Apostolic Theology

What does it mean to be Apostolic?

2025-05-26T22:22:00.008+01:00

I was in Denmark last week meeting with Apostolic Church leaders from across Europe and then up on the Firth of Forth with people from Apostolic churches across Scotland. So that has got me thinking. What is it that unites Apostolics in Rome and Riga, in Bo'ness and Brussels, in Palermo and Paris, or in Sofia and Swansea? Or beyond this continent, what unites us in Accra and Adelaide? As a nearly 120 year old global movement, our cultures and ways of working can vary immensely. And yet despite those differences, we still very much feel like a family all around the world.

Older Apostolics always spoke of a vision of God's Eternal Purpose for Christ and His Church as the heart of what it means to be Apostolic. About a decade ago Tim Jack summed that up at our international convention in 5 Apostolic principles. Tim spoke about those 5 principles again on Saturday at the Scottish gathering in probably in a different way, but probably an even more powerful way than I've heard before. (So if anyone noted that down in Bo'ness on Saturday, you've got some notes that are well worth continuing to think and pray over.)

If you want to read the five principles, you can read the post from 2015 here. But, for a new decade and a new generation, here's a brief explanation in video form, with Pastor Dan explaining what it means to be Apostolic — not just what it means to be part of the Apostolic Church in the UK, or Nigeria, or Bulgaria, or Canada, or any other country, but what unites us all together as Apostolic people.

(Oh, and for anyone who has qualms, like me, about putting words into the mouth of a real person, I can assure you — as the only living person who has written a couple of dissertations on D.P. Williams and his theology — that, though the words may not be his, the theology very definitely is.)

Pentecostals Worshipping the Trinity Round the Table: Some Thoughts and an Excellent Book

2025-05-05T13:04:00.000+01:00

Today I want to enthusiastically recommend an incredibly good, brand new Pentecostal book — Resurrecting Worship: A Pentecostal Liturgy for Slow Burn Revival by Joseph M. Lear. I’m not going to write a review — as I hope to do that elsewhere — but I want to share a little bit about the book and encourage people to read it. And I'll do that in the context of offering some of my own thoughts on the same topic (as it’s a theme I’ve written a lot about in various places over the years and still have lots to say).

Good and Bad Liturgy

Every church has a liturgy. We might not realise it or like to admit it, but we do. The question isn’t whether we have a liturgy or not — it’s really whether we have a good liturgy or not. A liturgy might not be written down word for word in a book like in the churches we think of as liturgical, but it can still be rigidly followed. The liturgy of the Sydney Suburbs can be just as strong a tradition in the life of a local church as the liturgy of Antioch or Rome or Canterbury.

A good liturgy doesn’t only help individuals to worship. It draws us together as the people of the Triune God and builds us up together. It helps to form us in faith and for life, for the Lord is at work in it as we worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. As the church has understood through the centuries, lex orandi lex credendi — literally those words translate to “the law of praying is the law of believing,” but what it actually means is how we worship ends up determining what we believe and then, flowing out from that, how we live. A bad liturgy will form our faith in poor ways and misshape our lives. Good liturgy will form us in true faith and love, for faithful and loving lives to bring glory to our Triune God.

But how can we know if we have a good liturgy? Well, if we never think about it, that won’t help! Liturgy is intentional. And if what we do in church from week to week isn’t intentional, that might not help.

Here are a few immediate — and simple — tests. Could someone come to a service in your church and leave not having heard that Christ died for our sins and rose again? Could someone come to your service and leave not knowing that we worship the Triune God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Could someone come to your service and leave not hearing the Bible read as the Word of God? And not over a year or 6 months, or even 6 weeks. Those are the very basics of our faith, and if someone could come to any service and not hear them, then we’ve got our liturgy way out of whack. Good liturgy will keep the main thing front and centre. Good liturgy will mean we can’t lose sight of those things which are “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

Trinitarian Worship

And so a good liturgy means our worship must always be Trinitarian. Now, obviously, the God we worship is the Triune God, so in that sense our worship always is Trinitarian. But a good liturgy will mean it is explicitly Trinitarian. Traditional liturgies give glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit again and again through the service. They structure their prayers so that they are explicitly addressed to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. They recite the Creeds and so explicitly proclaim their faith in the Triune God. If we rely on singing to carry the weight of our liturgy, then (unless we are incredibly intentional, and keep reaching far beyond the list of current top worship songs) we could easily go for weeks at a time without explicitly mentioning the Trinity. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if the first time someone heard the Father, Son and Holy Spirit named together in church was at the moment of being plunged into the waters in the Triune name in baptism! (And wouldn’t it be an even bigger tragedy if that was the only time they ever heard it!)

Our salvation lies in the Triune God. The Father has sent His Son into the world to save us. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the glory of Christ and draws us to Him for salvation. It’s the Holy Spirit who unites us to Jesus when we trust in Him. And it’s in the Son and through the Spirit that we have access to the Father. Our entire faith is grounded in the fact that God is the Triune God! So let’s rejoice explicitly in the Triune God and come explicitly to the Triune God in prayer.

Joseph Lear shows in Resurrecting Worship how his church — Resurrection Assembly — does this. By baptism, saying the Creed together, and the way they pray corporately together as a church they intentionally ensure that their liturgy is constantly Trinitarian, and that everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, knows that the God who saves us, the God whom we worship, is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A Trinitarian liturgy doesn’t exclude anyone. It’s not a way of complicating things. In fact, Lear shows how in Resurrection Assembly this helps them make sure that everyone can participate in their worship. (Get his book to see how!)

Word-filled Worship

Christian worship is rooted in God’s Word. He speaks to us as we read the Scriptures together, and we respond with praise and prayer. Reading the Bible isn’t just the preliminary to a sermon. If we only read like that, it makes it seem like it’s our human words that do the heavy lifting — as if God’s Word is a closed book until the clever preacher comes along to explain it. Now, preaching is vital. And we need the gifts of teachers, pastors, and elders Christ has placed in His church who are “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2).

But God doesn’t just wait until the preacher starts speaking to work by His Word. His Word itself is living and powerful. And it is a powerful and life-giving thing to simply listen to the Scriptures being read (without our comments). As Jospeh Lear writes, “To be Pentecostal ... is to take the Scriptures so seriously that we appraise our daily lives with them, and it means to always place ourselves in the grand Trinitarian story of the Bible.” If we’re going to be properly Pentecostal, we need “the Scriptures to be central to all we do” (Resurrecting Worship, p.51). That’s not just in a reference book sense — we need to read these Scriptures out loud together and listen to them together.

In Resurrection Assembly, they explain at the first Bible reading why they do it: “Because the Bible tells us to devote ourselves to the public reading of Scripture we read from ...” (Resurrecting Worship, p.53). And that public reading of Scripture is accompanied by singing Scripture and preaching the Scriptures too.

Eucharistic Worship

Christian worship takes place round a Table. That’s where the liturgy leads. For the Lord Himself invites us week by week into His own presence, to meet with us and bless us. And that He does as He speaks to us in His Word and feeds us at His Table. Word and sacrament is the shape of Christian worship. It has been from the beginning — as we see in Emmaus, Jerusalem, Troas, and Corinth — and it will be “till He comes.” Take away the Lord’s Table from our lives and our assemblies, and we take away worship. In fact, if we take away the Table, we take away the church! For, as we see in the earliest days in Acts, the church continues steadfastly, not only in doctrine, fellowship and prayer, but in the Breaking of Bread. Without the Word rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered, there is no church and no worship. As Jospeh Lear puts it in his excellent new book on Pentecostal worship, “without the Eucharist, the church is hard-pressed to claim they are actually giving thanks appropriately for Jesus’s sacrifice” (Lear, Resurrecting Worship, p.31).

You might not be familiar with the term Eucharist — or maybe you've heard it and assume it's got something to do with the Church in Wales (or the Church of England). Really it’s just one of very many names for the sacrament we Pentecostals more often call the Breaking of Bread or the Lord's Supper. (And for anyone who thinks Eucharist doesn't sound Pentecostal enough, it was a term used for the Supper by D.P. Williams himself, so it has a good Apostolic pedigree.) Eucharist means thanksgiving and comes from the Greek word for giving thanks in the New Testament accounts of the Supper. The early Christians recognised that the Thanksgiving Jesus Himself instituted was the high-point of our thanksgiving and praise. The greatest reason we have to give thanks to the Lord — and the reason which makes our giving thanks for anything else even possible — is found in the cross of Christ. And so, at the Table we make the highest of thanksgivings — a thanksgiving instituted by the Lord Jesus, for the Lord Jesus and all that He has done for us, and from which all the rest of our giving thanks to God flows. So the Breaking of Bread is the ultimate Thanksgiving and the summit of our worship.

The very earliest Christian text we have outside the New Testament instructs believers that they should “on the Lord's own day gather together and break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your sins” (Didache 14:1). This is exactly what we see believers doing in the New Testament — gathering together on the Lord's Day in order to break bread (Acts 20:7). And there’s no time gap between that instruction outside Scripture and that example in Scripture, for Didache 14:1 was probably written around the year AD 50. That’s around the same time as 1 Thessalonians or Galatians. Some want to date it earlier, and a few push it back to later in the century, but no matter which date is correct, it was still probably written before parts of the New Testament. So, right from the very beginning of the Christian church, we have evidence from both inside the Bible and outside it that Christians gathered each Sunday with the Lord’s Supper at the centre of their worship.

Shortly after the last book of the New Testament was written, Ignatius of Antioch wrote a warning against those who “abstain from the Eucharist.” These, he wrote, “hold heretical opinions about the grace of Jesus Christ that came to us” (Smyrneans 6:2). Ignatius was alive at the time of the apostles, and early church sources tell us he was a disciple of the Apostle John. So this wasn’t some late addition to Christian teaching. Like the pattern we see in Acts and 1 Corinthians, and the instruction we find in the Didache, Ignatius points to the central place of the Lord's Supper in the worship of the 1st century church. (Ignatius died as a martyr in the earliest years of the 2nd century, but was part of the church from his youth.)

By the time we get the first full post-New Testament description of Christian worship from Justin Martyr in the 2nd century, we find the pattern that has continued right up until today. Lots of Scripture read, a sermon, prayers, and the Breaking of Bread.

The centrality of the Supper in our worship isn’t something that fell from heaven during the Welsh Revival in 1904 or with the Brethren in Dublin in the 1820s. It’s something that goes right back to the earliest days of the Christian church — right back to the apostles and their disciples, just like we see in Troas in Acts 20. As the New Testament shows us and the Didache instructs, this is how Christians worship the Triune God. Singing praise is good, but the high-point of worship will always be at the Table.

In Resurrection Assembly, the Scriptural imperative for worship centred in the Supper means they “celebrate and give thanks by observing the Lord’s Supper every Sunday service and at most other church gatherings abstaining only when we gather at a location or a time that not everyone in the church can access” (Resurrecting Worship, pp.31-32).

But it’s not only the actions of eating and drinking that are central. The Eucharist is more than that. Jesus told us what to “do” as well as what to eat and drink. It’s only when Christ’s words are added to an element that it becomes a sacrament. As I’ve written before, “without Christ’s words, bread and wine in church are just a snack” (The Lord’s Supper: Our Promised Place of Intimacy and Transformation with Jesus, p.108). Lear says the same thing: without Christ’s words, “baptism is just splashing in water ... [and] the cup and bread are merely an in-service snack that can’t feed the body let alone the soul” (Resurrecting Worship, p.37).

So Lear sets out how they celebrate the Supper and what they pray at the Table in Resurrection Assembly. For the Lord’s Supper to be the Lord’s Supper it must be blessed with Christ’s words and prayer, and so that’s exactly what they do. Lear sets out not only the structure, but also the words of their liturgy here, which will be a great help to many Pentecostal churches and leaders.

Lear’s writing from within an American Assemblies of God culture, which hasn’t been used to such regular celebration of the Supper. In the UK, of course, the weekly Breaking of Bread has been our way of worship since the beginning of Pentecostalism, and has only started falling by the wayside in the past two decades. In our context, Lear could help us recover a precious biblical practice that we’ve begun to forget to treasure.

Pentecostal Worship

But is it Pentecostal? That’s the question on many of your minds! All this talk of liturgy and Eucharistic worship and Creeds might sound foreign to more than a few readers. And yet, it’s not foreign to Pentecostalism at all. In the UK and much of Europe, as well as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and places that Pentecostal missionaries have gone to from those countries, the Breaking of Bread was, for very many decades, the heart of Pentecostal worship. John Bond, the South African Assemblies of God leader, taught that to celebrate the Supper any less frequently than every Sunday would reflect a lack of understanding “of its meaning as the staple of Christian life.” Harry Greenway, the General Superintendent of the Elim Pentecostal Church in the UK insisted that without the Breaking of Bread in our services, we’re “lacking the fundamental basis of all true worship.” George Canty, another widely respected Elim leader, pointed out that “Pentecostals love the communion service beyond all occasions [for] it is then ... that the Lord draws the closest.” (Those are all from sources that are out of print and hard to find today, but you can find those references and more in my chapter on “Why is the Breaking of Bread so Significant for Pentecostals?” in 40 Questions About Pentecostalism.) There is nothing at all non-Pentecostal about Eucharistic worship!

