Any revelation from God’s Word that does not lead us to an encounter with God only serves to make us more religious. The Church cannot afford “form without power,” for it creates Christians without purpose.

    Jesus, the model teacher, never separated teaching from doing. He is the pattern for this gift. God’s revealed Word, declared through the lips of an anointed teacher, ought to lead to demonstrations of power.

    Nicodemus said to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”¹ It was understood that God’s kind of teachers don’t just talk—they do. And the doing that is referred to in John’s Gospel is the performing of signs and wonders.

    Jesus established the ultimate example in ministry by combining the proclamation of the gospel with signs and wonders. Matthew records this phenomenon this way: “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.”² And again, “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.”³

    He then commanded His disciples to minister with the same focus—the twelve were sent out with, “And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.”⁴ He commissioned the seventy by saying, “And heal the sick there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’.”⁵

    The Gospel of John records how this combination of words and supernatural works takes place, “The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.”⁶ It’s apparent that we speak the word, and the Father does the works—miracles!

    As men and women of God who teach, we must require from ourselves doing, with power! And this doing must include a breaking into the impossible—through signs and wonders.

    Bible teachers are to instruct in order to explain what they just did, or are about to do. Those who restrict themselves to mere words limit their gift, and may unintentionally lead believers to pride by increasing knowledge without an increased awareness of God’s presence and power. It’s in the trenches of Christ-like ministry that we learn to become totally dependent upon God. Moving in the impossible through relying on God short-circuits the development of pride.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

    In 1987 I attended one of John Wimber’s conferences on signs and wonders in Anaheim, California. I left discouraged. Everything that was taught, including many of the illustrations, I had taught. The reason for my discouragement was the fact that they had fruit for what they believed. All I had was good doctrine.

    There comes a time when simply knowing truth will no longer satisfy. If it does not change circumstances for good, what good is it? A serious reexamination of personal priorities began. It was apparent that I could no longer expect good things to happen simply because I believed they could…or even should. There was a risk factor I had failed to enter into—Wimber called it faith. Teaching MUST be followed with action that makes room for God to move.⁷

    Things changed immediately. We prayed for people and saw miracles. It was glorious, but it didn’t take long to discover that there were many also that weren’t healed. Discouragement set in, and the pursuit with risks decreased.

    On my first trip to Toronto in March of 1995, I promised God if He would touch me again, I would never back off. I would never again change the subject. My promise meant that I would make the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, with the full manifestations of His gifts—the sole purpose for my existence. And I would never stray from that call—no matter what! He touched me, and I have pursued without fail.

RESISTING THE INFLUENCE OF OUR OWN CULTURE

    Our culture has castrated the role of the teacher. It is possible to attend college, get a business degree, and never have received any teaching by someone who ever owned a business. We value concepts and ideas above experience with results. I wish that pertained only to secular schools—but the culture, which values ideas above experience, has shaped most of our Bible schools, seminaries, and denominations. Many present day movements have made a virtue out of staying the course without a God experience.

    To make matters worse, those who speak subjectively of an experience are often considered suspect, and even dangerous. But God cannot be known apart from experience. Randy Clark, the man God used to initiate the fires of revival in Toronto in 1994, puts it this way: “Anyone who doesn’t have an experience with God, doesn’t know God.” He is a person, not a philosophy or a concept. It’s time for those who have encountered God to stop pandering to fear by watering down their story. We must whet the appetites of the people of God for more of the supernatural. Testimony has the ability to stir up that kind of hunger.

KINGDOM REALIZED

    As our ministry teams travel around the world, we have come to expect certain things. Healing, deliverance, and conversions are the fruits of our labors. While healing is seldom the subject we teach on, it is one of the most common results. As we proclaim the message of the Kingdom of God, people get well. The Father seems to say, Amen! to His own message by confirming the word with power.⁸ Peter knew this when he prayed for boldness in his preaching, expecting that God would respond by “extending His hand to heal, and signs and wonders would be done in the name of His holy servant Jesus.”⁹ God has promised to back up our message with power if our message is the gospel of His kingdom.

POWER VS. PRIDE

    The problems we face today are not new. The apostle Paul had great concern for the Corinthian church, for they were being enticed by a gospel without power.

    I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me.

    For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church.

    Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power.

    For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.
        —1 Corinthians 4:14-20

    Paul begins by contrasting teachers and fathers. The teachers mentioned were different from the kind that Jesus intended the church to have. Paul concedes they may be believers, saying these instructors are “in Christ.” But note that he later refers to them as being “puffed up.”

    In this post-denominational era we are seeing an unprecedented movement of believers gathering around spiritual fathers (not gender specific). In times past we gathered around certain truths, which led to the formation of denominations. The strength of such a gathering is the obvious agreement in doctrine, and usually practice. The weakness is it doesn’t allow for much variety or change. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, the people who received the baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues were no longer welcome in many of these churches, because most denominations held statements of faith cast in stone.

