Signs and wonders

Matters of faith can be very difficult to talk about and share with people. If you don't have a religious faith at all people who do may seem misguided or deluded. If you do have a faith the same thing applies to those who don't. Polite society discourages talking about politics or religion because they are such potentially divisive and explosive subjects. Being a Christian sometimes feels like being a member of a selective club with quite strict rules for membership and I'm sure many people would view churches that way looking in from the outside. Being a Christian is sometimes quite confusing. A source of doubt in one's life. One thing I am sure of though is that Jesus didn't intend the church to be narrow minded, exclusive or inaccessible. The Good News that he proclaimed was for everyone. It was (and still is) supposed to transform the world. How far many of us Christians have fallen short.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the very moving service we had in our tin shack church with it's dirt floor. Dorine, one of our pastors, is a powerful and gifted minister. She speaks with passion and has a deep commitment to bringing our church members closer to God. If you don't believe in this kind of 'mumbo jumbo' I guess it 's hard, if not impossible to understand the power of God to change people's lives. I can only speak for what I see and what I experience. Lives were changed in our church this morning because of the deep love that God has for all the people who come to him for healing and deliverance. Those are strong words – for many people part of the 'holy roller' lexicon. I don't use them lightly.

I've been reading a book by an evangelist called Reinhard Bonnke. He has brought the Gospel to millions in Africa and strongly believes that signs of God's power accompany the preaching of the Gospel. Many people would dismiss the miraculous things that happen in his mass meetings as some kind of crowd mass hysteria. It's an easy way of understanding phenomena that we can't easily explain. I've seen Reinhard Bonnke speak recently and he isn't that kind of man. He is passionate, committed and powerful. He speaks a plain Gospel message and people respond to it. Just like they did to Dorine's message this morning. Dorine could no more whip up frenzied mass hysteria than I could fly. This morning, after we'd prayed and been prayed for three members of our small congregation experienced a very deep encounter with God and were delivered of serious spiritual problems in their lives. I know they were real because I was stood next to them. I knew they were real because I'd prayed, before church, that God would be with us in a very powerful way today. The bible says that signs and wonders accompany the preaching of the gospel. They did when Jesus preached it and they still do now.