CHAPTER 5
WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT HAS COME UPON YOU
When we dedicate even our weakness to God, his power consumes us.
They that cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.
JONAH 2:8
Throw me the idol, I’ll throw you the whip!
SATIPO TO INDY AT A CRITICAL MOMENT
A red laser scope pinpointed the forehead of an innocent, random Sarah Connor in a midwestern town who ill-fatedly shared the same name as the future mother of the world-savior, John Connor. In the eighties flick, The Terminator, the real Sarah escapes the T-800 robot assassin. In the sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the story flashes forward to a future where she’s a pumped, ripped, lean, mean, terminator-fighting machine. In the years that follow her narrow escape, Sarah Connor devoted her life to prepare for the coming rise-of-the-machines apocalypse. Sarah’s transformation happened when she mentally shifted from hapless victim to determined victor.
The mission before us shares many similarities to the Terminator storyline. Sarah Connor may be able to tell us the secret to successfully reaching the unreached of the future. The ironic opening of Terminator 2 shows Connor in a psych ward, even though she’s the only sane one on the planet. Sarah Connor suffers a recurring vision of an incinerated playground, and she bears the burden of knowledge that Skynet will detonate an atomic bomb, destroying civilization.
Being an American returning from Europe was like being John Connor disembarking a time machine into the past to save the world from the coming future. Ministering in Europe is like traveling to the future and back, knowing where America is heading. If we compare Britain’s slide into darkness following the Victorian age to America’s current state, they also experienced a few punctuated surges until the 1950s. But then the 60s hit Britain like a Mac truck and everything changed. Just like it has for us following the 80s and 90s.
Consider the following figures about church attendance in America today from Alan Roxburgh:
▪ If you were born between 1925 and 1945 there’s a 60% chance you’re in a church today.
▪ If you were born between 1946 and 1964 there’s a 40% chance you’re in a church today.
▪ If you were born between 1965 and 1983 there’s a 20% chance you’re in a church today.
▪ If you’re born after 1984 there is less than a 10% chance you’re in a church today.1
Add those numbers together and it equals the yawn of an irreversible generation gap.
Sarah’s repeated attempts to wake up and prepare them for Skynet falls on deaf ears, so she prepares herself. She alone knows what’s coming tomorrow, and her vision drives her to prepare, while everybody else is carried about by blissful ignorance, living mundane lives. Paul told the Ephesian church it was not time for sleeping, but to be alert, because the night was fast approaching, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16). Our lives, wisdom, and use of time must be used to strategically prepare ourselves to aid in the salvation of the world in the darkest of days. Like Sarah, we prepare ourselves by anticipating the future, equipping for tomorrow, today. Noah, like Sarah, had a vision of the coming apocalypse, he prepared, and the world survived. In the same way that years of training chiseled Sarah Connor into a hardened fighting machine, those ten days the apostles set themselves apart for the Spirit’s coming in the upper room provided the necessary cutting edge to save the world against impossible odds.
CHEMISTRY THAT DOESN’T SUCK
Jesus told them the Holy Spirit would come upon them, but how can we ensure this for ourselves?
It is not enough to tell me Jesus promised it to the apostles if it can’t happen to me. Why does he come upon me? When and what conditions need to be met? It’s not rocket science, but it might appear that I’m drawing a formula on the blackboard. For the record, I hate chemistry, math, and anything involving numbers, so in my book, formulas suck. There are, however, New Testament principles from Scripture that stake a lightning rod in the turf when the storm is approaching. We cannot manipulate God with formulas. The Spirit is as wild as the wind and blows where he pleases. Nevertheless, Jesus predicted where he would be—like a weatherman, and we can at least trace some wind patterns. Understand that God wants to come upon you more than you want him to. Perhaps he’s been waiting for you to want him to.
Aware of their insufficiencies, the disciples spent ten days praying and fasting for power to come on them, so they could go out and share the good news. In regards to the Spirit, Jesus said that we only needed to ask, but the Greek verb tense is continuous, “keep asking.” Have you ever wanted something so bad it has consumed every fiber of your being? Or that you would sell all you had to possess it? If you’re really hungry, God will not leave your belly empty. The men and women we read about in church history were desperate for the power of God and can recall a time of wandering like vagabonds from hovel to hole, searching for something missing in their ministries. Like A. W. Torrey, they could trace all of their successes back to the Holy Spirit’s presence arriving in their lives:
What did the world do during these ten days while the early disciples were waiting? They knew the saving truth, they alone knew it; yet in obedience to the Lord’s command they were silent. The world was no loser. Beyond a doubt, when the power came, they accomplished more in one day than they would have accomplished in years if they had gone on in self-confident defiance and disobedience to Christ’s command. We too after that we have received the baptism with the Spirit will accomplish more of real work for our Lord in one day than we ever would in years without this power.2
The book of Acts ends with, “He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31, emphasis mine). Acts leaves us with a cliffhanger—the gospel unhindered, advancing rapidly in power. Written on the tombstone of famed Scottish Presbyterian missionary John Geddie was, “When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.” Homeboy needed the power of God for that! Especially since people held him back for so long, believing that he was an unsuitable candidate, due to lack of ministerial experience.