Lear sees this and wants us all to see it too. “Pentecost represents the trinitarian fulfilment of eucharistic worship. In other words, trinitarian and eucharistic worship must result in Pentecostal worship. And to be Pentecostal means to live in the last days in the power of the Holy Spirit” (Resurrecting Worship, p.49).

Pentecost doesn’t mean chaos, for the Holy Spirit brings order. And so liturgy and spiritual gifts aren’t in competition. As one early Apostolic Church leader put it, “Liberty without order is not true freedom, but licence. There is an order of worship for baptised believers.” A Pentecostal liturgy isn’t a rigid resistance to the Lord’s freedom to move by prophetic gifts. Spirit and sacrament go together — just as they did in Troas and Corinth.

But What About Mission?

But isn’t all this talk of liturgy and sacraments detrimental to our mission of reaching the lost? Isn’t it only appealing to old people? Surely it’s much too complicated for our youth, and we should be trying to reach the next generation? Nonsense!

One Sunday morning in a previous church, when I had all the children up at the front to teach them during the service, a four-year old put up her hand. I can’t remember what I had asked, but she proceeded to explain to the whole church the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, and through it the Gospel of who Jesus is and what He’s done for us. Even her parents were astonished at her explanation of the Table. And how was she able to do that? Because week after week she heard the meaning of the Supper as we gathered round the Lord’s Table in church.

Lear gets the power of the liturgy for the children. “The Pentecostal liturgy described in this book was,” he writes, “in a sense constructed for the kids ... We wanted to disciple kids biblically ... And the fire of the Lord of Life, through them, spread to the whole church” (Resurrecting Worship, p.73). Children don’t need a stripped back Christianity, they need to be led again and again into “God’s story that begins with creation and will culminate in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come” (Resurrecting Worship, p.73).

And not just children. Resurrection Assembly is “an incredibly diverse group of people. People from every walk of life ... The homeless, the disabled, rural white Iowans, the educated so-called ‘elite,’ immigrants and refugees, black Chicagoans and Latinos, and the urban poor all worship the risen Lord side-by-side ... If you welcome kids, you welcome everyone. If you disciple kids, you disciple everyone. Liturgies for kids are liturgies for everyone” (Resurrecting Worship, p.74).

I’ve seen the same in previous places, as British people and people from the other side of the planet, elderly people and little children, poor people and rich people, have lifted up their voices together to proclaim the Lord’s death, say the Lord’s Prayer, cry “Holy, holy, holy” at the Table, or sing the Prayer of Humble Access.

The law of praying is the law of believing — or how we worship ends up determining what we believe and how we live. As Lear puts it, “Liturgy is discipleship. Christian disciples worship and proclaim the risen Lord. So we ought to have patterns of worship that train people to do that very thing” (Resurrecting Worship, p.75).

In Resurrection Assembly they proclaim the mystery of faith with the words “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” In a previous assembly where I pastored, we did it with the words “Dying, You destroyed our death; Rising, You restored our life; Lord Jesus, come in glory.” And that proclamation played its part in drawing people to eternal life in Jesus. Over the years, I had a few chats with different people that went like this: “Pastor, when I first started coming, I didn’t say those words because I didn’t believe and didn't want to be a hypocrite. But eventually I realised I’d started saying them with everyone else. And then I realised it was because now I believe them. Can I get baptised?” A good liturgy doesn’t only glorify God and disciple the saints, it also evangelises!

Joseph Lear’s book Resurrecting Worship: A Pentecostal Liturgy for Slow Burn Revival is published by Cascade Books (2025). It’s only 80 pages, but these are very rich pages indeed. This is currently the best book there is on Pentecostal worship. So get it and read it!

2025 Christian Book Award Theology Winner!

2025-04-30T19:10:00.004+01:00

I've had some lovely news today. A few weeks ago I had mentioned that my latest book, 40 Questions About Pentecostalism, was a finalist for the 2025 Christian Book Awards, assuming that would be the end of the story. But it turns out that wasn't the end after all. For, last night at the awards ceremony in Nashville, my book was announced as the winner of the Bible Reference category (i.e. the category for theology, biblical studies, Bible commentaries, and church history books)!

I was thrilled my book was a finalist, and can't believe it's actually won!

I really hope the book's a help to people.

You can see the winners from all the categories here. And have a look at the other finalists here too — it was an incredible privilege to be nominated alongside such great books in the Bible Reference category.

Thank you too to my publishers at Kregel and to Benjamin Merkle, the series editor.

(By the way, if you'd like to get hold of a copy of 40 Questions About Pentecostalism in the UK, ICM and Eden both seem to have it in stock. But if you're having trouble getting hold of it, there's a lovely book on The Lord's Supper available from BooksEtc for less than £10.)

The Glorious Good News that Mary Gave Birth to God

2025-04-28T23:47:00.001+01:00

Christianity is full of wonderfully good news — so much good news that sometimes we can even forget how glorious some parts of the message are! And perhaps one place that sometimes some Evangelicals forget just how good the good news is is when we think about (or, unfortunately, don't think about) those nine months between the angel Gabriel visiting Nazareth and the choirs of angels visiting the shepherds of Bethlehem. For the incarnation didn't begin in the stable. God the Son took on our human nature nine months before that, unnoticed in the womb of his mother Mary. Mary is indeed the mother of God!

Who is Jesus? He’s God the Son, who has taken on our human nature through His Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary. That means Mary is the mother of God the Son. And God the Son is God — so Mary is the Mother of God.

And that's wonderful news. Because it means that God has entered into the fullness of human life from its very beginning, from its tiniest, weakest moment. God became a tiny embryo for the sake of all embryos. The one Mary carried in her womb — the one who was born in the stable in Bethlehem, grew up in the carpenter's house in Nazareth, was baptised by John in the Jordan, died on the cross of Calvary, and rose from the tomb the third day really is God! And so, from first to last, it is God who saves us.

If we mistakenly say Mary isn't the Mother of God, then what we really end up saying is that Jesus is not God. (And no good Evangelical wants to say that!) The early church recognised this, and so when the Archbishop of Constantinople refused to call Mary Theotokos (God-bearer – the Greek equivalent of Mother of God), a major crisis broke out that ended up leading to a few major Church Councils to defend the truth that the one born of Mary is God the Son.

Cyril of Alexandria, the great defender of orthodoxy in that controversy (and one of the greatest teachers on the doctrine of the person of Christ in the history of the Church) even wrote a book Against Those Who Are Unwilling To Confess That The Holy Virgin Is Theotokos. What was the book about? It wasn't about Mary. It was all about Jesus!

For Cyril, Theotokos (God-Bearer) or Mother of God wasn’t a title on which to establish a Mariology; rather, it was an essential title for a true Christology. As Cyril wrote to the Monks of Egypt at the outset of the controversy:

I was completely amazed that certain people should be in any doubt as to whether the holy virgin ought to be called the Mother of God or not. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, then how is the holy virgin who bore him not the Mother of God? (Cyril’s Letter to the Monks of Egypt, §4)

But for Cyril, it wasn’t only essential to agree that Mary is the Mother of God because it’s a vital Christological teaching, but also because he insisted that it’s the biblical thing to say. He points to three particular Scriptures: Luke 1:41-43; Luke 2:11-12; and Isa. 7:14 quoted in Matthew 1:23.

In Luke 1:41-43, when Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth, John the Baptist leaps within Elizabeth’s womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, calls Mary ‘the mother of my Lord’ (v.43). Who is Elizabeth’s Lord? The Lord God! If anything, Elizabeth’s wording is even stronger than Mother of God, for she effectively calls Mary the Mother of YHWH!

In Luke 2:11-12 the Angels announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. But who do they say is born? ‘A Saviour who is Christ the Lord.’ Like Elizabeth, the angels insist that the one born of Mary is the LORD himself.

Finally, in Matthew 1:23, Matthew quotes Isaiah, writing: ‘“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”’ In his Scholia on the Incarnation, Cyril argues that ‘God with us’ ‘signifies that the Word (true God of true God) came in our nature on account of flesh’ and so the Son borne by Mary ‘was God in the flesh, and she who gave him a fleshly birth in accordance with the flesh was truly the Mother of God’ (Cyril, Scholia, §27). So, to say that Mary is the mother of Immanuel (as Matthew 1:23 and Isaiah 7:14 both say) is to say that she is the mother of God.

The Church eventually resolved the controversy. The Archbishop of Constantinople in question was deposed, condemned for heresy, and anathamatised. And it is the settled doctrine of the Christian Church that ‘if anyone does not confess the Immanuel to be truly God, and hence the holy virgin to be Mother of God (for she gave birth in the flesh to the Word of God made flesh), let him be anathema.’ (No. 1 of the Twelve Chapters of Cyril, formally accepted as the standard of orthodoxy at the Second Council of Constantinople).

So, Mary is the Mother of God. We say that because: 1) to say otherwise is to say that Jesus isn’t God, 2) it’s a biblical thing to say, and 3) it’s the settled, orthodox doctrine of the entire Christian church. So ignore any nonsense on social media that's claiming otherwise. (It doesn't matter how famous a preacher anyone can use to back up their claims, because it's God's Word we rely on, not fallible Christian celebrities!) Instead, thank God that she is, because that means God really has come down to us for our salvation.

The Name Death Could Not Hold

2025-04-21T18:53:00.000+01:00

Christ is risen! Happy Easter!

I'd hoped to be writing this from a château in Normandy today, at the celebrations of the centenary of the Apostolic Church in France. However, in the Lord’s good providence, injury has prevented me from going anywhere further than I can hobble a few steps at a time. Some Belgian and Scottish friends who are there to preach this weekend though have sent me some pictures of the book launch for the first volume of the French translation of Apostolic Theology though, so that has added to the joy! (None of my English books have ever had a book launch!)

The translation has been a huge project undertaken by the Apostolic Church in Belgium and France and the publishing house of the French and Swiss Apostolic Churches, Éditions Foi et Victoire. It’s been a huge investment of time and energy, and I’m very thankful for those who have driven the project and taken part in it. The Belgians are now raising money distribute it in the francophone countries of Africa.

On this side of the Channel, our church in Sunnyhill (in Poole in Dorset) released a hymn for the glory of Good Friday and the victory of Easter Sunday. I really love it and have been listening to it on repeat through the weekend. Here are a few of the verses:

There is a name that climbed the cross

To pay my debt, this was the cost.

A name of love, mercy and grace;

A name that died to take my place.

There is a name death could not hold,

A name that caused the stone to roll,

A name that sets the captive free,

A name that stands in victory.

And, of course, as the chorus tells us, this name is glorious name of Jesus. Here's the lyric video, but you can find the links for it on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and iTunes via Sunnyhill here.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your Easter Week!

Christ is risen. Jesus is alive. And the risen Jesus is saving people!

Good Friday

2025-04-18T12:29:00.002+01:00

This is the Day that the Lamb of God was lifted up.

This is the Day that the Spotless Lamb was slain.

This is the Day that the Promised Lamb was sacrificed.

This is the Day that the Sinless Lamb was made sin for us.

This is the Day that the Conquering Lamb conquered.

This is the Day that the Glorious Lamb was glorified.

This is the Day that the Lamb of God took away the sin of the world.

So lift up your eyes today, and behold with me the Lamb. ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ Behold! The Lamb of God who dies in YOUR place! Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away YOUR sin! Behold! The Lamb of God who by His death, destroys YOUR death!

This is not a day for doing, or for learning; this is a day for beholding! For this is the Day on which there was the most fearsome sight to behold. This is the Day when there was the most glorious sight to behold. This is the Day when there was the most powerful sight and the most gracious sight to behold. For this is Day on which the Lamb of God was slain for the sin of the world. This is the Day when God’s precious Lamb, His Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, shed His blood as He died on the Cross for you and for me. So, let’s behold the Lamb in His Glory today.

The Crucified Lamb is incomparably glorious. It’s the Lamb who was slain who sits in the centre of the Throne of Heaven. It’s the Lamb who was slain before whom all the hosts of heaven bow down in praise. It’s the Lamb who was slain who crushed the Serpent’s head and conquered death, hell, sin, and the Devil. It’s the Lamb who was slain who will return for His Bride, the Church, and with whom we will feast in heavenly joy. It’s the Lamb who was slain who will judge the living and the dead. It’s the Lamb who was slain who will be the Light of the heavenly city. It’s the Lamb who was slain who will lead us eternally to living fountains of waters where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

The Crucified Lamb is all our glory here below — ‘for He has become for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.”’ (1 Corinthians 1vv30-31). And the Crucified Lamb will be all our glory above, for Jesus Himself is the glory of Heaven.

Today, we behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Today, we gaze upon the glory of the Lord displayed at its most dazzling through the death and suffering of the cross.

‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast.’ (1 Corinthians 5:7-8)

’Tis finished! The Messiah dies,
Cut off for sins, but not His own:
Accomplished is the sacrifice,
The great redeeming work is done.

’Tis finished! all the debt is paid;
Justice divine is satisfied;
The grand and full atonement made;
God for a guilty world hath died.

The veil is rent in Christ alone;
The living way to Heaven is seen;
The middle wall is broken down,
And all mankind may enter in.

The types and figures are fulfilled;
Exacted is the legal pain;
The precious promises are sealed;
The spotless Lamb of God is slain.

The reign of sin and death is o’er,
And all may live from sin set free;
Satan hath lost his mortal power;
’Tis swallowed up in victory.

