Great Stuff

I was raised in a church-going home, but somewhere in there I missed something. I thought I had to work my way to heaven by being good. And believe me, I had a long, long way to go. I tried to cover my inadequacy by erecting an altar in my room complete with candles and a banner that said, "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want."

Sometimes I would stare at that banner and wonder, "Why would the Bible say I shall not want Him?" Like I said, I was missing something. (Among other things, a semi-colon.)

In my eighth grade year when Cindy A. invited me to a Charismatic prayer meeting, I agreed to go. I wanted to go with her because I hoped I might find what she had. What you have to know about Cindy is that she had been the seventh-grade sleaze, but when September of our eighth grade year rolled around, everybody noticed Cindy was different. Way different. Cindy had gone to summer camp and there she met Christ.

And at the meeting she took me to she introduced me to Him.

For the next three years, I was Charismatic. Frankly, I didn't know there was any other brand of serious Christian. Boy, could we pray, and we believed God could and would do anything. We were bold, but not presumptuous. Nobody was ever ashamed of his or her tears in response to Him. And we worshipped with our arms flung in the air, lost in love and adoration of a fantastically great God.

But I had some questions. When I didn't speak in tongues, someone tried to teach me some syllables to say quickly. It went something like "Bought-a my Chevy, sell-a my Honda." Repeat it fast and it sounds like ecstatic speech. Hm-m-m. I was told using such a phrase would "prime the pump." Yet if the gift of tongues was supposed to be a Spirit gift, I wondered why He would need my help. And didn't Paul say "not all speak in tongues"?

When Cindy was doing sit-ups in P.E. and she winced, I asked if she was uncomfortable. She told me, "I was healed of a back injury, so I'm not going to receive the pain." That struck me as a mind game. If Jesus is Truth, why not tell the truth--that it hurt?

During my junior year I started going out with a guy named Gary Glahn. He had a brother who was going to Bible college, and for the first time I heard the word "cessationist." One night the three of us stayed up late discussing theology, and he explained the Book of Acts from a perspective I'd never heard. He convinced me.

While there were excesses on the Charismatic side, I have concerns with some teachings on the cessationist side, too. For instance, I've often wondered why some of the same people who warn against the feeling-oriented life when it comes to Spirit-worship can scream their heads off whenever the Cowboys score. We can get excited about dem 'boys, but not the stuff that makes the angels rejoice?

And why do people get labeled as Charismatics when they raise their hands in prayer? Cessationists often raise their hands--okay, maybe not in front of each other.

Recently I've started reading Who's Afraid of the Holy Spirit? by a group of cessationist scholars. Editors Dan Wallace and James Sawyer contribute, as well as about ten others such as J.I. Packer, and my friends Reg Grant and Tim Ralston. The main question they address is this: If the Holy Spirit did not die in the first century, then what in the world is He doing today? Willie Peterson's chapter on "The Spirit in the Black Church" is worth the price of the book.

Yes, we've been missing more than a semi-colon. It's as if we've had the attitude that one of the persons of the Trinity we "shall not want." It's high time we got it right.

(By the way, one of the authors tells me I can raise my hands in public again--as soon as my surgeon gives permission.)