There would be times things would slow down, but the apostles would repeatedly return in desperation and beg for God to give them a bolus injection of faith and power. The result: “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31). They would keep asking for fresh bursts of anointing, power, and authority after Pentecost until the world was flipped upside down.
Earlier, John the Baptist had confessed that his baptism of water was for repentance only, but that there would be another baptism that would be even more powerful. “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt. 3:11, emphasis mine). The people must have wondered what that meant.
The answer came in the form of fire and wind coming upon them in the upper room at Pentecost. The only thing firefighters dread as much as fire is a gale wind stoking power upon the flames, spreading them like, well, like wildfire. I’ve been in forest fires that traveled so quickly over a ridge, we escaped with our lives only by jumping onto a moving fire truck, trailing uncoiled fire hoses behind us. On Pentecost, the apostles became the fuel, and the Spirit was the wind and oxygen igniting them to a contagious blaze that burned across the map. That fire that sparked in Jerusalem on Pentecost was the combusting of living sacrifices. They had offered themselves to prayer, consecrating themselves completely to the mission before them. After ten days, fire came from heaven to fill them and consume everything in their path.
The key to being consumed with the fire of God is surrender. Paul wrote, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Rom. 12:1–2). Because of the finished work of Christ on our behalf at the cross, anything we offer to him is made holy and acceptable. The desire to be offered to God actually comes from being overwhelmed with the grace that grips our souls. Having our eyes opened to the wide scope of his grace, “in full view of God’s mercy,” offering ourselves becomes a reflexive response. God first works in a soul before he works through it. He goes deep with grace in our heart before asking us to go wide with it in the world. This is why reformation historically precedes revival. A rediscovery of God’s grace happened in the lives of Luther, Whitefield, Count Zinzendorf, Chuck Smith, and others. They returned the church to God-glorifying, Soli-Deo-Gloria-style exaltation of the finished work of the cross. Jesus said, “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself”3 and when the Spirit comes, “He will glorify me.”4 Nothing glorifies Christ like the cross, the focal point of his grace. That’s why the apostles experienced the cross and resurrection personally before experiencing Pentecost. Each soul must make the same journey.
Attempting to reach the world effectively without the preparation of offering ourselves completely to God as living sacrifices is like a king going to battle against an army he can’t defeat. Jesus concludes that you must sacrifice everything to him in consecration before the battle (Luke 14:31–33). As a veteran of the battle, Paul said we should offer our bodies as weapons (literal translation) of righteousness. Any believer offering themselves as sacrifices in response to Christ’s sacrifice becomes an embodiment of the cross and resurrection. “We always carry in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Cor. 4:10). Satan fears nothing more than a walking, talking example of the finished work of Christ and the power of the resurrection that ultimately defeated him. Describing us as weapons, Paul invites us to change our stance so that we’re not solely defensive, but also on the offensive. At the dawn of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield wrote in his diary, “I offered my life up as a blank checque to God, telling him that he might write whatever he wanted on it.” The resulting power in Whitefield’s life should not surprise us. When the Spirit finds somebody completely surrendered in prayer to his purposes to lift up the name of Jesus, and is ready to be poured out for others, they are ready to be filled with God. A person like that is like a lightning rod staked in the ground to attract his power because they are aligned to his purposes.
THE HOLY COMBUSTION TRIANGLE
Paul’s picture of surrendering ourselves as a living sacrifice refers to the whole burnt offering from the Old Testament. In order for the whole burnt offering* to be considered “holy and acceptable” in Leviticus, there were two conditions and one result.
1. It had to be set apart (separation).
2. It had to be dedicated to God (consecration).
3. The result: it would be fully consumed by the flames (combustion).
Separation. Consecration. Combustion. Put these three together, and you have the biblical concept of holiness. The word holy literally means to be set apart. Two aspects of holiness are revealed when looked at under a microscope. There is what you’re set apart from (separated from sin), and what you’re set apart for (God). Therefore holiness has a negative and positive aspect to it. Romans six emphasizes the positive and negative aspects of offering yourself to God, “Count yourselves dead [negative] to sin but alive to God [positive]” (Rom. 6:11, insertion mine). Paul continues, “Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God” (Rom. 6:13). To become a whole burnt offering means to be wholly separated for that task, wholly consecrated to God, and wholly consumed by him.
The result of Levitical separation and consecration was combustion. Whenever a burnt offering was made at the temple, the priest would allow it to be wholly consumed by flame to remind them of the fire that fell from heaven that licked up the sacrifice in Moses’s day, and visibly demonstrated that God had accepted the sacrifice as holy and acceptable. The fire in the upper room and Pentecost’s power outside of it was a visible sign that God had received their offering of themselves to the mission of going to the ends of the earth with the gospel. The answer was power. Fire from heaven.