Saved from the legal curse I am,
My Saviour hangs on yonder tree:
See there the meek, expiring Lamb!
’Tis finished! He expires for me.

Accepted in the Well-beloved,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
I see the bar to Heaven removed;
And all Thy merits, Lord, are mine.

Death, hell, and sin are now subdued;
All grace is now to sinners given;
And lo, I plead the atoning blood,
And in Thy right I claim Thy Heaven!

(And here’s the old tune Pentecostals know from the Redemption Hymnal.)

Maundy Thursday: Gethsemane

2025-04-17T06:30:00.006+01:00

Today is Maundy Thursday. That means it’s the day that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, gave them a new commandment to “love one another”, instituted the Lord’s Supper, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, and was betrayed and arrested.

Reading: John 18:1-11

Here in John 18 we see Good News in the Garden. Jesus isn’t fleeing. He isn’t trying to hide in the Garden. He’s in complete control. Verse 4 tells us that Jesus knew all of what was about to happen, and knowing that He went out and asked the soldiers and the priests who they were looking for. Jesus is the one who knows all things. He is the omniscient God. He knows the future. And knowing it all, He didn’t shrink back or hide. Instead, He steps forward and offers Himself up to them.

When they say it’s Jesus of Nazareth they’re looking for, Jesus answers “I AM!” That’s the name of the LORD! Jesus is telling them, not just that He’s the one they’re looking for, but that He is the living LORD. And in response, they fall down. Jesus’ glory is revealed in the Garden, even as He’s being arrested to be taken to the Cross. He is the LORD of Glory.

Yet the one who is the LORD of Glory, the one who is the Great I AM, the one who knows the end from the beginning, freely offers Himself up. He doesn’t flee from what’s coming. Instead, demonstrates even in His arrest exactly why He’s come. For He tells the soldiers, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go” (verse 8). He has come to rescue others. Jesus has come to save His people, and even in His arrest He demonstrates that He has come to give up His life in the place of others. He gives up His life so that His disciples can go free — so that we can go free. Jesus has taken our place in His death on the cross. In all that He suffered, He did it as our Substitute to save us.

What does He save us from? He saves us from what He takes in our place. And in verse 11, He describes that as a cup. In the Old Testament we read of this cup of the fury of God’s wrath on sin. It’s the punishment for the unbelief and sin of the world. And so Jesus here, on the night of His arrest, is telling us that He has come to save us, by suffering in our place the wrath of God which we deserved as the just judgment for our sin.

Yet, on this same night that Jesus tells us He’s come to drink the cup of God’s wrath for us, He offers us another cup — the cup of salvation. On that same night, He instituted the Lord’s Supper, and in it He gives a cup to drink saying: “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you … for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke22:20; Matthew 26:28). Jesus has taken the cup of God’s wrath so that we can drink the cup of salvation — the forgiveness that comes to us through His blood shed in our place.

Jesus has paid the price for us on the cross. He has suffered the wrath of God for our sins. Instead of drinking that cup of God’s wrath ourselves, we can trust in the one who has drunk it for us. Come to Him and drink of the cup of salvation He offers us — come to Jesus and trust in Him, and taste and see that He is good.

Previously in this series:

Spy Wednesday: A Place Prepared

2025-04-16T06:30:00.011+01:00

This Wednesday has a very strange name. It’s called Spy Wednesday because it’s the day one of Jesus’ disciples turned into a spy. The chief priests were plotting to have Jesus killed, and Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ own disciples, decided to offer to help them out — for a price! They paid him thirty pieces of silver to hand Jesus over to be killed, and from that moment on, Judas was a spy, on the lookout for a moment to betray Jesus to death.

Judas was one of the twelve disciples chosen by Jesus. He had spent the last three years with Jesus, seeing His miracles and hearing His teaching. And yet, Judas became a spy and a traitor. Jesus might have had some place in Judas’ heart, but not the ultimate place. For 30 pieces of silver was enough to get him to hand over the Lord of life to be put to death.

What place does Jesus have in your heart today? Do you have an undivided heart for Him, or have other things crept in to take His place?

For today’s meditation, however we’re going to skip ahead a bit in the story to John 13...

Reading: John 13:36-14:6

We’re skipping ahead today from the start of Holy Week towards its end. For these words come from the night Jesus was arrested. Jesus warns Peter about the fact that he’s about to deny Jesus. And then suddenly, we read some very famous words. Often we let chapter divisions get in the way, and so we read the famous words at the start of John 14 as if nothing has come before them. But Jesus speaks these words in light of the warning He’s just given Peter. Peter has been asking Jesus about where He’s going. And now Jesus says “I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).

Where’s Jesus going? He’s going to be arrested. He’s going to be crucified. He’s going to be buried in the grave. And then He’s going to be raised from the dead on the third day.

So how does Jesus prepare a place for us? He prepares a place for us by going to the cross. He prepares a place for us by going through death and resurrection for us. This is how Jesus goes to prepare a place for us. He hasn’t gone to do some redecorating in heaven! No! The way Jesus prepares a place in His Father’s house for us is by dying our death on the cross of Calvary — by paying the price for our sins when He hung and bled and died for us on the Tree. The way He prepares a place for us is through His death.

Thomas says “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” And Jesus answers, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

How do we come to the Father through Jesus? We come to the Father through Jesus as the one who bore our sins for us — the one who went down into death for us, the one who rose victorious over the grave for us. This is the Way! This is the Truth! The only way to the Father is found in the crucified and risen Saviour. The only way to the glory of heaven is seen at the Cross. The one who bore our death for us is the only one in whom true life is found.

If you want your heart not to be troubled, trust in the one who has gone to the Cross for you. Cast your cares on the one who has gone through death and back again to bring you true and lasting peace.

Previously in this series:

Holy Tuesday: Victory and Judgment

2025-04-15T06:30:00.007+01:00

Reading: John 12:27-36

Here in John 12 we encounter the voice of God Himself. Now, maybe you think the obvious place to see that is in the voice that comes from heaven in these verses. And that’s true — that is the voice of God. But it’s not the only way we encounter the voice of God in these verses. For Jesus is God the Son in the flesh. And so the voice of Jesus is the voice of God.

Here Jesus, the God-Man, speaks about His death — about the hour of His glory. And He says “Now is the time for judgment on this world” (verse 31). What does He mean? No thunderbolt fell from the sky that day in Jerusalem! How could Jesus say that “now” was the time for judgment on this world?

God’s judgment wasn’t poured out on the world in Holy Week. But God’s judgment on the world was poured out that week — on Jesus, as He died in our place, taking the judgement we deserved, on the cross. That’s what happened at the cross: instead of the punishment for my sins being poured out on me, Jesus has taken the punishment that I deserve in my place. The righteous Judge has become the one who is judged — for me and for you!

And so, in the cross, we see this glory of the forgiveness of our sins — as Jesus takes the punishment and bears the wrath which we deserve.

But Jesus doesn’t only say that the hour of judgment has come; He also says “now the prince of this world will be driven out” (verse 31). Jesus is telling us here that His cross is the great victory over the devil and all His evil works. We’re not waiting for some coming day when the enemy might be defeated. He already has been defeated through the victory of Jesus. By His mighty triumph in His death and resurrection, Jesus has crushed the devil under His feet, and He will soon “crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20).

Jesus has taken on Himself the judgement of the world so that we can be forgiven and set free. Jesus has crushed Satan under His feet so that we have no need to fear the devil. Jesus is our mighty Saviour, and in His victory on the cross He shows us more and more of the glory of who He really is.

(Previously in this series: Holy Monday — The Hour Has Come — John 12:20-26)

Holy Monday: The Hour Has Come

2025-04-14T17:30:00.010+01:00

Holy Week marks the final days of Christ’s life and ministry, leading up to His death on the cross on Good Friday and glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday. This picture of the start of Holy Week was made to decorate a Gospel Book in the middle of the AD 500s. That means this depiction of the Triumphal Entry is older than the world’s second largest religion. It was drawn before Augustine brought Christianity to England, before Maximus defended the truth of Christ's two wills, before Gregory taught how to pastor. This picture of the beginning of Holy Week is as old as the Hagia Sofia, Benedict’s Rule, or Columba’s mission to Scotland. Christians have been marking this week for a very long time indeed!

So, to mark this Holy Week, I'm going to post a short meditation on a Scripture from John’s Gospel each day to help draw our minds and hearts to the glory of the gospel.

Reading: John 12:20-26

John begins his account of Holy Week with the some Greeks who want to see Jesus. They come along saying “we would like to see Jesus,” but Jesus gives a very strange answer. He doesn’t say “yes” or “no.” He doesn’t say, “come along and have a look.” Instead He says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” What on earth is He talking about?

Jesus is talking about what Holy Week is all about — for this week is all about the glory of Jesus. That might sound a bit odd. Maybe you think of Holy Week as being a week about Christ’s suffering. But that’s exactly where His true glory is seen. Jesus displays His glory in the midst of suffering. For His true glory is seen in the Cross, through the shedding of His blood.

That’s what He explains in the next verse. “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” The glory of a grain of wheat is seen in the ear that’s produced when the plant grows, not in the single grain that falls into the ground. Jesus is speaking here about how His death leads to resurrection, and resurrection brings abundant life.

Jesus’ glory is seen in that He is the true grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies, so that through His death and resurrection He can bring forth an abundant and glorious harvest.

So if you want to see Jesus in His glory, the only way you can is by looking to the cross. And that’s why Holy Week is so glorious. Because this is a week that keeps drawing our eyes to the glory of Jesus seen in His suffering and death in our place.

How Donkeys Reveal Jesus

2025-04-14T06:30:00.003+01:00

My grandfather was a farmer, and his solution to keeping the children from getting bored on long car journeys was to keep telling them that there was donkey round the next corner. And while I might not have inherited my grandfather's farming ways, I seem to have inherited his love of donkeys. Once, in a year-end student quiz at the theological college, one of the questions was ‘How many times did Dr Black use the word donkey in one lesson?’ It turns out the answer was 96 — an answer which became even more painful when the quiz-master revealed that they'd only actually started counting halfway through the lecture!

Well, it turns out that donkeys have not had a prominent place in my writing — until today! For it's Holy Week, which starts with a donkey. (And I wasn't able to preach for Palm Sunday yesterday due to an injury, so the Palm Sunday donkeys are being unleashed here instead!)

At the very beginning of Holy Week, the Lord needed a donkey. He told two of the disciples to go into a village and bring a donkey and her colt, telling anyone who asked what they were doing ‘The Lord has need of them’ (Matthew 21:3).

Why did the Lord need a donkey? Matthew helpfully points us back to the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 that the promised King bringing salvation would come to Jerusalem ‘sitting on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey’ (Matthew 21:5; Zechariah 9:9). So, Jesus came into the city riding on a donkey to demonstrate that He is the one who fulfils this prophecy — He is God's promised Deliverer, the King coming to bring salvation.

And, I suppose, we could leave it there and say no more about donkeys. But the Bible has a lot more to say about donkeys. And it's not irrelevant that the animal Zechariah prophesied about was a donkey. So, if we want to understand the significance of donkeys and what they tell us about Jesus, we have to go a lot further back than Zechariah.

Donkeys and the Messiah

For, you see, Zechariah 9:9 isn't the first promise of a donkey in the Bible. The first promise of a donkey is back in Genesis 49. There we read Jacob's last words to his sons as he blessed them for final time before he died. As he blesses Judah, Jacob declares that ‘the sceptre shall not depart from [him] ... until Shiloh comes’ (Gen. 49:10). By this blessing, he prophesies the royal role of the Tribe of Judah which will last until the coming of the Messiah — God's saving King from Judah's line. And that's often where we stop when we talk about this famous Messianic prophecy. Yet, the next verse tells us more about this royal Messiah. ‘Binding his donkey to the vine, and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes’ (Gen. 49:11). The Messiah with a donkey and a donkey's colt! That's exactly what we see in Zechariah and then on Palm Sunday! So Zechariah 9:9 isn't the first promise of the Messiah coming with a donkey and donkey's colt. It's a promise that goes all the way back to Genesis. From Genesis to Zechariah — from the beginning of the Old Testament to its end — we have this promise, that donkeys and the Messiah go together.

But it's not just that the Messiah will come with donkeys. For the Scriptures which tell us that donkeys and the Messiah go together teach us a few things about what type of Messiah this will be. In Genesis 49:10-11, the Messiah who comes with donkeys is the Messiah who wields a sceptre, ‘and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.’ This promised Messiah from Judah's royal line is coming as King to reign. He is coming with power and authority.

And His kindgom is coming. What type of kingdom will this be? Well, look at the donkeys. This Messiah-King ties his donkeys and their colts to the choicest of vines. Now, I don't know how much you know about farming and donkeys and vines, but, essentially, tying a donkey to a vine isn't generally a good idea — not unless you want to donkey to eat all the grapes and destroy the vine! But this King doesn't have to worry about tying his donkeys to the vine, because in His Kingdom there is such rich abundance of provision that it's perfectly safe for Him to tie donkeys to the vine. It doesn't matter how many grapes they eat! For this King can even wash his clothes in the wine that flows from these vines. There is such abundance of new wine (and joy! — because in the Bible, again and again, wine points us to joy!) in the Messiah's Kingdom that the donkeys can eat their full and wine can be used like water. For this Messiah-King comes brining provision, plenty, feasting and joy.

