If you are reading this fourth part of my personal testimony about my journey with the Holy Spirit, I commend you for hanging in there. My guess is that there are two types of people following this latest series of blog posts from me: 1) Those who are simply curious about how a Baptist pastor became a believer and participator in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and 2) those who are secretly wondering if these things are true, and if maybe they also should be seeking God for themselves about the truth of this issue.There may be other categories of people reading these recent posts but, regardless, I know that I am to tell my story ,and to trust the Lord with the motivations and responses of those reading. If you desire to hear deeper reasoning and my views concerning the gifts of the Holy Spirit, download the free Transforming Truth App and listen/watch the sermons in my Spiritual Gifts series. You can also purchase the series on CD if you prefer it that way. Now, let me pick up the story where we left off last time. – Jeff
Repentance is an interesting experience. Pressure builds within the soul of the one who needs to repent. Something still resists that need for the individual to turn from his/her way, and to turn unto the Lord in humility. As I come to this part of my testimony, please know that it was extremely difficult for me to repent, and here is why: I was not repenting of something I was actively doing. I was repenting of something that I had been refusing to do. I was turning from my sin of omission – the omission of living in commitment to the reality of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The bottom line is that I was overly concerned with the fallout that would come against me once people knew that I believed and exercised these gifts. As God gently led me from ignoring and resisting His work in this area for my life, I broke before Him. During this same season, both ministry and family pressures were rising and, once again, I knew I could not be the man, husband and pastor that I needed to be without a fresh touch from God. These gifts were needed by me, and it was somewhere in the early Spring of 2007 that I turned over to God this issue of me operating in any gifts which He desired to give to me. At that time, the stronghold for me was that I still did not actually desire to speak in tongues. The other supernatural gifts did not concern me as much. Tongues was the biggie in my heart… but my heart belonged to the Lord and I committed to Him that I would do whatever it is that He wanted me to do. In those days of repenting, there were no flashes of lightning or peals of thunder. Angels did not descend proclaiming the pleasure of King Jesus at my repentance. I simply remembered a weight lifting off of me in those weeks and, somewhere in that season of life and ministry, my personal journey began to be characterized again by the charismata, the gracious gifts from the Holy Spirit. I have not looked back at all since that season. What I knew was biblically true would now be welcomed to become personally active in my life. I was completely surrendered for the fist time on the issue of the gifts.
There was still no sense of needing to go public in my preaching with my beliefs and practices at that point. Still committed to expository preaching, I was going through various books of the Bible on Sundays and Wednesdays that had little to nothing to do with spiritual gifts. I did, however, begin to pray regularly with the Lord about when it would become time for me to preach about the gifts. I was also open to my beliefs and practice of the gifts remaining personal and private between Him and me – that would have been so much easier! It turned out that He did not lead me to do either of those things. I clearly knew that it was not time to preach about it, but He did move me out of my complete isolation to begin to have open dialogue with a few trusted people about it. Some of those people were in Meadow where I was still enjoying very fruitful ministry. Many of them were not part of Meadow, and I felt much more at ease asking these people questions, and also going over the pertinent Scriptures about the gifts with them. Most of those with whom I interacted on the issue did not themselves practice the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. It was during this time period that I became aware of deeply credible theologians who also believed in the active, ongoing nature of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Men like John Piper, Sam Storms, Don Carson, R.T. Kendall, Wayne Grudem and others were now a source of encouragement and instruction for me. Nobody would label these men charismaniacs. They were very well respected scholars, and they affirmed the continuance of the gifts. I learned that I was not alone in my desire for a sacred commitment to the authority of the Scriptures, while maintaining a desire for profound personal experience with the Holy Spirit. It seemed that God was pouring courage into me to no longer feel timid about pursuing Him in this area.
What was most ironic to me is that I realized that, in my early years as a Christian, I had been taught that we were to separate from those who “practiced the gifts”. Avoid those cooky charismatics, Jeff! I had been repeatedly indoctrinated that the gifts had ceased at the end of the first century, therefore those who practiced them were living in error and teaching false doctrine. I had also been instructed that speaking in tongues was an indication of fleshly emotionalism or, worse, demonic activity. Yet when I made a careful study of the Bible itself, and as I intentionally muted what I had been taught from all others in the past, here is what I actually saw in the Scriptures:
- We were not to flee from those who practiced the gifts but, rather, we ourselves are commanded to eagerly pursue spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:31, 14:1 & 14:31).