Separation.
Consecration.
Combustion.
Those same Old Testament principles are the application of offering yourself as a living sacrifice in the New Testament era and will lead to New Testament power. But to be powerfully set apart in your generation (combustion), you need to be set apart from your generation (separation), and more importantly, to be set apart to God for your generation (consecration). Combustion means you are holy in the biblical sense, a living sacrifice ablaze with the fire of the Holy Spirit upon you. Separation means to be free from the bondage holding your generation down. Finally, consecration means an all-out, no-holds-barred passion for seeing them saved at any cost, even if, like Paul, it meant you were willing to be cut off for them (Rom. 9:3). Paul’s dedication to the Jewish people emulated Jesus, who had been cut off from his Father for our sake.
Lloyd-Jones said it this way:
You only have to read Christian biographies and the story of revivals, to see exactly what I mean. There is always this stripping. Men and women are aware that they have been doing things that they should not do. Not very harmful things, perhaps, in and of themselves, but they stand between them and God, so they must go . . . They strip themselves. And they give themselves to God, in a new consecration, and in a new dedication. This, I say again, is of the very essence of repentance. But we realize that we must act. We have got to take some steps. It is not for me to tell you what they are, because if I do, I shall be speaking to some and not to others. But every one of us has got to be stripped of something. Every single one of us, without exception.5
Maybe you’re like me; chemistry is not your friend. The back label of my deodorant understands this and tells me, “Contains odor-fighting ‘atomic robots’ that ‘shoot lasers’ at your ‘stench monsters’ and replaces them with fresh, clean, masculine ‘scent elves.’ ”* In the spirit of my deodorant, and in fear of chemistry, let me sum it up by saying holy people catch fire more easily! They should come with a warning label: Spontaneous spiritual combustion imminent.
COMBUSTION
Let’s talk about combustion first. It’s the effect of the two causes, separation and consecration. When those conditions are met, like the whole burnt offering, the power of God consumes a believer with a contagious fire that effectively spreads his message. It doesn’t matter if you’re thoroughly waterlogged wood and fear you’ll only smoke and stink in the fire. The good news is that the consuming fire will consume whatever is offered upon that altar of separation and consecration. I once watched a documentary about an amateurish eccentric man who kept lions on his ranch. He’d lost a foot to a lion once because his boot went slightly into the cage during feeding time. “A lion is a territorial animal,” he said, “and he’ll own whatever crosses that line. If it’s a tire, a hunk of meat, or a boot, once it’s in there it’s his.” Remember, Aslan is a lion. Whatever smacks against the slab of that altar as a living sacrifice will be consumed. He’ll own it. But it has to be freely offered to him for service. That’s how it works. Everything gets sacrificed to the fire that will consume it all, burning it up until we burn brightly for him.
Tozer said, “We do not need to worry about getting more of the Holy Spirit, but see to it that he gets more of us. We can have all of him if he can get all of us.”6 In order for the fire to spread through you to others, you first have to be caught alight yourself. In order for that to happen, you have to be under the rule and reign of the Holy Spirit. He must possess you, own you, control you. It’s less about us harnessing him, and more about him harnessing us—finally. And when he consumes us like fire, his power begins to unleash itself through us. Like a fire consuming all that’s in its path, there are no hindrances to his helping, no roadblocks to his moving, no thwarting of his purposes.
Founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, was once summoned to appear before Queen Victoria and receive a commendation for the countless souls he’d rescued from alcohol and ruin. The queen asked him why he’d had such widespread success whereas many others had failed. As tears began to well in his eyes and run down his cheeks, he looked up and said humbly, “I suppose your Majesty, that it is because he has all of me.”7 Whitefield said something very similar about his time spent in prayer, which is really a time of submitting yourself upon the altar.
Early in the morning, at noonday, evening and midnight, nay, all day long, did the blessed Jesus visit and refresh my heart. Could the trees of a certain wood near stone house speak, they would tell what sweet communion I and some others enjoyed with the ever blessed God there. Sometimes, as I was walking, my soul would make such sallies as though it would go out of my body. At other times I would be so overpowered with a sense of God’s infinite majesty that I would be constrained to throw myself on the ground and offer my soul as a blank in his hands, to write on it what he pleased.8
Normally we do the opposite, filling in the check for the amount we want, we ask God to sign approvingly on the dotted line. But Whitefield handed God a blank check with his own signature at the bottom, inviting God to fill in whatever he wanted. When that happens in people, history changes.
Does he have all of you? In The Enduement of Power, Oswald J. Smith writes about a horse dealer who agreed to break in a horse purchased by a city-slicker. “That’ll be fifty dollars,” he says to the dude. After a week or so, the city-slicker comes back to pick up his horse. The horse dealer tells him, “Okay, you can have him, but you can’t ride him; not like this.” “Why not?” says the slicker. The dealer responds, “He’s only half-broken right now. I broke his left side, if you want his right side broken, that’ll be another fifty bucks.” Many of us, he concludes, are like half-broken horses; broken only on one side. Until what Jesus has done breaks us completely, we won’t offer all of ourself upon that altar of combustion. Having bought us once with his blood, we still ask him for another fifty bucks to make it all worthwhile. But Paul urges us, “In full view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies” (Rom. 12:1). Was what Jesus did for us on Calvary enough? Isaac Watts thought so when he penned, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life my soul, my all.”
