirit. 
• Recognition of the inspired Word of God as the ultimate basis and authority for faith and Christian living. 
• Commitment to biblical witness, evangelism and mission that brings others to faith in Christ.

Evangelicals are largely Protestant, Independent or Anglican, but some are Catholic or Orthodox. It is one of the TransBloc movements in this book. …
(http://www.operationworld.org/glossary)

However, for the college professor and her husband, the word likely carried a rather different set of connotations.  As far as I know, they would indeed affirm the four points above; at another time, I heard them describe themselves as “confessional Christians.”  In their politics, however, they leaned to the left.  Thus, the word “evangelical” carried baggage for them which made it uncomfortable and even “scary” – names like Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, etc. and phrases like “Moral Majority,” “Christian Coalition,” and “Religious Right.”  For them to imagine the strand of Christianity which birthed such political movements exported to all the nations as the world’s fastest growing religion was understandably, and perhaps even deservedly, scary.

I bring up this story in order to confess my own stumble into confusion over labels.  Over the few years that I transitioned from the church that I described above into IHOP-KC, my latent belief that the gifts of the Spirit continued to operate today flowered into full-fledged participation in the gifts of tongues, healings, and prophecy.  In this transition, I began to refer to myself, rather incautiously, as a “charismatic.”  What I meant by the term is very much what Operation World means by it:

Those who testify to a renewing experience of the Holy Spirit and present exercise of the gifts of the Spirit such as glossalalia, healing, prophecy and miracles. The charismatic renewal, or “Second Wave” Pentecostalism, has generally remained within mainline denominations. A further “Third Wave” renewal movement occurred with many characteristics of the Second Wave, but with less open identification with formal Pentecostalism or the charismatic movement. Second and Third Wave charismatics are counted as a single entity in this book. In our global survey of denominations, we have assessed percentages of affiliated charismatic Christians for each of the 37,500 denominations in the world from 1990-2010. The assessment largely excludes those no longer actively associated with charismatic renewal. (http://www.operationworld.org/glossary)

I discovered, however, that not every one thinks of this definition when they hear the word.  What may come to mind instead is two-tier system of Christianity, in which those who are Spirit-baptized are superior to those “without the Spirit,” or perhaps a ministry rife with unbridled emotionalism and manipulation, or worst of all, a church in which Biblical teaching has been abandoned in favor of the latest dream or vision from the “anointed prophet” who has a unique revelation from God, not to be questioned by the unanointed layman.

Fortunately, IHOP-KC is none of the above, nor would I be a part of the organization if it were.  IHOP-KC’s statement of faith places it squarely within the stream of the “Third Wave” charismatic movement, which clearly affirms that every born-again believer has the Holy Spirit living within them, though many forego the benefit of conscious experience of the Holy Spirit’s power that comes by being “filled” with the Spirit (Eph 5:18).  As for emotionalism and manipulation, I have rarely experienced more level-headed Biblically-based ministry times as those at IHOP-KC.  Mike Bickle follows closely in the footsteps of John Wimber, who strongly encouraged leaders in his movement to avoid every kind of hype and showmanship and to be “supernaturally natural” in platform ministry.  As for abandoning the Bible because of the latest dream or vision, I have read my Bible more, studied it harder, and been more impressed at the clarity and depth of Bible teaching at IHOP-KC than at any previous point in my walk with the Lord.

So perhaps, I am not a “charismatic.”  But I unashamedly affirm and practice the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given His church.  Labels will always be dangerous, but fortunately the Lord Himself has prayed that His Church be unified around allegiance to Him (John 17:21-23).  When men and women of goodwill who love Jesus meet, even if their respective labels should make them enemies, I am convinced that the Holy Spirit can and will make them friends.

The Courage of the Creator

“Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (“The Romance of Orthodoxy”)

If we could look from the perspective of heaven, perhaps it would not be very surprising that when God visited His people He would be regarded as a troublemaker and a rebel. He had warned them for centuries that He was not on their side. Either they were on His side, or they were against Him. Looking frankly at the history of Israel, most of the time they were opposed to Him. He had spoken to them in judgment, in deliverance, in blessing and in cursing, and still they persisted in their own way.

So He came to them as a subversive. He began to put the world right by turning it inside out and upside down. The poor are rich, the persecuted are joyful, suffering is pleasure (2 Cor 12:10), and death by crucifixion is glory. And what is highly exalted among people is an abomination to God (Lk 16:15). The age to come will vindicate those who side with God, no matter how foolish they look now.

We have been invited into the Grand Conspiracy to fix the world by turning it on its head. But we immediately run into our own fear. Turning the world upside down and making pretty much everybody mad is scary stuff. We’d be a lot more comfortable if we could preach moderation. Or if we could pick a side and make sure “the good guys” win. But we don’t get to do that. Our King took no one’s side except His Father’s, received no honor from human beings (Jn 5:41), and was utterly fearless. We learn what courage looks like by looking at Jesus. There’s never been a Man more brave.

