Ministry Of Presence Quotes

Ah. I smiled. I'm not really here to keep you from freaking out. I'm here to be with you while you freak out, or grieve or laugh or suffer or sing. It is a ministry of presence. It is showing up with a loving heart.

We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don't know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don't compare. The sensitive person understands that each person's ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else's. Next, they do the practical things--making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don't try to minimize what is going on. They don't attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don't say that the pain is all for the best. They don't search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don't bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct.

No one celebrates the presence and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ more than the person who has embraced his desperate and daily need of it.

An experience of collective pain does not deliver us from grief or sadness; it is a ministry of presence. These moments remind us that we are not alone in our darkness and that our broken heart is connected to every heart that has known pain since the beginning of time.

Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called ‘heightened interrogation’. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.

Jesus’ ministry lasted 1,350 days, spanning five calendar years (AD 29–33), fifty calendar months, and 44.36 months (calculated as being of 30.5 days’ average duration). The gospels have gaps in their narratives in which Jesus disappears from the pages of history. The gaps total 770 days, which is about two years, representing fifty-seven percent of Jesus’ total ministry time. No wonder John wrote “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book” (John 20:30) and “There are many more things that Jesus did. If all of them were written down, I suppose that not even the world itself would have space for the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don't know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don't compare. The sensitive person understands that each person's ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else's. Next, they do the practical things--making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don't try to minimize what is going on. They don't attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don't say that the pain is all for the best. They don't search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don't bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct.

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place whey are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant ministers, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer.

The work of atonement took place in the presence of the God of heaven. Indeed, it involved a transaction within the fellowship of the persons of the eternal Trinity in their love for us: the Son was willing, with the aid of the Spirit, to experience the hiding of the Father's face. The shedding of the blood of God's Son opened the way to God for us (Acts 20:28). That is both the horror and the glory of our Great High Priest's ministry. Terrible

Tender, heartfelt worship is hard for a person who thinks of himself as having arrived. No one celebrates the presence and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ more than the person who has embraced his desperate and daily need of it.

Something in me hates this confession. I do not think that I am alone in this. Twitter, Facebook, virtual conferencing—these allow us the illusion of being somewhere other than where we are. Positively we have a voice in places otherwise absent to us. But we type on our keyboards while sitting in a chair where we are—the local knowledge and work of the day in our place awaiting our presence. The danger here is that it allows us to give our gifts without giving ourselves.

If it is God who has been withholding His presence, exposing the sin, calling for its destruction and a return to obedience, surely we can count upon His grace to strengthen us for the life He asks of us. It is not a question of what you can do. It is a question of whether you will with your whole heart give God what is due Him and allow His will to be done in your life.

When spirituality becomes spiritualization, life in the body becomes carnality. When ministers and priests live their ministry mostly in their heads and relate to the Gospel as a set of valuable ideas to be announced, the body quickly takes revenge by screaming loudly for affection and intimacy. Christian leaders are called to live the Incarnation, that is, to live in the body, not only in their own bodies but also in the corporate body of the community, and to discover there the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We must have God! Perhaps the greatest problem with the church today is the attempt to do the work of God apart from the presence and power of God. We can get so good at “doing church” that the ministry becomes mechanical and mundane. We must say, “Lord, we do not want to go another step without You!

did everything I could—I bought a vase, a lamp, a black-and-white poster of the skyline of New York—but their presence merely pointed up the anxiety of absence. The absence of what? I had no answer.

It’s so natural to think the Presence of Jesus has no greater purpose than to improve the quality of our journey through life—with quality defined as a pleasurable, satisfying, self-affirming existence—a journey where certain things don’t go wrong or, if they do, they correct themselves. Marriages should work, biopsies should come back benign, ministry efforts should succeed, and we should feel pretty good about the way most things go.

There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives. They minister constantly to believers who feel within their breasts a longing which their teaching simply does not satisfy.

Over the years I've found it much more helpful to follow the advice of Sister Liebert and seek to treat each young person as a teacher from God, someone God has placed in my life in order to help me grow in faith. When I encounter a young person, I find it much more helpful to think that she (or he) may be the only Jesus I'll ever know. Perhaps by seeking to encounter the presence of Christ in young people, we'll find ourselves better able to see them, hear them, feel compassion for them, and respond in kindness.

There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals oft he faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives.

There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives.

When the Duke of Wei offered him the prime ministry he dismissed the royal messengers with a curtness indicative of a writer’s dreams: “Go away quickly, and do not soil me with your presence. I had rather amuse and enjoy myself in a filthy ditch than be subject to the rules and restrictions in the court of a sovereign.

You are constantly preaching to yourself some kind of gospel. You preach to yourself an anti-gospel of your own righteousness, power, and wisdom, or you preach to yourself the true gospel of deep spiritual need and sufficient grace. You preach to yourself an anti-gospel of aloneness and inability, or you preach to yourself the true gospel of the presence, provisions, and power of an ever-present Christ.

...we must be careful to avoid the error of reductionism, as if the whole of the Spirit’s ministry can be reduced to Christology, as if the Spirit does nothing but glorify Christ. It’s the mistake of arguing that the primary purpose of the Spirit’s coming is the sole purpose of his coming. The principal aim of the Spirit in what he does is to awaken us to the glory, splendor, and centrality of the work of Christ Jesus. But this does not mean that it is less than the Spirit at work when he awakens us also to his own glory and power and abiding presence.

I have talked with many pastors whose real struggle isn’t first with the hardship of ministry, the lack of appreciation and involvement of people, or difficulties with fellow leaders. No, the real struggle they are having, one that is very hard for a pastor to admit, is with God. What is caused to ministry become hard and burdensome is disappointment and anger at God. We have forgotten that pastoral ministry is war and that you will never live successfully in the pastorate if you live with the peacetime mentality. Permit me to explain. The fundamental battle of pastoral ministry is not with the shifting values of the surrounding culture. It is not the struggle with resistant people who don't seem to esteem the Gospel. It is not the fight for the success of ministries of the church. And is not the constant struggle of resources and personnel to accomplish the mission. No, the war of the pastor is a deeply personal war. It is far on the ground of the pastor’s heart. It is a war values, allegiances, and motivations. It's about the subtle desires and foundational dreams. This war is the greatest threat to every pastor. Yet it is a war that we often naïvely ignore or quickly forget in the busyness of local church ministry. When you forget the Gospel, you begin to seek from the situations, locations and relationships of ministry what you already have been given in Christ. You begin to look to ministry for identity, security, hope, well-being, meeting, and purpose. These things are already yours in Christ. In ways of which you are not always aware, your ministry is always shaped by what is in functional control of your heart. The fact of the matter is that many pastors become awe numb or awe confused, or they get awe kidnapped. Many pastors look at glory and don't seek glory anymore. Many pastors are just cranking out because they don't know what else to do. Many pastors preach a boring, uninspiring gospel that makes you wonder why people aren't sleeping their way through it. Many pastors are better at arguing fine points of doctrine than stimulating divine wonder. Many pastors see more stimulated by the next ministry, vision of the next step in strategic planning than by the stunning glory of the grand intervention of grace into sin broken hearts. The glories of being right, successful, in control, esteemed, and secure often become more influential in the way that ministry is done than the awesome realities of the presence, sovereignty, power, and love of God. Mediocrity is not a time, personnel, resource, or location problem. Mediocrity is a heart problem. We have lost our commitment to the highest levels of excellence because we have lost our awe.