When Jesus told his followers to wait until the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were not entirely unfamiliar with the work of the person of the Holy Spirit. In Old Testament times, the Spirit came upon David before battle, or upon a prophet as he prophesied. The Spirit came upon Samson before he laid hold of a jawbone, Left 4 Dead style, and gave 1,000 Philistines the epic beatdown of all beatdowns. And before Jesus exhorted his followers to wait in Jerusalem, he previously blew on them in John 20, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” imitating Yahweh breathing into Adam’s nostrils. Jesus used the Old Testament terminology when he told the apostles that the Spirit would come upon them. But when Luke recorded the events at Pentecost he introduced a new term unique to the New Testament. The apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit. When somebody has the Spirit within them he saturates every ounce of their being, and they become filled. This filling was secondary to their salvation but necessary for empowerment.
This experience of power was not foreign to them. They knew there were times when they didn’t have what it took to accomplish the mission. When Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples were wrestling all day with a demoniac. They’d cast out demons before, but this one wouldn’t budge. Jesus cast it out with just a word. The disciples asked, “Lord, why couldn’t we do it?” Jesus’s answer, “This kind can come out only by prayer” (Mark 9:29). Because they were not set apart and consecrated with prayer,* they were not powerful enough weapons in his hands.
Lest you imagine being filled with the Spirit to be an optional extra, like an app for your iPhone, perhaps it’s better if you think of it as the operational system like a Mac OS X, or Windows 10. Without it, your Christian life is stuck on DOS programming. Talk about boring. Being filled with the Holy Spirit opens up new windows of contagious efficiency. The pilgrims in Jerusalem thought Peter was drunk because the power and persuasion that manifested in him demanded an explanation. In Ephesians, Paul exhorts the believers, “Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit” (5:21). Being filled is not an option, but an imperative. The phrase to “be filled” with the Holy Spirit is literally, keep being filled. This is something that you are responsible for. It’s no good to say, “Holy Spirit, come and fill me,” when you’re drunk off your butt. Being filled with something else, or under the influence of something else, you can’t be filled with the Holy Spirit. Sin acts like alcohol, influencing your thoughts, affecting your actions so that you do and say stupid things. It is addictive, has consequences that hurt like a hangover when the party is over, and eventually ruins your life.
We must be careful to avoid the pitfall of confusing justification with sanctification. Your justification was entirely the work of Christ. He earned your holy standing before God, but the process of sanctification is a joint effort. “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do” (1 Pet. 1:14–15). The Holy Spirit strives to make us holy, but it’s our responsibility to work in partnership with him, to make his job easy. Therefore Paul says if we want to be weapons of righteousness, we must yield ourselves entirely, piece by piece; body part, by body part (Rom. 6:13).
Therefore, to be filled with the Spirit, you have to stop being filled with sin. In preparation for our first date, I cleaned out my Plymouth Duster. I cleaned that hunk of junk like Joseph cleaning out the saliva-strewn manger that would hold the baby Jesus. Know why? Because I was going to have a real, live pretty girl in that car, and I didn’t want her to find any boogers under the seat. Yes sir, my wife’s a lucky girl. In the same way, it’s probably a good idea to scrub your life clean of disgusting things before you ask the Holy Spirit to fill you. I can’t be filled with the Holy Spirit with a brain packed with porn. Ready for some tough talk? Jesus talked tough when it came to sin. This is something that you can do. No, scratch that. It’s something that you are commanded to do. And for the sake of the lost, it’s something you must do if you want to reach them effectively.
“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside” (Luke 4:14). He had been in the wilderness, learning to rely on his Father. He was tempted, but he separated himself from sin and consecrated himself to do the will of God alone. My hope is that the church will return from her long sojourn in the wilderness, and the name and fame of Christ would combust and spread like wildfire in our cities.
