The Sons are Free is now a Podcast, available through RSS.com, Amazon Music, Apple and Spotify. Articles will continue to be posted here of course. The Podcast format allows me to share original songs and to present what is posted here in print in an audio file, for a generation seemingly born with cell phones in their hands and ear buds in their ears. And with my 70th coming up next year, I’m feeling rather grandfatherly and overflowing with stories to share about the Father’s amazing love and involvement in my life. Lindsay, if you’re listening, I promise not to talk about flying carp.
New episodes are posted every Monday at noon, PST. As with everything else, it’s FREE. ‘Cause as sons, we’re all free. Blessings! Jack
I’ve attended more than a dozen churches in my lifetime. Some of the ministers I met encouraged me to seek God for myself and obey Him without hesitation. Such were the men who led me to Jesus and who married me and my wife. Both remained genuine and loving brothers in Christ who would never come between me and the Lord, except perhaps to stop me from doing something that would harm my relationship with Him. The former was like a 2nd father to me during my teen years, the latter a sweet friend and counselor, who could always be found on Saturday evening standing in the pulpit delivering his Sunday sermon before God and an empty sanctuary. Sadly, some others questioned whether I could really hear God’s voice for myself and insisted I obey them instead. Through them God taught me to stand up for my freedom and to respond like Peter who said: “judge for yourself whether it is right to obey you, or God”.
Examining what it means to be a Free Son takes several forms: identifying ways in which we’re free, and the things that hold us back. Often that means coming to terms with falsehoods we’ve embraced and the people who taught and reinforced them. No one ever said rising from the dead was going to be easy (Luke 9:60, Ephesians 5:14). Imagine Lazarus, passing peacefully in his sleep, only to awaken days later on a cold slab in a dark tomb, tightly bound in linen cloth with 75 pounds of burial spices wrapped up with him (John 19:39-40). However did Lazarus manage to get to his feet and stagger out of the tomb? Likewise, when we awaken from our slumber, how do we come out from under the heavy burdens placed on our shoulders by false teachers and teachings (Matthew 23:4)?
Isn’t it perplexing the glib sayings we toss around in casual Christian conversation, that in practice we ignore even while doing the very opposite?
“Jesus is the answer” we claim while prayerfully asking Him to grant us the answer we think best. That He is the answer is why we pray “thy will be done”.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. (Matthew 6:10 RV)
Even in His hour of greatest torment, Jesus prayed:
Father … not my will, but thine, be done. (Luke 22:42 RV)
If instead of praying for God’s will in our life, we ask Him to grant us the answer we think best, could we be missing out on His best? It’s sobering to remember that the Israelites refused God’s answer and insisted on their own solution for a king, thus the Father gave them Saul. And OH did they learn a hard lesson.
My wife and I met in our early 40’s and married after a year-long, long-distance courtship. Typical of most church weddings, our minister’s homily spoke of the 3-stranded cord, unity, cleaving, and becoming one flesh. To conclude the marriage ceremony, he declared “what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Mark 10:9).
Unity candle
Twenty-five years since my wife and I lit our “unity” candle in the presence of our guests, it’s clear some of them didn’t listen to the minister’s homily nor take to heart his charge not to separate what God has joined together. This I take to mean man is not to introduce division, strife, conflict, etc., between a husband and wife and thereby bring about division, separation and possibly divorce. Certainly that view is consistent with the many instructions of Jesus and the apostles to put the old nature to death, get rid of unwholesome talk, bitterness, rage, malice, slander, and instead to build one another up in the faith. In the same way Christians are to encourage one another, we ought also build up marriages.
Were it the only time our guests heard the gospel message on marital oneness, I might understand their ignorance and divisive antics. But the unity message is a universal one, in the sense that we’ve heard it at countless weddings together with the charge of Christ. Thus it begs the question how people can be so ignorant as to set about trying to divide husband and wife the moment they say “I do”?
In the article “Rebuilding the fallen tabernacle of David” I wrote “I believe the truth is this: in the same way we are the “Church”, we are also the “rebuilt tabernacle of David”. About that, I can’t put my finger on any scripture where it says that definitively, rather, I wrote that in keeping with the spiritual gifts of discernment, wisdom and knowledge (1 Corinthians 12:8-10). Of course, that’s the way it is with prophecies in scripture; few are explained and only after they come to pass are they understood.
Recently the Spirit prompted me to consider David’s tabernacle as a kind of vessel which contained several symbolic elements within the Ark of the Covenant, and we as tabernacles (vessels) in which dwells the Holy Spirit together with several gifts from God. I was truly surprised by how the articles within the Ark of the Covenant compared to the Holy Spirit, His gifts and teachings that the Lord has deposited in us through rebirth and maturation (perfecting).
It seems to me the doctrine of cessation is for those who like me were fearful of receiving the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts or who asked God but never received them. In turn they comforted themselves by adopting such doctrine to explain their lack, but it is a false comfort rooted in nullification of God’s Word. I suppose the appeal of such a doctrine is that it’s easier than persisting with God until He grants your request for more of His Holy Spirit and His gifts. It is through persistence that my wife received the gift of tongues some twenty years before we met, married, and I received the gift for myself.
The gifts and callings of God are without repentance.
