Part 6
The Word of Faith Movement
The "Shoots"
I thought I'd start out with one of the most basic aspects of the Christian life:
Prayer.
I heard Pastor Chris Rosebrough say just this week that in heresies the enemy is working to get Christians not to pray.
My ears perked up like my dogs' ears whenever they hear me open the refrigerator door in the garage. "Hello, it's bone time."
This week one of my ducks got too close to Aslan while he was waiting eagerly outside of the garage on the sidewalk. The big boy jumped up in a flash of fur and pinned the poor duck down in the herb bed with his huge, bear size mouth firmly locked on her neck. After a couple of seconds, he let her go; his control amazes me. There was not so much as a single feather floating in the air. He could have easily bitten her neck clean in half, but he wasn't trying to kill her, just warn her.
She was fine. She's used to Aslan. The ducks know, like Lewis's King Aslan in Narnia, that he's good, but he's certainly not safe.
Pyrenees usually don't move that fast unless it involves food or a coyote.
Or a wolf.
If you have any knowledge at all of the Word of Faith movement then you're already aware of their trademark version of prayer: decreeing and declaring, commanding, demanding, confessing, and rebuking.
These exhausting activities stem from their founder E.W. Kenyon's mind-over-matter, faith-force theology: "If you believe it, you can receive it." So, "name it and claim it!" And also from their erroneous belief that after Jesus resurrected he gave us authority over everything in the known universe. In future blogs, I'll address this more.
For now suffice to say that if mankind was given authority over everything in creation, including the weather and natural disasters, as Word of Faith teachers always assert, don't you think that on his journey to Rome the Apostle Paul would have calmed the turbulent storms that kept him out to sea for months? When all passengers and crew were hungry from not taking food for fourteen days and the weary sailors tossed the tackle overboard, don't you think Paul would have stood up and commanded the storm to cease? Surely, if any human had the authority to do so, it would have been Paul. ( Acts 27 )
In Matthew 28:18, Jesus said that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. Not us.
Under his authority, Jesus commissioned us to make disciples. The Psalms instruct us to declare "the glory of God" and "the works of the Lord." Even God's works themselves declare his glory. ( Psalm 19 ) In the gospels, we are commanded to declare "the Gospel," but not our prayers.
Parents are given authority over children, rulers over their people, Jesus's chosen Apostles over the Church, again, authority is given by the Lord Jesus as he has determined to delegate his authority. It's not a free for all.
Word of Faith teachers really get going on the authority thing. Could you imagine if your kids walked around the house decreeing and declaring, commanding and demanding things from you, asserting their authority over everything?
There's so much more that can be said and clarified on this subject. I hope to encourage study.
Jesus teaches us to pray to our heavenly Father when we have a need. Even though he already knows what we need before we ask, we are encouraged to ask, seek, knock, to come humbly and pray for good weather as well as good health. ( Matthew 6:25-34, Matthew 7:7-11 )
The Scriptures tell us that Jesus wakes up early and finds a quiet place to pray. Hebrews tells us that Jesus is heard in prayer because of his reverence. ( Mark 1:35, Hebrews 5:7 )
He teaches us in Matthew 6:6 not to heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles do, or pray to be seen by others like the hypocrites, but "go into your prayer room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." As we will see, the rewards are not perishable, but eternal.
In the biblical narrative we have so many beautiful examples of prayer: Daniel's humble prayer of repentance for his nation and request for mercy. ( Daniel 9 )
Moses's prayer as he "bowed his head toward the earth" and asked for God to "pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance." ( Exodus 33 )
Mary's Magnificat in Luke 1: 46-55, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant."
Another young mother - Hannah's respectful, reflective prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, so similar to Mary's song of prayer. "My heart exults in the LORD; my horn is exalted in the LORD. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation."
The Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 whom Jesus doesn't give an answer to after the request for healing for her daughter. He's silent. Nonetheless, she comes and kneels before him calling him "Lord." She is not offended by Jesus referring to her people, the Gentiles, as dogs, but she continues to ask. "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."
Then the healing came to her daughter. Jesus said it was because of her faith.
Look at her faith. Her faith was requesting, not decreeing or declaring. Her faith was humble, not demanding. Her faith knelt and acknowledged His authority as Lord. Her faith acknowledged her need for him.
There are so many others. The Bible is full of them.
Do we see the pattern in these prayers?
Yes, there's some major rants in the Psalms and in Job, but they are rants directed to God in prayer. They aren't demands and commands. We should be experiencing wrestling at times in our prayer life. That's good. I'll show you why:
I really don't want to miss this:
God uses our prayers as a means of grace.
I want to write that again because it is such a beautiful truth:
God uses our prayers as a means of grace.
The Bible is a book about God. It is so nourishing because we are learning about him in the narrative and his plan of redeeming a sinful people to himself through Jesus, and we learn as we feast on its goodness that God rarely does anything immediately.
He works through "means."
We see this in the cross of Christ and in everything he has done starting in creation. This is how our God choses to work his grace, his sovereignty, and his authority in the lives of his children. Through means. Through our continued prayers we slowly develop into mature, solid saints with strong spiritual bones. It's a godly process. It's God's will for our lives, our sanctification. ( 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 )
Prayer is this powerful.
Not because we can get whatever we want, but because it IS a means to an end, just not the one we had originally thought or the one the word-faith / prosperity gospel offers. It's so much deeper than getting our 'immediate' material needs met, and yet, God does meet those as well. In the daily process of communing with our Father for everything and in everything, our pain, joy, questions, in our supplications and requests, that communion is drawing us closer to him.
He uses our prayers as a means to accomplish his purposes.
The more we pray, the more we desire to pray because we're being "filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understand, to walk worthy, be fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work." ( Colossians 1:9-14 )
Yes, friends! Pray his Word back to him! As we study and meditate on God's Word, its truth shapes our prayers and creates a strong, tight braid with the three that embody the means of grace.
The word-faith theology says we are to declare and decree Bible verses in faith so we can get God to "work" for us. This is a misuse of the Bible, and it's not prayer to confess things. Do we see how selfish and self-serving this word-faith theology is? It's deceptive, hard to recognize because it appeals to our sinful, human nature while robbing us of the true abundant life Jesus came to give us.
Do we see why the enemy would want to keep us from prayer?
And do we realize how his scheme would be, not to get rid of prayer altogether, that would be too obvious, but to offer us a counterfeit? And many of us have bitten and swallowed the word-faith bait. I was hooked on it for years.
I want to close with this thought: When Jesus told the disciples parables that they would pray and not lose heart or give up, when he instructed us to keep asking, seeking, and knocking, Jesus had a purpose in mind.
He wanted us to know that in the continued times of prayer, day in and day out, humbly and faithfully pouring out our hearts to God in petition and supplication, in times of joy as well as pain, something beautiful and eternal was going to take place: a deep affection for and the realization of the sheer grace, sovereignty, magnificence, and mercy of our heavenly Father and our Mediator the Son of God by way of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer is the means of his grace.
This relationship is not developed in the mode of never-ending, exhausting exercises of decreeing and declaring, commanding, rebuking, and demanding, naming and claiming or confessing verses over and over until we possess what Jesus has already so sacrificially and graciously given us by way of the cross.
In Christ, the blessings were always ours.
We don't need to work ourselves up into a frenzy, just open your Bible and your arms and receive.
Pray.
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| Another HBF archive photo - my first Great Pyrenees - Aslan's grandmother, Natasha |
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