Zechariah's prophecy also points us to the rich provision for us in the Messiah's Kingdom. Only Zechariah doesn't describe it in terms of wine. He describes it in terms of who this King is for us. ‘He is just, and having salvation!’ This King who comes gently and lowly, riding on a donkey, is the one who brings us full salvation, perfect righteousness and true peace. Zechariah tells us that He is just — He is righteous. The King who brings salvation is the Righteous one who comes for us to clothe us with Himself for righteousness. He Himself is our abundant provision. He is God's salvation for us. As Jeremiah 23:5-6 tells us, this promised saving-King from Judah's royal line (David's branch) will be called ‘The LORD our righteousness.’ The coming Messiah isn't just a Just King, He's a saving King who comes to give Himself to us as our perfect, spotless righteousness. The just one who comes riding on a donkey is the LORD our righteous.

Donkeys and Kings

The Messiah is the saving King, so it shouldn't surprise us that donkeys and Kings go together in the Old Testament too. In fact, it's on a search for some lost donkeys that we meet Israel's first king. In 1 Samuel 9-10, Saul goes out to find his father's lost donkeys and ends up being anointed by Samuel as king. Then, after the Lord rejects Saul as King and sends Samuel to anoint a new King, David, the first thing we see this newly anointed King-to-be doing, is travelling to the royal court with a donkey. ‘And Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by his son David to Saul’ (1 Samuel 16:20). With David and Saul, there's an association between the account of the revelation of the Lord's anointed king and donkeys. Saul's father sends him to find donkeys. David's father sends him with a donkey. And in the context of those donkey stories, each of these men are revealed as king and anointed by God's prophet. (In that way, donkeys are a bit like angels — when they show up in the story, something big is often going on!)

When David and Saul are anointed, we find a donkey. But when Solomon is crowned as David's successor, we only find half a donkey. In 1 Kings 1, David has Solomon set on his mule and taken down to Gihon by Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet, to be anointed as King over Israel. Now, a mule is half-horse, half-donkey. So, on half a donkey, Solomon goes down from Jerusalem into the Kidron valley (between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives) to the spring Gihon.

About 950 years later, another son of David would make the opposite journey on a full donkey, and a colt, the foal of a donkey. From the Mount of Olives, the Lord Jesus — Great David's Greater Son — would go down into the Kidron valley and then up into Jerusalem, recapitulating the coronation march of Solomon.

But why did Solomon ride a mule — a half donkey — and not a proper, full donkey? Because Solomon wasn't the ultimate son and successor promised to David. Solomon wasn't the ultimate son of David — Jesus is. And so Solomon rode half a donkey, showing that there was a greater fulfilment yet to come. Then Jesus came, riding a donkey and a colt, as the full fulfilment of the prophetic promises.

Solomon wasn't a king of perfect peace. There were still rebellions and enemies to be dealt with. So he rides half a horse (the animal of war) and half a donkey (the animal of peace). But Jesus comes as the true King of Peace and King of Righteousness, riding on a donkey, the animal of peace.

Donkeys and the Saviour

The Messiah is the Saviour King. And donkeys specifically point us to the Saviour Himself. Donkeys recognise the Saviour and donkeys proclaim the Saviour. But how?

Well, I've got this far without even mentioning one history's most famous donkeys. But it's finally time for her to make an appearance. For once there was a donkey who spoke. We read about this donkey back in Numbers 22. Balak, the King of the Moabites, had been trying to get Balaam to curse the children of Israel. When Balaam finally saddled his donkey and went to Balak, the Angel of the LORD came to stand in the way. Now, although I don't have the space to demonstrate it here, the Angel of the LORD is Jesus (the LORD sent from the LORD to speak the Word of the LORD). So, Balaam is riding his donkey, and the donkey sees the Angel of the LORD standing in the road in front of them with his sword drawn. And so the donkey turns off the road into the field. And Balaam gets annoyed. The same thing happens again, this time with a wall on either side of the road, so Balaam's foot gets crushed by the donkey against the wall in her attempt to get out of the way of the Angel of the LORD. Then, a third time it happens, and this time there's nowhere to get out of the way, so the donkey just lies down before they get as far as the Angel of the LORD. Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey and there's a conversation between her and Balaam about what's happened.

The thing is, the donkey sees the Angel of the LORD, but Balaam doesn't. Balaam doesn't see the Lord Jesus (until later when the Lord opens his eyes), but the donkey does. The donkey recognises the Saviour (who is also the Judge). And so the donkey ends up saving Balaam's life because the donkey sees Jesus.

Balaam's donkey recognises Jesus. But some of the other donkeys we've mentioned also point us to Jesus and His saving work. The donkey in Genesis 49 is tied to the vine. So the saving Messiah comes not only with a donkey, but with grapes and wine. And then this saving Messiah covers his robes in the blood of grapes. The one who ties up His donkey to the vine is the one who comes in garments stained with wine — wine that's described as blood. We've already thought about this in terms of the abundance of provision in the Messiah's Kingdom. Yet, it's interesting that this wine is also described here as blood (and that we get an almost identical picture in Revelation 19, where Christ returns ‘clothed with a robe dipped in blood’).

The Saviour the donkeys proclaim has stained His garments with blood — not the blood of others, but His own blood. He was robed in His own blood as He hung on the Cross for our salvation. And now He holds out to us His blood in the promise of the forgiveness of sins. As we gather at the Lord's Table, He makes this proclamation: ‘This is the new covenant in my blood.’

We see this good news again with David's donkey (in 1 Samuel 16:20). David's donkey is another gospel donkey. What did Jesse put on the donkey along with David? Bread, a skin of wine and a young goat. What was the young goat for? For a sacrifice. The promised king, the Lord's anointed, goes up to the royal city on a donkey with bread, wine, and a sacrifice! And so David and his donkey point us to the ultimate promised King, Great David's Greater Son, who would be the perfect sacrifice — and who now gives us a memorial of His sacrifice in bread and wine. We come and feast upon the fruits of Calvary in bread and wine, as Jesus gives Himself to us to eat and drink at His Table. And David's donkey points us there. For donkeys proclaim the Saviour who gave Himself for us as the perfect sacrifice, and who lifts our eyes back to that sacrifice of the cross week after week in bread and wine.

And with that, I've used the word 95 times, so can only use it once more! So I'll use it to say this: the ways Jesus rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday isn't just glorious because it fulfils prophecy or signals peace. The way He rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is extra glorious because over and over again donkeys proclaim the Saviour Messiah-King and point us to His saving sacrifice. I think my grandfather might have been onto something — what more exciting and glorious animal could you hope to find round the next corner than one which points us to the Saviour. So next time you meet one of these beasts of burden in the Scriptures, pay attention, for, just like on Palm Sunday, it might be bringing Jesus.

Of Book News, Sacraments, and Apologetics

2025-04-07T18:12:00.003+01:00

On Friday I got an email from the publisher of my latest book to tell me that it's been chosen as a finalist for this year's Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (EPCA) Christian Book Awards. The Christian Book Awards have been running since 1978 and each year they honour the best books of the year in twelve categories, with one of the finalists also being selected as overall Christian Book of the Year. My book, 40 Questions About Pentecostalism is one of the five finalists in the “Bible Reference Category” (which covers all theology, doctrine, church history and biblical studies books, including reference works, and commentaries — so it's quite a vast category with some amazing finalists).

To be a finalist for the Christian Book Awards, alongside such authors as Don Carson, Kevin Vanhoozer, Jon Mark Comer, Max Lucado, N.T. Wright and Michael Bird, is way beyond what I would ever have imagined, so it's quite exciting and a lovely blessing from the Lord. I know there were delays in it arriving in the UK (and problems with preorders from a certain large international online bookseller), but I hope this is an encouragement that the book is indeed worthwhile — both for Pentecostals, to better understand what we believe, and for non-Pentecostals to clear up some misconceptions and get an accurate idea of what Pentecostalism is, what we share in common with other evangelicals, and what our distinctively Pentecostal beliefs really are.

(By the way, my current writing project is a commentary on Ephesians, so if anyone would like to pray for me as I work on that, I would be very thankful. Also, you might have noticed the last few weeks that I've been publishing a blog post each Monday – and that's a discipline I'm going to try to stick to, so if you want to know when to come back to the blog to find something new, there should be something here each week.)

...

On Twitter this weekend, it was the Lord's Supper that was the trending topic. Two different things combined to draw Twitter's attention to the Supper. The first was a video of an interaction between a seemingly well-known American Evangelical apologist and an Ethiopian Orthodox deacon. The debate is painful to watch (and for that reason and others, I won't link to it — I want to engage with some ideas and culture here, not draw further critique to an individual). But it highlights a few things we need to be much better at in the Evangelical world. (In fact, it's what makes it most painful to watch which highlights our weaknesses.)

The debate started when the Orthodox deacon asked the apologist about what he'd said about the Eucharist being symbolic rather than efficacious. (In other words, that the Supper was just a symbol and that the Supper itself doesn't actually accomplish anything.) The deacon pointed back to Christian writings from the 1st-3rd centuries which don’t view the Supper as symbolic, but do see it as efficacious. His question was, ‘How can you say you're just following what the Bible says if your interpretation of the Bible is not lining up with the people who directly received the Bible?’

Now, this is a fair, and actually very important question. And it's not a question of which Protestants should be scared! (It is, however, also a slightly more complicated question, as the writings we have from the 1st-3rd centuries don't directly correspond to ‘the people who directly received the Bible’ — in most cases there was at least one generation in between — but they were at least people who used the same language and lived in a very similar culture and some even knew some of the people who had first received the Bible. Polycarp and Ignatius may well have been disciples of the apostle John, and Ignatius may also have known Peter.) If our interpretation of the Bible doesn't line up with how anyone in the early church understood it — if our interpretation is something that no one ever dreamt of for at least the first millennium and a half of the history of the church — then we should be asking a lot more questions before jumping to a conclusion.

But that doesn't mean abandoning the evangelical Protestant faith for Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. In fact, returning to the understanding of the earliest Christians is exactly what the first Protestants saw themselves as doing during the Reformation. Their supreme authority was Scripture, but they took a lot of time to demonstrate how they were reading Scripture in line with the early Church Fathers and getting rid of Rome's later alterations. As John Calvin wrote to Cardinal Sadoleto: ‘Our agreement with antiquity is far closer than yours. All we have attempted has been to renew that ancient form of the church, which was at first besmirched and distorted by uneducated men of undistinguished character, and afterwards disgracefully mangled and almost destroyed by the Roman pope and his faction.’

The apologist responded by asking the deacon to name the Church Fathers ‘on both sides of the fence’, which is where everything started to go downhill. For, as the deacon knew, but the apologist didn't, there were no ‘both sides of the fence’ on this question in the early church. ‘Not even Luther?’ asked the apologist. Leaving aside the fact that Luther lived 1,500 years later than the early church, this highlighted one of our big problems in the Evangelical Protestant world — we don’t know our own history (and theology) well enough. As the Orthodox deacon knew (but the Protestant apologist did not), Luther emphatically rejected any notion that the Supper is merely symbolic and declared that he would rather drink blood with the Pope than mere wine with the fanatics.

Until relatively recently in the history of the church, no one, apart from a few heretical groups, has thought that the Supper is purely symbolic. (Even Zwingli didn't believe that, even though his name is so often associated with the idea!) It was the Socinians — a heretical group which denied the deity of Christ — who really introduced a purely symbolic view of the Supper. (Even until the 1990s, Apostolic Church writers continued to describe any notion of a purely symbolic view of the Supper as Socinianism. Ian Macpherson, the former Principal of the Apostolic Church Bible College, and revered Pentecostal preacher, rejected any view of ‘the Lord’s Supper [as] nothing more than a memorial rite [and that] the elements throughout the ceremony are and remain “bare signs and nude emblems’’ . . [and] only a commemorative ordinance’ as Socinian.)

The apologist’s next strategy was to speak louder and more confidently to ridicule the real presence of Christ in the Supper — yet in doing so, he showed that he didn't understand the doctrine of the real presence at all. He immediately jumped from ‘real presence‘ to transubstantiation — even thought those two things aren’t at all the same. And in doing that, he was reflecting what we Evangelical Protestants too often do: assuming that there are two and only two alternatives when it comes to understanding the Supper: mere symbolism or transubstantiation.

The problem is, historically Protestants have not believed in either of these. So in reducing the options to these two (essentially the Socianian position or the Roman Catholic position) we cut ourselves off from our own history and theology as Protestants.

The apologist ridiculed the idea of the real presence by describing the scene at the Last Supper: ‘When [Jesus] stretched out his hand to grab the bread ... he was taking a piece of his kneecap, dipping it in some of the blood that was pouring out of his arms and then eating himself ... It’s just completely contradictory.’

Now, that is completely contradictory — completely contradictory to the actual doctrine of the real presence. We don't feed on Christ in a carnal way in the Supper — we don't each receive as piece of His flesh. Instead, Christ feeds us with His body and blood in a heavenly and supernatural way. As the Lutherans put it in the Epitome of the Formula of Concord: ‘We believe, teach, and confess that the body and blood of Christ are received with the bread and wine ... not in a Capernaitic [i.e. the way the apologist characterises it], but in a supernatural, heavenly mode.’ Johann Gerhard, one of the greatest of Lutheran theologians, explained that ‘the body of Christ is not eaten naturally ... the mode of eating, like the presence itself, is neither natural, carnal, physical nor local, but supernatural, divine, mystical, heavenly, and spiritual.’ The Reformed, in the Westminster Larger Catechism (Q.170), say that those who worthily partake of the Supper ‘feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal or carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really.’ All Christians who believe in the real presence — not only classical Protestants, but also Roman Catholics and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox — reject what the apologist describes.