This is, indeed, an insightful observation. The Archbishop [Joseph L. Berardin] insists that the natural resemblance between Christ and his priests must not stop merely with the fact that they share a common masculinity. Our question is, 'Why must it BEGIN there?' If the faithful cannot see Christ in a male who exemplifies no godlike virtues - humility, gentleness, and self-effacing service - can they not see him in a female who does? Indeed, if the priest acts 'in persona Christi,' not 'in masculinitate Christi,' then 'NATURAL resemblance' between Christ and the priest, it would seem, does not entail PHYSICAL, that is SEXUAL resemblance, but a resemblance which is natural to the SPIRITUAL order with which the worshiping congregation has to do. And in this order there is neither male nor female, even as there is neither Jew nor Greek. We would, therefore, conclude that since the Word was made flesh, as the apostle John has declared him (John 1:14), we rightly heed those who, in the flesh, symbolize his presence as they speak and act in his name. But we see no reason to add to what the apostle said by insisting that the Word was made MALE flesh, for both male and female are equally bearers of the divine image. And since God created humankind in his image, male AND female, we can only conclude that women as well as men should be ordained to the priesthood, because femaleness, like maleness, is a fitting symbol (sacramental sign) of Deity.

Whatever men please to think or say, the Romish doctrine of the real presence if pursued to its legitimate consequences obscures every leading doctrine of the gospel and damages and interferes with the whole system of Christ's truth. Grant for a moment that the Lord's Supper is a sacrifice and not a Sacrament, grant that every time the words of consecration are used the natural body and blood of Christ are present on the communion table under the forms of bread and wine, grant that everyone who eats that consecrated bread and drinks that consecrated wine does really eat and drink the natural body and blood of Christ, grant for a moment these things and then see what momentous consequences result from these premises. You spoil the blessed doctrine of Christ's finished work when He died on the cross. A sacrifice that needs to be repeated is not a perfect or complete thing. You spoil the priestly office of Christ. If there are priests that can offer an acceptable sacrifice to God besides Him, the great High Priest is robbed of His glory. You spoil the scriptural doctrine of the Christian ministry. You exalt sinful men into the position of mediators between God and man. You give to the sacramental elements of bread and wine an honor and veneration they were never meant to receive. You produce an idolatry to be abhorred by faithful Christians. Last but not least, you overthrow the true doctrine of Christ's human nature. If the body born of the Virgin Mary can be in more places than one at the same time, it is not a body like our own and Jesus was not the last Adam in the truth of our nature.

TIMOTHY 4  hI charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,  iwho is to judge the living and the dead, and by  jhis appearing and his kingdom: 2preach the word; be ready in season and out of season;  kreprove, rebuke, and  lexhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 mFor the time is coming when people will not endure  nsound [1] teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4and  owill turn away from listening to the truth and  pwander off into myths. 5As for you,  qalways be sober-minded,  rendure suffering, do the work of  san evangelist,  tfulfill your ministry. 6For  uI am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my  vdeparture has come. 7 wI have fought the good fight,  xI have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8Henceforth there is  ylaid up for me  zthe crown of righteousness, which the Lord,  athe righteous judge, will award to me on  bthat day, and not only to me but also to all  cwho have loved his appearing.

You look terrible,” was Ron’s greeting as he entered the room to wake Harry. “Not for long,” said Harry, yawning. They found Hermione downstairs in the kitchen. She was being served coffee and hot rolls by Kreacher and wearing the slightly manic expression that Harry associated with exam review. “Robes,” she said under her breath, acknowledging their presence with a nervous nod and continuing to poke around in her beaded bag, “Polyjuice Potion . . . Invisbility Cloak . . . Decoy Detonators . . . You should each take a couple just in case. . . . Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, Extendable Ears . . .” They gulped down their breakfast, then set off upstairs, Kreacher bowing them out and promising to have a steak-and-kidney pie ready for them when they returned. “Bless him,” said Ron fondly, “and when you think I used to fantasize about cutting off his head and sticking it on the wall.” They made their way onto the front step with immense caution: They could see a couple of puffy-eyed Death Eaters watching the house from across the misty square. Hermione Disapparated with Ron first, then came back for Harry. After the usual brief spell of darkness and near suffocation, Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway where the first phase of their plan was scheduled to take place. It was as yet deserted, except for a couple of large bins; the first Ministry workers did not usually appear here until at least eight o’clock. “Right then,” said Hermione, checking her watch. “She ought to be here in about five minutes. When I’ve Stunned her—” “Hermione, we know,” said Ron sternly. “And I thought we were supposed to open the door before she got here?” Hermione squealed. “I nearly forgot! Stand back—” She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting trips, into an empty theater. Hermione pulled the door back toward her, to make it look as though it was still closed. “And now,” she said, turning back to face the other two in the alleyway, “we put on the Cloak again—” “—and we wait,” Ron finished, throwing it over Hermione’s head like a blanket over a birdcage and rolling his eyes at Harry.

Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge- a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in pros- perity. As the number of her adherents dimin- ishes, so will she lose many of her social privi- leges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along- side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and ex- perience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholar- ship.

When the service began, I was not surprised to hear the angelic hosts join with the worship team. In fact, several people in the church testified to hearing the angels. After the service, we traveled to Tim Horton’s for a late dinner. We returned to Botwood to find Margaret waiting for us, and she kindly directed us to our separate rooms for the night. The Holy Spirit was still hovering very close to me, and as soon as the door closed behind my host, the Lord began to speak to me. I immediately began to pray and worship the Lord. Once again, the Lord had me begin reading from Revelation 4. It was about 3:30 A.M. when I fell into a peaceful sleep praying in the Spirit. I awoke to the sound of the Lord’s voice speaking to me. “Kevin, get up; it’s time to go to work.” I opened my eyes and looked around the room. My mind began to race. I looked at the clock, and it was just 5:00 A.M. I had only been asleep for a short while. I sleepily said, “Lord, what could you possibly want me to do at this hour?” “Walk downstairs and prophesy to Margaret,” He said. I protested, “Lord, I don’t even know Margaret.” He said, “Don’t worry. I know her. Just say what I tell you to say.” “But Lord, It’s only 5 A.M., and nobody is awake at 5 A.M.” He answered, “Margaret is awake. She is in the kitchen. She is praying and having tea and a scone. Go to her now.” In my natural mind this seemed totally insane! Me? Prophesy? Suddenly the anointing and presence of the Lord intensified, and I found myself dressed. The next thing I knew I was walking down the hallway toward the stairs. All at once, there was a still, small voice speaking into my left ear. I was being told many things about Margaret. I was hearing the secrets of her heart. When I walked into the kitchen, she was there. She was having tea and a scone. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me that she was praying. PROPHESYING ABOUT ANGELS I said, “Margaret, I think God wants me to tell you something!” Her eyes grew as big as saucers as I launched into a litany of words about angels. I was as shocked as she was! I was able to speak in great detail about angels to her. “Your angel is very precious to you, and it has a name; your angel’s name is Charity. Your very nature is much like your angel. You are full of the love of God. The Lord is going to open your eyes to see your angel again. It is going to happen soon.” Somewhere in the middle of this heavenly utterance Margaret burst into tears! Then something else rather extraordinary began to happen. Gold dust began to rain down into the kitchen! Gold started to cover the kitchen table and our faces. After a few minutes, Margaret regained her composure, and I took a seat at the table with her. She shared with me her journey and how God had always ministered to her using the realm of angels as confirmation of everything that I had just spoken to her. We continued to fellowship together while enjoying tea and scones for the next hour and a half. Margaret gave me a copy of the book, Good Morning, Holy Spirit. Later, I took this Benny Hinn book along with me into the wilderness of Newfoundland where I had a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit in a tiny cabin. Margaret and I were joined by two friends for breakfast, and the Lord continued to move. Jennifer received the revelation that she was supposed to give an angel’s feather she had found to our hostess.