This was the heart of missionary to India, Amy Carmichael, “Give me the love that leads the way, the faith that nothing can dismay, the hope no disappointments tire, the passion that will burn like fire. Let me not sink to be a clod: make me Thy fuel, flame of God.”9
SEPARATION
If holy people are set ablaze, then most of us probably feel like Jack London’s doomed character in London’s short story To Start a Fire—hopelessly ignorant in the vast Alaskan wilderness, unable to catch anything aflame. As I wrote this chapter, I wasn’t too far from the famed Lewis and Clarke Trail, where hardened mountain men braved impossible odds and rough terrain, fueled only by guts and whiskey, in an embodiment of the true American spirit. Today, the American spirit is the emotional equivalent of an overly hormonal junior high school girl, weeping and crying if somebody looks at us the wrong way. Any talk of holiness and separation from sin, and we cry “legalist” because talking about sin might make us feel guilty, judged, or “yucky.” Hudson Taylor said, “An easy-going non-self-denying life will never be one of power.”10
That said, I can’t stand legalism in any shape or form, but according to Scripture, holiness isn’t an option. Even Jesus stated that you need to metaphorically cut off sin wherever you find it. Even if it’s something you’re pretty attached to, like an eyeball or right hand. John the Baptist was accused of being a legalist, and the people said he had a demon. And by the Pharisees’ standards, Jesus was a Sabbath-breaking, prostitute-loving, wild-party attending, wine bibbing, gluttonous man-versus-food champion.11 Yet Jesus was the embodiment of holiness. With that, I’ll leave you to work out your feelings with your inner child. Alternatively, you could wrestle with the angel until you receive the blessing. And of course, Jesus is always ready to spar a little bit more with us.
Does the word “holy” scare you? Holiness is so important that Peter warns, “Without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). If the Holy Spirit is in you to begin with, it’s his job to make you holy. You should have been clued into that by the fact that we call him the “Holy” Spirit. But don’t be afraid of the word holy, as if some big swarthy-toothed madman will suddenly spring out of the bushes with a Bible big enough to choke a mule, spouting frothy specks of spit. Being holy doesn’t mean that “you don’t drink, smoke, chew or go with girls who do.” When the rubber meets the road, holiness means to be like Jesus. After all, he was the only truly holy human being to speak of. But when we live under the influence of his Holy Spirit, walk in the Spirit, and are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can’t help but have a greater effect on the people we are around.
Separating ourselves from sin is the negative aspect of holiness, and although not popular today, it was understood in ages past to be a key to effectiveness. Charles Spurgeon, while lecturing ministers-in-training on the connection between their lives, quoted Ecclesiastes 10:10, “If the axe is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but skill will bring success.” He likened the Holy Spirit to a workman who can work faster with a sharpened tool. That tool is a holy life. Spurgeon’s lecture was titled “The Minister’s Self-Watch,” and was an appeal to holiness so that we are “anointed with the sacred consecrating oil, or that which makes us most fragrant to God and man will be wanting . . . Sanctity in ministers is a loud call to sinners to repent.”12 Without holiness, we lose our cutting edge for mission.
Paul exhorted Timothy, “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work” (2 Tim. 2:21 ESV, emphasis mine). This doesn’t just apply to ministers, but like Paul said, “if anyone” cleanses themselves from what is dishonorable, they will become useful, and ready for every good work. Becoming useful and equipped for mission is a choice, but comes with a hefty price tag. For some, the cost of becoming effective is too steep a price to pay. But those who are willing to lay themselves at the feet of Jesus become an effective tool, ready to do God’s work. Salvation Army founder William Booth asked, “Will you go to His feet and place yourself entirely at His disposal?”
Holiness is not an optional extra if you want to see people around you get saved. Because this generation is addicted to everything, you can’t afford to be addicted to anything. People today are tangled up in addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, rage, debt, video games, social networking, and pornography, like a cat tangled up in Christmas lights. Lest you think that addiction is unique to twenty-first-century living, the New Testament calls it the bondage of sin, and after being set free from it, Paul calls us not to “be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).* Gospel passages aren’t always popular at gospel-centered conferences. The gospel is good news, but it’s less than great news if it can only set me free from sin’s guilt, but not sin’s power and dominance over my life. The good news of the gospel has been undersold for years. The gospel is not merely, come to Jesus and he will forgive you your sins. It is that and so much more. The gospel is that Jesus will set you free from the sin’s penalty and set you free from the bondage of sin.
How will we minister to addicts if we’re still addicted? In that condition, we wouldn’t even make it as a sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, not to mention as a minister of the gospel. Lives are on the line, and if we’re going to rescue them from the undertow of sin, we need to be in shape to swim against the current. Fat lifeguards don’t save lives.
I’ve laid my hands, Mr. Miyagi-style, on a crack addict held in bondage for twenty-five years and seen him liberated instantly. I graduated from college as a registered nurse and worked as a psych nurse in drug rehab. I know that God doesn’t always set people free immediately. It angers me when people insist he must. Sometimes people need to work the twelve steps. Although our justification was immediate, our sanctification is an ongoing battle, as the nature of the flesh constantly drags downward like dead weight, like the law of gravity. But now the much stronger supernatural power works within us like the law of aerodynamics, which can supernaturally overcome the natural laws of sinful gravity and get us airborne. Paul found a “new law” at work within him that helped him rise above. Jesus does not expect me to be sinless, but he does expect me to sin less. The stakes are high. Souls hang in the balance. “Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame” (1 Cor. 15:34 ESV). Mission was a powerful motivator for holiness in Paul’s life, and in his mind, the two were connected.
