"He could see a deep sadness in her eyes. I am not who you think I am, Mackenzie. I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It's not my purpose to punish it; it's my joy to cure it."

Some would say that it IS God's will to punish sin in all its forms. Sin is lawbreaking and there is always a penalty exacted otherwise the law is without effect. Without the threat of punishment the Gospel loses its saving impact. I mean why would we need a Saviour from sin's penalty if there was no punishment?  (see Prodigal Magazine review on the problems with the theology in The Shack). So I take issue with Young's softness on sin if that is what he is trying to do here.

BUT I don't think that is what Young is trying to do with this exchange. He is dealing with a perception issue on the part of MacKenzie.

Later, we discover that Mack's big question is NOT does God punish sin BUT is God GOOD?

And if God is good HOW do I know that given my awful life experience especially given the loss of a child.

That is what is at issue in the book. It is the age old question - how can a GOOD GOD permit BAD things to happen to GOOD people?

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I am starting to feel the itch to blog again. It might or might not be a regular thing, but at least I think I can start posting some new material here.   more »

This Sunday morning Rebekah Croker (New Life Children’s Leader) preached on the subject of HOPE. The message was entitled Hope, A Living Conversation. The passage referenced was from Hebrews 6:19-20. “We have this HOPE as an anchor for our soul…”

Rebekah challenged New Life Church to HOPE. She lined up children, youth & adults with balloons that spelled out the verse: Hope deferred makes the heart sick… (Proverbs 13:12a). The whole morning was devoted to stirring our hearts to hope again.  

New Life church has been through a season of much disappointment. Disappointment in finances. Disappointment in relationships. Disappointment in leadership. Our hopes as a church for the glorious promises that God has bestowed upon us have remained unrealized. Our hearts have grown sick with disappointment because our hopes have been deferred.

Yet Christian faith is all about HOPE! The world lacks HOPE! We have what the world lacks! Is your heart feeling sick? Do feel your HOPE has been deferred? Then you need more HOPE!

Rebekah exhorted us to HOPE again!

This happened not just with words. There was a HOPE WALL where people wrote their hopes and dreams. Sara Gagnon painted colorful expressions of HOPE on a canvass on the stage. The youth worship team led us in a reprise of Isaiah 61 – a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair… Church youth acted out various stories of HOPE from the Bible including the story of Abraham and God’s promise of Isaac. They built a bridge of HOPE with chairs. The Master’s Commission Young Adults group from the USA did a sketch on the Christian HOPE!

Nadira Deschner joined Rebekah to tag team the preach reading Biblical passages concerning HOPE! Romans 4:18;Romans 5:1-5; and Romans 8:24-25. (For more reading see:  Romans 15:4; Colossians 1:5; and 1 Peter 3:15). (Roll over the texts with your mouse to see the verses).  Nadira showed us painting of a morning sunrise she had done. On it were written the words of Jeremiah from Lamentations 3:21-23 - Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Rebekah challenged us to HOPE in God and not in HORSES! Horses are a VAIN HOPE!  Proverbs 33:17. Horses are all those things we tend to hope in such as technology, money, real estate, friends, family, etc..  These are vain hopes, since it is only God who can truly save. He did that by sending Jesus and through his death he has made a way for us to enter his presence.

So in Jesus we have a new and living hope! Even if there is no reason to HOPE we can HOPE against hope because Jesus has opened up the way to GOD!

In conclusion, the whole morning was a kaleidoscope of intergenerational expressions of HOPE. It was full of colour, sound, and imagination from all of the generations. It was not simply a conversation on HOPE.  It was HOPE embodied in music, art, drama and visual demonstration.

Thank you Rebekah for calling us back to HOPE! As Rebekeh exhorted us: New Life church, IT IS TIME TO HOPE AGAIN!

This message stirred much passion in me concerning HOPE! Thus it is fitting that I relaunch this Blog.

One drawback, though, was the absence of the HOPE OF RESURRECTION. I may have missed it but I did not hear it mentioned. I think this is a common problem with us Charismatics. We get the part in the gospel about Jesus, signs, wonders, the cross and heaven, but we don’t seem to get the resurrection.