The Spiral of Adoration

The Hermeneutical Spiral is a book that I never read, but the title changed my life. Well, perhaps “changed my life” is an exaggeration, but it really helped me understand Bible study. The idea is that knowing what whole books are about helps understand what individual verses mean, which in turn helps understand the whole book, which helps understand the verses, and so on. The process of understanding the Bible is “the parts interpret the whole interpret the parts, etc.”

I’d like to suggest that something similar happens when we meditate on the Incarnation. It has been well said that we completely miss the significance of the stable in Bethlehem unless we keep fully in mind Who it is that is lying in the feeding trough. The story slides into sentimentality unless we remember that the helpless Baby born in squalor is the very God who created the heavens and the earth with a word… who in judgment for sin, wiped the entire human race from the planet except Noah’s family… who demolished the global superpower Egypt to rescue slaves and make them the His own special people... who sent them into exile when the rebelled against Him… and promised them a restoration beyond hope. Unless we remember that it is this same God of creation, covenant, exodus, exile, and restoration who is now lying in a manger, we miss the entire point of Christmas.

But we need to go one step farther. God incarnate in Jesus reveals the God of Sinai in ways that are unthinkable otherwise. How would we know about the humility of God if it were not for Jesus? His gentleness with sinners? His joy? Gratitude? Courage? The Son interprets the Father for us.

As we meditate on the Incarnation, let us remember that it is Yahweh who became flesh – and that through His flesh He revealed what we could never have known about Him any other way. It is in this “spiral of adoration” that we will find ourselves, as Wesley wrote, “lost in wonder, love, and praise.”

Why I hate suicide

An acquaintance of mine, a follower of Jesus, recently took his own life, apparently in the midst of a bad bout of depression.  This is the second time a Christian I have known has killed himself in the past 10 years.  Aside from grief and anger over the situation, I have another reason to hate suicide.  The story below happened to me about 6-7 years ago. 

I am convinced that every suicide – especially of believers – is a victory for Satan and a victory of deception over truth.  This is not to say that I believe that Christians who commit suicide go to Hell.  I’m not the Judge, and I don’t know their hearts, but I have reason to believe that both Paul and Ed had sincerely trusted Jesus for salvation and that they are in His presence today.  But to give up hope is to forget or ignore Jesus and the Gospel, and to believe a lie.

 

I was driving home one night under a heavy burden of depression. I had just given into temptation and yielded yet again in an area of habitual sin which had hindered my life and my calling in God at every turn. As I was driving home, familiar feelings of shame and hopelessness assailed me. “You are a failure. You’ve done nothing with your life. You’re pathetic…” And so on. All of this seemed to be my own mind, and certainly at the time I agreed with most of the sentiments. I felt pathetic. I felt like a loser. I felt like I was accomplishing nothing and I was in a dead-end job. I felt my sin disqualified me from any possible destiny in God.

These thoughts began to take a particularly nasty turn that night, however. I began to feel that life was not worth living any more. Depression began to harden into despair. Suicidal thoughts began to float through my mind. I looked at a bridge I was driving past and had thoughts of driving my car into a concrete abutment or off of a cliff. For a few moments I wallowed in these feelings, and they began to crystallize into a suggestion. “Why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you just end it now?” I continued in my self-pity and depression another moment, but the suggestion became more insistent. Suddenly a new thought crossed my mind.

This isn’t me.

Nearly automatically, I said out loud in the car, “Spirit, I rebuke you in Jesus’ name!”

And it stopped. The voice stopped instantly and completely. Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking suicidal thoughts. I wasn’t pitying myself for my pathetic life. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t even feeling shame anymore. Instead, I felt like I was waking up from a dream. What had I just been listening to for the past 15 minutes?

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, I urge you to get help.  Tell someone.  Call 911 if you need to.  But above all, believe the Gospel.  Jesus Christ has paid the price for the redemption of the entire earth – for your freedom as well as your forgiveness.  Repent of your sins, trust Jesus Christ for salvation, and then take hold of the authority that is yours as a child of God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Suicidal thoughts are not your portion as a believer in Jesus.  Find people to pray for you, ask the Holy Spirit to help, and renounce the lie that you are destined to be depressed and suicidal your whole life.  DO NOT GIVE UP.  There is always hope.  Jesus has set many people free before you.  There are thousands of people all around the world who wanted to kill themselves before Jesus rescued them.

One place you can find dozens of testimonies of people who have been freed from suicidal thoughts is the IHOPU Student Awakening.  Watch the video testimonies and believe that what Jesus did for those people He can – and will – do for you!  It’s not about IHOP, it’s about Jesus.  This is what He’s like.  He’s the Savior, and so He saves.  He’s the Deliverer, and so He sets people free.  He will set you free IF YOU DON’T GIVE UP.