    But now this gravitational pull toward fathers is happening even within denominations. Such a gathering of believers allows for differences in nonessential doctrines without causing division. Many consider this movement to be a restoration of the apostolic order of God.

    Paul’s second concern is about the puffed-up condition of his spiritual children. He makes his point by contrasting faithfulness and pride, which he defined as being puffed up. Paul was very concerned that they would be tricked by the theories of good public speakers. Personal charisma is often valued more by the church than either anointing or truth. People of little character can often have positions of leadership in the church if they have personality. Paul found this particularly troubling. He had worked hard to bring the Corinthians into the faith. He had chosen not to wow them with what he knew. In fact, he led them to an encounter with the God of all power who would become the anchor of their faith.¹⁰ But now the sermonizers had come on the scene. Paul’s answer was to send them someone just like himself—Timothy. They needed a reminder of what their spiritual father was like. This would help them to recalibrate their value system to imitate people of substance, who are also people of power!

    Paul makes a stunning statement clarifying the right choice. He said, “The Kingdom of God is not in word but in power.”¹¹ The original language puts it like this—“The Kingdom of God is not in logos but in dunamis.” Apparently they had a lot of teachers who were good at speaking many words, but displayed little power. They did not follow the pattern that Jesus set for them. Dunamis is “the power of God displayed and imparted in a Holy Spirit outpouring.” That is the kingdom!

    Two chapters earlier Paul lays out his ministry priority as bringing the people of Corinth to a place of faith in God’s Power¹² (dunamis). Here he addresses how they were set up to fail if things didn’t change. Any time the people of God become preoccupied with concepts and ideologies instead of a Christ-like expression of life and power, they are set up to fail, no matter how good those ideas are. Christianity is not a philosophy; it is a relationship. It’s the God encounter that makes the concepts powerful. We must require this of ourselves.¹³ How? We must seek until we find.¹⁴

FATHERS WITH POWER VS. TEACHERS WITH ONLY WORDS

Fathers                                     Teachers (not after Jesus’ example)
Lifestyle—Imitate fathers            Lifestyle—Gather around ideas
                                                 (divisive)
Attitude—Humility                     Attitude—Pride (puffed up)
Ministry—Power                       Ministry—Many words
Focus—The Kingdom               Focus—Teachings

GOD IS BIGGER THAN HIS BOOK

“You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor God’s power.”¹⁵

    In this passage Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for their ignorance of the Scriptures and God’s power. His rebuke comes within the context of marriage and resurrection, but is aimed at the ignorance infecting every area of their lives.

    What was the cause? They didn’t allow the Scriptures to lead them to God. They didn’t understand…not really understand. The word know in this passage speaks of “personal experience.” They tried to learn apart from such an experience. They were the champions of those who spent time studying God’s Word. But their study didn’t lead them to an encounter with God. It became an end in itself.

    The Holy Spirit is the dunamis of heaven. An encounter with God is often a power encounter. Such encounters vary from person to person according to God’s design. And it’s the lack of power encounters that lead to a misunderstanding of God and His Word. Experience is necessary in building a true knowledge of the Word. Many fear experience because it might lead away from Scripture. The mistakes of some have led many to fear experiential pursuit.¹⁶ But it is illegitimate to allow fear to keep us from pursuing a deeper experience with God! Embracing such fear causes a failure to the other extreme, which is culturally more acceptable, but significantly worse in eternity.

    God does as He pleases. While true to His Word, He does not avoid acting outside of our understanding of it. For example, He’s a loving God who hates Esau.¹⁷ He’s the One who has been respectfully called a gentleman, yet who knocked Saul off of his donkey¹⁸ and picked Ezekiel up off the ground by his hair.¹⁹ He’s the bright and morning star²⁰ who veils Himself in darkness.²¹ He hates divorce^,22 yet is Himself divorced.²³ This list of seemingly conflicting ideas could go on for much longer than any of us could bear. Yet this uncomfortable tension is designed to keep us honest and truly dependent on the Holy Spirit for understanding who God is and what He is saying to us through His book. God is so foreign to our natural ways of thinking that we only truly see what He shows us—and we can only understand Him through relationship.

    The Bible is the absolute Word of God. It reveals God; the obvious, the unexplainable, the mysterious, and sometimes offensive. It all reveals the greatness of our God. Yet it does not contain Him. God is bigger than His book.

    Revival is mixed with many such dilemmas—God doing what we’ve never seen Him do before, all to confirm that He is whom He said in His Word. We have the inward conflict of following the One who changes not, yet promises to do a new thing in us. This becomes even more confusing when we try to fit that new thing into the mold made by our past successful experiences.

