Back to the Hebrides for a moment ....
I understand what happened there to be true Pentecostal revival. Just like the Welsh revival, the Great Awakening, etc.
Acts gives one chapter to Pentecost. It gives about 24 more to what happened afterward. Throw the epistles into that Acts historical framework and a lot more chapters are given to what happened after Pentecost.
In the Hebrides, as Campbell said, "God came down." I want God to come down here. In Moulton, Alabama where my family and I live and where we meet in our home. In Decatur, Alabama where we go to church.
When God came to the isle of Lewis, no one expected what happened and no one had any idea what things would look like if God came down. As a Christian from the Pentecostal-Holiness tradition, I confess that we have an idea of what it ought to look like if God came down. That is a monumental hindrance. I don't know that we can hope to see true revival as long as we hold onto our visions of Pentecost. What we need is a vision of the days after Pentecost when people were living in the fruits of repentance and the fullness of the Holy Ghost was known by the fullness of His personality taking over their own. The takeover of the Spirit is the character of Jesus, not the charismatic gifts --- and this is from a man who believes that God still gifts the body in the Acts way.
If it meant that God would silently bring men to their knees in godly sorrow and repentance unto salvation not to be repented of, without so much as a song, a psalm, a praise, or an amen, I long for that far more than I long for any demonstration of power that might amaze my senses. Yet, that is not how He seems to be when He comes.
How can we stand silently when He comes? How can we not weep and lament our own sinfulness in His presence?
You know, I've recently come to the point in prayer that I've said, "Lord, I have no rights. I have no right to even want anything. I have no right to a wife and a daughter. I have no right to want them. I have no right to want anything. Give me yourself, Lord." It is scary to pray that. I'm scared by typing what I'd prayed.
Sometimes, it feels like I'm losing my sanity. (I'm not. I'm just telling you how I sometimes feel.)
My freedom? No right to it. No right to want it.
My health? No right to it. No right to want it.
My desire to be a witness for Christ? No right to it. No right to want it.
My freedom from deep pain and mortification? No right to it. No right to want it.
I had gotten to the point in all this that I quit praying out loud. The thought occurred, "Satan may take this confession and use it against me, so I'm going to pray in silence and wait on the Lord." That was stupid of me, but I'm just being transparent with you. And, I hit a wall in prayer.
Then, I got mad. I'm still not fully over anger. I stand here and look around me and I think, "How on earth can my own local church not see what is happening? How can people who say they are seeking God with their whole hearts be so absolutely blind at the same time? How can they keep on this silly chase after Pentecostal bling -- the raised hands, the hype on emotion, the screaming preaching, the emphasis on coming up to the altar for some kind of 'Holy Ghost hoedown'? Where's the exit from all of this and the entrance back to TRUTH, Jesus?"
[You're wondering what this has to do with Hebrides. Everything.]
This week, 2 1/2 months after I'd posted that blog thing on Wordpress about "What's Wrong With Pentecost?", I tweeted the link to it for the first time. I'd shared it here, and with my wife, and I'd shared substantive thoughts from it elsewhere with people I know, but not -- you know -- just putting it out there. I had not done so because I thought I would be inviting a fight. I don't want a fight with others. I want God to come down and displace ALL of OUR ideas and what we know with Himself. So, I had hesitated.
Well, less than 10 hours later, I got a tweet from my pastor. "Very good, Tim," he allowed, and said something about the church (as a whole, he means, vaguely) needing the word of God. Then he tweeted me again that he wanted to sit down and discuss it. :) I'm not sure he really wants that so much as to be seen saying so. (His M.O., but we'll see if and how he follows up; it won't be a biblical discussion, but it will move from him as a personal issue).
I'm saying that to say this: I don't care anymore. I am sick and tired of the endless tail-chasing game of the church that wants to slo-mo replay Pentecost and live in mimicry. I want to be completely Christ's and live in the power of the Spirit of the Lord and in real time live out what Pentecost started. This is an anguish and I just am at the end of my rope about it.
Hebrides? Yes. Lord, come down. Visit us. You've told us you would. Do as you've said, Lord. Glorify yourself. Take our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Write your laws on our hearts. Give us new hearts, a new spirit. Put new wine into new wineskins and take away the old. Revive us. PLEASE.
Can I keep going for a minute?
Today, Pentecost means shouting and rejoicing. It is a fleshly work we do. We shout when we shiver at the excitement of being told God loves us and wants the best for us, wants to give us our dreams and wants to bless us, that He is for us and not against us. We don't know what blessedness is! We don't know what Him being for us means!
We take it circumstantially. Things will just go better or just BE better. This week, a young lady from our church who is now in college -- she has worked since she was a kid to be in modeling and acting and the whole showbiz bit -- got a place in the new Taco Bell ad campaign about their new breakfast menu. She's online and in print ads, prominently situated, short blonde girl with a taco shaped biscuit in her hand. The whole church has gone head over heels for "success", and how "God is giving you your dreams" and all that kind of talk. Her holding a taco-shaped biscuit in a poster to hang inside a fast food joint is being treated as evidence of God's work in her life. The girl is so confused spiritually already that she wouldn't know a gift from God if He signed it in front of her with a finger on the wall. She's so filled with all kinds of pop psychology, pop culture and Swiss cheese theology that this is like dropping a box of ants on a sugar cube. It affirms all of her worldly hopes, and she really does thank Jesus for those hopes and what she sees as His affirmation. The pastor even tweeted her success! I'm thinking, "Lord? See?!"
A confused, desperate for approval young lady gets a break on a career in being gawked at, and our church trips over itself praising the Lord for her success. God speaks clearly to the church (long time ago, not by me, not my Wordpress post) a couple of years ago "repent". Crickets. No one wants to remember it. No one wants to recall it. No one wants to acknowledge that we ignored it.
Our praise to God is fleshly. Pentecost as it exists in our society is fleshly, and bears no relationship except its name to the saints of old who lived it in truth. Oh, that God would raise up men and women who live in true Pentecost and who do not give a rip about being involved in demonstrations of power that really aren't. Oh, that we would rejoice that our names are written in the book of life instead and that we would burn so hot and fast and far with the desire and joy of knowing Him that we leave behind any concern about what we think that ought to look like.
