Bokelskere.no

I belong to the Presbyterian church and we had
everything in order.
When we went to church, everything was written down
on paper.
The pastor read one part and we read the other part.
We knew when to stand, when to sit, when to pray
and when to sing.
I really thanked God for, and appreciated, that order
in my church.

We also had love.
Or I should say, we had a little bit of love!
When someone smiled at us, we smiled back.
We learned to love people if they loved us.
And if they didn’t love us, we didn’t love them too much.

But in my church, we had no power at all.
When the revival came, God gave us all the gifts
of the Holy Spirit, as well as power and love and order.

Our pastor often said to us, “Since God gave the Holy
Spirit to the church 2,000 years ago; if you are a member
of the church, automatically you receive the baptism
of the Holy Spirit.”
..That night the Lord began to open our eyes that
it isn’t an automatic thing.

/

We have too many boxes in our churches today
in which to put the various Scriptures:
This box is for a verse telling what happened centuries ago.
Another box is for verses telling what can happen today,
but only under certain circumstances.
These verses are for the Jews alone, so they go in
another box. We have put the Bible in so many boxes
that we have lost most of its message and meaning.

The Bible is simple. It is for us today. And it is as true
for us as it was for people living 2,000 years ago.
God wants to confirm it through our lives today.
If everything in the Bible isn’t true, then nothing is.

I thank God that when the revival started, He helped us see
the Bible in a very simple way. The trouble with most of us
is that we have to figure out everything with our minds,
our little computers..
When we read in Mark 16:9-20 about these signs and wonders,
many say, “Oh, but we haven’t found these verses in all the
ancient manuscripts. Because they aren’t in all the ancient
manuscripts, we had better put them in another box
and shut the lid on them.”

What about I Corinthians 12 ?
[ motivering om forstandig bruk av Åndsgaver i forsamlingen,
i gjensidig respekt, til gagnlighet for alle ]
“Paul recorded this because the church was very small
and just being established,” many say.
“They were weak and needed these gifts. Today we have
big churches and Big men in them and everything runs well,
so we don’t need supernatural gifts.”
And this chapter is put in another box.

Then we read I Corinthians 13 and say, “Oh, yes, that’s
what we need — love! Love is the best gift.”

Then we come to I Corinthians 14
[mer inngående regler om utfoldelse av Åndens gaver
i forsamlingen, unngå uorden ]
and decide that these things
aren’t very important: Since we have love, we have everything,
and we don’t need anything else. So we put I Corinthians 14
in a box.
However, the Bible doesn’t explain it that way.
The Spirit of God is the Spirit of power, love and order.

/

Praise God who said, “They shall cast out devils in My name.”
I’m glad that at that moment the team wasn’t thinking about
what the scholars were saying, but were trusting in what Jesus
had said. The team just sat there and waited. They looked at
one another, smiled and praised Jesus.
Soon the head pagan priest began to tremble.

Then he began to cry. And then he said, “Brothers, sirs,
I want your God, Jesus, right now.”
It was such a quick transformation, the team members
didn’t know what to say.

“Why did you change your mind, sir?” one of them finally asked.
“Oh, Jesus is more powerful than the devils,” he replied.

“How do you know that?” one of the team members asked.
“I am a pagan priest,” he replied.
“I have talked with the devils. I know many of them by name.”
Then he started to cry, and couldn’t control himself.

“What is the matter? We don’t know what is going on,”
someone in the team said.
“Yes, Yes, I know,” the pagan priest replied.
“But when you prayed in the name of Jesus, and bound all
the demonic power here and commanded them to flee,
do you know what happened?”
“No,” the team said, “we don’t know what happened. You just
tell us what happened.”
“I tell you,” said the priest, “I saw with my own eyes and I
heard with my own ears all the demonic power that has ruled
this village:
They just gathered together, one by one, from the biggest to
the smallest, and they ran away crying, ‘Jesus won’t permit us
to stay here. We must go because Jesus wants these people.’
Jesus must be a tremendous God. I want to know Jesus.”

_

mer her: Online faksimile og nedlastbar pdf-utgave

MEL TARI - 'like a mighty wind' isbn 0-88419-080-3
Creation House / Shuzia.com 182 s. ( 1971 )