Meat Church

When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart’s delight…
Jeremiah 15:16

How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Psalm 119:103

What does it mean to be “Spirit-led” in our Sunday morning worship services?

One way to answer this question is to compare it to the beautiful art of cooking red meat. Preparing steak and brisket can teach us a great deal about how the Spirit moves in a worship service.

There are certain traditions within the church that virtually equate being “Spirit-led” with being “spontaneous.” You often find this kind of thinking in charismatic and Pentecostal churches. If a worship song or sermon is planned, then it’s not very Spirit-led. To be Spirit-led in these churches means to follow the spontaneous promptings of the Spirit in the moment. So a Spirit-led song is one that doesn’t follow the words on the screen but instead spontaneously flows from the heart. A Spirit-led worship service isn’t scripted.

This view of what it means to be Spirit-led is often a reaction against the hyper-scripted liturgical traditions. Sometimes it’s a reaction against the new form of hyper-scripted worship service — the multi-site, hyper-produced, mega-church service that is timed down to the millisecond.

It’s probably important to mention that not all things that are “spontaneous” in a worship service are from the Holy Spirit. This is why it is often unhelpful to always equate “Spirit-led” with “spontaneous.” Sometimes spontaneous worship moments by musicians or off-the-cuff stories that are unplanned by the preacher are not coming from the Holy Spirit but simply from their human spirit. As a worse-case scenario, some spontaneous things in worship could be coming from an evil spirit. So “Spirit-led” can’t always be equated with “spontaneous.”

While I agree that the Spirit does move through spontaneous moments in the worship service, I also believe that the Spirit moves through plans that are made by the pastors as they listen to the Spirit all week long. These two ways of being Spirit-led (the Spirit-led spontaneous and the Spirt-led planning) go together really well and remind me of two beautiful ways to prepare red meat.

The Spirit-led spontaneous reminds me of throwing steaks on the grill. The Holy Spirit in scripture is often depicted as a fire. The fire heats up and the flame creates an awesome char on the meat. Steaks cook fast. These quick, spontaneous moments of being Spirit-led can and do happen in a worship service where people are willing to follow the Spirit’s lead.

But there’s another way to make meat taste amazing. Smoking meat produces an incredible result if done correctly, but the rule of smoking meat is “low and slow.” With smoking meat, it’s not the flame that imparts flavor to the meat (as is the case with grilling), it’s the smoke. This is how Spirit-led worship planning should happen throughout the week. As the worship leaders and pastors sit in God’s presence allowing the Spirit to speak to them all week long, the deep aroma of Christ is imparted to the service (2 Corinthians 2:14-15). It’s not spontaneous. It’s planned. It’s low and slow. It’s following the lead of the Spirit days in advance, but it’s still “Spirit-led.”

With grilling, the meat needs to already be tender for it to work. You don’t grill tough meats, you smoke them. This is often true of a worship service as well. When things are spontaneous, they work best with truths that are already obvious, already tender, already able to be readily consumed.

But if you are dealing with passages of scripture or truths that are hard to understand, that are tough, then you need more than a quick, spontaneous Spirit-led moment. You need a low and slow studying of scripture. You need a low and slow process of listening to the Spirit speak the deep truths of God’s word to your heart. You need time. You need patience. It’s a lot like smoking tough cuts of meat until they are fall-apart tender. It takes the “low and slow” of planning and studying to unpack the deeper truths of scripture.

My favorite kind of worship service, and favorite way to prepare steak, is to combine both of these methods. When it comes to meat, it’s called a reverse sear. My brother-in-law did this for me on my birthday. He took a ribeye steak and first smoked it for a few hours. Then right at the end, when the temperature was almost medium-rare, he threw it on the grill to get that sear and that char. This steak was amazing because it had the smoke favor imparted to it from the low and slow, and it had the charred sear on the outside imparted from the grill. This is also what we need in our worship services.

We need the Spirit-led spontaneous moments in our worship, in our sermons, and in our prayer times. And we also need the Spirit-led planning the week before the worship service, so that we can consume difficult truths that have been tenderized with forethought, study, and Spirit-inspired wisdom. Our worship services need both. One without the other can fall short of the fullness that is available to us.