Transubstantiation is one attempted explanation of ‘how’ Christ is present in the Supper. But it's not the only explanation. And attempted explanations of how Christ is present are a different matter altogether from the fact that Christ is present. Classical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox all believe the fact that Christ is present; but they don't all agree as to how.

So, as a good Protestant, I reject transubstantiation (on biblical grounds) as the explanation for how Christ is present. But, still as a good Protestant, I insist that we must recognise that Christ is present — we must ‘discern the Lord's body’ (1 Cor. 11:29). Believing in the real presence does not mean believing in transubstantiation. Nor does it mean adopting a Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Oriental Orthodox theology. Rather, to believe in the real presence is to stand in the long line of Protestants stretching from Martin Luther and John Calvin, to John Wesley, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, William Seymour, D.P. Williams and Andrew Turnbull.

And so, while many Catholics and Orthodox have been pointing to the debate between the apologist and the deacon as a demonstration of the weakness of Protestant theology, the reality is that many Protestants watching saw it not as a weakness of our theology at all — but a weakness in our culture. Somehow we've developed a culture where we can be blissfully unaware of our own theology and history — and a culture which is much too confident about things we don't understand.

For that was perhaps the biggest take-away from the debate. The reason it was so difficult to watch was not so much the confusion and lack of understanding about Protestant theologies of the Supper, but rather the over-confidence and the combative mode of engagement on the part of the Evangelical apologist. Talking over his opponent, imputing ideas to him that he didn't actually advocate or believe (like transubstantiation), speaking with unfounded confidence about things he didn't really know or understand (like assuming that when an Orthodox Christian speaks about the early church councils that that means the First and Second Vatican Councils — the most recent councils of the Roman Catholic Church — or speaking about the non-existent Vatican III). Speaking confidently might give the appearance of ‘winning’ a debate, but that doesn't really mean anything at all. We are called to be people of the truth (for Christ is the truth, and we want to be more and more like Him) and to speak the truth in love. Our call isn't to ‘win’ debates — it's to hold out the word of truth in a dark and dying world. (And to be fair, this isn't only a problem in evangelical culture; many of those on the other side who were reposting the debate were talking about how the apologist got ‘destroyed’ or ‘bulldozed’ or other equally triumphalist language. Let this attitude be far from us all!)

Theology isn't for winning debates, it's for helping us grow in the knowledge of our God and in the life of prayer. Theology isn't for ‘destroying’ opponents, it’s for serving others with the truth of God's Word in humility and love.

But this debate wasn't the only reason the Supper was getting attention on Twitter this weekend. One of the dangers of our general disconnect from our own historical Protestant positions on the Supper is that people in our churches replace healthy Eucharistic Theology with superstition. That was the other reason the Supper was coming up this weekend.

Some videos were going round of people doing odd things with grape juice. In a few, people were pouring it round the boundary of their property or all over their gardens to protect them from spiritual attack. Now, there are some parallels to this in some abuses of the sacrament in mediaeval folk-religion (like the woman who put a consecrated host in her beehive to increase her honey yield, or the farmer who buried a host in his field to multiply his harvest). And I don't think we should be so surprised by people doing such things today. Where we don't teach well, superstitious folk-religion practices based on a poor understanding combined with belief in God's power will flourish. (Isn't that exactly what we see with the prosperity gospel and exaggerated teachings about divine healing?)

It didn't take me long to find multiple ‘ministries’ on the internet providing instructions for how to anoint your home with grape juice and specific prayers to use for it. And, although it's not identical, it ties in with some of the bizarre quasi-magical (and fetishistic) teachings about Communion found in books on the extreme fringes of the charismatic world (like those of Beni Johnson and Joseph Prince), but which are read much more widely.

Now, pouring grape juice round the garden might be quite extreme, but once you start taking to people in churches about the Supper, it won't be long before you find other superstitious practices like people taking Communion by themselves daily (or thrice daily) like vitamins to protect from sickness. (Joseph Prince even has an article on his website connecting taking Communion three times a day with success in dieting and losing weight!) Where we create a vacuum by not teaching about the Supper, all sorts of superstitions and magic-like beliefs flow in to fill it up. People seem to instinctively grasp that there's something special going on in the Supper, and in the absence of some good sacramental theology, many grasp hold of ideas which aren't only superstitious, but can ultimately end up becoming quite dangerous indeed — ideas where the power or the blessing ends up being rooted in the ritual or in a bottle of grape juice, rather than in the Lord Jesus who has promised to meet with us in His body and blood in the sacrament of the Supper.

So what's the solution? We need to teach! The debate highlighted the general paucity of our knowledge and understanding about the Supper across much of the evangelical world. The grape juice-pouring videos highlight what fills up the vacuum when we don't teach about the Supper (or when we speak about the Supper in purely symbolic terms, as if the Lord is absent and not at work in it!).

That's part of the reason why I wrote The Lord's Supper: Our Promised Place of Intimacy and Transformation with Jesus. There are a lot of unhelpful (and wacky) books out there being read by Charismatics and Pentecostals, full of these quasi-magical ideas. So I wanted to give some sound teaching, from a Pentecostal perspective that's rooted in Scripture and enriched by the thought of those who have gone before us. If you've got your ideas about Communion from Beni Johnson or Joseph Prince, or if you think it's a mere symbol like the apologist, then I hope my book will help you.

The sacraments weren't given to us to be talked about, but for us to make use of them in faith. Yet, faith comes by hearing God's Word, so if we're really to make use of the sacraments in faith, we need to hear what God's Word teaches about them. Our faith and expectation at the Lord's Table will grow as we teach more about the precious sacrament of Holy Communion, where the Lord Jesus promises to meet with us in His great grace and power in His body and blood.

A Recipe for Apostolic Mission

2025-03-31T18:50:00.002+01:00

It's been my great joy to take part in the ordination of two Teachers in just over a week. One ordination was planned, with people travelling the length and breadth of the country to be there. The other was an on-the-spot response by the apostleship to prophecy at our recent Apostolic Church Ministries Conference.

This year, two of our Teachers are coming to retirement. And yet, in the space of 8 days, the Lord gave us two new Teachers. The Lord is like that — in His great grace, He keeps on blessing His Church with gifts.

Too often we make the mistake of separating teaching from mission or pitting mission against a dynamic ministry of the gifts of the Spirit. Yet that's not what we see in Scripture at all. In Acts 13 we meet some Teachers in Antioch. But when we meet them, they aren't alone.

Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away. (Acts 13:1-3)

In these few verses in Antioch, three things come together: teachers, prophets, and apostolic mission. The teachers and prophets are united in worship and fasting. Together, the teachers and prophets serve the Lord and out of that unity of service and worship the Lord calls Paul and Barnabas into their apostolic mission. So from this harmony of teaching ministry and prophetic ministry, mission advances. From the unity of multiple teachers and multiple prophets, the Lord calls multiple apostles to plant multiple churches.

Antioch is neither a teaching church nor a prophetic church; it's not a church that tries to pit Word against Spirit or Spirit against Word. Either of those options would take us out of balance. Nor is Antioch a church that downplays either biblical teaching or prophetic ministry in the name of evangelistic mission. Teaching, prophecy and evangelism all go together in the life of healthy church. In Antioch, there is harmonious fellowship between prophets, teachers, and apostles, and that flows out into harmonious service. And this healthy church becomes a sending church — a truly apostolic church.

Teaching isn't something for a few super-studious Christians off in some corner of church life, far removed from the mission field. Just as in Antioch, so today, teaching and prophecy belong together in the context of apostolic mission. The teaching of the Word and the gifts of the Spirit shouldn't be separated. We need all the gifts and ministries Christ gives!

From the unity and harmony of prophets and teachers in Antioch, the Lord called apostles and sent them out on evangelistic mission. Neither teaching nor the gifts of the Spirit are distractions from evangelism and mission, but both feed into it, as the Lord uses them to build us up, encourage us, comfort us, equip us, and empower us for His call to take the gospel of Jesus who died for our sins and rose again for us to the whole world.

We need Teachers. Not just for emergencies and not just for a few studious Christians in a corner on the edge of church life. The whole church needs Teachers. For if we're to advance in Christ's mission, we need His Word. From the harmony of Teachers and Prophets in Antioch, the Lord worked to powerfully advance apostolic mission. And if we want to see powerful advances in apostolic mission today, we need not only evangelists and apostles, but prophets and teachers, harmoniously serving the Lord and His church together. We need the power of the Holy Spirit and the teaching of God's Word.

If you want to hear more about this, here's my sermon from the recent ordination of Ps Paul McMath as a Teacher in the Body of Christ in Lisburn, where the last part of the sermon picks up on this theme.

Advancing in Prayer: The Three Degrees and the Tabernacle

2025-03-24T20:25:00.001+00:00

The life of prayer isn't a life that stands still. We grow in prayer. Or at least, we should be growing in prayer. Eighty-five years ago an Apostolic pastor in Australia wrote about some stages of growth in the life of prayer.

Prayer is something which we need the Lord to teach us, and to keep on teaching us. And, Pastor Longstaff-Wright wrote, as we keep looking to the Lord to teach us to pray, He will take us through several degrees of prayer. “There are degrees in all ministry, whether it is praying, preaching, or giving, or anything else, and the degree is always according to the nearness of the individual to God.”

Ps Longstaff-Wright saw “three clearly defined degrees” of prayer in Scripture, but he particularly turned to the Tabernacle where he saw these three degrees of prayer exemplified in the Court of the Congregation, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. So let me draw on Ps Longstaff-Wright's teaching on the three degrees of prayer and the Tabernacle to help us see how to continue growing in prayer.

Degree 1: The Court of the Congregation

Through His sacrifice in our place on the Cross, Jesus has opened up the way for all believers to draw near into the Holy of Holies. But, we don't always step into the fullness of His provision for us in our lives of prayer. Instead, many of us stay in the Outer Court. “Certainly they can see the Throne of Grace, and they bow before it, but they are, as it were, ‘worshipping afar off.’”

Yet, there are important things for us to learn in prayer in this outer court. It's in this court that the altar and the laver are found. And so here we see that the first principle in prayer is that sin must be dealt with. “Get right with God first; confess and forsake your sin; let the cleansing Blood avail and then get down and pray.”

But, not only do we need to come to the Lord for His forgiveness, we also need to forgive one another (Mark 11:25). Our hearts should be filled with mercy and love towards our neighbour as we enter into the court of the congregation in prayer (1 John 4:21; Proverbs 21:13). “An unforgiving spirit will stop the ears of God to your cry, just as surely as the selfish spirit ... See also 1 John 3:17-23 and Matthew 5:44.”

So, our motive in prayer “must be unselfish or self-less — free from self-interest ... let our prayer be only for God's glory” (James 4:3). Whatever we ask in prayer, our purpose should always be for “God's ultimate glory, otherwise we are asking amiss. It is a sever truth to learn; but if we desire to be effectual in prayer the motive must always be God's glory.”

And we pray only as we look to the Lord in faith. For those who are justified live by faith.

“He who would enter into the Holy Place to minister must first pass through the Court of the Congregation with its altar and laver—sin must be judged, self must die, God alone must fill the vision.”

Degree 2: The Holy Place

The court of the congregation was the place of the multitude, but the Holy Place is the place of the solitary. In great love and tenderness, the Lord invites all to enter with boldness into the Holy Place, for we are His royal priesthood.

In the Holy Place we learn from three objects: the Candlestick, the Table of Shewbread, and the Golden Altar of Incense. All the furnishings of the Tabernacle point us to Jesus — the true fulfilment of the Tabernacle, and so as we consider prayer in light of the Tabernacle, that should lift our eyes to Jesus, to see that our prayer is rooted in our union with Christ. Our intercession is "entering into the intercessory work of the Great Hight Priest.”

In the Holy Place, prayer arises, day and night, like sweet-smelling incense which perpetually ascends to the Lord.

There were no windows in the Holy Place, and so no natural light — only the light of the Golden Candlestick. And just as the Holy Place was dependent on the light from the Candlestick, so as we grow in prayer we grow in dependence on God's illumination (Romans 8:26-27). “The intercessor in the Holy Place knows what it is to pray with the spirit and also with the understanding, illuminated by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 14:14-15).”

And we intercede only as branches in the vine (just as the 6 branches are joined in the one candlestick), united to Jesus our great Intercessor. And as the oil flows to each of the branches, so too the Holy Spirit flows from Christ to all those who are joined to Him. “Let not this truth of being joined to Jesus in intercession stagger us!”

But the Holy Place is not only the place of illumination, the Spirit's oil, and union with Christ, it is also the place of sustenence, for it's the place of the Table of Shewbread. “Those who function in the ministry of intercession in the Holy Place know what it is to be divinely sustained ... They learn the lesson of drawing on Divine strength.” And so fasting and prayer go together here.

