Where There’s Blayze

The excitement of something new

Denby bottles Methodist Church had been brimming with excitement for the past month in anticipation of going on their annual trip to Cliff festival. One of the standout memories I have from when I was interviewed by this Church for my current position was how fondly they spoke about Cliff festival. They saw it as the unrivalled high point of the year for the Church and even as their one point of the year to just sit back and rest in the spirit. This was an interesting thing for me to hear as a potential worker for the Church. It is actually quite sad to think that a Church feels that they are limited to engaging and resting in the spirit to just once a year. It is admirable for a Church to dedicate themselves so much to administration and giving people an experience of the living God, but if that comes at the expense of your own connecting with the Spirit then it needs work. All Churches should be striving for their services to allow its leaders to connect with the spirit so that it may lead them and flow out of what they do. When people do this, the Church is being driven by God and will subsequently grow. Recently we had the royal wedding between Harry and Meghan and there were two things that the press were focussing on after that event occurred, the dress and the preachers address. Whether I was speaking to Christian friends or people within the local schools who do not have a faith, everyone had an opinion on this preacher. Why? What was so different about this mans address in contrast to your local church sermon? The difference is that the preacher spoke with passion and conviction, he was charismatic. The origin of the word ‘charisma’ is all about imparting spiritual grace. ‘Charis’ translates as grace and ‘ma’ is the imparting of that. The preacher was charismatic and subsequently people were affected by the address. I was not prepared for how much of an impact Cliff festival would have on my Church with its charismatic events, and how much it would inspire our members to adopt that same charisma.

Stepping out in faith

As with attending any festival, there is excitement in arriving at the event and purchasing a program to find out what was on and what peaks your interest. My first thought when looking at the plan was confusion as to why at a Christian festival there was so much on there that had nothing to do with faith. There were movie events, the football was going to be shown in the cafeteria and there was a cage in which play football in. Now this did not upset me or lead me to feel disappointed as I can appreciate the need to make sure that there is something there for everyone, but it did get to me when I was attending a inspiring preach or time of worship only to realise that a great number of my Church was away watching football. I had hoped that Denby Methodist were attending Cliff festival to get as much out of it as humanly possible, rather than neglecting this rare opportunity for the chance to watch football. I am somewhat biased in this as I do not have much interest in football, nor in the film they were showing. Despite this there were things on the programme that were regularly attended by our Church. One such slot was called ‘radiate’ which was a bible study at the start of the day for those aged from 18-30. I was greatly tempted not to go to that stream and instead attend the bible study in the main tent, which was being led by the new principal of the college, but decided instead to go along with the majority of my Church to radiate to see what it was like. As soon as we entered the event there were people talking and mingling, with bean bags, chairs, tables and coffee strategically placed around the room. I must confess to being somewhat skeptical as to how good this stream was going to be, but wrongly so. I had envisioned that all we would do was talk to one another about who Jesus was to us and then get a daily dose of being told that He loves us. I have been to plenty of Churches where all the sermons seem to be on the same topic, and also to youth groups where the leaders seem to believe that the younger people can’t understand anything past the point that God loves us. Despite this pessimism I greatly enjoyed each morning at this stream and felt challenged each time I attended it. I knew that this was going to be good as soon as they were challenging us to step out of our comfort zones. On the first day they began by getting us to talk to those around us about our experiences of the Holy Spirit. This in itself is quite interesting as it gave us all a chance to hear from those who have never felt the spirit, and others who gave great testimonies involving the Holy spirit. I think it is always helpful to have people around you who have not had these experiences as it helps me to believe what is actually happening. What I mean by this is that, despite myself having experiences with the Holy spirit, I am always very skeptical by other peoples stories. I can’t honestly say I know why, I have had these experiences, I have seen amazing things happen through the Spirit, but when someone tells me they pray for healing and it happened, or when they are praying and all of a sudden have a prophecy for someone my natural response is to not believe them. So when I am joined in the room by people who feel they have never felt the Spirit move in that kind of way, I am then eager to see what happens with them during  all of this. We carried on speaking about the spirit for a while and looking to the Bible to see what it tells us about the Holy spirit and what we are supposedly able to do when we connect with that Spirit. Towards the end of our first session the leaders of the stream challenged us to turn to our neighbour and lay hands on them and pray. We were not to ask them if there was something they wanted prayer for, or anything about them. Instead we were simply to pray for them and ask God to give us an image for that person. The leaders said to us that if we did not get anything then that was fine, but if we did then we should share it, even if we are unsure if it is from God. I was very excited by this prospect and so the whole room began to pray for someone. At the end the leaders asked how many of us for the first time had felt they got an image from God. immediately half of the room put their hands up. I looked around and noticed that a great majority of them with their hands up were the ones I had spoken to about how they had never experienced the Holy spirit. How they even struggled to believe that the Spirit could move in such a way. What an amazing site, to see so many stepping out in faith and receiving from God. This one experience greatly challenged me about how the Church perceived prayer. So many Churches do not pray for an image, or for healing or for any intervention of the Holy spirit and why? If we take that stream at festival as an example, if we were to ask an entire Church to pray for someone and half of them felt they had an image from God, is that not then worth doing? If we prayed for everyone who is sick in the Church that they may be healed and half of them are, is that not worth doing more often? Even if just one is healed, should we not challenge ourselves more to step out in faith and ask the Holy spirit to intervene for us. I was blessed to witness numerous members of my Church step out in faith every day in the radiate stream to ask God to bless them in a whole new way. The testimonies of people from my Church telling me how they had received images, visions, words, bible passages given to them by the spirit for the first ever time. The Bible tells us that this is possible, testimonies of people tell us that this is possible and yet we still shy away from asking God to give us these things in fear that it won’t happen.