It is often tagged on as a post script to the story we tell. I see this often in YWAM. Whenever the good news is shared with groups, the truncated version of the gospel often leaves the resurrection out.

That is too bad, because when you really boil it all down, the exciting about Christianity, even more than forgiveness of sin, even more than access to God’s presence, even more than heaven, is the HOPE of a RESURRECTION to life eternal in a new creation.

Contrary to popular opinion we do not spend eternity in disembodied heaven but in a new material reality with new physical bodies that will enjoy new heavens and a new earth. (Revelation 21). That is why Jesus taught us to pray, your kingdom come and your will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9-10;)

I have written about that already in this article When Heaven Invades Earth Twenty Four Seven! Grounding the Charismatic Hope in the Resurrection.

Now let the conversation on HOPE at New Life begin.

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I have life matters that occupy my time right now. Please stay tuned. I will be back at writing this blog soon.   more »

Watch for the book mentioned in this article. There is such a thing as a text for Pentecostal Theology after all!

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The StarPhoenix
10 Mar 2007

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Ecstatic spirit of Pentecostalism gaining strength in Canada
CanWest News Service

OTTAWA — The first time Michael Wilkinson saw Pentecostals at worship, he was a teenager, dragged along by his parents. “These people are all crazy,” he came away thinking. “I’m not ever going back.”

But then the kids in the youth group asked him to some concerts. The music was terrific and the teens were fun, not losers or hopeless squares. “You can be cool and go to church,” he thought.

Now 41, he is both Pentecostal and associate professor of sociology specializing in Pentecostalism at Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C.

He maintains the Canadian Pentecostal Research Network and is compiling a study of Canadian Pentecostals, one of the first books of its kind. His colleagues are pressing him to finish so their graduate students can use it to undertake studies of their own.

Canada has about 4.4 million renewalists — some 500,000 classical Pentecostals, members of churches developed in the early 1900s; 2.5 million charismatics, people who are “spirit filled” but stay within their denomination; and about 1.3 million neocharismatics, or neo-Pentecostals, a movement that began 10 to 20 years ago among people who want to steer clear of some of the strictures of traditional churches.

Renewalists don’t all share the same beliefs or worship practices, but they are united by their experience of God — “an intense, direct and overwhelming spiritual experience centred in the Holy Spirit,” says Wilkinson, quoting from Frank Macchia’s Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology, one of several new books coming out on the subject.

The Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements says Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity is characterized by “exuberant worship; an emphasis on subjective religious experience and spiritual gifts; claims of supernatural miracles, signs and wonders — including a language of spirituality (as it is experienced), rather than a theology; and a mystical ‘life in the Spirit’ by which they daily live out the will of God.”

Psychology might describe it as magical thinking. Political science or sociology might see it as “enchantment,” a worldview that embraces wonder, belittled in western civilization but very much alive in other countries.

Renewal resides at the mystical end of the religious spectrum and much of it is an outright mystery, which is just fine with its adherents. For them, reason has its limits.

As one renewalist minister describes it, “When philosophers and theologians get to do enough thinking or talking, they eventually run themselves in a circle. . . . They’ve bumped their brains on the ceiling of a mystery, but don’t want to admit it, so they keep talking.”

Probably the most mysterious are the “gifts” of speaking in tongues, prophecy, deliverance and healing, and the signs and wonders, or modern-day miracles, “a foretaste of the coming kingdom of God,” according to Wilkinson.

Evangelicals are also turbo-charged in their worship but they believe the miracles in the Bible were intended simply to help the Apostles get the church started. Most don’t believe they are available to believers today. Pentecostals do.

Since Pentecostals take their name from a passage in the Bible in which the Holy Spirit imbues the apostles with special gifts and powers, their outlook is hardly surprising.

Tags: Pentecostalism, worship, Pentecostal, sociology, Canadian, renewal, charismatic, spirit+filled, Holy+Spirit, Christianity, supernatural, miracles, signs, wonders, tongues, healing, kingdom, God, Evangelicals

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