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Embrace Your Inner Pentecostal

"Holy Spirit religion" is quietly infiltrating the church, revitalizing us all.

by Chris Armstrong posted 09/19/2006 09:30 a.m.

I recently attended a Midwestern Baptist church in which the pastor directed his congregation to pray with hands extended toward a "pray-ee"—a man standing at the front. Since I'd worshiped in a Pentecostal church for ten years after my conversion as a young adult, I immediately recognized the gesture as a mark of Pentecostal spirituality. Indeed, I discovered later that the Baptist pastor had once been a Pentecostal pastor.

Two thoughts sprang to mind that Sunday morning. First, I realized there are dozens of visible clues associated with Pentecostal churches. People fall "under the power." Congregants stand to prophesy, speak in tongues, or interpret. Arms are raised during prayer and worship. People dance in the Spirit. Pentecostalism is nothing if not physical and active.
Second, while most of these practices remain confined to Pentecostal churches, many non-Pentecostal (and non-charismatic) congregations have become "Pentecostalized" in other ways. Contemporary worship style is an oft-noted influence of Pentecostalism, with congregations of all stripes now singing choruses and praise music, even raising their hands in adoration. But "Holy Spirit religion" is leaving its deepest mark in less visible, more significant ways.

A Spirit of Spontaneity

A typical Pentecostal service follows no printed order; bulletins, if present, contain only announcements. After all, why should an order be needed? "All the members expect anyone of the local assembly to follow the Spirit's leading," Pentecostal scholar Russell Spittler has written, "and to do so at once."
This sort of congregational freedom has marked Pentecostalism from its beginning, along with a unique emphasis on the "priesthood of all believers." Azusa Street pastor William J. Seymour, the driving force behind the earliest Pentecostal revival, typified a new breed of church leader. He allowed and encouraged worshipers to exercise their gifts during services, providing what Fuller professor Cecil M. Robeck has called "a forum for various members of his congregation to make their case or to demonstrate their charism in the context of the worshiping community, without fear of recrimination." When someone moved beyond the bounds of accepted order, Seymour corrected him or her in a manner that, while firm, was also "gracious and soft-spoken."

to read the article in its entirety click on the title above

GOD IS MY BANKER

Most Christians believe God wants them to be rich, a new poll says.
The Time magazine poll found 61 percent said "yes" when asked if God wanted them to be "financially prosperous."
So-called megapastor Joel Osteen, who preaches "relentlessly upbeat television sermons," has been influential in spreading a message that says God wants prosperity for his believers, Time said.
However, Pastor Rick Warren, author of the best-selling "The Purpose-Driven Life," said the notion that God wants all Christians to be wealthy is not in any Bible he's read. Warren called the belief that faithful Christians are rewarded with earthly riches "baloney."
"It's creating a false idol," said Warren, whose books have outsold Osteen's by seven to one.

Jesus' Worldview.....

We are apt to forget that a man is not only committed to Jesus Christ for salvation; he is committed to Jesus Christ's view of God, of the world, of sin and of the devil, and this will mean that he must recognize the responsibility of being transformed by the renewing of his mind.

"Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5

nirusen's Book of the Week

an essential quotation from this book:

Difficulties in the Postponed Kingdom Theory

It is immediately obvious that a system which takes this greatest portion of Jesus' teaching away from the Christian in its direct application must receive a penetrating scrutiny. This is the reason the dispensational interpretation of the kingdom concerns us so vitally. When Christians will not use the Lord's Prayer because it is given for the kingdom age and not for the present age, we must test carefully the validity of the position. These are not unimportant peripheral matters, but the heart of the teachings of our Lord.

Page 106

Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God

by George E. Ladd, Ph.D.
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1954

The Face of St. Luke’s Church in North Park

Yesterday a new Rector was installed at St. Luke's

and the congregation was Happy!

Michael Kiju Paul has been called from afar to lead this house

with his wife and partner pastor Veronica Kiju.

Who are you, 5 years later?

What makes you happy?

Seve-Time Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher will retire from race driving at the end of the 2006 world championship.

On October 12th, 2001 the then F1 world champion Mika Hakkinen was quoted at the season's final race in Japan as saying, "Every time you get in a F1 car it is a special feeling. This is my last Grand Prix for a long time, maybe forever, I don't know myself yet."