He nodded yes. I acquiesced. Immediately, I was “sucked” out of my body and was taken up in the spirit. When I came into the presence of Jesus, He was smiling and happy to see me again, but no more than I. The Lord began to show me the ways that He would confirm and release me to activate the angel of provision He had assigned to me earlier. Somehow I understood that the time was fast approaching for me to begin to employ this angel in a greater degree. When this encounter was over, I returned to my tiny prayer room with a sovereign knowledge that some things were about to drastically change in my life. I had an understanding that the angel of provision would become very important to these upcoming events. In hindsight, I understand that the Lord was preparing me to take the next step of our journey and move me toward my personal metamorphosis. He was preparing me to go to the next level pertaining to angelic ministry and understanding how to work with God’s angels. The Lord is in the midst of releasing many angels of provision into the realm of earth at this hour. I believe that many people will be assigned angels of provision. These angels will work with you to release finances that will allow you to complete the things that are on your heart. For some it will be evangelism. For others it will be ministering to widows and orphans. Whatever God has placed upon your heart, He can empower angelic ministry to release the provision to accomplish the task. You can access this area of angelic ministry. You do not need to be a superstar or person of great faith. These angels are going to be released to ordinary people. Let’s shift our focus to Africa, and look at how Jesus is actually releasing angels to impact the earth on the African continent.

LEAD PEOPLE TO COMMITMENT We have seen that nonbelievers in worship actually “close with Christ” in two basic ways: some may come to Christ during the service itself (1 Cor 14:24 – 25), while others must be “followed up with” by means of after-service meetings. Let’s take a closer look at both ways of leading people to commitment. It is possible to lead people to a commitment to Christ during the service. One way of inviting people to receive Christ is to make a verbal invitation as the Lord’s Supper is being distributed. At our church, we say it this way: “If you are not in a saving relationship with God through Christ today, do not take the bread and the cup, but as they come around, take Christ. Receive him in your heart as those around you receive the food. Then immediately afterward, come up and tell an officer or a pastor about what you’ve done so we can get you ready to receive the Supper the next time as a child of God.” Another way to invite commitment during the service is to give people a time of silence or a period of musical interlude after the sermon. This affords people time to think and process what they have heard and to offer themselves to God in prayer. In many situations, it is best to invite people to commitment through after-meetings. Acts 2 gives an example. Inverses 12 and 13 we are told that some folks mocked after hearing the apostles praise and preach, but others were disturbed and asked, “What does this mean?” Then, we see that Peter very specifically explained the gospel and, in response to the follow-up question “What shall we do?” (v. 37), he explained how to become a Christian. Historically, many preachers have found it effective to offer such meetings to nonbelievers and seekers immediately after evangelistic worship. Convicted seekers have just come from being in the presence of God and are often the most teachable and open at this time. To seek to “get them into a small group” or even to merely return next Sunday is asking a lot. They may also be “amazed and perplexed” (Acts 2:12), and it is best to strike while the iron is hot. This should not be understood as doubting that God is infallibly drawing people to himself (Acts 13:48; 16:14). Knowing the sovereignty of God helps us to relax as we do evangelism, knowing that conversions are not dependent on our eloquence. But it should not lead us to ignore or minimize the truth that God works through secondary causes. The Westminster Confession (5.2 – 3), for example, tells us that God routinely works through normal social and psychological processes. Therefore, inviting people into a follow-up meeting immediately after the worship service can often be more conducive to conserving the fruit of the Word. After-meetings may take the shape of one or more persons waiting at the front of the auditorium to pray with and talk with seekers who wish to make inquiries right on the spot. Another way is to host a simple Q&A session with the preacher in or near the main auditorium, following the postlude. Or offer one or two classes or small group experiences targeted to specific questions non-Christians ask about the content, relevance, and credibility of the Christian faith. Skilled lay evangelists should be present who can come alongside newcomers, answer spiritual questions, and provide guidance for their next steps.

WALKING WITH ANGELS IN THE COOL OF THE DAY A short time later I felt someone poke me hard in the left arm. I turned to see who it was, but there was no one there. At the time, I dismissed it and returned my attention to my thoughts. After a minute I was poked again, only this time the poke was accompanied with an audible voice! The Holy Spirit said, “I want to go for a walk with you in the cool of the day.” I jumped up totally flabbergasted. I quickly left the room and grabbed my coat, telling everyone that I was going for a walk in the “cool of the day.” It just happened to be minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit (or minus 24 Celsius)! The moment I walked out the door, the presence of the Holy Spirit fell upon me, and I began to weep again. The tears were starting to freeze on my cheeks, but I did not mind. God began to talk to me in an audible voice. I was walking through the streets of Botwood in the presence of the Holy Ghost. I could also sense that many angels were accompanying us. The angels were laughing and singing as we strolled along the snow-covered streets. It was about 8:00 A.M. The Holy Spirit led me along a road which was on the shore of the North Atlantic Ocean. For the first time since leaving the house, I began to notice that it was very cold. However, it was worth it to be in the presence of the Lord. I was directed to a small breezeway that leads out over the Bay of Exploits (this name truly proved to be quite prophetic) to a tiny island called Killick Island. As we were walking across the breezeway, the wind was whipping off the ocean at about 40 knots. Combined with the negative temperature, the wind was turning my skin numb, and my tears had crystallized into ice on my face and mustache. THE CITY OF REFUGE I said, “Holy Spirit, it is really cold out here, and my face is turning numb.” The Lord replied, “Do not fear; when we get onto this island, there will be a city of refuge.” I had no idea what a city of refuge was, but I hoped that it would be warm and safe. (See Numbers 35:25.) The winter’s day had turned even colder and grayer; there was no sun, and the dark gray sky was totally overcast. Snow was falling lightly, and being blown about by a brisk wind. As we walked onto Killick Island, it got even colder and windier. The Holy Spirit whispered to me, “Do not fear; the city of refuge is just up these steps, hidden in those fir trees.” When I ascended a few dozen steps, I saw a small stand of fir trees to the left. Just before I stepped into the middle of them, a shaft of brilliant bright light, a lone sunbeam, cracked the sky to illuminate the city of refuge. When I entered the little circle of fir trees, what the Holy Spirit had called a “city of refuge,” I encountered the manifest glory of God. Angels were everywhere. It was 8:50 A.M. As we entered, I walked through some kind of invisible barrier. Surprisingly, inside the city of refuge, the temperature was very pleasant, even warm. The bright beam of sunlight slashed into the cold, gray atmosphere. As this heavenly light hit the fresh snow, there appeared to be rainbows of colors that seemed to radiate from the trees, tickling my eyes. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit began to ask me questions. The Lord asked me to “describe what you are seeing.” Every color of the rainbow seemed to dance from the tiny snowflakes as they slowly drifted

