April 1

1 Corinthians 2:4 (NIV)
4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,

1 Corinthians 2:14 (NIV)
14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

One of the big questions that I hear often is; “why don’t we see more miracles?” Contained in this chapter is one of the reasons for that as well as a guiding principle of our way of life.

The answer is probably on the tip of your tongue right now. We don’t have the gospel preached like this anymore. The American Gospel is full of good works and morality, it is full of the love of God, but as far as power – not so much. There is a power in the preaching, a function of the Holy Spirit to empower the message and to prophetically speak to people, that is much more common, but as far as a demonstration (to show off, to prove by convincing proof), not so much. Why did this happen and when did it happen and how do we change it?

It has happened many times throughout the ages since Christ and not just in America! I believe that verse 14 is the key to why it happened. First of all people don’t understand walking (a way of life) in the Spirit. They have traded in walking in the Spirit for living a good moral life and it is NOT the same! The Spirit will empower you to live morally, obviously, but there is so much more! There is a life of miraculous power that flows from the Spirit to do much more than live right and I don’t think I have to explain it to you. Secondly, we have traded in the Spirit of God for the wisdom of this world! We want to appeal to the masses, so we have taken away anything that may offend people, like the power of the Holy Spirit. We have not wanted to appear “kooky” or “fanatical”, so we have sophisticated our church services to appeal to the world. Now of course we use all kinds of things like fog machines to appeal. In my thinking some appeal would be fine, but NEVER to the removal of the demonstration of the power of God. It is the preaching with the power that Jesus exemplified and that we seek after.

Oh God, come and visit us! Release your power on us oh Lord. We want to be a people who show you off to the world! We don’t care if it looks crazy, we are crazy for you and not ashamed to be sold out for you.