Our goal for every Sunday service should be a Spirit-led reverse sear – spontaneous moments with the Lord combined with tenderized, deep truth of scripture. Amen.

Wrong Words

Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good,reject every kind of evil.
1 Thessalonians 5:20-22

The Bible is clear that we should not treat prophecies and prophetic gifts with contempt. Healthy church cultures should make room for every follower of Jesus to hear from the Lord for themselves. The priesthood of the believers means that we don’t wait for the super-gifted to tell us what God is saying. Instead, we each cultivate an intimacy with Jesus, and that includes hearing from the Holy Spirit ourselves.

When each person is hearing the Lord in their own lives, this creates a prophetic culture where we can “test” whether what someone is saying is from the Lord. Just as our own personal study of scripture helps us to know if the preacher is preaching a sermon that is biblically sound, hearing from the Lord in our own lives helps us to test whether someone is giving a prophetic word that is actually from the Lord.

So while we don’t want to stifle prophetic gifts in the church, we also don’t want them to be used without checks and balances. Accountability and feedback are important tools that help a prophetic community stay healthy. Untested prophetic words are not biblical. If there are going to be people hearing from God and operating in prophetic gifts, then there also needs to be a community of those who are discerning and testing those words.

If someone has the gift of prophecy, why do they give wrong words sometimes?

First, we need to understand that every prophetic word has three parts to it. There’s 1) the word, 2) the interpretation of the word, and 3) the application of the word. The core revelation from the Holy Spirit is the word. It could be an actual word, a sentence, a mental picture, a mental movie, an external vision or a dream. And that word can never contradict the Bible because scripture has ultimate authority.

After the word comes, it has to be interpreted. Interpretation answers the question, “What does this mean?” Finally, it must be applied. Application answers the question, “What do I do?”

Sometimes a prophetic person gets the word right but the interpretation wrong. Sometimes they get the word right and the interpretation right but the application wrong (most of the time the application should be left to the person the word is for). Because there is a lot of room to have the flesh of the prophetic person get in the way (even if they get the word right), there needs to be discernment and testing of every word.

There are also times that it isn’t about the interpretation or the application. Sometimes the prophetic person simply gets the actual word wrong. The core revelation isn’t from the Lord. How does this happen?

In the new covenant, prophecy is different than it was in the old covenant. The Holy Spirit isn’t just resting upon us (like Old Testament prophets) but is now dwelling within us. That means, in the new covenant, God has chosen to use us, His Church, as conduits of ushering in the Kingdom of God on the earth.

What this means for prophecy is that when we get a word from the Lord, it is flowing through us. Most of the time, we aren’t hearing the audible voice of God and then simply repeating what we heard (like Old Testament prophets). One way to put it is that we aren’t “receiving” the word in a simple form, but instead we are “perceiving” a word from the Lord. God’s communication isn’t hitting our ears, but instead it is flowing through our spirit and through our soul (our mind, will, and emotions).

Because God’s communication is coming through our mind, will and emotions, it is coming through our personality. It’s like light pouring through a lens. Those lenses are often colored with our thoughts and our emotions. And, sometimes, those lenses are cracked. If we’ve been hurt and haven’t totally healed emotionally from that hurt, it creates little cracks in the lenses of our heart and mind.

Now, as the light of God’s revelation comes pouring through our cracked lenses, sometimes it will come through clean with maybe just a little coloring of our personality and vocabulary. Other times it will hit one of those cracks and skew the direction and content of the word. That means the same person could sometimes have a word that is actually from the Lord and other times they could be totally off. This is why discernment is so important in the church community.

Here are some things that skew words that the Lord gives us:

hurtful experiences
prejudices toward particular kinds of people
emotional pain, especially a perpetual feeling of rejection
strong political opinions (notice this in election years)
unbiblical theological views, especially of end-times
chronic sin (unrepentant)

It’s one thing to realize that God is okay with our personality slightly coloring the words that He gives us (metaphorically giving the light a tint of blue or yellow or green). God actually designed the gifts of the Holy Spirit to be like that, to have a little bit of our personality mixed in. He wants the gifts of the Spirit to be incarnated in us and through us.