to stay! It was another answer to prayer, and I graciously accepted her offer. When the service began, I was not surprised to hear the angelic hosts join with the worship team. In fact, several people in the church testified to hearing the angels. After the service, we traveled to Tim Horton’s for a late dinner. We returned to Botwood to find Margaret waiting for us, and she kindly directed us to our separate rooms for the night. The Holy Spirit was still hovering very close to me, and as soon as the door closed behind my host, the Lord began to speak to me. I immediately began to pray and worship the Lord. Once again, the Lord had me begin reading from Revelation 4. It was about 3:30 A.M. when I fell into a peaceful sleep praying in the Spirit. I awoke to the sound of the Lord’s voice speaking to me. “Kevin, get up; it’s time to go to work.” I opened my eyes and looked around the room. My mind began to race. I looked at the clock, and it was just 5:00 A.M. I had only been asleep for a short while. I sleepily said, “Lord, what could you possibly want me to do at this hour?” “Walk downstairs and prophesy to Margaret,” He said. I protested, “Lord, I don’t even know Margaret.” He said, “Don’t worry. I know her. Just say what I tell you to say.” “But Lord, It’s only 5 A.M., and nobody is awake at 5 A.M.” He answered, “Margaret is awake. She is in the kitchen. She is praying and having tea and a scone. Go to her now.” In my natural mind this seemed totally insane! Me? Prophesy? Suddenly the anointing and presence of the Lord intensified, and I found myself dressed. The next thing I knew I was walking down the hallway toward the stairs. All at once, there was a still, small voice speaking into my left ear. I was being told many things about Margaret. I was hearing the secrets of her heart. When I walked into the kitchen, she was there. She was having tea and a scone. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me that she was praying. PROPHESYING ABOUT ANGELS I said, “Margaret, I think God wants me to tell you something!” Her eyes grew as big as saucers as I launched into a litany of words about angels. I was as shocked as she was! I was able to speak in great detail about angels to her. “Your angel is very precious to you, and it has a name; your angel’s name is Charity. Your very nature is much like your angel. You are full of the love of God. The Lord is going to open your eyes to see your angel again. It is going to happen soon.” Somewhere in the middle of this heavenly utterance Margaret burst into tears! Then something else rather extraordinary began to happen. Gold dust began to rain down into the kitchen! Gold started to cover the kitchen table and our faces. After a few minutes, Margaret regained her composure, and I took a seat at the table with her. She shared with me her journey and how God had always ministered to her using the realm of angels as confirmation of everything that I had just spoken to her. We continued to fellowship together while enjoying tea and scones for the next hour and a half. Margaret gave me a copy of the book, Good Morning, Holy Spirit. Later, I took this Benny Hinn book along with me into the wilderness of Newfoundland where I had a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit in a tiny cabin. Margaret and I were joined by two friends for breakfast, and the Lord continued to move. Jennifer received the revelation that she was supposed to give an angel’s feather she had found to our hostess.

DANCING ANGELS During October 2001, the Lord began to speak to me about traveling to Newfoundland, Canada. I had no desire to go there, especially in the middle of the winter! At this time I was still concerned about my inability to “feel the Lord” and began to press into God all the more. At times I locked myself into the little house and fasted and prayed for up to seven days, or until the presence of God fell. After many confirmations in the spirit, I pooled all of my earthly wealth and made the trip to the great white North. The night before I was to depart, the Lord instructed me to “pray in tongues all the way to Newfoundland.” Somehow through the grace of God I succeeded in praying in the Spirit for about 18 hours until I touched down in Canada. In Springdale, Newfoundland, Canada, the Lord began instructing me to complete a series of prophetic actions. I attended an intercessory prayer meeting on Wednesday, November 21. We were interceding for an upcoming series of healing meetings. During this meeting, I began to “see” into the spirit. As the Lord opened my spiritual eyes, I incrementally saw the heavens open over Living Waters Ministries Church. In addition to this, I also began to hear angelic voices singing along with the worship team. At one point during the meeting, I saw a stream of golden oil pour out from Heaven and land on a certain spot in the sanctuary. At the leading of the Lord, I knelt upon that spot. The glory and anointing began to flow into and over my body. The sensation and anointing was very similar to what I experienced when the angel put his hands upon me the night of August 22, 2001. As I knelt under the spot where the golden oil was beginning to pour onto the altar, I was praying earnestly. I could feel the liquid oil raining down on my body. I could sense and smell this heavenly oil as it rolled off my head. The Holy Spirit began to talk to me in a very clear and direct way that I had never experienced before. I collapsed onto the carpet in a pool of golden oil and laid there in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Then I sensed angels dancing all around the pool and me. I felt an angel as it brushed its wings across my face. I had a “knowing” that the angel was asking me to raise my hands into the air. When I raised my hands up to about two feet, the angel would push my hands back down with its strong, warm hands. I tried again, and when my hands were almost totally up, the angel tickled my nose with the feathers of its wings. I laughed, and my hands fell. The angel and I continued to interact in this fashion for nearly an hour. I did not actually see this angel, but the force and reality of its touch was very tangible. There was no doubt that I was interacting with a heavenly being. This experience was both refreshing and real. SEEING IS BELIEVING On Thursday, November 22, the healing meetings started; they would last through Sunday, the 25th. In these meetings God began to open my spiritual eyes beyond anything I could have ever imagined. On the first night of these meetings, I began to see an “open heaven” forming in the sanctuary. I could also hear and sense the activity of angels as the heavens continued to open up to a greater degree. On Friday, I began to see “bolts of light” shoot through the church, and again the stream of golden oil was flowing from the open heaven in a greater volume. On Saturday night during the worship service, I began to see feathers falling around the church and

What if many listeners hold a profoundly different understanding of the concepts of God, truth, right and wrong, freedom, virtue, and sin? What if their approaches to reality, human nature and destiny, and human community are wholly different from our own? For decades, this has been the situation facing Christian churches in many areas around the world — places such as India, Iran, and Japan. Evangelism in these environments involves a lengthy process in which nonbelievers have to be invited into a Christian community that bridges the gap between Christian truth and the culture around it. Every part of a church’s life — its worship, community, public discourse, preaching, and education — has to assume the presence of nonbelievers from the surrounding culture. The aesthetics of its worship have to reflect the sensibilities of the culture and yet show how Christian belief shapes and is expressed through them. Its preaching and teaching have to show how the hopes of this culture’s people can find fulfillment only in Christ. Most of all, such a congregation’s believers have to reflect the demographic makeup of the surrounding community, thereby giving non-Christian neighbors attractive and challenging glimpses of what they would look like as Christians.

of temple, presence, and sacrifice; of covenant and faithfulness; of kingdom and victory. When we seek to communicate the gospel to a particular culture, we will find that some of these themes resonate more deeply than others. Paul was able to speak to a wisdom-obsessed culture by using one of the great themes of the Bible, the wisdom of God as it comes to its climax in Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor 1:18 – 2:16). The Bible has enough diversity to enable us to connect its message to any baseline cultural narrative on the face of the earth. atonement “grammars” It is commonly said that the Bible contains several different “models” of atonement. I prefer to call these different “languages” or “grammars” by which the saving work of Christ on the cross is presented.

By mobilizing relational ministry from how, by stopping only at Langmead's first aspect of incarnational mission (Jesus as a pattern for mission), the who of personal encounter, of participation in the continued presence of Jesus, is squeezed out into a utilitarian pattern (Jesus did it this way so we should too) that can be duplicated but lacks the indwelling power and direction of God.

If old covenant believers were regenerated by the Spirit, what is new about the new interiority promised in Jer 31:31–34? The newness does not consist in the Spirit's regenerating ministry of enabling people to hear God's word and believe. What is new is the indwelling ministry of the Spirit and the spiritualized view of the temple.

Like the garden and land of Eden, the tabernacle is mostly off-limits. From the time of Adam to the time of Jesus, no one is allowed to go back into the Garden, past the cherubim, to enjoy God’s presence. As Paul put it, the Old Covenant is a ministry of death (2 Cor. 3:7; see Heb. 9:8–10). The tabernacle is a way of keeping the people of God at a distance. Since Jesus has come, there is no longer a tabernacle or temple on earth. This means that God is no longer keeping us away from Him. Because Jesus has offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, we may boldly enter the Most Holy Place (Heb. 10:19–25). We may go back into the garden and eat from Jesus, the Tree of Life. All this is true now because Jesus has died and torn the veil that separated Israel from God. And when we have passed through the “firmament” of the Holy Place, God brings us to the highest heavens to sit on thrones in Christ and rule with Him (Eph. 2:6).