Biblically, the doctrine of cessation is rooted in a poor interpretation of the passage “when perfection comes” found in 1 Corinthians 13:10 which holds the Bible itself to be the “perfection” Paul wrote about. Adherents to the doctrine consider tongues and all the other spiritual gifts to have “passed away” when the Bible was completed. Whether “completed” refers to the date the last book was finished or to one of the various canonized (ratified) versions of the Bible, I’m not sure. Regardless, adherents generally believe spiritual gifts passed away between 1600-1900 years ago. Naturally that puts cessationists at odds with countless believers who have received the Holy Spirit and practice using spiritual gifts today. That leaves them with just 2 choices concerning those who speak in tongues: admit their doctrine is in error, or persecute those who do. Sadly, in my experience they have always done the latter and with great zeal. If only they realized that they are in fact persecuting (and grieving) the Holy Spirit by assailing believers who speak in tongues by the power of the Holy Spirit.
If as I have, you’re wondering why you’ve never heard the gift of tongues in your church, perhaps there is a reluctance to teach about the Holy Spirit and His gifts and thus ignorance abounds. On the one hand, I can empathize with that approach in the sense that teachers ought not teach about gifts they do not have. Such isn’t really teaching, it’s opining and the way I see it, that’s vanity. For example, I wouldn’t dream of trying to teach someone the guitar if I couldn’t already play it myself. On the other hand, not teaching about the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts makes for an unequipped body of believers.
Or it may be that your church simply isn’t welcoming of the Holy Spirit. I’ve met a few pastors over the years who have the gift of tongues, but whose congregations forbade them to exercise their gift or even talk about it. How sad it is when fear of the unknown reigns over the body. It isn’t likely those congregations ripped the book of Acts and Paul’s letters out of the pew Bibles. Rather it’s more likely the so-called “controversial” or uncomfortable passages are simply avoided. After all, who doesn’t like the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13? It’s 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 where people get all worked up.
If I speak in tongues while driving, will I need to pull my car over to the side of the road? (Real question from someone who feared the gift of tongues)
Where it is commonly taught that the Holy Spirit is received during water baptism and that’s all there is, the church has effectively raised a generation of believers who are unaware they can ask for MORE of the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13) and His gifts (1 Corinthians 12:31). But try as I might, I never could figure out the why of it all, for the New Testament clearly describes the Holy Spirit and His gifts and contains instruction for their use in the body, with numerous exhortations to seek the Father and ask for more of Him. Whatever the reason, it’s seems clear that fear and/or ignorance are at the root of resistance to the Holy Spirit.
Having been driven out of a few congregations, it is apparent “non-charismatic” churches turn “anti-charismatic” if ever a believer who speaks in tongues joins the fold. In all the years the Holy Spirit sent my wife and I to “non-charismatic” churches, we never used the gift of tongues in public. Nevertheless, where ignorance and fear rule over a church, members can quickly turn mob-like to run off any threat to the status quo. In our case the results of our “spiritual gifts assessment” were leaked to a few members who gossiped about us, rumors were started and some people feared we might speak in tongues and thereby turn them into a “holy roller church”. Clearly they did not practice the principle of receiving those whom God sends as illustrated by the parable of the vineyard tenants (Matthew 21:33-41 and John 13:20). Specifically, receiving the one sent is the same as receiving the sender. To refuse the one sent is to refuse the sender. By driving us out of “their” church they effectively drove out the Holy Spirit who sent us and abides in us.
Three times the Lord said “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10) and each time I responded fearfully. When I opened my mouth to give voice to my ignorance for the 3rd time, the Holy Spirit washed over and through me in what felt like a flood of warm pure love. At the same time, it felt as if His hand took hold of my tongue and stretched it out until something hard and lifeless broke off from the end of it and I began speaking in a language previously unknown to me. Overwhelmed with emotion, tears of joy ran down my face as the words which could only have been highest praise for almighty God rushed from my tongue. For several hours I didn’t speak another word of English except to confess “I can’t believe I ever feared You”.
I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. (Psalms 81:10 LEB)
Try as I might the next day, I could not begin speaking in tongues again. When I expressed frustration, the enemy whispered in my ear “God gave you the gift of tongues just for the day so you could see what it used to be like. It is not your gift to keep.” In my other ear I heard a different voice say “That is a lie. The gift is yours to keep. Now take your concordance and look up every scripture in which I say that I’ll put my words into your mouth and read them aloud”. Still feeling frustrated, I did as the second voice said, reading the first scripture timidly, the second more loudly and with authority, and the third I yelled at the top of my lungs “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it SAYS THE LORD! Now GET OUT of my HOUSE Satan and TAKE your LIES WITH YOU!” With a welcome rush of the Spirit I began speaking in tongues once again and did so all day long every day for the next 2 weeks since I was at home at the time and out of work. What a joyous experience it was to receive such fullness of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues! Though it was 22 years ago now, I still remember the gentle beauty of it all as if it were yesterday. It was truly ignorant of me to have ever feared the Holy Spirit.
I saw Joe Biden standing before a basin filled with water, where he washed his hands in such a way that I thought to myself “just like Pontius Pilate”. He mumbled something to himself which I took to be dismissing all accusations and evidence of fraud. Biden then turned to his left and walked to the top of a stairs where he tripped from the waist as if falling over an invisible turnstile and fell head-long down the stairwell and out of sight.
Still dreaming I pronounced “You are dead. You will never be president.” And the dream ended.
I have no specific interpretation for the dream, however it did make me mindful of when President Trump gracefully descended the stairs to his inauguration ceremony on January 20th, 2017.
The Sons are Free 