"What I am definitely planning to do is to take it easy and experience time with the family and have a lot of good times with them - and stay in one place for a long time. I want to get the feeling of waking in the morning hungry to do something," he added.

As if Mika had not been doing anything by staying busy doing what he loved and getting rich. He was still lacking in something. Is it God who satisfies our hunger for something more?

seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.......

nirusen's Book of the Day

Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation - David Chilton

Good news for those of you who have wanted a copy of David Chilton's extra-ordinary verse-by-verse exposition of Revelation. After being out of print for five years and only available at exorbitant prices in used book stores, Days of Vengeance is back! Going where no commentary has dared to go before, this work shuts the mouths of end-times doomsayers with their pessimistic view of the future. A biblical and scholarly exposition of Revelation is laid out for readers to soak up and begin to view the world with renewed hope and optimism. Chilton skillfully shows in detail that Christians will overcome all opposition through the work of Jesus Christ. The book of Revelation is not about the antichrist, the devil, microchips or bar codes. It is, as the very first verse says, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ." If this book isn't in your library, it should be.

Father, Son and Holy Rift

From his pulpit in Santa Ana, Chuck Smith's voice thunders with certainty. He denounces homosexuality as a "perverted lifestyle," finds divine wrath in
earthquakes and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and promises imminent Armageddon in a deep, sure voice. If his message is grim, the founder of the Jesus People and the Calvary Chapel movement bears the ruddy good cheer of a 79-year-old believer who insists he has never known a day's doubt or despair. From the pulpit of Capo Beach Calvary, 25 miles south of his father's church, Chuck Smith Jr.'s voice trembles with vulnerability and grapples with ambiguity. Without a trace of fire and brimstone, he speaks of Christianity as a "conversation" rather than a dogma, plumbs such TV shows as "The Simpsons" for messages, and aims to reach "generations of the post-modern age" that distrust blind faith and ironclad authority.There is a tradition among superstar evangelists like Chuck Smith the elder of bequeathing the pulpit to a son. Billy Graham did it, as did Robert H. Schuller. However, it has been ages since anyone considered the younger Smith a possible successor to his father's 15,000-congregation ministry, the symbolic center of a network of independently run Calvary churches: about 1,000 across the United States, including two of the three largest non-Roman Catholic churches in California, plus radio and TV ministries.Instead, critics whispered that the son was a dangerous impostor. Last year, those whispers exploded into a full-blown din. Online protests and fliers distributed at the younger Smith's church demanded that he drop the "Calvary" name because of his increasingly liberal drift on such non-debatable issues as the evil of homosexuality and the promise of hell for unbelievers. "What will it take for Chuck Sr. to stop the nepotism?" blogged Calvary congregant Jackie Alnor, one of the critics leading the charge. "Does his son have to burn incense to Isis and Zeus before he is disfellowshipped from a Bible-believing fellowship of churches?"By last spring, one thing had become clear to Smith Jr.: Sprawling as it was, the church his father had built — the place that once embraced a generation of drug-addled hippies and helped change the way many Americans worshipped — had little room left for him.

read the rest of this LA Times article at: http://www.latimes.com/features/religion/la-me-smiths2sep02,1,4959182.story?coll=la-news-religion

Be Fathered and live forever

Jesus came to restore the Tree of Life (He is the Tree, this is my Blood and this is my Body) so we can have eternal life, not just salvation so we can die and go to heaven. This means we have eternal life "NOW".

Jesus came to restore Fatherhood to a fatherless humanity. No more single parent world raised only by mother earth, lady luck and old mother Hubbard.

Motherhood is free to all and comes without repentance but Fatherhood is conditional. Fatherhood has strings attached and requires the confession that Jesus is the Christ and that He is The Way, The Truth and The Life. Motherhood represents the created & visible realm while Fatherhood represents the uncreated and invisible, made visible only through faith.

We have emphasized sinlessness and strived to achieve the sinless state believing it to be the "blissful state". Sinlessness is not blissful. Sinlessness is the requirement to eat from the Tree and have Life and sinlessness is the requirement to have a Father. Once this has been achieved, thank you Jesus, we can operate in this world as the "new creation".

We are more than just saved.

nirusen

Romans 8:37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.