We desired to see His presence and power in our ministry, and He was teaching us that it all begins with loving Him. Nothing happens apart from our being deeply, radically in love with Jesus.

The New Testament reading for the day was 2 Corinthians 10:12-17 in which Paul talks about the danger of comparing ourselves to others and measuring ourselves against their accomplishments. His antidote for this all-too-human tendency was to learn to stay within the limits of his own life and calling. He says, “We, however, will not boast beyond limits, but will keep within the field that God has assigned to us, to reach out even as far as you. For we were not overstepping our limits when we reached you. . . . We do not boast beyond limits, that is, in the labors of others; but our hope is that, as your faith increases, our sphere of action among you may be greatly enlarged” (2 Corinthians 10:13-15). Until that very moment I had never realized that Paul used the word limits three times in just a few verses and that he seemed to be very clear about the limits and boundaries of his calling. He knew the field God had given him to work, and he knew better than to go outside it. He knew that there was a sphere of action and influence that had been given to him by God, and he would not go beyond it unless God enlarged his field. Paul seemed to grapple honestly with the reality of limitations in several different ways in his writings, and, in fact, this seemed to be part of his maturing as a leader who was both gifted and called. When he wrote about not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought (Romans 12:3), he was making a very general statement about limiting our grandiosity and pride by cultivating a realistic sense of our essential nature. He was talking about being willing to live within the limits and the possibilities of who we really are. As he matured, he revealed a very personal understanding that his deep struggle with a thorn in the flesh was a gift that was given to him to limit his own grandiosity and keep him in touch with his humanness. In 2 Corinthians 4 he talked about what it is like to carry the treasure of ministry in fragile, earthen vessels. He wrote poignantly from his experience of his own human limitations and his conviction that it is precisely in our willingness to carry God’s luminous presence in such fragile containers—without pretending to be anything more than what we are—that the power

I will always respect Mr. Charles chuck Mackey for the way he dealt with me. His approach was not hostile, rather his approach was one, “Look here, I’m working with you, so I need you to work with me.” He showed me first that he had my back, and it was easy for me to do the same for him. Mr. Mackey was well known in the entire school as a no-nonsense but fair person. There are some school administrators that aren’t intimidating at all, but with Mr. Mackey, it was totally different. When we saw him, even if we were not doing anything wrong and our uniform was intact, we still tend to avoid him by going in a different direction. His presence alone demanded that kind of respect.

Secondly, although it is likely that there was a longer period of overlap between John and Jesus, the more weighty evidence implies that it cannot have been very long, and that the break between John and Jesus must have come quite quickly. After all, the central emphasis of their respective proclamations was quite different: John believed that the end-time was at hand; Jesus believed that the shift in the aeons had already taken place. And the decisive indication that the kingdom was present for Jesus was the presence of the Spirit working in and through him. The break between John and Jesus must therefore have been occasioned by Jesus' awareness of the Spirit: the eschatological Spirit was already upon him - therefore John's message and ministry was already superseded. How quickly Jesus saw these corollaries and applied them is not clear (the retreat to the wilderness is the obvious period of rethinking), but we should certainly hesitate to read too much into the Fourth Gospel's traditions about the overlap: they imply only a period of `competition' between John and Jesus, not a period when Jesus was John's disciple.

English-speaking practitioners generally use the four following terms to refer to the influence of evil spirits: Oppression – demonic influence which seems to come from outside a person, causing heaviness, weariness or discouragement. Oppressive spirits may be acquired through exposure to a heavy presence of evil: e.g. by participating in deliverance ministry (defined below), by being in a place where occult activities are taking place, by being placed under a curse, by coming into contact with items of witchcraft. Oppressive spirits may be dispelled by a simple command to leave in the name of Jesus. Obsession – demonic influence which seems to reside inside a person, usually afflicting a certain area of a person’s life in the form of strong habitual temptations. A person may open oneself to such influence by deliberately seeking the presence or power of evil spirits through witchcraft, Satanism, or fortune-telling (ouija, tarot etc.); demonic obsession may also occur through other grave sins which are not explicitly associated with the occult, e.g. sexual activity by consecrated or ordained persons pledged to celibacy. The obsessing spirit usually needs to be identified by name and cast out (i.e. commanded to leave) or bound (i.e. forbidden from exerting any further influence). Possession is very rare, and only occurs when human beings wilfully hand over complete control of their life to Satan, by expressly doing so or by embracing grave sin. Formal exorcism, sanctioned by the diocesan bishop, is always required in such cases.Infestation is used to refer to the influence of evil spirits over objects, animals, houses or places.

The Old Testament predicted the coming of the Messiah. But the idea that He would actually live in His redeemed church, made up mostly of Gentiles, was not revealed. The New Testament is clear that Christ, by the Holy Spirit, takes up permanent residence in all believers (cf. Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 6:19, 20; Eph. 2:22). The revelation of the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles awaited the New Testament (Eph. 3:3-6). Believers, both Jew and Gentile, now possess the surpassing riches of the indwelling Christ (John 14:23; Rom. 8:9-10; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 1:7, 17-18; 3:8-10, 16-19; Phil. 4:19). The church is described as “the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (2 Cor. 6:16). That Christ indwells all believers is the source for their hope of glory and is the subject or theme of the gospel ministry. What makes the gospel attractive is not just that it promises present joy and help, but that it promises eternal honor, blessing, and glory. When Christ comes to live in a believer, His presence is the anchor of the promise of heaven—the guarantee of future bliss eternally (cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-5; Eph. 1:13-14). In the reality that Christ is living in the Christian is the experience of new life and hope of eternal glory.

The goal of the ministry is the maturity of the saints. Paul expressed that clearly in Ephesians 4:11-13: “[Christ] gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ.” That goal was shared by Epaphras, the founder of the Colossian church: “Epaphras, who is one of your number, a bondslave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings, always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God” (Col. 4:12). Our aim is not merely to win people to Christ, but to bring them to spiritual maturity. They will then be able to reproduce their faith in others. In 2 Timothy 2:2 Paul charged Timothy, “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” To be complete, or mature, is to be like Christ. Although all Christians strive for that lofty end, no one on earth has arrived there yet (cf. Phil. 3:12). Every believer, however, will one day attain it. “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). Christians move toward maturity by feeding on God’s Word: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). The Colossian heretics believed perfection was only for the elite, a view shared by many others throughout history. The American journalist Walter Lippmann wrote, As yet, no teacher has ever appeared who was wise enough to know how to teach his wisdom to all mankind. In fact, the great teachers have attempted nothing so Utopian. They were quite well aware how difficult for most men is wisdom, and they have confessedly stated that the perfect life was for the select few. In contrast, Christ offers spiritual maturity to every man and woman.

The presence of anger is an indication that something is seriously wrong. But instead of lashing out in anger, we need to face our fears and shame, take them to God, and be healed.

The humble man feels no jealousy or envy. He can praise God when others are preferred and blessed before him. He can bear to hear others praised and himself forgotten, because in God's presence he has learnt to say with Paul, 'I am nothing.' He has received the spirit of Jesus, who pleased not Himself, and sought not His own honour, as the spirit of his life.