If we’re not walking in the power that frees us from sin’s bondage, and not just its guilt, then trying to reach this trapped generation that has succumbed to their passions is going to be difficult. Personally, we don’t have much to offer them except a half-baked gospel, as fake as the gospel of works. We don’t get to choose between the cross and the resurrection. They are both part of the gospel. The cross represents grace, but the resurrection represents power. To reject the power is to leave Christ in the ground, dead and buried as if he died for your guilt two thousand years ago, but can’t really do much for us today.
Separating yourself from sin is going to hurt. I don’t know about you, but a part of me likes sin. In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis envisions Jesus separating a man from his sin, with the sin personified as a seditious red lizard whispering warnings in his ear about Jesus. After the man gives permission for Jesus to kill the lizard, Jesus’s touch on the lizard starts to burn the agonized man. The man cries out for Jesus to stop, fearing it will kill him. Jesus replies, “I never said I wouldn’t hurt you. I said I wouldn’t kill you.”
Suddenly the lizard begins chattering loudly, “Be careful. He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you’ll be without me forever and ever. I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won’t do it again.”13
Putting to death the sinful desires of our bodies is a painful process of tug of war. Beating the crap out of something hurts your fists as well as the object you hit. Starve it. Hurt it. Beat it until it dies and your flesh cries “uncle” under the dominance of the Spirit, instead of the other way around.
Perhaps you’re reading this tough talk thinking God got the wrong guy. The right guys always think that. Despite all this talk about distancing yourself from sin, you will still fail. But through your failure, and refusal to quit, lies victory. Every time you resist, there is greater power, like Jesus returning from the wilderness. Every time you fail, Jesus proves to you the validity of the gospel and demonstrates a love that will not let you go. After repeatedly drinking deeply from the bottomless well of his unfathomable love for you, sin becomes a broken cistern that fails to satisfy. When the well of the heart has been deeply excavated by grace, having sin scooped out of it, it longs to be filled with holiness. Stripping grace from holiness is a formula for the making of a perfect Pharisee. They were experts at separating themselves, and having the form of godliness, but there was no power in it (2 Tim. 3:5).
Therefore, sinless perfectionism is garbage. Jesus handpicked you like he did the apostles. He died for your sin so that he could send his Spirit to inhabit the mess of a state you are, mistakes, flaws, and all. He was aware of how condemned the building was before he bought it, and he’s got a restoration blueprint that nobody, maybe not even you, can see. Peter tried telling Jesus he got the wrong guy once. But as soon as Peter netted an impossible haul of fish, he knew he’d been caught. “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). Through deep shame and frustration with himself, Peter failed to grasp the lesson that the fish were there to teach. Jesus was essentially saying, “Peter, you keep hauling, and I’ll keep doing the impossible.” It’s more what Jesus can do in each of us than what we ourselves can do. Peter couldn’t catch a single fish after toiling all night, nor could he do anything else of any spiritual significance, but Jesus was looking for partners in his business of fishing for people. They needed to be keenly aware that God used flawed but surrendered people, and nobody knew that better than Peter as he stood broken, but filled with the Holy Spirit’s power on Pentecost. Holiness doesn’t mean being perfect. It means being sacrificed to the one who was sacrificed for us. J. Hudson Taylor said, “God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him.”14 Peter valued holiness because he valued grace. God had broken him before he used him.
One man said, “I’m not what I should be. I’m not even what I could be. But by the grace of God, I’m not what I used to be.” With the work of God in your life, the same can be true for you.
CONSECRATION
Consecration is the flip side of the record, and like most B sides, this one is rarely played. If you thought side A was tough, this one’s even harder to listen to. I promise not to ask you to dance to it. Speaking of music, Francis Havergal summed up what it means to be consecrated, with the hymn “Take My Life and Let it Be:”
Take my life and let it be
consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days;
let them flow in endless praise.
Take my hands and let them move
at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice and let me sing
always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use
every power as Thou shalt choose.
Take my will and make it Thine;
it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart it is Thine own;
it shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour
at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be
ever, only, all for Thee.
This time we’re not talking about what you’re separated from, but what you’re separated to. Now that we’ve refused to allow sin to control us, it’s a matter of not taking the control ourselves. It’s the constant struggle to keep handing over the reins of our lives to Jesus, as our King and rightful ruler. In Romans 6:13, it reminds us to yield yourself to the Holy Spirit to become a weapon of righteousness. Like my buddy Adam Stadtmiller said, “Holiness unlocks doors of purpose in your life a lot faster than any to-do list or seminars and books on purpose filled living can. If you commit to holiness, your purpose will hunt you down and lie at your feet.”15
When I’m filled with either wine or the Holy Spirit, I come under its control and influence. If I fill myself up with wine, I’ll be under its influence. Likewise, if I fill myself up with the Spirit, I’ll come under his influence. Let me illustrate. Years ago, I was playing a massive multi-player online game called The World of Warcraft. Even now, I slightly drool when I think of it. As dumb as it sounds, it was consuming me. Killing boars, looting snobolds, and fastening epic armor to my toon avatar was all consuming. But you can’t be consumed by Wow and wowed by the Spirit at the same time. Believe me, I’ve tried. While a committed warrior of Azeroth, I could not be a warrior in the kingdom of God with the same efficiency. Playing video games took huge bites out of my prayer life, time preparing to preach the word, and even my marriage.