- The Holy Spirit imparts the gifts for the work of ministry and the reality of unity in the Church (1 Corinthians 12). Interestingly, the gifts are given in order to accentuate our unity in Christ. Instead these very gifts meant to be a manifestation of our unity, have resulted in our division as believers. How did this happen?
- There are two different experiences with tongues revealed in the New Testament: the first is praying privately in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:14-15; Jude vs. 20; Ephesians 6:18; Romans 8:26) which is actually an expectation for believers and 2) the prophetic gift of tongues which necessarily requires an interpreter for there to be any benefit to others (1 Corinthians 14:1-33). I always thought that “tongues were tongues”, never seeing the distinction that Paul made between private and public tongues. This was huge for me in my personal journey with the Holy Spirit.
- Tongues (and the other gifts) were not only not forbidden to us, they are revealed as something to actually be pursued and embraced (1 Corinthians 14:5; 14:18-19; 14:39). The Scriptures plainly decree “Do not forbid to speak with tongues.” It takes great effort to re-write these portions of scriptures in order to make that clear commandment to end up teaching the exact opposite of what it says. Cessationism forbids tongues. God’s word commands us not to do that. As a former cessationist, I had to reinterpret the whole context of that passage in order to conclude that the commandment not to forbid speak in tongues was only for the church at Corinth, and not for us today. How can we permit ourselves to invalidate that lone commandment to not forbid speaking in tongues, while leaving all the other commandments in 1 Corinthians intact as being binding upon us today? Are we allowed to pick and choose which commandments we are to keep? Cessationism actually has to remove the present day application of 1 Corinthians chapters 12-14, in order to empower cessationism from having to embrace the ongoing validity of the gifts. Basically, those three chapters become “history chapters” instead of instructional chapters for today’s Christian. This inconsistency in bible interpretation was appalling. I am a sola scriptura man – a belief that the Scriptures hold supreme authority over our beliefs and our lives. I could no longer dare to tweak the Bible to support my beliefs. I crossed that line and committed to be militantly loyal to the Word of God.
So, I ultimately concluded that I was not only allowed to teach on present day validity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit but, if I was not going to live in a denominationally compromised loyalty, I was actually obligated to teach the available and active nature of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. No fence straddling, no more cherry-picking of bible verses, and no more overt fear of man. When the Lord would lead my heart to do so, I would preach the undiluted truth about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You know that I have been in that season for a couple of years now as I have been teaching in a formerly Baptist church about the Person, works and gifts of the Holy Spirit. What you do not know is how long and how difficult the process was. Those details will be in my next posts.
God Bless you my Baptist brother. I am right now on the church paperwork at our church as the Associate pastor but I have not been allowed to preach in the last 2 to 3 years because of preaching the truth against traditionalism and the Baptist congregation didn’t like it. I told them all you either get the truth or you don’t get it. Well as of right now “they don’t get it.” I’ll just keep praying for them.
God Bless you Bro. Jeff for following Jesus correctly!
…speaking the truth in love…” – Ephesians 4:15
Keep after it, Ricky.
You say you don’t have the fear of man but yet for the last few weeks all you try to do is explain yourself to Man for acceptance ……. Honestly … the Story sounds contrived and desperate…. Please be honest with yourself and God
I can see what you are trying to say, but please go back and read the opening statement of the very first blog I posted on this topic last week (My Personal Journey…) This series of posts is not a defense but, rather, a response to the multiple inquiries over the last year or so into how I came to leave cessaitonism. I have had dozens of private conversations wherein I relayed this a same account. Each person was helped by having me clarify what I believe, how I came to that place, and where it ultimately leads. My own testimony was misrepresented by a few people while I chose to remain silent last year. Misinformation was being spread about me, so I discerned that this was the time for me to tell my own story. If I wanted to be accepted by man, as you stated in your comment above, I would have never traveled down this road. As far as the story sounding contrived (I assume you mean to say that I am being dishonest), the story is 100% true. Desperate? Not for anything else than for people to walk in the full reality of all that God has for His children. I’m quite desperate for that, I admit it. I do appreciate you expressing your thoughts, even as I stress that they are off the mark. I am not asking anyone to agree with me, but I at least want to communicate the accurate details to how I went from a cessaitonist Baptist to sola-scriptura continuationism. It warrants an explanation.
It is quite nigh impossible to discern a man’s motives when face to face. It is well beyond impossible to discern them from a Web page.