The church in the present age is called not only to experience God’s blessing through the work of the Spirit, but to be a blessing by the power of the Spirit. Through the ministry of reconciliation afforded us in the gospel, we are called to pronounce the reality of God’s kingdom come in Christ, thereby expanding God’s covenant blessings promised to Abraham—the reception of “the promised Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:14). Peter exhorts the church to “bless, for to this you were called” (1 Pet. 3:9), with the result of receiving a blessing. The body of Christ is to mediate the blessings of God to the present age through lives no longer shaped by the passions of the surrounding culture (1 Pet. 2:11–12), but as those who know the reality of God’s kingdom blessings, even in the midst of—indeed, fueled by—suffering and trials. Peter writes, “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Pet. 4:13–14). By the Spirit, we bless and experience blessings, anticipating the day when the glory of Christ will be revealed. Instead of wealth and power revealing Christ’s kingdom to the world, Peter explains, when we come to know the blessings of the kingdom in the midst of trial, we thereby bless those around us by allowing our lives to bear witness to the reality of Christ’s kingdom.

The words of Isaiah 35:5–6 also point to a prophetic perspective of a new creation that reveals the transformation of a fallen, post–Genesis 3 world. Jesus’s miracles were not simply “spiritual healings.” He miraculously altered the material world in real time and space. Blind eyes received sight, lame hands were transformed, and the dead were raised. The blessings of the kingdom of God were a reversal of the brokenness of human sin, frailty, and even mortality. Jesus’s kingdom ministry was no less than a holistic transformation of reality into a new creation. His ministry met people who were broken both spiritually and physically and brought spiritual transformation and physical healing. Jesus then concludes his comments to John’s followers stating the blessed happiness experienced by those who respond rightly in identifying him as the “one who is to come.

Getting Off the Island of Lost Boys and Girls The first step to getting off this God-forsaken island is to understand ministry is wherever you are as a disciple of Jesus. When I first chose the public-university route, Christian friends would say, “Wow, I’m really surprised you’re not going into ministry.” But they had no idea of the ministry happening all around me, through me, and growing inside of me. They weren’t there when I carried my drunk classmate to her dorm room at 3:00 a.m. and slept on her floor to make sure she was safe. They weren’t hearing the midnight conversations between my Jewish roommate and me. They didn’t know how much ministry was happening as I lit the menorah with her at Hanukkah or how the presence of God filled our room as we read the Easter story together that same year. They didn’t know about the lunches with my atheist professors who wore me down as they challenged my charismatic upbringing and tried to tell me there was no God. They didn’t see me wrestling with my faith and that with each day God was perfecting it. Ministry is all around us, and if we let him, he’ll show us it isn’t confined to a position in a church building that we fear can be stolen. It’s in the everyday hugs and phone calls we make, in teachers grading papers and doctors charting medical information, in stay-at-home moms and dads packing lunches with little notes where Jesus shows up, and the Kingdom advances because we are right where he wants us. When we learn that ministry is right where we are, we go big, we don’t hold back, and we don’t wait for something better. We stop being afraid it can be stolen. We don’t care if we’re overlooked. It might be holding back your roommate’s hair after a long night of partying or rocking a sleeping baby or mowing your neighbor’s lawn. This isn’t selfie material. Setting sail with the Great Commission (go and make disciples) and the Great Commandment (love God and love people) as our North Star keeps us off the Island of Lost Boys and Girls.

but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives.

The Bible says to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Taste is experience. See is perception. What we experience in God will always affect what and how we see. And lest you think such encounters are dangerous, it’s the absence of encounters we should fear the most. Case in point: What would the apostle Paul’s ministry have been like without his Damascus Road experience? The Bible is one big storybook about the lives of people who encountered God and what they were like following that experience. Encountering God changes everything, as it should. But as true sons and daughters of God, we must value the simple as well as the overwhelming.

The Ministry of presence was a gift from God to mothers. They are ever present in our lives. Nothing is more precious than mother's love

A natural outcome of time spent in the safety of God’s presence is that it becomes quite natural to engage routinely in a rhythm of celebrating who we are in Christ and the work of transformation that God is doing in our lives, as well as inviting him to show us those places where we are still living in bondage to sin and negative patterns. Without the regular experience of being received and loved by God in solitude and silence, we are vulnerable to a kind of leadership that is driven by profound emptiness that we are seeking to fill through performance and achievement.

Creation itself—not ritual or spaces constructed by human hands—was Francis’ primary cathedral. His love for creation drove him back into the needs of the city, a pattern very similar to Jesus’ own movement between desert solitude (contemplation) and small-town healing ministry (action). The gospel transforms us by putting us in touch with that which is much more constant and satisfying, literally the “ground of our being,” which has much more “reality” to it, rather than theological concepts or ritualization of reality. Daily cosmic events in the sky and on the earth are the Reality above our heads and beneath our feet every minute of our lives: a continuous sacrament, signs of God’s universal presence in all things

is worth lingering for a moment over Paul’s focus on the heart in this passage. By emphasizing the importance of the heart, he reminds the Corinthians of the presence of the Spirit in their hearts—the Spirit who enables them to become “a letter of Christ” (3:2–3; see 1:21–22). Paul thus subtly challenges them to heed the Spirit’s power. Moreover, the theme of hearts calls to mind the †new covenant promises that God would remove people’s stony hearts and replace them with hearts of flesh, hearts amenable to the Spirit’s promptings (3:3). Paul thereby exhorts the community to bear in their relationship with him the fruit of the new covenant ministry.

This terrible absence is, like a black hole, not simply a passive emptiness waiting to be filled. It is a menacing awareness of a force that is fundamentally set against all that exists and is good. This absence is the experience of evil, what St. Augustine called many centuries ago the privatio boni, the absence of the good. Survivors of torture have expressed the experience of this special kind of absence. Devout Christians have recounted how, in the midst of their torture, they did not feel the presence of God, even though they knew that God sides with the oppressed. No, they did not feel that presence at all. All that they did experience was this menacing absence. Perhaps the women at the tomb that day experienced such a thing.

My task was simply to bear witness to the Christ who was already there. We all do this when we listen for the feelings behind the words, sit with others, offer a touch of the hand or a hug, and love them as Christ loves them. That is the ministry of presence—to re-flect the presence of Christ who always goes before us.

a person who is fully occupied with Christ, who knows Him well, and who is in touch with Him through daily fellowship can boldly say, “Christ is all I need. You can strip everything else away from me, and I would still be left with Christ. Take away my gifts and my ministry; take away signs and wonders; take away the sense of His presence; take away my ability to read; and take away every spiritual and religious pursuit I have, and I will still have Christ. And in having Him, I have everything.

Friend, you are special. God gave you certain characteristics, personality traits, talents, and aptitudes for a reason—for you to fulfill a unique role in history. And when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, He gave you certain spiritual gifts to use in ministry, for His glory (Ephesians 2:10). Therefore, today, embrace who your Creator says you are—His beloved child who is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). No one who has ever lived before, is alive now, or will be in the future has been just like you. So enjoy who God made you to be!

Only through its presence and ministries grounded in local places is the church able to proclaim the gospel message: "Today salvation has come to this house.

Those who restrict themselves to mere words limit their gift, and may unintentionally lead believers to pride by increasing knowledge without an increased awareness of God’s presence and power. It’s in the trenches of Christlike ministry that we learn to become totally dependent upon God. Moving in the impossible through relying on God short-circuits the development of pride.

First, the missionary is a model for missions. That may seem scary, but you must never forget God has given you your status. In essence, you are a walking testimony of God’s coveted plan for world evangelism. Bacon says, “The presence of a missionary is a living illustration of obedience to the Great Commission.” In raising support, you keep God’s priority of ministry in front of the body of Christ and help others become mission-minded.

The most important relationship of presence to combat absence will be in the Eucharist.