In the first year of our church plant, our leadership went away for the weekend to seek God for direction in a place that literally looked like Hobbiton. There is a book written about that place called The Grace Outpouring that hadn’t been written yet, but the Hound of Heaven was hot on my trail during our time there. The Spirit hounded me about the cat-and-mouse I was playing with him. On my knees in prayer, I begged God to rip the addiction out of my heart because I was unwilling to let it go. After about four hours of struggling silently, one of the other leaders had a word for me. It was something like this, “Peyton, God wants to use you, really use you. But there is something in your life that is blocking the influence and activity of the Holy Spirit. God is calling you to sacrifice that to him, but he won’t take it from you. It has to be given. And when you do, he’ll be able to fill you with his Spirit.”
Busted.
Yet being busted never felt so good. It was the taste of freedom for a guy who was languishing in prison. I didn’t know how to stop wanting what I wanted so badly and because I was unwilling to let it go, I prayed the only thing that I knew how to pray, “God, make me willing to be willing.” If you’re not willing to offer it because you love the kingdom of Azeroth or the state of Pornizona more than the kingdom of God, then you need to ask God to make you willing to be willing. It’s the starting place, and God welcomes prayers that echo, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
I have to warn you, prayers like that are dangerous. They’re prayers inviting God to come into your inmost desires and shake them up. It will wreck what you have now. I mean, heck, we’re supposed to be praying this way daily, “Lead us not into temptation.” That prayer is a way of saying, “Help me to not want what I want when I shouldn’t want it.” I always misunderstood that prayer as meaning God would steer the external temptations from my path. What it actually means is that while I walk down temptation way, my internal GPS doesn’t malfunction, but safely navigates me out the other side. The entire Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of consecration, asking God to change our hearts so we’re not diverted from his glory, his will, our dependency, our repentance, or our mission.
Coming under the influence of the Spirit means to want what he wants! Consecration is all about the submission of wills, saying as Jesus did, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The key word here is surrender. I come under his influence by yielding to him; offering myself to him as a living sacrifice; offering my desires, my will, my dreams. That’s why Romans uses the language of offering sacrifices with the word yield, or surrender, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness” (6:12–13). When you separate yourself from sin in order to consecrate yourself to God as a weapon of righteousness, you put your toe to a spiritual line, and enlist as a commando. Trust me when I say wimps need not apply. There’s going to be a bit of a fight ahead of you before you get to settle down into eating the fat and drinking the sweet. Like Joshua, you’re going to have to fight for every inch of ground, because to be frank with you, the enemy you’re fighting on this front is primarily yourself. When Indy is in the cave at the end of the Last Crusade, he also realizes the true enemy that needs to be fought is himself. His father tells us the same thing ours does, “Let it go.”
FIRE!
To sum up, power in witness is the result of meeting these two conditions: repentance and surrender. It would have saved time if I’d just said that at the beginning, but it’ll save you time in life if you repent and surrender. Life is like a mafia thug sometimes, offering us the choice between doing this thing the easy way or the hard way. Surrender seems hard at first, until you’ve done things the hard way. D. L. Moody said, “I do not know anything America needs more today than men and women on fire with the fire of heaven. Not great men, but true, honest persons God can use.”
When Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician died, they found a piece of paper detailing an encounter he had with God sewn into the liner of his coat. This encounter has become known as Pascal’s “Night of Fire.” On that scrap of paper was written the words that would set almost any heart ablaze.
It reads:
The year of grace 1654 . . .
From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight.
FIRE
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,” not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
“Thy God shall be my God.”
The world forgotten, and everything except God.
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels.
Greatness of the human soul.
“O righteous Father, the world had not known thee, but I have known thee.”
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have cut myself off from him.
They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.
“My God wilt thou forsake me?”
Let me not be cut off from him for ever!
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I have cut myself off from him, shunned him, denied him, crucified him.
Let me never be cut off from him!
He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Sweet and total renunciation.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director.
Everlasting joy in return for one day’s effort on earth.
I will not forget thy word. Amen.
I can hardly ever read that without being moved by Pascal’s demonstration of incredible intellect, suddenly overcome by emotion during a head-on collision with God. It’s obvious that words fail to express the enormity of his experience. Whatever his experience, he uses the words “total submission,” “renunciation,” and “surrender all” in connection with fire. At that moment, he was a man consumed.