    Not everyone handles this challenge well. Many hide their need to be in control behind the banner of “staying anchored to the Word of God.” By rejecting those who differ from them, they successfully protect themselves from discomfort, and from the change for which they’ve been praying.

ROAD MAP OR TOUR GUIDE

    The acceptable way of studying Scripture puts the power of revelation into the hands of anyone who can afford a Strong’s Concordance and a few other miscellaneous study materials. Put in the time, and you can learn some wonderful things. I don’t want to discount a regular disciplined approach to study, or certainly those wonderful study tools, as it is God who gives us the hunger to learn. But in reality, the Bible is a closed book. Anything I can get from the Word without God will not change my life. It is closed to insure that I remain dependent on the Holy Spirit. It is that desperate approach to Scripture that delights the heart of God. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” ²⁴ He loves to feed those who are truly hungry.

    Bible study is often promoted so that we will get formulas for living. Certainly there are principles that can be laid in an A to Z fashion. But too often that approach makes the Bible a road map. When I treat the Bible as a road map I live as though I can find my way through my own understanding of His book. I believe this perspective of scriptures actually describes living under the law, not living under grace. Living under the law is the tendency to desire a list of preset boundaries, and not a relationship. While both the Law and Grace have commandments, Grace comes with an inbuilt ability to obey what was commanded. Under Grace I don’t get a road map…I get a tour guide—the Holy Spirit. He directs, reveals, and empowers me to be and do what the Word says.

    There are many concepts that the Church has held dear desiring to maintain a devotion to Scripture. But some of these actually work against the true value of God’s Word. For example: many who reject the move of the Holy Spirit have claimed that the Church doesn’t need signs and wonders because we have the Bible. Yet, that teaching contradicts the very Word it tries to exalt. If you assign ten new believers the task of studying the Bible to find God’s heart for this generation, not one of them would conclude that spiritual gifts are not for today. You have to be taught that stuff! The doctrine stating signs and wonders are no longer needed because we have the Bible was created by people who hadn’t seen God’s power and needed an explanation to justify their own powerless churches.

    Revelation that doesn’t lead to a God encounter only serves to make me more religious. Unless Scripture leads me to Him, I only become better equipped to debate with those who disagree with my way of thinking.

    “Knowledge puffs up...”²⁵ Notice Paul didn’t say unbiblical knowledge, or carnal knowledge. Knowledge, including that which comes from Scripture, has the potential to make me proud. So how can I protect myself from the pride that comes from knowledge, even when it’s from the Bible? I must be certain that it takes me to Jesus!

    The pride that comes from mere Bible knowledge is divisive. It creates an appetite for one’s own opinion. “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.”²⁶ Those trained without a revelation that takes us to Him are trained to speak from themselves, for their own glory. This drive for knowledge without an encounter with God wars against true righteousness.

    Not only does righteousness suffer, so does our faith. “How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?”²⁷ That desire for glory from man somehow displaces faith. The heart that fears God only—the one that seeks first His Kingdom and desires God to receive all honor and glory—that heart is the heart where faith is born.

    The mission of heaven is to infiltrate earth with its realities. All teaching is to lead us to that end, for training in the Kingdom is not without purpose. We are being trained to run the family business. This is the discovery of the next chapter.

ENDNOTES

1. John 3:2.
2. Matt. 4:23.
3. Matt. 9:35.
4. Matt. 10:7, 8.
5. Luke 10:9.
6. John 14:10.
7. Making room for God doesn’t mean He can’t move without our approval. It simply means He delights in our invitation.
8. See Mark 16:20.
9. Acts 4:29-30 NASB.
10. See 1 Cor. 2:1-5.
11. 1 Cor. 4:20
12. See 1 Cor. 2:5.
13. It would be easy at this point to think that I’m only addressing power as that which changes a physical condition in the body, or some problem in nature. It certainly includes these kinds of situations. We must remember that the love of God is the greatest power in the universe. It can transform a life as nothing else. We just cannot use this fact as an excuse to avoid the obvious needs of the sick and tormented all around us. We must be moved with the love of God to the point that we seek His face until we are clothed with Power from on high!
14. See Luke 11:10.
15. Matt. 22:29 NLT.
16. Being deceived didn’t start with believing something unscriptural. It started with a heart full of compromise. For no one is ever deceived except they first compromise. See 1 Tim. 1:18-19.
17. See Mal. 1:2-3.
18. See Acts 9:4.
19. See Ezek. 8:3.
20. See Rev. 22:16.
21. See Ps. 97:2.
22. See Mal. 2:16.
23. See Jer. 3:8.
24. Prov. 25:2.
25. 1Cor. 8:1.
26. John 7:18.
27. John 5:44.