But the fact remains that there are numerous homosexual Christians—like my friend Gary and some of my ablest theological students—whose lives show signs of the presence of God, whose work in ministry is genuine and effective. How is such experiential evidence to be assessed? Should we, like the earliest Jewish Christians who hesitated to accept “unclean” Gentiles into the community of faith, acknowledge the work of the Spirit and say, “Who are we to stand in the way of what God is doing?” (cf. Acts 10:1–11:18)? Or should we see this as one more instance of a truth that all of us in ministry know sadly about ourselves: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”? God gives the Spirit to broken people and ministers grace even through us sinners, without thereby endorsing our sin.

Jesus’ ministry had roots in grace expressed primarily through the quality of presence: the way he chose to be present, in relationship and in the company of others, even with those who wished him harm.

Half of all regular church-going adults admit that they have not experienced God’s presence at any time during the past year. The younger the adult, the more likely they are to state that God is a distant, impersonal reality for them. And even among those who say God’s presence was evident to them, most of them say that happened only one or two times throughout the course of the year.

Suffering became a door for me into the presence of Christ as he really is, not as I expected him to be.

Ministry with young people—in fact, ministry with anybody—intrinsically relies on imagination to vividly and compellingly invite others into God’s presence.

His one desire was not to be vindicated in front of his enemies, but to be in the presence of the Lord (v.

Integrity, honesty, reverence toward God, avoidance of evil and consistent religious affection are graces that ought to characterize the servant of God. They are not developed instantly, but result from the consistently demonstrable growth of a “new creation”30 in Christ.

Luther’s teaching is this: Anything we look to more than we look to Christ for our sense of acceptability, joy, significance, hope, and security is by definition our god — something we adore, serve, and rely on with our whole life and heart. In general, idols can be good things (family, achievement, work and career, romance, talent, etc. — even gospel ministry) that we turn into ultimate things to give us the significance and joy we need. Then they drive us into the ground because we must have them. A sure sign of the presence of idolatry is inordinate anxiety, anger, or discouragement when our idols are thwarted. So if we lose a good thing, it makes us sad, but if we lose an idol, it devastates us.

Phoebe Palmer’s mysticism—her lived experience of the transforming presence of God—gave birth to her theology which had an incalculable impact on the world. Palmer’s achievements as a preacher, humanitarian, ecumenist, feminist, writer and theologian were all due to her grounding in “the mystical element of religion.” Palmer’s mystical experiences and their powerful impact on her ministry are clearly within the stream of a long tradition of Christian mysticism.

The coming of the messianic King occurs in two stages. At his first coming, he saved us from the penalty of sin and gave us the presence of the Holy Spirit, the down payment of the age to come (2 Cor 1:21 – 22; Eph 1:13–14). At the end of time, he will come to complete what he began at the first coming, saving us from the dominion and very presence of sin and evil. He will bring a new creation, a material world cleansed of all brokenness. Christians now live in light of that future reality. We evangelize, telling people about the gospel and preparing them for the judgment. We also help the poor and work for justice, because we know that this is God’s will and that he will ultimately overcome all oppression. We teach Christians to integrate their faith and their work so they can be culture makers, working for human flourishing — the common good. The “already but not yet” of the kingdom keeps us from utopian, triumphalistic visions of cultural takeover on the one hand, and from pessimism or withdrawal from society on the other.

I don’t believe in the power of prayer. I believe in the power and presence of God, so I pray.” He adds, “We know that God brings light out of darkness, life out of death, hope out of despair. That’s what Scripture teaches us.” Prayer isn’t the way to get God to do whatever we want. It’s an expression of our trust in His power, wisdom, and grace. No matter what we ask God to do for us, we are to have the attitude of Jesus, who said, “Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

Gospel renewal does not simply seek to convert nominal church members; it also insists that all Christians — even committed ones — need the Spirit to bring the gospel home to their hearts for deepened experiences of Christ’s love and power. In Paul’s great prayer for the Ephesians in chapter 3, he prays for his readers that Christ will dwell in their hearts and they may be filled with all the fullness of God. This is noteworthy, since he is writing to Christians, not nonbelievers. By definition, all Christians already have Christ dwelling in them (1 Cor 6:19; Col 1:27) and have the fullness of God (Col 2:9–10) by virtue of their union with Christ through faith (see sidebar on “A Biblical Theology of Revival” on pp. 58 – 59). What does Paul mean, then, by his prayer? He must be saying that he hopes the Ephesians will experience what they already believe in and possess — the presence and love of Christ (Eph 3:16–19). But how does this experience happen? It comes through the work of the Spirit, strengthening our “inner being” and our “hearts” so that as believers we can know Christ’s love (see v. 16). It happens, in other words, through gospel renewal.

When Abraham journeyed from Hebron (v. 1), he left God’s presence and the proper standing on which he could have fellowship with God (13:18 and notes). Although he had been circumcised both physically and spiritually (17:10, 23-24 and note 101), when he left the proper standing of fellowship with God, Abraham was again in the flesh and repeated his previous failure (12:13). This shows that no matter how high our spiritual attainment may be, as long as we are still in the old creation, if we do not remain in fellowship with God, we are capable of being in the flesh and of behaving like the worldly people. We should never have any confidence in our flesh; the flesh is absolutely untrustworthy (Rom. 7:18; Phil. 3:3). We must put our trust in the Lord’s presence.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, probably for the first time in human history, the living presence of the abyss—that is, the simultaneous existence of one world that is dying and another one that is being born—is a widely shared experience for millions of people across cultures, sectors, and generations. It is experienced in communities as well as in ministries, global companies, NGOs, and UN organizations—wherever people are looking at the real picture. It’s a felt sense that applies to relationships, institutions, and systems, but even more to the personal level of our journey from self to Self.

Prayer: Father God, I come to You, not experiencing this power of ministry that Oswald had. Awaken my soul that I might claim what has already been given to me. I want to exhibit power in my beliefs and live by Your strength. Amen.   Action: Claim all the provisions given by possessing the Holy Spirit in your life.   Today’s Wisdom: Without the presence of the Spirit there is no conviction, no regeneration, no sanctification, no cleansing, no acceptable works. We can perform duties without Him, but our service is dull and mechanical. Life is in the quickening Spirit. —W. A. CRISWELL

Nowhere else in all the Bible is there a preface to a command like this one: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1–2). The command is three short words. “Preach the word”—in the context of 2 Timothy 3:16–17 meaning the “God-breathed” word of Scripture. But the introduction to the command is spectacular. It is calculated to make us take a deep breath and be sober minded about the task of preaching. “I charge you.” “In the presence of God.” “And in the presence of Christ Jesus.” “He will judge.” “The living.” “And the dead.” “By his appearing.” “And by his kingdom.” In view of these weightiest of realities, preach the word. How could Paul have made preaching any more momentous

from a Wesleyan perspective, we can easily see how the imagination is one of the ways the Holy Spirit works preveniently in our lives—before we’re even aware of God’s presence.

am deeply burdened by observing churches lessen their value of prayer in all their meetings. We need prayer that is relational and fellowship oriented. This kind of prayer in a leaders’ meeting goes beyond a quick invitation to God for his help in decision making. This is the kind of prayer that at the opening of the worship team practice leads the team to a deep level of communion with God. This is the kind of prayer that connects us to a living God and draws us into his heart’s desires. The church that has prayer woven into the fabric of its entire ministry will be absorbed with the presence of God. If

Day did what sensitive people do when other people are in trauma. We are all called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don’t know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don’t compare. The sensitive person understands that each person’s ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else’s. Next, they do the practical things—making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don’t try to minimize what is going on. They don’t attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don’t say that the pain is all for the best. They don’t search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don’t bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct.

The light the priest sheds on the community is as the light of the moon. This is one way of describing what is said here. It underlies the fact that the priest is both different from the community and yet exists only, in one sense, by virtue of community. What is seen in the priest is the reflection of what is the presence of God in the people.