But it’s a different thing to operate in the prophetic with a cracked lens. With cracks in our heart and our mind, some of the words that come through end up being entirely wrong. And it’s not just the interpretation or the application that end up being wrong but the core word itself.

So, if a prophetic person gives a wrong word, does that make them a false prophet?

Well, if we were in the old covenant, that is what that would mean. But in the new covenant, we all have the Holy Spirit and are called to test and discern the words. They didn’t have this ability in the Old Testament so the accountability had to be more severe.

But, no, if a person gives a wrong word it doesn’t make them a false prophet. What makes a person a false prophet in the new covenant is if they reject Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, God-incarnate, the Lord and Savior of the world. Those who deny that Jesus is who He said He is are false prophets. But a prophetic person who gives a wrong word is simply a “wrong prophet” not a false prophet.

There needs to be accountability for wrong words, but we don’t need to stone the person to death or throw them out of the church (like in the old covenant). We need, instead, to pastor them. If a person consistently gets wrong words from the Lord, it means they’re operating with cracked lenses. Most often it’s a sign of a broken heart born out of continual rejection, biased political views, unhealthy end-times theology, or chronic sin in their life. They need pastoring and accountability. They also need to put a pause on the use of their prophetic gifts to ensure the enemy doesn’t continue to hijack the gifts and use them for his purposes.

Your Breath in Our Lungs

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
Ezekiel 37:9-10

The worship group All Sons & Daughters has a song called Great Are You Lord. It was released in 2013 and I’ve always really loved this song. There is a line in the song that says, “It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise.” This specific line, and the whole song in general, took on new meaning in 2016 after I had a profound encounter with the Lord in a worship service.

It was March, 4, 2016 and I was at a Cultivate Revival conference put on by Global Awakening. It was hosted by a Methodist church in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Bill Johnson, Dr. Randy Clark and Dr. Tom Jones were the main speakers. I drove up and stayed at an AirBnB by myself for the first few days of the conference. By Friday, some other friends had joined me.

Friday night Randy Clark did his impartation service. This is when he invites the Holy Spirit to come and radically touch everyone in the room. After some worship and teaching, Randy invited the Holy Spirit to move. We were instructed to wait on the Lord as worship played and, if we felt anything, we were to come to the front for someone to lay hands on us and pray for us.

As I waited, I asked the Spirit to fill me to overflow. Nothing much happened…at first. But then I noticed that my right hand started to shake involuntarily. This had never happened to me before so I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t think it was significant enough to go down front so I stayed in my seat near the back of the sanctuary.

After a while, the prayer team that was down front started to move out into the congregation and pray for people standing at their seats. A number of other things happened to me in that service as the prayer team began to come out to the people in the congregation. I started trembling and shaking involuntarily. I felt tingling in my hands. I felt the heavy weight of the glory of God resting on me. It felt like someone put a 20 lb. lead vest on me, like the kind you wear before getting X-rays on your teeth at the dentist.

One by one a prayer team member would come and pray for me and as they did God continued to do more. As one man began praying, something different began to happen to my breathing.

I was standing with my hands by my side and suddenly my lungs didn’t seem to work. They weren’t getting enough oxygen and I felt like I had to heave just to get any air. It was like my trachea had closed and very little air was getting in my lungs. It was so hard to breath that I asked the Lord what was happening to me. I heard him speak to my heart and say, “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.” Then I got the distinct impression that I was breathing in the Holy Spirit.

Fast forward nearly 8 years to today. I have seen many times now that when someone is getting free from a demonic spirit, they sometimes experience this phenomenon where they can’t breathe. This happened to one lady in my church when a spirit of death left her. This happened to another person when a spirit of fear left. I am now convinced this same thing was happening to me.

After a few moments of trying to trust God in the midst of struggling to breathe (it probably lasted only a minute but felt much longer), a man on the prayer team came and gave me this huge bear hug. Now I really couldn’t breathe. I have no idea why he did that except that he felt compelled by the Lord to do it. After he let go, I slumped down into my seat, and I could breathe again without issue.

