Onward, Forward, Toward…

In many pentecostal /charismatic circles, there is a very strong mentality that exists within this movement that spends countless amounts of money, time, and energy trying to figure out why

something, some event prophecied, some desire, some ‘promotion’, some newfound wealth, some victory over a bad habit, some healing, etc.

has not yet come to pass and what needs to be done to bring ‘it’ forward.

or this strong mentality is used to figure out why

some tragedy, some personal suffering, someone died way too early, some natural disaster, some school shooting, etc.

happened and what could have been done to prevent it

However, the one ‘hotspot’ that the concept of trying to figure out why something does not happen is most commonly applied to one thing that pentecostals / charismatics thrive on

revival

In trying to explain why either something has not taken place or why some suffering had to happen, many people love to reference Joshua chapter 7 in reference to a story about a man named Achan who, during the battle of Jericho (verse one),

…committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi,[a] the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed things; so the anger of the LORD burned against the children of Israel.

This was in direct violation of a command that the Lord gave to Joshua in chapter 6, verse 18 where the Lord said

And you, by all means abstain from the accursed things, lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.

If you read Joshua chapter 7 in it’s entirety, you can see what happened when the Israelites went up to defeat Ai, they were defeated. The Lord reveals that His instructions were not properly fulfilled and after finding out that Achan took of the accursed things,

Then Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the garment, the wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and all that he had, and they brought them to the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, “Why have you troubled us? The LORD will trouble you this day.” So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.

In chapter 8, we then see that Ai was then defeated.

The point that is always made in the teaching off this scripture in pentecostal / charismatic mindsets is that you are ‘destined for greatness, health, wealth, prosperity, and mega-revival’ but there is ‘that one thing’ that is in your way that needs action to get done or gotten rid of before mega-revival, greatness, health, wealth, prosperity, victory, and anointing can ever come on your life.

Send a televangelist 66 dollars a month for 12 months to unlock the ‘end-times transfer of wealth’ and to unlock the Psalms 66:12 blessing

Denounce your disagreement with this big named minister from Tulsa to where you can receive healing from cancer

Vote for this candidate on election day to where God can stop crime in your neighborhood, stop abortion, give tax breaks to homeschoolers, eliminate all the sin, gays, and DEMONcrats from America, and God can finally ‘move’ in this nation and we can pray again at school.

Wear three piece suits (and the women wear floor-length dresses) and listen to southern-gospel music to where we can ‘flesh out’ to the country twang, run around the pews, and call it “wee-vibe–ulll’ and ‘uuffvv gawddd’

Send this preacher a love offering to where he can go into ‘the holy of holies’ for you to atone your sins when he goes to ‘the threshing floor’ of his prayer room on Yom Kippur

Stop your secret sin of questioning me which is touching the anointed.

Jump around like a mosh-pit, bark like dogs, and laugh very hard for a long period of time to break ‘religion’ and get ‘blessed’ and experience the ‘anOINKing’

Repent of a ‘new sin I invented’ (reality - quit doing something I dislike) and see people get saved

Dress up in Army fatigues and get your GPS and speak to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west to release the souls to come to God

Eliminate the Roman calendar and observe the Jewish calendar, holidays, have Saturday church, do not eat pork, and change your time base to Jerusalem’s time zone.

On May 28th, start a 40 day fast which will end on 7-7-07 and come to our big mega crusade where ‘revival’ will start. (since God’s number 7 and 40 are used, then this IS God)

We need to place property stakes anointed with oil at our borders and have people at the county line cast evil spirits off the people traveling through.

We need to go back to sawdust brush arbors with fans provided by the funeral home (the air conditioner made us too lazy to evangelize and the windows not opened caused the town drunk not to hear God’s Word), where we ate fried chicken afterwards cooked on Saturday (cooking is ‘work’), stayed at church all day and not leave by noontime, close the stores, avoid the skating rink, movie theaters, and bowling alleys, etc. and God will bless us again.

I can continue on and on with more ‘examples’. However, we see a very distinct pattern at work here. We see that (1): Something caused a ‘decline’ in society, a ‘dryness’ in the church, and a sense of ‘God has left and betrayed us.’ (2): We have to find out ‘the one thing’ and address it. (3): After we address it, then we will experience blessing, revival, and be able to speak to and hear God again….

until some time later when the pattern repeats itself or human depravity was never properly addressed to begin with.

Reviewing this, it is easy to see that the answer is right in reference to ‘the one thing’ but ‘the thing’ was wrong. The ‘one thing’ we needed to do was not wear three piece suits, not march around a bar once for six days and then seven times on the seventh day, not bunker ourselves and create a christian counterculture expressing ‘the official christian worldview’, not vote for a candidate who would ’save us’, not stay at church thirty minutes longer, not change our calendar, not dress up in army fatigues and blow shofars and waive flags and banners.

The one thing that is needed is the ‘one thing’ that Jesus told his disciples in Acts 1:4-8 when he stated:

And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

The one thing was to continue doing what they were doing, but tarry and wait for God to move. Not change course and invent a revival. Not trying to ‘rush’ god to come sooner than expected. What we ended up doing was to attempt to ‘patch-fix’ a known human condition of sinful depravity while keeping the corporate church machinery going instead of admitting that there was a breakdown and stopping until resolution came forth. We attempted to purify ourselves on the fly instead of going into a period of downtime where we stop and pause, do a total replacement of the ‘life-area’ that was bad with a brand new mindset that only comes by transformation via the renewing of the mind.

The disciples still didn’t get this because they were still thinking of ‘kingdom restoration’ in reference to freeing Israel from Rome instead of the Kingdom of God until Jesus told them about receiving power and being witnesses throughout the Earth.

What did tarrying during downtime bring the disciples? Pentecost and power

What does ‘patch-fixing’ and keeping the corporate church machinery running bring forth? pragmatics and politics.

What do we do? Do we try to find the problem and ‘patch-fix’ the dysfunction for expediency until the next weak spot bursts or do we get to the root cause and replace the failure with Jesus, the solution that provides stability and reliability within our Christian walk?