Degree 3: The Holy of Holies

Although the veil has been torn and the way opened through Christ's sacrifice, “we pause with holy awe at the threshold because this place is the abiding place of God.” When we advance “to this ultimate degree of prayer” we are “no longer afar off in the Court of Congregation nor close at hand in the Holy Place, but so blessedly close to God that when they bend their knees to intercede, their reverently-clasped hands rest upon the Throne of Grace.”

Now, Pastor Longstaff-Wright wants us to be careful here as we think about this nearness to God. “In His Omnipresence God is nearer than hands or feet to every saint and sinner alike, but in spiritual experience there are degrees of nearness according to the individual saint's willingness.” God invites us to draw near, and so we are to draw near and keep drawing nearer. And His promise is that He will draw near to us as we draw near to Him (James 4:8).

And the nearer we draw to Him, the more we will know Him. “The intercessor who ministers in the Holy of Holies is always reverent because he knows God as only the utterly yielded can know Him. Like the cherubim around the Throne (Rev. 4:9-11) he is frequently on his face in adoration and worship.”

Along with this growing knowledge of God, comes growing confidence in Him. Those who pray in the Holy of Holies are “confident, but it is not self-confidence; self has been crucified and his humble testimony is ever ‘I do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’”

Yet, proximity to the Lord and confidence in Him does not mean there are no trials. “The tests are multiplied, not diminished, but he always maintains a calmness and serenity that causes his fellow-saints to marvel as the disciples marvelled at Jesus at peace in the boat in the midst of the tempest. He has learnt, as did Paul, ‘how to be abased and how to abound; to be full and to be hungry, to abound and to suffer need’ (Phil. 4:12). He not only patiently endures trials, he rejoices in them. His experience no longer fluctuates between peace and distress, victory and defeat, but he is ever quietly confident in the Lord and possesses a peace and joy which the waters of sorrow cannot quench, nor the fires of persecution destroy.”

Those who pray in the Holy of Holies are humble and happy with obscurity, and yet, through their prayers bring great blessing to so much in the life of the church and the world. “He often fights and wins the Lord's battles before the preacher enters the arena, but he seeks no praise or recognition, rather he hides from the praise of man lest his Lord be robbed of the glory.”

This life of prayer in the Holy of Holies is the life of union with God. There are two senses to union. The first is the union by which we're joined to Christ in salvation. This is our being grafted into the vine so that we are now “in Him”—what we normally call “union with Christ.” And, as we've already seen, this is vital to prayer. The only way into the Holy of Holies is in union with Jesus our Great High Priest.

But the union with God that we're now dealing with is something else. It's rooted in our union with Christ, but this is now a oneness in character and likeness. A union in holiness. (Pastor Longstaff-Wright calls these two unions “union by joining” and “union by blending”— but I think the word “blending” is too liable to misinterpretation to be particularly helpful.) In this union, we “experience the power of Christ's resurrection and also the fellowship of His sufferings.” By this union, in the Holy of Holies, we commune with God as friend communes with friend.

This prayer in the holy of holies is a ministry, and yet it is far more than that. “It is Life itself—the Life of God, expressing itself through the heart of the Body.”

That's just a summary of what Pastor Longstaff-Wright had to say about these three degrees of prayer. Going from the Outer Court, to the Holy Place, to the Holy of Holies, we go from dealing with sin, to illumination, to union with God. And in those three ways, the Pentecostal pastor in Australia ended up echoing so many of the great teachers of the spiritual life through the history of the Christian church. (Isn't the Holy Spirit marvellous in how He leads!)

But any teaching about the three ways or degrees of prayer is always an invitation — an invitation to draw ever nearer to the Lord and enter more and more into the life of prayer. He wants us to know more of Him in prayer. So won't you draw nearer?

All the quotes above are from Ps R. Longstaff-Wright, ‘The Purpose and Power of Prayer’, Riches of Grace 1940 (June, pp.52-53; July, pp.63-64; August, pp.81-82).

Doing What Jesus Did?

2025-03-17T08:30:00.001+00:00

Can we do what Jesus did? Well, Jesus ate and drank and slept, and we can definitely do all that. Yet, Jesus also died for the sins of the world and rose again in triumph over sin, death and hell, and we definitely can't do that. So the answer to the question is really, it depends. Or, in the words so often delighted in by theologians of the past: ‘we distinguish.’

To distinguish is a good thing. And it's a very helpful thing indeed in the Christian life. We live in an age of soundbites and slogans; but we cannot build out lives on snippets of 280 characters (or fewer). And if we try, we're in danger of going off track, because a short, pithy slogan might contain part of the truth, but at the same time hide something equally important that goes along with it.

And that's exactly what can happen if we talk about doing what Jesus did without making some careful distinctions. And it can be extreme. In 2006, a man who didn't make these sorts of distinctions drowned in the Atlantic Ocean because he was convinced that if Jesus could walk on water, he should be able to walk on water too. Living by simple slogans can have dangerous consequences.

So how can we make some careful distinctions to help us think well about doing what Jesus did? Well, back in the 1700s, Thomas Charles, one of the key figures in a major revival in Wales, thought about this question. He was thinking about the need for holiness and how holiness means becoming like Jesus. Holiness, Charles wrote:

consists in possessing the mind that was in Christ, and a conformity to his image. He is the pattern which we are to copy, and the perfect example which we are to imitate. He has in his own person marked the path to glory; and we are to follow in his steps. (Spiritual Counsels, 'Sanctification', pp.67-68)

But Charles knew that he wasn't doing enough by simply pointing people to the example of Christ's life. He had to help them by making some distinctions. Holiness, after all, doesn't mean walking on water. So, he gave his readers a very helpful clarification.

Christ is to be considered in a threefold respect; as Man, Mediator, and God. What he did here on earth, as Mediator and God, is not proposed to us for our imitation ... But as Son of Man he is a bright example to us, and a perfect pattern of every virtue. (Spiritual Counsels, 'Sanctification', p.68).

Now, Charles isn't dividing Christ into three — everything Christ does He does as the God-Man. Rather, he's pointing us to how what Christ did is to be ‘considered’ — so he's telling us that we need to do some thinking about what Jesus has done. Although everything Christ did He did as the God-Man, some of what He did is only possible because He is God. And some things Jesus did He did as part of His unique role as Mediator. So, in the one and undivided person of Christ we see three things: we see God, we see the Mediator between God and us, and we see perfect man. And it's only as we look on Him in this third way that we see where we are called to do as He did.

So we need to be careful to avoid confusing ourselves and trying to repeat what God the Son did to reveal Himself in the flesh, or to do the work of our Mediator. Christ shows us the perfect example of a sinless, God-glorifying human life, and now, because we have received His work as our Mediator, we can look to His example as the perfect pattern of the type of life God desires for us. But we need to get our looking in the right order: first we see that Jesus is God, then we see Him as our Mediator, and only then do we look at Him as our example of perfect man. If we don't know Him first as God and Mediator, His example will do us no good. For He didn't come to teach us how to save ourselves through a perfect life; He came to live and die and rise as the God-Man in our place, our only Mediator.

Back in the Reformation, Martin Luther put it like this:

The chief article and foundation of the gospel is that before you take Christ as an example, you accept and recognize him as a gift, as a present that God has given you and that is your own. This means that when you see or hear of Christ doing or suffering something, you do not doubt that Christ himself, with his deeds and suffering, belongs to you. (What To Look For And Expect In The Gospels)

Christ is first and foremost God's gift to us — God Himself who has come in our flesh as our Mediator — and only then in light of receiving that gift can we know Him as our example, as He shows us what a human life in right relation to God looks like.

That's the way we need to understand any call to ‘do as He did.’ We're not trying to repeat His demonstrations of His deity, nor re-do His saving work as our Mediator. We recognise Him as our Lord and our God, we receive His perfect, finished work as our Mediator with faith, thanksgiving, and joy. And then we see in Him the pattern of a godly life — the perfect pattern of every virtue.

Eucharisma: A New Venue for Thoughtful Pentecostal & Charismatic Writing

2024-12-14T13:34:00.004+00:00

Earlier this week, the second issue of Eucharisma was published (and I've got an article in it on praying the name of Jesus). I haven't had time to say much about Eucharisma yet (or about anything else this year, for that matter!), but I do want to highlight it. T.M. Suffield and I have launched Eucharisma as a forum to encourage us within the UK Pentecostal and Charismatic world to think deeply, read deeply, and be rooted in the Christian tradition. So, we aim to publish thoughtful theological writing from across the UK Charismatic, Pentecostal, and Continuationist scene. That's a wide scope, so we won't always agree. Yet, within our disagreements, we want to encourage thoughtful dialogue.

Unfortunately, Pentecostals and Charismatics tend to have a (sometimes deserved) bad reputation when it comes to careful theological thought. I hope both on this blog and in my published work elsewhere that I've helped demonstrate that that need not be the case. But I'm not alone, and so in Eucharisma we want to help draw together voices from across the various spheres of UK continuationist thought (for, all too often, we're only familiar with people within our own sphere).

So, Eucharisma is a theological ‘journal’ aimed at Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and Pastors in the UK. (It's not a scholarly journal — we're not writing for academics, but for the thought-life of the church.) There are, unfortunately, very few opportunities for people to write theologically in Pentecostal/Charismatic spaces. Yet, writing—and engaging with good theological writing—helps to shape the thinking of our future thinkers, teachers, and leaders.

So much writing in the Charismatic/Pentecostal world is either at such a high level that it is only accessible to those who have long been embedded in the world of academia, or else it's severely lacking in theological and biblical grounding. Yet, most of our churches and pastors lie in between these two extremes. So Eucharisma is for them. We're still finding our feet and growing into how to best do that, but hopefully there'll be something in the first two issues that will engage your interest and your thoughts.

Issue 1 came out earlier this year. Issue 2 came out this week. You can read any of the articles online or download the whole issue as a free PDF from our site.

And, if you're interested in praying the name of Jesus, have a look at my article which draws on our Pentecostal forbears and the Jesus Prayer tradition earlier in the history of the church.

Please do spread the word. And if you've got some interesting thoughts for an article, you can propose it to us here.

Apostolic Tenets Videos

2024-11-16T14:29:00.003+00:00

Last night, we launched a new project which has been in the works for quite some time — a series of videos teaching through the Tenets and Confession of Faith of The Apostolic Church in the United Kingdom. The videos are 10-15 minutes in length and help to explain what it is that we believe as The Apostolic Church, and you can find them both on the Apostolic Church UK website and on YouTube. In the near future we'll be launching some Bible study materials to go along with the videos to make them even more helpful for use in 1-to-1 discipleship, small groups, or whole church Bible study settings.

It's been a great privilege (and great fun) to work on this. It's been fantastic to work with Ash Abbott who has done huge amounts of work behind the scenes to produce the videos, and with Jacob Crolla, and Junior and Sarah Giokabari who've done such an amazing job on screen. Thanks as well to our assembly in Dover — One Church — who welcomed us in to film in their building. I'm really thankful too for the national leadership of The Apostolic Church in the UK who've had the vision for this project (and a lot more to come) and given me the absolutely incredible privilege of being responsible for it.

The videos accompany both the Tenets and The Vision Glorious: A Confession of the Faith of the Apostolic Church. Underneath the videos on the ACUK website you can click expand to read the full text of the section of The Vision Glorious for that Tenet, or you can read the full confession here.

This is just the beginning of the discipleship materials ACUK are producing to serve people in our churches and beyond. In fact, that's one of the reasons I've been so quiet on here for a long time — as I've been heading up this project as well as ACTS (The Apostolic Church Theology School). So, even if there isn't much Apostolic Theology in a personal capacity going on over here, there's lots of Apostolic theological work in an ecclesial capacity going on to serve the churches. (And we'd value your prayers for that work!)

However, I would like to do a bit more writing here too. Recently I've met people from several different countries who have come to tell me how this little blog site has helped them over the years. That's been quite a surprise (and an encouragement), and I'm very thankful to the Lord that the little bits I've been able to write have been helpful. So I think I should try to do some more writing from time to time too.

My Newest Book is Out Today

2024-06-18T06:30:00.003+01:00

My new book, 40 Questions About Pentecostalism, launches today. (As it’s published in America, it might possibly be a few more weeks before copies arrive in the UK.) I really love the 40 Questions series which Benjamin L. Merkle edits for Kregel Academic. Over the years, I’ve read and recommended many of the volumes, and so I’m thrilled to have now contributed a volume to the series as well.

My hope and prayer is that the book will be of benefit both to Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals alike. For Pentecostals, the book will help us see where we’ve come from and why we believe what we believe. For non-Pentecostals, I hope the book will help clear up misconceptions, demonstrate what Pentecostals and other Evangelical Christians have in common, and sweep away some mistaken stereotypes.

You’ll find some chapters on the historical origins of Pentecostalism, looking at the Welsh Revival, Topeka, Azusa Street, Mukti, Sunderland, Norway, and a few other places. Then there are some chapters on the Pentecostal perspective on central doctrines of the Christian faith such as the Trinity, Christ, the Bible, the Atonement, and Salvation. You'll find lots of focus on distinctive Pentecostal beliefs like the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the Gifts of the Spirit, as well as healing and suffering. Finally, there are some chapters on the church, mission, worship, and the sacraments.

You can read the first two chapters — “What is Pentecostalism?” and “What were the precursors to Pentecostalism?” — here. There are also excerpts on Jesus and on Healing and the Atonement on the Kregel Academic blog.