I don’t know what left, but I believe some demonic spirit that had been attached to my life couldn’t stay while the Holy Spirit was getting poured out on me. And as it was on the way out, I couldn’t breathe. But after it left, the Father breathed His breath into me. He filled my lungs with His Spirit.

And this is why, from that moment on, I could never again sing that line in the worship song the same way.

“It’s your breath in our lungs

So we pour out our praise,

we pour out our praise”

Great Are You Lord, All Sons & Daughters

While I’m sure All Sons & Daughters meant this line to be metaphorical, I experienced this in a very literal, physical way. When I sing this song, I remember that God literally put His breath in my lungs, set me free from whatever was holding me back, and filled me with His Spirit.

What is a Vineyard Church?

I am currently serving as a pastor of a Vineyard Church, and we have been in the process of hiring a new youth pastor. I’ve looked at over 130 resumes that have been submitted to us, and I have interviewed over 30 people so far for this position. One thing I keep running into is that very few people know what a Vineyard Church is. I end up having to give a little elevator speech about who we are. The following is usually how I answer the question, “What is a Vineyard Church?”

Vineyard, as a network of churches, was born out of the Jesus People movement of the 1960s and 70s where thousands of hippies surrendered their life to the Lord. It got started in the mid-70s with a few churches but really didn’t become a movement of churches until John Wimber began to lead it in the early 1980s. There are now about 2500 Vineyard churches around the globe with roughly 500 of those existing in the U.S.

Originally, Vineyard churches were the result of trying to combine the evangelical and charismatic streams of the church. We emphasize experiential worship, sound biblical teaching, the priesthood of believers (“everyone gets to do the stuff of ministry”), and the operation of the supernatural gifts of the Spirit.

Although we engage in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit (like healing prayer, prophetic words, praying in tongues, words of knowledge, signs and wonders, etc) we do so with a Kingdom theology rather than a Pentecostal theology. (We’re huge fans of George Ladd and Dallas Willard). We stress that seeing the miraculous is one aspect of the Kingdom “already” being inaugurated on the earth. Yet, we should also expect moments of not seeing the miraculous because the Kingdom is “not yet” in its fullness. And it won’t be in its fullness until Jesus returns.

After spreading east from southern California, over time Vineyard began to add two more streams of the Christian tradition: the social justice and contemplative streams. The social justice stream emphasizes care for the poor and recognition of those who have been marginalized by various societal structures. The contemplative stream emphasizes spiritual formation and discipleship by way of Ignatian practices. The hope is to walk with Jesus daily in a way that creates space for a deep interior life with God. Vineyard practices spiritual formation from an evangelical perspective rather than a Catholic perspective.

Each local Vineyard Church tries to hold these four streams together in tension:
Evangelical Stream, Charismatic Stream, Social Justice Stream, and Contemplative Stream. Each local Vineyard Church expresses this convergence of streams in different ways. Each church tends to choose one or two of these streams to emphasize over the other ones while still believing in the importance of all four of them. That’s why Vineyard Churches can feel a little different from one another.

As far as hot button issues: Vineyard affirms women in all roles of ministry but does not affirm the LGBTQ lifestyles. Vineyard believes that the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural gifts of the Spirit are alive and well and should be used in the church, but does so by empowering every believer rather than creating an unnecessary hierarchy of gifts. Vineyard believes that spiritual formation is key in helping people to deepen their walk with the Lord and provides opportunities for people to experiment with spiritual practices to that end.

I am biased, but I believe the convergence of these four streams within one church community makes Vineyard one of the most holistic expressions of the Kingdom of God that I’ve ever experienced in a church setting. If you want a community that cares about a deep, interior life with God while also expressing the powerful manifestations of the Spirit, a place that teaches from the authoritative word of God while also reaching out to the marginalized in our society, then Vineyard is the place for you.

We often say that people don’t “become” Vineyard, they simply realize one day that they already are Vineyard.

Receiving More

The Lord said to Moses: “Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them.
Numbers 11:16-17

A few months ago, during a Sunday worship service, I felt like the Lord asked me to do an impartation service before I left for Kansas. I had never really created a service like this, so I recruited some help from my sister, Jenn, and brother-in-law, Luke. The idea was to ask the Lord to release to others what He had so generously poured out on me over the last few years (gifts, power, authority, anointing, etc).