The priest in the church is called to serve this priesthood of Christ, to stand in the midst of the cloud of unknowing, to lead the community to the consciousness of God's saving word, and to invite into God's strengthening arms those who are far from his presence.

It may seem simple, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. To surrender myself to intimacy with Jesus during the first minutes of the day has been the driving force of my life and ministry. Sitting at His feet, I have admired Him, and He has re-created me in His presence... the rest came naturally. When He speaks, His voice transforms me; all I have to do is reproduce His words. When He looks at me, His love inspires me and at the same time grants me His authority. Dear colleague. If you are asking for my advice, it would be this: carefully read this phrase because it contains the essence of fifty years of service: Sit every day at the feet of Christ, and then tell the world what you have seen. Affectionately in Him,

Spiritual leadership springs forth in grace from our very desire for God’s presence. This does not take effort or striving. It takes courage, a kind of showing up, attentiveness.

Paul’s lesser-to-greater comparisons make another important point. Notice that the verbs associated with the new covenant ministry are in the future tense: will … be (v. 8), will abound (v. 9), will … be (v. 11). Paul thereby intimates the glory to be realized in eternal life. It is in the presence of God in heavenly glory that the fullness of the blessings of the new covenant will be enjoyed (see 2 Cor 5:1–10).

Tourists enter Tehran from the south on a carriageway built by order of the Shah. On the city’s outskirts they pass through the green belt he envisioned would protect Tehran from the twin scourges of desert wind and dust. In the central city visitors pass by the government ministries, hospitals, universities, schools, concert halls, monuments, bridges, sports complexes, hotels, museums, galleries, and gleaming underground metro that were among his many pet projects. … He championed the social welfare state that today provides Iranians with access to state-run health care and education. He raised the scholarship money that allowed hundreds of thousands of Iranian university students, including many luminaries of the Islamic Republic, to study abroad at leading American and European universities. The Shah ordered the fighter jets that made Iran’s air force the most powerful in southwestern Asia. He established the first national parks and state forests and ordered strict water, animal, and conservation measures. Perhaps it is no surprise that Iran today has the look and feel of a haunted house. The man who built modern Iran is nowhere to be seen but his presence is felt everywhere. The revolutionaries who replaced the Shah may not like to hear it, but Iran today is as much his country as it is theirs.

Through [the Eucharist's] celebration Christ makes himself present and that presence, it is interesting to note, is largely made through words which may be those of holy scripture or those of the poets who, together with the music that their words have evoked, have enriched our worship throughout the centuries. These patterns of words, music, gesture, and movement, sometimes of great beauty, have formed the setting of the eucharistic action on whose content in one way and another they have thrown light. Together they have manifested the Christ who makes himself present. Likewise, the prayer of the Church, whether it is called the Divine Office or Mattins and Evensong, which are so largely scriptural, recalls the past, speaks through Christ who is present, and constantly looks on to the end.

More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems.

But the Mountain of Transfiguration is given to us only to provide strength for the daily ministry and to enable us to walk the way of the cross. Susanna Wesley, the mother of John and Charles Wesley, had a prayer: ‘Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in thy presence.’ The moment of glory does not exist for its own sake; it exists to clothe the common things with a radiance they never had before.

But I’m able again to offer rest and hospitable presence for others because I actually possess something of this myself. The grace of this amazes me. When I first introduced the idea of “resting months” to our congregation, they didn’t like it. Three months a year we’d give all our weekly ministries a break without guilt (April, August, and December). I did this because of the age of our congregation, made up of mostly young families with kids. These same families were doing all the volunteering at the church and in the community. Between serving and volunteering, going to Bible studies and house groups, people were wearing out. On the flip side, if anyone did take a break they felt enormous guilt, like they were letting God and us down. Of course, we don’t mandate that our members observe resting months; people can keep meeting if they desire to. But over the years, most have grown thankful for the built-in rhythm they provide. We strategically rest in order to vigorously keep going. If we don’t, we wind up taking unplanned breaks because we are sick or burned out from overworked schedules.

CHAPTER ONE The Entrance into Jerusalem and the Cleansing of the Temple 1. The Entrance into Jerusalem Saint John’s Gospel speaks of three Passover feasts celebrated by Jesus in the course of his public ministry: the first, which is linked to the cleansing of the Temple (2:13-25), the Passover of the multiplication of the loaves (6:4), and finally the Passover of his death and Resurrection (for example, 12:1, 13:1), which became “his” great Passover, the basis for the Christian celebration of Easter, the Christian Passover. The Synoptics contain just one Passover feast—that of the Cross and Resurrection; indeed, in Saint Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ path is presented as a single pilgrim ascent from Galilee to Jerusalem. To begin with, it is an “ascent” in a geographical sense: the Sea of Galilee is situated about 690 feet below sea level, whereas Jerusalem is on average 2500 feet above. The Synoptics each contain three prophecies of Jesus’ Passion as steps in this ascent, steps that at the same time point to the inner ascent that is accomplished in the outward climb: going up to the Temple as the place where God wished “his name [to] dwell”, in the words of the Book of Deuteronomy (12:11, 14:23). The ultimate goal of Jesus’ “ascent” is his self-offering on the Cross, which supplants the old sacrifices; it is the ascent that the Letter to the Hebrews describes as going up, not to a sanctuary made by human hands, but to heaven itself, into the presence of God (9:24). This ascent into God’s presence leads via the Cross—it is the ascent toward “loving to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1), which is the real mountain of God. The immediate goal of Jesus’ pilgrim journey is, of course, Jerusalem, the Holy City with its Temple, and the “Passover of the Jews”, as John calls it (2:13).

The power of the church truly to bless, rests on intercession – asking and receiving heavenly gifts to carry to other men. Because this is so, it is no wonder that where – owing to lack of teaching or spiritual insight, trust in our own diligence and effort, the influence of the world and the flesh, and that we work more than we pray – the presence and power of God are not seen in our work as we would wish.

Hebrews 10:21-25 describes the purpose for our encounter with God: And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

to hire a “strong leader,” as she put it, with the hope that whoever it was would take charge of an inefficient staff. However, within months some were complaining of Jim’s bullying. Sandy, who directed the youth ministry, said, “I’ve never seen a worse bedside presence. He has no empathy, only opinions.” Dick, a longtime pastor of discipleship, cited Jim’s condescension in their meetings with one another, even though Jim was younger and had no ministry experience prior to this role. When Denise sat down to discuss these issues with Jim, he allowed little time before he launched into a

In her book Leaving Church, former parish priest and award-winning preacher Barbara Brown Taylor describes what it was like to feel her soul slipping away. She says: Many of the things1 that were happening inside of me seemed too shameful to talk about out loud. Laid low by what was happening at Grace-Calvary, I did not have the energy to put a positive spin on anything. . . . Beyond my luminous images of Sunday mornings I saw the committee meetings, the numbing routines, and the chronically difficult people who took up a large part of my time. Behind my heroic image of myself I saw my tiresome perfectionism, my resentment of those who did not try as hard as I did, and my huge appetite for approval. I saw the forgiving faces of my family, left behind every holiday for the last fifteen years, while I went to conduct services for other people and their families. Above all, I saw that my desire to draw as near to God as I could had backfired on me somehow. Drawn to care for hurt things, I had ended up with compassion fatigue. Drawn to a life of servanthood, I had ended up a service provider. Drawn to marry the Divine Presence, I had ended up estranged. . . . Like the bluebirds that sat on my windowsills, pecking at the reflections they saw in the glass, I could not reach the greenness for which my soul longed. For years I had believed that if I just kept at it, the glass would finally disappear. Now for the first time, I wondered if I had devoted myself to an illusion.