There isn’t really another book like this one. It’s carefully researched, but it addresses the actual beliefs of real Pentecostals (rather than the discussions of Pentecostal academics, which can, unfortunately, sometimes be focused on rather different topics). It actually looks at things like the Authority of Scripture, the Trinity, Jesus, salvation, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, prophecy, and speaking in tongues. And it draws on statements of faith and writings of Pentecostals all over the world.

I really hope that this book will be an encouragement and help to Pentecostals, and a book which helps other Evangelicals to better understand Pentecostals, and our commitment to the Gospel and to the Scriptures.

Here’s the table of contents so you can see the 40 questions and find out what topics the book covers.

I really hope that you’ll enjoy the book. And if you benefit from it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads (or both — reviews like that really do help other people find good books), and tell other people who might benefit from it too!

Thank you!

Jonathan

On Ordination

2024-06-15T22:22:00.000+01:00

Today the Apostolic Church in Ghana held a three-hour long ordination service in Accra. The Apostles laid hands on 9 new apostles, 2 teachers, 2 evangelists, and 22 pastors. Setting these men apart to the ministry in the name of the Triune God, Ap Dr Aaron Ami-Narh, President of the Apostolic Church in Ghana said, “We give all glory to our Risen Lord who is the Head of the Church, and we thank Him that in His own sovereign will, He continues to give us labourers in His vineyard, that His work might be done. To Him and Him alone be all praise, glory and honour.” (You can see the service here, the “solemn part” of the service with the actual ordinations begins with the Scripture readings at 54:30.)

Today is also the 16th anniversary of my own ordination as a Presbyter in Christ’s Church. On this day all those years ago, I was ordained as an Elder, and then two years later as Pastor. But in the Apostolic Church we ordain not just to the ministry, but to each specific ministry; so more recently I’ve been ordained as a Teacher (a dozen years ago) and as a Prophet (two years ago). That means I’ve probably been ordained more times than most ministers, so it’s probably a good thing that I’ve given a little bit of thought to what’s going on in ordination.

Ordaining ministers is part of the role of an apostle (Acts 14:23). The Apostolic Church UK confession of faith — The Vision Glorious — summarises our understanding of ordination: “The Lord sets apart His choice to the ministry in ordination through prayer and the laying on of the apostles’ hands for the impartation of grace” (VG, 9).

In many countries, the big difference between the ordination of presbyters and the ordination of deacons is that presbyters are anointed with oil, but deacons aren’t. (If you look carefully in the photo at the top, you’ll see the bottle of anointing oil in Ap Dr Ami-Narh’s hand. Nowadays in the UK the anointing is often omitted, as it isn’t Scripturally necessary — although I’ve still taken part in quite a few ordinations in this country with anointing). The anointing with oil represents the simultaneous anointing with the Holy Spirit who gives “the necessary virtue, grace and power required” for the ministry. The anointing also has a Christological meaning. “Its use by the Church also indicates the fact that this office is a gift of the anointed Christ carrying with it His authority.” (You can see a shorter video of an Apostolic Church ordination of an elder and deacons from a Ghanaian assembly in the UK with the elder anointed in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit here.)

So, an ordination isn’t just about what the church is doing, but about what the Lord is doing. The apostles are human beings who lay on human hands. But through this human act, Jesus, the Head of the Church, by the Holy Spirit, is incorporating those being ordained into His ministry which He exercises through the ministers He gives as gifts to His Church.

The Lord works through human hands. As the American Pentecostal theologian Daniel Tomberlin puts it, “Pentecostal spirituality is a physical spirituality. The Holy Spirit dwells within the believer; the Spirit fills the believer … Spirit-filled believers are laying on ‘holy hands’ … This sacramental practice involves fellowship with the Spirit and the church, and the interaction between that which is of the Spirit and that which is physical.” (Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacraments, p.90). The laying on of the apostles’ hands in ordination isn’t just a ritual. It’s a Spirit-filled act by which the Lord is at work.

In 1 Timothy 4:14, Paul writes, ‘Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership’ and in 2 Timothy 1:6-7 he reminds him ‘to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.’ The laying on of hands here is connected with imparting a gift. And the gift has remained in Timothy since hands were laid on him. Sometimes it might need to be stirred up — but it doesn’t disappear! The Holy Spirit works through the laying on of hands to anoint for ministry. That doesn’t mean there isn’t already an anointing from the Spirit there — but the Lord can always give more!

The laying on of hands is never an empty gesture in the New Testament. Paul underlines its significance when he warns Timothy not to ‘lay hands on anyone hastily’ (1 Tim. 5:22). In other parts of the New Testament we see that the Lord works through the laying on of hands to bring blessing (Mk 10:13-16; Mt 19:15), healing (Mk 6:5; Lk 4:40; 13:13; Acts 28:8), the baptism in the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-19; 19:6), or even a combination of these (Acts 9:17). It’s the Lord, not the person who lays on hands, who is the source of the blessing. And the blessings the Lord gives are effectual (which is exactly the type of blessing Paul is writing to Timothy about in encouraging him to stir up this gift which is within him through the laying on of hands). So, biblically speaking, something actually happens through the laying on of hands in ordination. This isn’t just a human ceremony — in ordination God is at work in a powerful and effective way.

The Lord gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. The Holy Spirit raises up elders and deacons. And the Lord doesn't only make the ministries, He also anoints them and empowers them through the laying on of the apostles’ hands in ordination.

What's the point of speaking in tongues?

2024-06-01T21:19:00.000+01:00

One thing that many people find a bit odd about Pentecostalism is speaking in tongues. Of course, it's not only Pentecostals who speak in tongues. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has said that he prays in tongues every day. But it is something which has quite a significant place among Pentecostals.

Now, the reason many people find speaking in tongues a bit odd is that it is a bit odd. It's not normal to speak a language you haven't learnt. And really, that's the point. Speaking in tongues points us beyond our own abilities to what only God can do.

Speaking in tongues along with the interpretation of tongues are complementary gifts of the Spirit for the building up of the church. The Lord speaks to His people through these gifts to encourage and strengthen them. But that isn't the only way we see speaking in tongues in the Bible and in the lives of believers. The Lord doesn't only give the gift of tongues for interpretation for edifying the church, He also gives tongues to individual believers so that they can pray and praise Him in tongues by themselves at home.

Sometimes the Lord speaks to us by tongues and interpretation, and sometimes He gives tongues so we can speak to Him. And by that speaking to Him in tongues, the Holy Spirit is helping us in two ways: in praise and in prayer.

Praise

In speaking in tongues, we bless the Lord and give thanks (1 Corinthians 14:16-17). We magnify God (Acts 10:46) and speak the wonderful works of God (Acts 2:11). Through this wonderful gift, the Holy Spirit enables us to praise and magnify our Infinite God, far beyond the finite limitations of our words and our abilities. When we come to the end of how we can express our praise and worship, the Holy Spirit enables us to praise beyond our limits.

And speaking in tongues is also a sign to us of many wonderful reasons to praise the Lord. For tongues is a sign that the Lord is with us — it's the Holy Spirit who is here giving us these words we don't know. Tongues is a reminder that the Lord has promised to clothe us with power from on high by pouring out His Holy Spirit upon us. Tongues is a sign that the risen Christ has poured out His Spirit upon us so that we would be witnesses to Him here where we are and to the uttermost parts of the earth. That means tongues is a sign to us that He is the God who delights to save! And tongues is also a sign that the Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world is risen, exalted, ascended and seated on the Throne of Heaven as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. By tongues we praise, but tongues also point us to more and more reasons to praise.

Prayer

"He who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God" (1 Corinthians 14:2). Therefore, speaking in tongues is a way of praying. Specifically, verse 28 tells us that without interpretation, tongues isn't for speaking to the church, but only for prayer in speaking to the Lord. "If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays" (1 Corinthians 14:14). In fact, the Scripture here encourages us to pray in tongues with the spirit and also to pray in our own language with the understanding (verse 15).

Every time we pray, we're depending entirely on Christ our Mediator, Intercessor and Great High Priest. He is praying for us, and He takes our prayers and purifies them to present them perfect to the Father. So it's only in His name, relying on Him and in union with Him that we can truly pray.

And to help us pray, not only does Jesus pray for us and purify our prayers, but He also pours out the Holy Spirit to empower and guide our prayers. Jesus helps us pray by praying for us, by perfecting our prayers, and by empowering our prayers by the Spirit who also intercedes for us. Christ intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father, and the Spirit intercedes for us in our hearts.

So as we pray in tongues in the Spirit, the Lord is showing us how all our prayer depends entirely on Him. It's not the eloquence of our words, or our great ideas of what to pray for that get us heard. It's all because of the Lord Himself. The Father invites us, the Son prays for us and purifies our prayers, and the Holy Spirit prays in us and unites us to Jesus our Great High Priest so that we can truly pray through and in Him. When we pray in a language we don't understand, we're being built up in that faith that it's all down to the Triune God, not us! So, as we pray in tongues, we are praying — and seeing a demonstration of how all our prayer is — in communion with the glorious intercession of the Son and Spirit.

We might not understand what we're saying when we pray in tongues; but that's actually part of the purpose. Our faith is not in our words or our ability in prayer, but in the Triune God who gives us these tongues in which to pray by the Spirit, in the name of the Son, to the Father who delights to hear His children pray.

A Prayer for the King's Healing

2024-02-05T23:11:00.001+00:00

Today, The Palace announced that His Majesty has been diagnosed with cancer. Scripture teaches us at all times to pray for The King (1 Timothy 2:1-2). And as Pentecostals, when we hear the news of sickness, our reaction is to bring it to the Lord, trusting that He is the One who can heal. So we plead the blood of Jesus for our King and pray for his healing. Here is a prayer which may help:

Almighty & all-merciful God,

Who by the cross and resurrection of Your Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, makes all things new and pours out by Your Holy Spirit gifts of healings as foretastes of the day when You will wipe away every tear from our eyes: in your grace and compassion, heal our King, surround His Majesty, Her Majesty The Queen, and all the Royal Family with the knowledge of Your presence, love, power and grace, and lift their eyes, and those of all the people of his Realms, to You, the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Through Jesus Christ, who brings us to Your throne of grace.

Amen

"The Most Important Part of a Minister's Life"

2024-02-04T23:55:00.000+00:00

Pastors usually have lots of responsibilities. There are people to be visited, sermons to prepared, events to be organised, meetings to be chaired, finances and charity compliance to administered, and lots, lots more. And in the midst of all that we want — or need — our pastors to do, it can be easy to forget that a vital aspect of his calling is something we don't see at all.

When the first deacons were installed in the early church, part of the reason was so that the apostles could devote themselves “continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). This is the heart of the ministry of those set apart as ministers in Christ’s church: the word and prayer. But, in the Scripture itself here, it’s prayer which comes first. To be a minister of God’s Word, the pastor must first and foremost be a man of prayer.

And throughout the ages, that’s what great pastors have been: men of prayer. Martin Luther said he had so much work to do that he had to spend at least the first three hours of every day in prayer to be able to get it all done. Lancelot Andrewes spent five hours a day in prayer, and at the same time was a beloved and effective bishop, preached to monarchs, and oversaw the the translation of the Authorised Version of the Bible. John Wesley got up at 4am every morning to spend the first four hours of the day in uninterrupted prayer. In his later years he would spend eight hours a day praying. That was’t even unique: many of the great church fathers lived a monastic life, which involved eight hours every day set aside for prayer.

But these aren’t just unusual stories of unusual men of the past. These just happen to be men whom God used in such ways that details of their lives of prayer have been recorded for us. Yet, when we compare them to what we know of other ministers in the past, the details of their prayer lives don’t appear quite so unusual at all.

A century ago, as the Pentecostal movement was spreading round the world, a Scottish pastor by the name of William Cathcart took up the responsibility of training ministers in Australia for the Apostolic Church. And one of the most significant lessons Ps Cathcart taught them was that prayer is “the most important part of a minister's life.” Only through prayer can a minister accomplish anything at all. “The more work there is to do the more prayer is required.” If we cease to pray in order to speed up our work, Cathcart taught, “then we cease to have results. Days, weeks, months of effort are then irretrievably lost” — whether we realise it or not! In fact, for a minister to fail to give prayer its proper place would be “gross negligence on the part of God’s servants.”

Public prayer will always be an important part of a pastor’s ministry, but its specifically private prayer which Cathcart calls “the most important part of a Minister’s life.” And as it is so important, Cathcart helpfully gave his students some advice:

Private prayers should begin with ourselves in the sight of God. To enter into God’s presence on the merits of Christ alone and to confess before God our own unworthiness or any sins, faults or mistakes, is as essential as it is necessary. We must have a clear conscience before God about ourselves before we can pray for others. Having confessed we must believe that He has heard and forgiven, then we pray about our own personal future for grace and strength to avoid failures as much as possible. It is well to remember the work of God in general beginning with other Assemblies and Ministers and members who particularly need prayer. We get into a deeper place of prayer as we pray for others. The work of the Lord must be borne upon our heart and shoulders into the presence of the Lord. This will bring a flow of prayer and prayer will spend itself once the burden of prayer has been prayed off before the Lord. Private prayer is the place to pray about ministry and about messages and delivery and leadings and ministering, or about gifts and callings or anything that the Spirit of God particularly lays upon us as a burden.