Two Sunday nights ago, we met at Luke’s giant, Amish barn where his family hosts auctions for pottery. About 35ish people showed up. We started the night with worship. Leroy and Jenn led us wonderfully into the Presence of God. By the third song it was clear that the place was being filled with God’s tangible presence. It was palpable. Luke then led us in a time of collective prayer of gratitude.

Then, I got up and did a short teaching on impartation. Impartation is basically a “transference of anointing.” Practically, it’s when you lay hands on someone and pray that the Holy Spirit fill them, empower them with new gifts, and fan into flame the gifts they already have. As He did with Moses, God takes some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and pours it out on someone else. It’s often the case that the Spirit will download some prophetic words for the person while we pray for them (in line with what Timothy experienced).

“Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.”
1 Timothy 4:14

So after my time of teaching, I invited the Holy Spirit to be poured out on each person there. I invited God’s Presence to overwhelm each person and for the Spirit to release new gifts to people. I invited anyone who felt God’s tangible presence on them in that moment to come to the front and we would pray for them first.

When you pray a prayer like that, you’re never quite sure what is going to happen. Maybe nothing will happen. But God is faithful. The Spirit started to move immediately and powerfully. A few people made their way to the front and I prayed for them. God touched them powerfully. Strong physical manifestations of the Spirit were present (people weeping, shaking, dropping to the ground, etc).

Then, with the help of my friend Cam, we went around the room praying for each person, and the Holy Spirit continued to move powerfully. God gave me and Cam prophetic words for each person. There was a lot of shaking, trembling, and weeping as people experienced a powerful outpouring of the Spirit.

It was incredible!

This went on for more than an hour as we worked our way around to each person. As we finished praying, I went to the front to close out the night. We lifted up praise to God for moving so powerfully among us.

As I was trying to conclude the night in prayer, people in the room started to spontaneously pray for me. Unexpectedly, they started thanking God for my ministry over the years and praying for my move and future ministry. Then, more people joined in praying for me and my family.

I definitely wasn’t expecting this. As people popcorned around praying for me, I could feel the Spirit, like a mighty wind, hit me. It intensified the more people kept praying. It’s hard to describe but it felt like a blast of wind, not physical wind, but like a force that was blasting me in the spirit. It got to the point where I couldn’t stand anymore and had to go down to my knees.

It was such a blessing not only to pray for everyone but to have them pray for me and my family. I thought I was there to give to others, and I was, but the Lord also had me there to receive. What I thought was a night for everyone else was also a night for me.

It’s a night I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. A week later and I’m still processing all that happened there. It was truly a beautiful night. I was so encouraged by how God used me to bless others. I was also so encouraged by how God used others to bless me.

A double blessing.

May this be just the beginning of more impartation nights in the future. Lord, as I hand to you my meager fish and loaves, may you multiply it to others and set them ablaze with your Presence and power. Amen.

Full

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:17-19

If you’ve ever stuffed yourself at dinner, you know that feeling. You feel full and heavy. But if you’ve ever fasted for a few days, you know the opposite feeling. You feel lighter but not full. What if, spiritually, you could feel both simultaneously?

“Somehow, I feel both lighter and fuller at the same time!“

This is a quote from a person who had just received inner healing and deliverance prayer. Read it again and let those words really sink in. This is what happens when the power of God comes to set people free from the heavy spiritual oppression of demonic spirits and then fills them with the Holy Spirit. When God comes in power to set you free, you feel both lighter and fuller at the same time. Only God can do that!

As we pray for people and these oppressive spirits leave, we always ask the Holy Spirit to fill the places in the person’s life that have just been vacated. We invite the Holy Spirit to fill every place in their heart, soul, mind, and body that had previously been occupied by the enemy.

Paul prayed something similar for the Ephesians when he prayed that they would be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” This is also what he was saying when he told the Ephesians,

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit…
Ephesians 5:18

Instead of being filled with the heaviness of sin and darkness, we are called to be people who walk in the lightness of the Spirit because we are filled with the Spirit.