Why do we let our insecurities hold us back?

I was so astounded at the sheer number of people I encountered who had never experienced these things before who were now receiving prophecy’s, images and words from God that I became desperate to know why this was happening. I have had images and words for others from God before that have been 100% true and correct, but why was there now such an influx of it? I attended a lecture that was being taken by a pentecostal preacher called Ben Pugh entitled ‘prophets, prophesying and giving it a go.’ I took this opportunity to seek answers to all the questions that had been floating around since that first morning at Cliff festival. The lecturer began by talking about the prophets of the Old and New testament, people who had heard from God and led people according to the nature of the prophecy. Moses leading the jewish people out of Egypt and through the wilderness, Jeremiah who knew of the impending doom that was coming. These Old Testament prophets were given words from God to know what was coming and to try and help God’s people. The idea of prophecy is also looked at in the New Testament with Ephesians 4 writing about prophecy being one of the gifts we can have through the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul writes about how we should seek the gift of prophecy more than any other gift. If this is the case then why does the Church not encourage its members to practice this gift, or at least try to seek it. I have never been to a Church that encouraged me to pray for the gift of prophecy and try for it. Surely if the Bible is right about this and it is to be the most sought after gift. It has aided the prophets of the Old and New Testament so surely we should be encouraging our congregations to be actively praying for these gifts and seeking them. Sadly I think the issue is in this country that we are just far too British. We are far too worried about stepping into the unknown and having people think we look silly. I hear it a lot when I talk to fellow Christians, how they were worried if nothing happened, or scared that someone might think they are strange. I am also guilty of this, when people tell me that their back is hurting, my first thought is not to pray for healing. I am worried that if I do and nothing happens then I will be made to look the fool. When I am praying for someone and feel something come to mind, I keep it to myself because I am worried that what I say will mean nothing to them and subsequently make me look stupid. I imagine that every Christian has been there at one point in their lives, but why? Honestly the reason is not because we are afraid of looking stupid, it is because we don’t have enough faith. Now this is a hard pill to swallow but it is true. We don’t put ourselves out there enough with prayer because we don’t believe anything will actually happen. We don’t pray for healing because we don’t think that they actually will be healed. When the disciples could not drive out an evil spirit in Matthew 17, they went to Jesus who could. They asked him why they could not do it and Jesus replies very bluntly and says, ‘because of your unbelief.’ He tells them that their lack of faith is what prohibited them from being able to access the full power of prayer. James 1:6 amplifies this point by stating that ‘the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.’ We must be striving to get to a point in our discipleship where we have enough faith in God to ask for his spirit to intervene and to believe in that power.

Where does this lead us

So where will this get us? What will change if we begin to preach in this way, if we begin to pray in this way. Without being in two minds but instead believing what the Bible tells us and stepping out in the Spirit. Well let’s take that radiate group at festival as an example. Half of the people there for the first time ever got an image or a word from God that was meant for someone there. What if everyone in our churches went out and prayed for someone and half those people had a prophecy. Is that not amazing? What if all of us went out and prayed for healing over those who are sick and half of them were made well? People would not ignore the Church, they would flock to us because they would want to know more about the very Spirit that we were praying in. I would also argue that this would be the case if we stepped out in faith and we did not get an image for someone, or someone was not healed. Even if what we expect to happen does not happen, we are showing that we are part of a faith which we believe so strongly in that we are willing to pray for healings and prophecy. If when I was an atheist someone came up to me and said they were going to try and pray for a word from God into my life and they finished by saying, ‘sorry God did not put anything on my heart to tell you.’ If nothing else it would have peaked my curiosity. Why was this individuals faith so strong that they believed that it would happen. What is this Spirit that they claim to have in them? Even when God does not do what we want Him to do, He can still be at work. My advice to people reading this is to go out and step out in that faith. Go and ask God for a word of prophecy, go out and ask for healing in the Spirit. If it happens, then great! You have just spoken the Spirit into someone’s life. If it does not happen, then fine. What’s the worst thing that’s happened? You have been able to pray for someone and honestly, the fact that we don’t always get what we expect is how we know that this is not fake. If I went to a Church where every prayer was answered exactly the way people were expecting then I would greatly doubt that Church. It suggests that we can always predict God. If I go to a Church where they pray in the Spirit and ask for these words and healings, and some of them happen and others have the humility and honesty to say it didn’t, then that makes me believe that it’s true.

Please

I implore all who are reading this blog to go away and read what the Bible has to say about the Spirit. Learn about the power we can have with it. After that I challenge you to step out in that faith and try it for yourself. Even if all you do is set yourself the task of just praying for one person this week. Just one person while asking the spirit for something. Set yourself that task. If it works then you have gained a whole new understanding of what it means to be alive in the Spirit of God. If you don’t get an image or a word or healing then that is also fine. You have prayed for someone and stepped out in faith, if you keep doing that then the spirit will move. What will happen then is people will not see a boring faith and a boring Church. They will see us radiate charisma, just like that preacher did at the royal wedding. People will go away and talk about us and what we are doing. The spirit will move and we as a Church will grow.