I want to blog on something I know will be controversial. I want to challenge a Christian paradigm that may believers espouse as truth. I was taught it and used to believe it myself. But I think Papa is showing me a new revelation on this.
“He makes His sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and makes the rain fall upon the upright and the wrongdoers [alike].” (Matthew 5:45 Amp)
The context here is Jesus teaching us to love our enemies as well as our neighbours. This is in itself a great blog discussion for another time. But I want to focus on something I hear all the time, all too often.
“Oh, that guy is certainly operating in something supernatural… but he is definitely operating through the wrong source…”
What a turn of phrase. I think I may have even said it myself in our last preach away podcast! (Sorry, Papa!)
In some cases, I am sure that it is true. But I want to question if it’s always true.
Just because someone is not a self-professed born again believer, does that mean that if he is able to operate in some form of a biblical gift of supernatural activity that he is definitely operating from ‘the wrong source’…?
I think there is arrogance, or a form of pride, behind this kind of thinking. I don’t think we Christians do ourselves any favours thinking this way.
Thinking that someone who is unsaved, if they operate in a gift, that they must be pulling on the dark side… isn’t this accusing God of pouring sunshine only on the good? Rain only on the righteous?
If the callings of God are irrevocable, and before the beginning of the world, He knew us and called us according to His purposes… then, surely, a person could be born with an innate natural gifting from God for whatever purpose. Surely the source is God, no matter how a person decides to use that gifting.
Do we really believe more in the devil’s ability to make supernatural things happen than we do in God’s ability?
Surely, a man with a talent to create wealth, be he righteous or unrighteous; that talent came from God… Yes? No?
Or what about a faith healer, operating in the genuine ability to lay hands on people and heal them of their ailments? Is he of the devil? Or does he have a God given ability, but just has yet to meet the One who gave it to him…?
Or the New Agers embracing all sorts of ‘strange’ therapies… are they REALLY all of the devil? Or have they perhaps tapped into some Godly truths that were rejected by the Church at some point or another.
Or the television personality, Dynamo. Is he of the devil? For sure? Or has this man tapped into some universal truths and abilities that are open for all the Godly to discover?
Hear me: I have not done an in depth theological study on this. I’m just blogging from the heart. I just want to provoke us to think. I am not trying to say my answer is the end all and be all. I just want to encourage you to ponder, meditate, and see if Papa shows you something new.
Maybe we should stop accusing everyone who isn’t saved of being of the devil, and try to see God inside them, inside who they are, and what they do. Maybe we should see them through God’s eyes and love on them, and encourage them, and appreciate the talents they have, without distancing ourselves from them with a judgmental attitude, which might simply be a way of covering up our own fears and insecurities.
Maybe, deep down inside, we’re a little jealous, actually, because we’d LOVE to operate in that thing. But instead of facing our own ugly feeling, maybe we hide behind a moral judgment which helps us make ourselves feel a little better.
Or maybe we are just spouting something that we heard someone else say without every stopping to think about it…
I want to be the good, not the bad or the ugly. I know He’ll pour rain and sun on me regardless of which I am. But I want to make Him proud by withholding my judgment and giving people the benefit of the doubt.
For example, I feel certain of this: God LOVED Kurt Cobain, regardless of how Kurt spent his musical talent that God put in him. This was a man who knew how to worship, and lead others into worship.
May you all ponder. May you all get a new revelation, as God leads you.
(And may you all not lynch me for bringing it up. ;>)
Be encouraged. Be empowered. Be delivered.
Glory Company
Wowza great blog!! Loved it. Makes so much sense.
Great blog. Certainly one with having and a conversation piece.
I’d say also that something we forget is yes there is natural giftings associated with our bloodlines, lineage if you like. A gift of grace, works, mercy or even prophetic. A natural gift of working with animals or being a healer. Yet what we haven’t truly unearthed or become aware of, is the spiritual realm “playing it forward” if you like. We are the sum total of all the people who have come before. Our dna carries their tractics and we amplify the best characteristics as we sift and filter them through our lives weaving them into an expression of who we are.
Just like God’s covanent with us, there is also spiritual paperwork, documentation, covanents that sit in the realm of the spirit. Don’t believe that to be true? What about the person who all their life has a natural prophetic gift yet when saved, it get’s amplified as life is breathed on it. The origins of that was already there, the choice was who do you serve?
Yes when God pours out His spirit on all flesh He means ALL.
What I’m saying is in your makeup there’s a predispensation, tendancy, bent if you like.
And you’ve come around to the age old argument of “does source really matter?” And this is the catch cry of this generation as they’re being exposed to more and more supernatural media. Have we got an answer for the werewolves, the vampires the shapeshifters? Is the church ready to embrace them and what’s sitting in their dna that allows them there’s triggers?
Great post!
Most Christians seem to live in the realms of Duality which is where the Law really excists. (sowing & reaping, blessing & curse, cause & effect…etc). If one lives in the lower level conciousness, there will always be a so called fight with an enemy or a belief that two powers excist or are at work. In the Father there is no evil, only Oneness with the Father. Everything becomes God or of God. “The Father and I are One”. Anything less is a really just separation from God or call it “sin consciousness”. The knowlegde of good and evil was the first act of dissobedience in the garden. Jesus said “my Father judges no man”. Righteousness without the Law is to come up the mountain in the mind of Christ conciousness (where the “Most High” is) and sore above it all in the “Law of the Spirit of Life”, at One in the Father. The great dragon is nothing more than a mythical creature at work in the phenomina of the vain dusty imaginations of man. “Beneath the earth” is the realms of the subconcious where the abyss or call it the underworld resides and the psychic seas swell. Let Jesus decend into your abyss..ie The Revelation of Christ in you, the hope of glory!
He makes His sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and makes the rain fall upon the upright and the wrongdoers [alike].” (Matthew 5:45 Amp)
God is Love! Realms of Duality in out minds have sepparated and veiled us from seeing the unconditional Love and acceptance that we are the be-loved offspring of the Heavenly Father and created a performance based religion that is even rampant among the so called super spiritual free ones. SuperNatural is still Natural. The dividing of who is included and who is excluded in the church (who gets into heaven and who goes to hell) is nothing more than judgemental dualism of knowing men after the flesh. We shouldnt even know Jesus by the flesh!
Blessings to all!
Well, God can heal the body. So can evil supernatural beings. So it is (emphasis ‘is’) a matter of discerning ‘source’. Otherwise the supernatural is just one big smorgasbord of dippy experience and people who bring from it bring unclear waters. Jesus didn’t. And he knew the powers there were not all good gifts wrongly used. Love the people….sure….but don’t call evil activity Godly giftings, or you’re going to be seriously duped. Get up there and see the truth. It’s there to be seen and known in Christ….just as love for people is.
Storm, your dna comments are good and valid, but that’s the whole point isn’t it….that our dna / bloodlines need cleansing from defilement of bad spiritual input because of generational idolatry or, to put it in accessible terms, evil influences that can operate through us as supposed ‘good’ gifts when they are not. Yes, the good generational stuff needs freeing and acknowledging too, but mixture accepted as ok is never acceptable to God and won’t cut it in the era we are moving into. So, wisdom and discernment needed. Power too. All the stuff from The Most High God…clear waters!
I find Children can be very prophetic, I think everyone can have God given giftings, but if not sanctified or born again then they can be open to spirits that aren’t of God infiltrating those giftings, so yes we do have to exercise discernment and judge the source, this scripture came to my mind, perhaps if she ever got born again she would possibly be a prophet, but a familiar spirit was actually in operation through her:
Acts 16:16-18New International Version (NIV)
Paul and Silas in Prison
16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.