Such prayer demands time. And so, he taught his students that a pastor must set aside some hours each day for this type of prayer:

An hour a day of this type of prayer is a bare minimum, two hours is little enough, three hours is better.

Time in private prayer is also vital before preaching the Word:

Then it is always best to pray some time prior to public ministry in preaching. A message that has been received by prayer should also be delivered in the power of prayer. Often good messages are spoiled for lack of prayer rather than lack of preparation.

Likewise, it is essential, Cathcart taught, before presiding at the Lord’s Table:

It is as good as useless [for the minister] to come to a Communion service without the preparation of heart and mind ... Every called out man should be up early on the first day of the week to seek preparation in prayer and meditation.

This prayerful preparation before presiding at the Breaking of Bread should normally include fasting from some time the night before until receiving Communion. But even when circumstances don’t allow for extended prayer or fasting before a Breaking of Bread service, Cathcart urged his students that the minister still “should see that he has at least an hour or even more, before the Lord.”

The ministry of Word and Sacrament — and all public ministry and pastoral care — must be steeped in private prayer. “Ministers must get alone with God.”

Prayers for Pastors

2024-01-16T06:00:00.001+00:00

Pastors need to pray lots. And pastors need lots of prayer. So whether you are a pastor, or whether you have a pastor and would like some help and encouragement to pray for him, here are seven points of prayer from David Torrance's essay ‘Sharing in the Ministry of Christ’ (published in A Passion for Christ: The Vision that Ignites Ministry), to which I've added some comments and explanation.

1. Pray every day for the gift of love.

‘He who does not love does not know God, for God is love’ (1 John 4:8). On the night on which He entrusted the ministry of the Lord’s Table to His apostles and promised them the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus also gave them ‘a new commandment,’ that they should ‘love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another‘ (John 13:34-35). As Christ’s people we are all called to show Christlike love. And the shepherds of God’s flock are especially called to a ministry of loving as Christ has loved. The Lord Jesus has entrusted His flock to our care, and so we must lay down our lives in love for Christ's lambs. When the Lord asked Peter if he loved Him, He commissioned him to the loving service of His sheep (John 21:15-17). As David Torrance writes, ‘none of us can love as Jesus loves. We need constantly, daily, to pray for this gift in ever greater measure.’ So pray for Christ’s love for His people. Pray every day for more love. For, as Matthew the Poor put it, ‘love is the ultimate criterion of Christ’s service.’

2. Pray to be conformed to the likeness of Christ.

The Lord’s desire for us is that we should be holy like Jesus. Our sanctification is God’s will (1 Thessalonians 4:3). In His great love, the Father has predestined us ‘to be conformed to the image of His Son’ (Romans 8:29). And He gives gifts of ministers to help His people grow in Christlikeness (Ephesians 4:11-24). But that means unholy, un-Christlike ministers do not provide a model which encourages Christ’s people to Christlike holiness.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne is supposed to have said that ‘the greatest need of my people is my personal holiness.’ Although the exact quote is almost certainly apocryphal, it not only well sums up M’Cheyne’s life and ministry, but stands as a truth for all the pastors of Christ’s flock. What M’Cheyne really did say should spur us all on to great prayer: ‘It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.’ (Memoir and Remains, p.282). And so, we should all join in M’Cheynes prayer: ‘Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made.’

All pastors would be glad of their people praying for them they way M’Cheyne asked for prayer: ‘Pray for me, that I may be made holier and wiser, less like myself, and more like my heavenly Master.’ And the Lord’s answer to that prayer will always be a great blessing to the church.

3. Pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

God works through us in our weakness and dependence upon Him. But we need to see our need for Him, and not rely on our own abilities. A pastor cannot bring anyone to salvation; only the Holy Spirit can. A pastor cannot sanctify; only the Holy Spirit can. We need to be clothed with power from on high, as Jesus promised.

And pastors also need to lead others to look to the Lord Jesus for the outpoured power of His Spirit. Andrew Murray insisted that ‘it is the great work of the gospel ministry to lead believers to the Holy Spirit ... An evangelical minister must not merely preach about the Holy Spirit from time to time or even oftentimes, but also direct all his efforts towards teaching his congregation that there can be no true worship save through the indwelling and unceasing operation of the Holy Spirit.’ (The Full Blessing of Pentecost, pp.13-14). Pastors need the filling of the Holy Spirit to lead others to receive the Spirit’s filling too, for, as Murray put it, ‘to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God, to have the full enjoyment of the Pentecostal blessing, is the will of God concerning us.’ (p.19).

The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus and draws to Jesus. The Holy Spirit brings revival and reformation. The Holy Spirit works maturity and holiness among Christ's people. The Holy Spirit makes us bold witnesses to Christ and Him crucified. Therefore, we need to pray again and again to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

4. Pray to be a good listener.

To truly tend Christ’s sheep, the shepherd must listen well. How can we pray aright if we don’t listen? How can we speak the Word rightly into the situation if we don’t listen? A true pastor can’t come to those in need with the sound a clanging cymbal; he must bring a word in season—and knowing what season it is will only come by listening. Richard Baxter recognised this, writing that we need to get to know people properly and listen to them careful, for then ‘we will know better how to lament for them and rejoice with them and how to pray for them to God ... he that seeks to pray rightly for others should know their hearts as far as he may and is appropriate.’ (Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, ed. Tim Cooper, p.102).

‘The true portrait of a Christian Pastor’, Charles Bridges wrote, ‘is that of a Parent walking among his children.’ And so, like a true parent, a pastor must listen to the Lord’s children for whom he cares, in order that he may always ‘be found ... encouraging, warning, directing, instructing—as a counsellor, ready to advise—as a friend to aid, sympathize, and console—with the affection of a mother to lift up the weak—“with the longsuffering” of a father to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort”’ (Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry, 360). There are so many ways a pastor must speak as a spiritual parent, but to know the right way at the right time, he must listen well. And so pastors must pray — and people should pray for their pastors — to be good listeners.

5. Pray for wisdom and practical insight.

In everything he does, the pastor needs wisdom from on high. Thankfully, the Lord has promised, ‘If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him’ (James 1:5). As David Torrance writes, ‘If only we as ministers were more diligent in asking for the wisdom of God how different our ministries would be!’

6. Pray for courage.

Pastors are called to defend the flock from false teaching. They're also called to reprove sin. Pastors must defend the weak and rebuke injustice. And in all these things, pastors must fear God and not man. The pastor also carries out his work in the midst of the spiritual warfare; therefore he must stand courageously in Christ in the face of the enemy’s attacks. As Matthew the Poor writes, the pastor ‘must willingly accept the assaults of Satan and bear with patience and endurance all the afflictions that he hurls at our minds, emotions, impulses, and senses’ (Matthew the Poor, If You Love Me, p.91). Christ has triumphed over the devil and He will soon crush him under our feet (Romans 16:20). In the meantime, we are to stand strong in the Lord and the power of His might, praying to Him for the courage needed to faithfully shepherd His flock.

7. Pray that God will graciously work His miracles of grace.

Pray for the Lord to save souls. Pray for the Lord to convict sinners. Pray that the Lord, Torrance says, would ‘open eyes that are blind and make cold hearts receptive to the Gospel.’ And Torrance encourages us to pray for faith ‘that God will work miracles today in our generation and through our ministries ... We should ... expect miracles and pray for miracles.’ Amen! So let it be, Lord!

So, whether you are a pastor or have a pastor, here are seven ways to pray for pastors:

1. Pray every day for the gift of love.

2. Pray to be conformed to the likeness of Christ.

3. Pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

4. Pray to be a good listener.

5. Pray for wisdom and practical insight.

6. Pray for courage.

7. Pray that God will graciously work His miracles of grace.

Fasting and Prayer

2024-01-13T17:29:00.000+00:00

Many churches spend some time in the month of January in prayer and fasting. I know that the whole of the Apostolic Church in Ghana, for example, spends three weeks in prayer and fasting at the beginning of each year. My own local assembly is spending some time over the next few weeks in prayer and fasting too (despite being in Wales rather than Ghana). And so it’s a time of year when lots of people have questions about fasting. A couple of years ago (during the lockdown) I made a few videos with some Scriptural teaching about fasting to help give a clearer biblical picture of what it’s all about (and what it isn’t). In the videos I talk about how the Lord has given fasting to us as a way of humbling ourselves, growing in dependence on Him, longing for Jesus, knowing communion with Him, and training our bodies in the fight against sin. If those would be helpful to you, you can find the 6 videos here.

Through the centuries, Christ’s people have recognised the significance of regular fasting as part of our life of prayer. Andrew Murray, the great South African evangelical saint of the late 19th century, wrote that ‘prayer needs fasting for its full growth.’ Murray is still remembered for his great books on prayer, and yet he had these strong words to say about fasting along with it. But what did he mean? Well, he explains that just as ‘prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting [is] the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible’ (Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer, London: Nisbet, 1885, p.98). Murray is saying that fasting is a practice which helps us to let go of our dependence on other things — on the things we can see, feel, sense, and (quite literally) taste — in order to grasp hold of the Lord in more complete dependence. By forgoing the strength which comes from our normal food, we are strengthened in our dependence upon the Lord in prayer. And so fasting fuels prayer. Murray goes on to write: ‘We are creatures of the senses: our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves, to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God’ (p.99).

Before the Azusa Street revival began, William Seymour and the saints in Los Angeles had been praying and fasting together for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. One visitor to Azusa Street, who was initially convinced that the work of the Holy Spirit there was of the devil rather than of God, was brought to conviction and repentance for this opinion ‘through fasting and prayer and much study of the word’ (from a testimony in The Apostolic Faith 1.4, December 1906, p.3), leading to receiving the baptism in the Spirit.

The early Pentecostals frequently fasted for things they knew they couldn't do, but only God could. So they fasted for revival and for the salvation of souls. They set apart days of prayer and fasting to know more of the Lord’s power at work among them (The Apostolic Faith 1.7, April 1907, p.4). When they had a convention (or a conference), they set aside weeks of prayer and fasting leading up to it (Confidence: A Pentecostal Paper for Great Britain 1.2, May 1908, p.5). They fasted while tarrying for the baptism in the Holy Spirit (The Apostolic Faith 1.7, April 1907, p.4; 1.10, September 1907, p.1; Confidence 2.1, January 1909, p.6; also Agnes Ozman in Topeka) and when praying for healing (The Whole Truth 4.4, October 1911, p.1; The Apostolic Faith, 1.6, March 1907, p.6). And they often fasted in preparation for ordination (The Whole Truth 4.4, October 1911, p.3) or for the Breaking of Bread. They fasted in all these situations, because they knew that in them all they absolutely needed the Lord to work — they knew that they were utterly dependent upon Him.

Fasting isn’t a magic key to twist God’s arm to get Him to answer our prayers. But fasting is a gracious provision from the Lord by which we express our dependence upon Him and He teaches us to grow in our hunger for Him. Fasting points us to the fact that the Lord Himself alone can truly satisfy and encourages us to keep on seeking Him more and more.

Prayer for the Dying

2024-01-11T00:18:00.001+00:00

We Pentecostals are good at praying for God's healing of the sick. But sometimes we need help to pray for those we love in the last moments of their pilgrimage here below, when the time has come not to pray for healing but to commend our dear brother or sister in Christ to the Lord in the hour of death. Often the Lord leads us in these times by His Spirit and our knowledge of His Word. Yet sometimes we can find ourselves at a loss to know how to pray. So here are some prayers to help us in such difficult times, when we really do need to pray (drawn and adapted from the wisdom of Christians who have gone before us).

O Saviour of the World, by Your cross and precious blood You have redeemed us: guard your servant and help [him], we humbly pray, O Lord.

O Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world: have mercy on [him] and grant [him] Your peace.

O Eternal God, who gave Your Son the Lord Jesus to die for our sins, have mercy on Your servant, and cleanse [his] soul by the precious blood of Jesus, from all the defilements of this earthly life, and present [him] faultless before the presence of Your glory with exceeding joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God our Heavenly Father, whose Son Jesus Christ committed His spirit into Your hands in trust at the hour of death: we humbly commend the soul of Your servant into Your gracious care and keeping. Be with [him], as You have promised, through the valley of the shadow of death: show [him] the path of life, for in Your presence there is fullness of joy, and at Your right hand there are pleasures forever more. Embrace [him] with the arms of Your mercy and give [him] an inheritance with Your saints in light and joy and glory. Receive [his] spirit and open to [him] the gates of everlasting life: through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

Eternal Father, You alone decide concerning life and death. Be gracious and merciful to your servant, whose death seems imminent. Keep [him] in Your grace, and prepare [him] to commit [himself] to your eternal care and keeping. Give [him] a repentant heart, steadfast faith, and living hope. Do not let the fear of death cause [him] to waver in [his] trust in You. Grant [him] a peaceful departure, at Your chosen time, and a joyful entrance into everlasting life with the glorious company of all Your saints: through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

Almighty and faithful God, comfort and strengthen your servant in Your great mercy. Help [him] in all discomfort and distress. In Your good time, take [him] to Yourself in Your kingdom, for you have redeemed [him] through the precious blood of Jesus. Amen.

I live to You, Lord Jesus;

I die to You, Lord Jesus;

I belong to You, Lord Jesus;

Whether I live or die,

Save me and take me on high. Amen.