If you have a heaviness that seems to follow you around, you may discover that you need freedom. You may have some spiritual parasites that have globbed onto your life and are sucking the life out of you. Demonic spirits love to bring a heaviness that feels empty. Instead, the Holy Spirit brings a lightness that feels full. This is the difference between the kingdom of darkness and the Kingdom of God.

Jesus paid a high price so that we could walk in freedom, lightness, and fullness. His Name is the only Name with the authority to set people free from demonic darkness and usher in the fullness of the Spirit.

All the people were amazed and said to each other, “What words these are! With authority and power he gives orders to impure spirits and they come out!”
Luke 4:36

he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth…
Philippians 2:8-10

God’s Familiar Presence in Unfamiliar Places

Come near to God and he will come near to you.
James 4:8

God’s presence is sometimes a tricky thing to talk about. For much of my life, talk of His presence stayed in the realm of theology. I affirmed that His presence was everywhere; He is omnipresent. But then I would have an occasional moment when I felt His presence. I didn’t know much about God’s tangible presence (or sometimes called his “manifest presence”), but I knew it was a different category than just His omnipresence.

Then, in 2014, I began to have increasing encounters with God’s tangible presence, increasing both in frequency and intensity. I began to understand that God’s tangible presence could directly impact not only our emotions but also our physical body. There is something different that happens when a measure of God’s presence steps through the thin veil that separates the natural realm from the spirit realm. This is what the priests experienced when they brought the ark of the covenant into Solomon’s Temple for the first time:

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple.
1 Kings 8:10-11

In my own life this looked like encounters with the Holy Spirit that would completely interrupt my normal functioning. At first, these encounters would simply be me weeping uncontrollably as the presence of God seemed to intensify. These weeping sessions wouldn’t just happen in church services. They would happen when I was alone in prayer or reading a book at Starbucks. This was not emotionalism. These encounters would happen at very unemotional times and in very unemotional places. This was God putting his finger on my heart, and my emotions would respond accordingly.

In 2016, after receiving impartation prayer, I began to have physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit. If you’re not familiar with the term “physical manifestation of the Spirit,” it just means that my body would react involuntarily to the increased presence of God.

These manifestations started with shaking and trembling in the presence of God. Then I started getting side crunches. My oblique muscle on my right side would contract on its own outside of my control. Imagine how your oblique muscles contract when someone pokes you with their finger in your side. But imagine it happening involuntarily in response to the Holy Spirit rather than to a poke. Then a few weeks later, it started happening on my left side.

A few weeks after that the Lord added another manifestation. My right hand started to curl up when the presence of God would intensify. Imagine the muscles in the middle of your palm contracting on their own apart from your control, like your hand was trying to grip something using only the muscles in your palm and not your fingers. Or imagine how your hand would respond if someone drove a spike through the center of your palm. That muscle contraction (minus the pain) is what it feels like when it happens. Then, a few weeks later, this started happening on my left hand.

A few months after that I was given another one. I was at Starbucks, and my right hip flexor contracted on its own while I was in the middle of reading a book on the miraculous. This one has even happened to me a few times while I was driving and singing worship songs. The presence of God would increase as I worshiped and my leg would get pulled off the accelerator as my hip flexor pulled up on its own. It’s a wild experience to have your body react to the Holy Spirit in such a way that your foot gets pulled off the gas pedal while you’re driving down the highway.

All of these physical manifestations of the Spirit continue to this day, and I experience them daily. The only reason I describe these in detail is because they have become a sort of “array of sensors” that can pick up on the increased presence of God or move of the Holy Spirit. They often act like a Geiger counter picking up on the radioactivity of the Spirit. The more tangible God’s presence, the more they go off.

We usually assume when someone picks up on the presence of God, they are having a subjective experience that is not quantifiable. And while that is mostly true, these physical manifestations of the Spirit have made picking up on the increase of God’s presence a more objective, measurable experience for me. The unexpected result of all of of this is that God has given me the ability to sense His increased presence anywhere that I am, and it’s not always in a church service.

