Saturday, March 7, 2009

Hearing and Seeing: A Key to God's Power

By David Ryser

I was recently speaking with Ken--a friend of mine who pastors a wonderful church in western Kansas.  He has been considering what we commonly call the Lord’s Prayer.  The disciples of Jesus came to Him one day asking Him to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1).  Ken’s question was, “Why did Jesus’ disciples ask Him to teach them how to pray?  Why didn’t they ask Him how to do miracles, perform healings, or raise the dead?”  (As I thought about it after our conversation, I realized that this was the only time Jesus’ disciples ever asked Him to teach them to do anything.)  As Ken and I pondered the possible answer to his question, I believe we may have gained some insight into something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

I’ve been receiving some e-mails lately about this “loving Jesus stuff” from sincere Christians who are genuinely concerned the current emphasis upon intimacy with God will deteriorate into some form of spiritual navel-gazing that might hinder the Church from doing what it has been called to do; namely, preach and teach the Gospel with power (including signs & wonders) and disciple the nations.  They worry that too much time spent just being in God’s presence will prevent the Church from doing her assigned task.  (Personally, I’d like to see our churches dump the dog-and-pony shows we call worship services, reconnect with God, become vibrant communities of faith, and then begin to minister the Kingdom of God with power out in the world.)  Their concern is legitimate and is deserving of a thoughtful, biblical response.

How does a personal, intimate relationship with God tie into our commission to proclaim and demonstrate the Kingdom of God on the earth?

In John 14:12, Jesus tells His disciples that those who believe in Him will do the works He did--and even greater works.  Where’s our power to do this going to come from?  Probably it’s going to come from the same place Jesus’ power came from.  Luke 4:18, 19 tells us that His power to proclaim and demonstrate the Kingdom of God came from being anointed by the Holy Spirit.  That’s great news for us because we also are anointed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8).  So now we know where Jesus’ power came from, and where our power comes from, but how do we exercise this power?  How did Jesus exercise His power?

Jesus summed up His ministry of proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom of God by telling us that He only said what He heard the Father saying (John 12:50b, among others) and only did what He saw the Father doing (John 5:19, for example).  This is also great news for us because we are told that the Holy Spirit will tell us what God is saying and show us what God is doing (John 16:13-15, and numerous examples in the book of Acts).  This is where intimacy with God comes into the equation.

I believe Jesus uses the picture of hearing and seeing intentionally because hearing and seeing have one thing in common:  in order to hear or to see someone, a person must be in close proximity to the one speaking and doing--we must be in the neighborhood.  Likewise, we must be close to God in order to hear what He is saying and see what He is doing.  If we are not close enough to hear God, how can we know what He is saying?  And if we don’t know what He is saying, how can we proclaim His words?  And if we are not proclaiming His words, then what are we proclaiming/preaching?

The same goes for what He is doing.  If we are not close enough to see God, how can we know what He is doing?  And if we don’t know what He is doing, how can we do what He wants us to do (or how He wants us to do it)?  And if we are not doing what He wants us to do, then what are we doing?

And could this explain, at least in part, the “power outage” in our churches?

(“Read the Bible,” some might say in answer to these questions.  Good advice.  Does your Bible tell you exactly what to say and do when a scared, tearful friend tells you she has been diagnosed with breast cancer?  Because mine certainly doesn’t.)

You see, being and doing are not mutually exclusive; they are inexorably linked.  What we do comes out of what we are (1Corinthians 13:1-3, and others too numerous to mention).  And what we are comes out of Whom we are with.  And if we are not careful, we will find ourselves among the poor souls Jesus talks about in Matthew 7:21-23.  These people are petitioning Jesus for admittance into His eternal Kingdom on the basis that they did the works of God, by the power of God, through the name of Jesus--and Jesus does not contradict them.  He refuses them entry into His Kingdom, however, based upon a lack of relationship.  He says to them, “I never (the Greek is very clear here) knew you.”  The word for “knew” is a past tense form of the Greek word γινωσκω.  This word means “to know by experience” and is used in Matthew 1:25, and other places in the New Testament, to describe the sexual relationship between a man and his wife (and other intimate relationships as well).  So we could translate what Jesus is saying to these people as “I was never intimate with you.”  He goes on to command them to depart from Him and calls them “workers of iniquity” “(iniquity” means lawlessness or illegality).

What gives here?  How can people whom Jesus does not know do the works of God, in the power of God, through the name of Jesus?  Why would God allow that?  I can think of at least three reasons off the top of my head, but this is another discussion for another time.  Why are they declared to be lawless/illegal?  Jesus calls them this, not because of what they did; He calls them this because of where they were when they did those works.  He was not in intimate relationship with them; and, by extension, neither were they with Him.  How could they legitimately speak the words of God and do the works of God if they were not close enough to either hear what He was saying or see what He was doing?

These people, by whatever means they were doing these mighty works (perhaps they had read the Book without meeting/knowing the Author), were operating in the things of God while being outside of connection with God; thus, they were operating illegally.

This brings us back to Ken’s question.  Why did the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray instead of how to minister in God’s power?  And remember, they had just returned from a trip where they had, in fact, preached the Kingdom of God with healings, deliverances, and other signs & wonders accompanying their proclamation (Luke 10:1-17); so why did they now want to be taught how to pray?  I suspect their ministry trip had shown to them the power they could walk in by virtue of the fact that they had been with Jesus and had been commissioned by Him.  They had heard the words of Jesus, and they had seen the works of Jesus, for as long as they had walked with Him (cf. Acts 4:13--the Sanhedrin recognized the apostles had been with Jesus).  When He sent them out, they simply spoke what they had heard Him say and did what they had seen Him do.  And when they expressed their excitement over what had happened through their ministry, Jesus brought them back to the foundation of their relationship with God (Luke 10:18-20).

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray because they finally realized that the things Jesus spoke and did were revealed to Him during the times He was intimate with the Father in prayer.  Jesus was a Man of prayer:  He often prayed, sometimes prayed all night, and frequently sought to pray even more than the demands of His ministry would allow.  And Jesus’ example of intimate prayer influenced His disciples long after He ascended into heaven (Acts 6:4)  They knew that if they were going to continue to speak and act as Jesus did, they would have to be where Jesus had been--close enough to the Father to hear what He was saying and see what He was doing.

When the disciples asked Jesus to “Teach us to pray” they really meant, “Teach us how to be intimate with the Father.”

A final word of caution concerning the motives of our hearts in this matter:  There is power in intimacy with God, but intimacy with God for the purpose of getting power is not true intimacy (it is more like spiritual prostitution).  We should not love God in order to get His power; it is His good pleasure to give us the Kingdom, and its power, because we love Him.

Responses to this article are welcomed.  You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com

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