Stand out thought from class today

After hearing this today, I just thought to myself, you know--this is the kind of thing that I may not have thought of for a long time, so it's a good thing someone said it. Because sometimes, it just feels like, if no one tells you, how in the world are you supposed to know?

"He told me, that's how I found out."
--Bill Murray, in The Man Who Knew Too Little (I threw that one in for my dad and my brother)

Quote from my notes:
"Scripture says earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. How do we get them? Asking for them.
Just because someone has spiritual gifts doesn't mean they have a great relationship with God. It means they're good at asking for things.
So what does this mean?
a. It means, don't just follow someone because you see them doing powerful things.
b. You can't be sure of your relationship with God just because you're praying for people and they're being healed."

I actually even think I felt some kind of a sense of relief as we recieved this teaching today.

So I thought this was a really great statement to bring to light, especially for people who come from a similar background as I do where seeing miracles and healings isn't really all that normal and sometimes it's hard to really figure out what you think about them in themselves--not to mention the complication of bringing leadership and humanity into the equation.

I mean, my underlying assumption was/would have continued being that if someone is able to bring God's presence and pray for heaing and see it, then they must be in a really great place with God. (I probably wouldn't have ever known that this was my assumption, but now, I can see that it was.) So, then, if later, some inconsistancies in this great miracle ministry leader's regular life come to light, or they just seem to be quite immature in thier Christian walk--that really throws trying to understand the miracles they are claiming in a big giant loop. For me, seeing someone who claims to walk in the power of God fail in thier walk with God in thier personal life would have discredited the miracles and healings they had been a part of and also thrown a shadow over the whole idea of God moving in these ways.
The lack of maturity, integrity, reliable leadership, and what would seem to me to be authenticity in a person's claim to know and love God, would have tainted the ways my mind could process the idea of God preforming miraclous signs right here, right now.
It would have been a mistake to connect those two currents.

In understanding that these two aspects of christian life aren't one and the same--that one isn't a measure of the other--that changes how seeing that kind of inconsistancy would look to me, and what it would mean to me too. It makes it understandable--we have to remember, that we're all just people. And, also, that if we aren't seeing great miraculous things all the time, it doesn't mean that we don't know God. There's nothing to fear, we do know him.

Our judgement against those who may be in a more immature place but who pray for miracles, should be the same as it is against those who are weak in the faith and don't try praying for them--and that is no judgement at all, but rather, acceptance as a brother or sister in Christ.

Our expectations for leaders who contend for the supernatural should be the same as for leaders who don't--they earn our trust by how authentic they are, we can trust what they say when we see how they live when they are with thier families, in thier cars, in thier private lives.

Seeing inconsistancies in any pastor's life doesn't mean that the whole Bible, or all christian faith has to have a shadow cast over it or has to be discredited in some way. Most probably wouldn't react by rejecting the entirity of thier faith after such and occurance, some would, but not most people. Most people would be able to draw a line between what they know to be true of thier faith, and how thier leader's life got messed up and maybe wasn't the most top notch representation of that faith for a time. We throw in a little grace, some forgivness, some understanding and life goes on with a lesson learned.
But it seems that when it comes to the miraclous, something that isn't easy to understand if you've never seen it before, it's very easy to discredit the whole concept of it after an experience with one flaky crazy healing evangelist who makes the most out of every story he's got, on TV, with a big cheezy smile and a loud voice and a telephone crew ready to take your pledges.
(I really am just making up some stereotyped person--so no personal references are intended, but, haha, this person really might exist and if he does, we should love him.)

so, to end it all: I wanted to post this because hearing the articulatulation of what I quoted from my notes set well with me somewhere--it helped to settle some things down somewhere inside me and i thought it might ring a chord with people back home.

paraphrase:

• seeing healings and miracles and other spiritual giftings in someones life is not a sign of spiritual maturity.
• To mistake it as a measure of maturity will cause problems for everyone.
• You can tell how much you are growing in God by how much fof his spiritual fruit you see in your life (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control), not by your sucess rate in praying for miracles.