There have been a few places that I picked up on the increased, tangible presence of God at moments and in places that I wouldn’t have expected. I’ll just mention two here:

Middle school choral performance: Last year, as a family, we went to watch my oldest son’s band performance. I wasn’t particularly interested in listening to the middle school chorus perform, but they were a part of the concert. As the kids sang, they did fine for a middle school, but my son wasn’t in the chorus so I was only mildly engaged.

But then I began to feel that familiar feeling of God’s increased presence. It totally caught me off guard. Multiple manifestations of the Spirit began to happen to me, and as they did, I took notice. I began to ask the Lord what was happening. He began to give me mental pictures of angels singing along with the kids and a sense of His pleasure when children sing. They weren’t singing worship songs. This was a public middle school performance. It was just the fact that children were singing, and angels with them, that drew in the increased presence of God.

This wasn’t me feeling proud of my kid as a dad. My son wasn’t up there. I didn’t know any of these kids. This was the increased presence of God descending right in the middle of that auditorium. The Lord began to show me how much He loved each of these kids, regardless of whether they knew anything about Him.

Children’s ballet dance performance at an outdoor festival: This one just happened the other day, and it really caught me by surprise. As a family we attended a local outdoor festival so that we could watch my middle son do a taekwondo demonstration with the Demo Team that he is a part of.

Before the taekwondo demonstration, a local ballet studio performed a dance routine for the audience of mostly parents. There was no stage. They had to perform their routine in a grass field. The girls ranged in age from what looked like 6 to 14 years old. They did great, but they were only kids in tennis shoes and tutus. This wasn’t a professional artistic masterpiece. These were little girls doing their best, which is why it surprised me to have the presence of God come like a freight train in the middle of their dance routine.

I was just standing there, again only half interested, when tears began welling up in my eyes. My side started crunching and my hand started to curl up. I began to feel the intense presence of God as they danced. I couldn’t believe it! They were dancing to the soundtrack of The Greatest Showman, which I love, but could hardly be mistaken for worship music.

I asked God about it as it was happening. Again, like the middle school chorus moment, I got the impression that angels were joining these girls in their dance movements. I could feel God’s pleasure. I could sense His smile. He loves it when children dance. Any children. Any kind of dancing. But especially the beauty of ballet. I’m not really a “dance” kinda guy, so it was really eye-opening to sense that God absolutely loves it when children dance. God was like one of the proud parents looking on, maybe the proudest of parents, and His presence was palpable.

If I hadn’t been given this “array of Holy Spirit sensors” in the form of physical manifestations of the Spirit, I’m not sure I would have picked up on the increase of God’s presence in these unassuming places. In fact, I’m fairly confident I wouldn’t have. I’m too oblivious. But with these tools, these sensors, I find that God’s increased presence happens in some unlikely places.

Conversely, I’ve been a part of quite a few worship services where His tangible presence doesn’t increase at all. Maybe it’s the distracted, disinterested congregation, or the unyielded worship leaders, or the pastor’s need to control the service. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, many church services often leave the Holy Spirit unwelcome and uninvited.

All of this is a good reminder to me that God delights in drawing near to people. He loves it. He’ll draw near at unlikely times and in unlikely places. But He’s not always welcome to do so in church. The Holy Spirit’s tangible presence is not always invited. And in those times, He will not increase His tangible presence. Unfortunately, He is often willing to do exactly what we’ve asked Him to do. And too often (with our actions, words, or heart-posture) we’ve asked Him to stay quiet, stay on the sidelines, and let us manage on our own.

5 Types of Impartation

Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses.
Deuteronomy 34:9

Impartation isn’t a word that every Christian tradition uses, but every Christian tradition does it in one form or another. To “impart” means “to give, convey, bestow, release, transmit, or confer.” For example, “The teacher imparted knowledge to her students.” Or, “The spices imparted flavor to the dish.”

Impartation carries with it the idea that something of value is being released or transmitted from one thing and given to another thing, or from one person to other people. Within the Body of Christ, there are at least five different kinds of impartation that exist for different purposes. With each of these five we’ll examine the primary mechanism used for impartation, the purpose of that type of impartation, and identify those who do the imparting.