George Whitefield was consumed when he flung himself on his bed in desperation and cried out, “I thirst!” The Spirit flooded in that day and Whitefield surrendered and was consumed by a holy fire. At the moment that the Holy Spirit rushed in, he laughed that it had all been so simple and cried out, “Joy, joy, unspeakable! So full and big with glory!” At that moment, Whitefield became a spiritual millionaire. When he spoke, it was out of an experience of a satisfied soul, nourished from a well that sprung up within him into everlasting life. Not only that, it spilled out over the rim of the well of his heart and created streams of living water others used to quench their thirst. That well of the Holy Spirit wants to well up within us so deeply that you never thirst again, and out of that abundance, offer others freely to drink from the streams of living water. And Whitefield knew power. Eyewitness accounts attest to the powerful undertow of the gospel that pulled at their souls when he preached.
Whitefield’s counterpart John Wesley said:
Never doubt either God’s presence, God’s word, God’s pity, or God’s power . . . but whatever else you do, deal much with God. People say, ‘this man has talent,’ and ‘that man has talent,’ depend upon it, the great secret of usefulness is close dealing with God . . . walk humbly with God. Acts of self-condemnation are, next to acts of faith in Christ, the most profitable of devotional exercises. I have grown best and done best when most frequent in them.
The reason people get nervous about this stuff is that it can make people raging, jerkhole Pharisees. This is because they can be tempted to feel self-justified that they’ve set themselves apart to receive power in their lives. But remember, we don’t become holy in our souls by any other means than the blood of Jesus, so that as Paul said, boasting is excluded (Rom. 3:27). The problem is, we’d rather have a lack of power, and stifle these verses, than have raging jerkholes. But the current hour calls for humble, broken people, consumed with Jesus, and unimpressed with themselves.
That’s what it’s about, by the way. There was a time when I was obsessed with seeking power for witness at the expense of seeking Jesus. Feeling no better than Simon the Sorcerer who tried to buy power from Jesus without walking with him, I repented. Make no mistake, the disciples were seeking the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not his power. Power is always a result of something else. It’s never something to be sought directly. I’ve begun to get to know Vance Pitman, who has been used powerfully in the city of Las Vegas to reach the unreached and plant many churches. He has repeatedly said that his life changed when he realized ministry was what God did. Therefore, ministry was not his first calling. His first calling was intimacy. If he pursued that, God would work all around him in power.
THE POWER OF ONE
Back to Sarah Connor. In the Terminator franchise, only one lone warrior could be sent back in time to save the world. Sarah Connor shifted from a hapless victim to a determined victor. She focused with the intensity of the laser that drew a bead on her forehead. Those who labor, sweat, fast, and pray during the “silent years” have been the ones that get to see God turn the tide of the war through a revival. They are those, who like Elijah, pray for rain during the years of drought. They are categorically out of place, like prophets born out of due time. They pray when they see nothing on the horizon, in anticipation of seeing a cloud the size of a man’s fist. Anna and Simeon kept lamps trimmed and burning in the temple and held the infant Hope of Israel in their ancient arms. They stayed focused. They were tired, but remained awake, watching and waiting. As Paul said, “Let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober” (1 Thess. 5:6). E. M. Bounds said, “Men look for methods. God is looking for men.”16 He’s looking for people that will focus on him, looking only to him as the answer to the mess we’re in.
This kind of talk is not popular. It’s not going to make it into most pulpits, Christian magazines, or popular conversation. It’s seen as extremist and strange. It’ll get you locked up in padded rooms of solitary confinement and make people want to shove a needle in your glutes. That’s okay, I’m in good company. Didn’t you know that everyone thought the prophets were crazy? You wouldn’t have believed their message either. They were specifically sent into times that needed, but didn’t want, their message.
In the psych ward, Sarah is pounding pushups and pull-ups in her cell to keep herself in shape for the coming war. She stayed tough and ensured she could wield a machine gun and use her fists. She trained in martial arts, explosives, and schematics. She trained her mind, spirit, and body in preparation for a future she knew would follow.
She is like those apostles on the eve of Pentecost, focused, determined, and all in. They knew what it would take to save the world. Like Joseph in prison, Moses in the wilderness, Daniel in Babylon, and David on the run from Saul, they knew their time was coming. Soon. They prepped. They sought God. He ignited them.
Discussion Questions
(For Dr. Jones, the Princeton Professor in you)
1. What areas do you think you need to surrender to God?
2. How would your life be different if you submitted those areas to him?
3. How do you continually live a holy life without becoming a Pharisee?
Adventurous Actions
(For Indiana, the Temple Raider in you)
1. Spend a week focusing your prayer life on surrender to God.
2. If there are areas of your life in bondage to sin, ask somebody to pray you through whatever struggle you’re having. Talk with them on a weekly basis. If it’s a serious issue, consider getting counseling from a pastor or licensed and Spirit-filled professional.
3. Spend a day praying and fasting and asking the Holy Spirit to fill you.
*Leviticus is my favorite book of the Bible. I know, I’m a freak, right? You can catch my eight-minute chapter expositions of it on the Through the Word app.
*Old Spice—ask for it by name!
*Some manuscripts include fasting, which is an even greater discipline of consecration.
*Paul may have been talking about legalism or sin, or both, depending upon the interpretation.