1. Impartation of Truth

Primary mechanism: teaching

Purpose: Upgrade for our mind/thinking

Who does it? Anyone can impart truth, but some are particularly gifted who have the gift of teaching.

The impartation of truth can be seen in nearly every Christian tradition. Teaching and preaching are the primary ways that truth gets imparted either through a sermon, seminar, or bible study setting. The apostle Paul charges his protege Timothy to do just that:

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
2 Timothy 4:2-4

2. Impartation of Wisdom/Character

Primary mechanism: modeling

Purpose: Upgrade for our actions/decisions

Who does it? Anyone can impart wisdom, but some are particularly gifted with wisdom and are more seasoned with life experience.

The impartation of wisdom and character happens primarily through modeling wise living and wise decisions. It happens by spending time with people who have learned important lessons from life experience. It happens less by instruction and more through conversation and life together. It’s about watching someone live well and imitating what they do. Paul said it this way to the Corinthians:

Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
1 Corinthians 11:1

3. Impartation of Life/Courage

Primary mechanism: encouragement/affirmation

Purpose: Upgrade for our heart/confidence

Who does it? Anyone can impart life with their words, but some are particularly good at it who have the gift of encouragement.

The impartation of life and courage happens through the spoken word, specifically, words of affirmation and encouragement. Words are often more powerful than we realize. James 3 reminds us that words can build up and tear down. The proverbs remind us that words can impart life or death:

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Proverbs 18:21

4. Impartation of Authority

Primary mechanism: impartation prayer/laying on of hands

Purpose: Upgrade for our responsibility/authority

Who does it? Anyone can impart authority, but it most often has to come from those already in authority who are raising someone else up.

In most Christian traditions this kind of impartation is most clearly seen in the ordination ceremony of new pastors. Often, a group of elders will lay their hands on a young pastor who is being ordained into vocational ministry and will impart or confer their blessing and authority onto the young minister. While most people assume this is just a ceremonial rite of passage, throughout scripture we see the laying on of hands confer a real transference of authority. In other words, this isn’t just for show. Something is really being transferred in the spirit realm. We not only see Moses do this with Joshua (Numbers 27:18-20) but we also see this happen with the deacons in the early church.

“…choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.
Acts 6:3-6

5. Impartation of Anointing/Spiritual Gifts

Primary mechanism: impartation prayer/laying on of hands

Purpose: Upgrade for our spiritual gifting/anointing

Who does it? Anyone can pray to impart increased anointing and spiritual gifts because, ultimately, it is the Holy Spirit doing it, but some are particularly gifted who have the gift of impartation.

While most Christian traditions understand the reality and importance of the first four types of impartation, only a few actually understand and practice this kind of impartation. I have personally been on the giving and receiving end of this kind of impartation (mostly the receiving end) and it is very real and very powerful. With this kind of impartation, there is a transference of anointing, power, or spiritual gifts when one person lays hands on another (sometimes a transference of all three!). We see this kind of impartation happen both in the Old and New Testaments and we need more of it in the Church today. Here are some samples of it happening in scripture:

Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him.
Deuteronomy 34:9

The Lord said to Moses: “Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.”

So Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. He brought together seventy of their elders and had them stand around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took some of the power of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied—but did not do so again.
Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25

Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.
1 Timothy 4:14

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
2 Timothy 1:6

Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. These two went down and prayed for them so that they would receive the Holy Spirit. (For the Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then Peter and John placed their hands on the Samaritans, and they received the Holy Spirit.
Acts 8:14-17

Just as some people are particularly gifted with teaching or wisdom or encouragement, the same applies here. Some people in the Body of Christ are particularly gifted with impartation. What it means to operate in any spiritual gift is that the Spirit seems to move more powerfully when a person is operating in a gift than when they are not. Again, we see this truth play out with teaching and leadership and other spiritual gifts.

But the same applies to those who are gifted with impartation gifts. When a person who is gifted in this way prays for the impartation of anointing to happen or the impartation of gifts to happen, the sheer volume of impartation that happens in the room is more. This is why, if we want powerful teaching, we need to sit under a person gifted with teaching gifts. And if we want wisdom, we need to be around people gifted with spiritual wisdom. Likewise, if we want to receive an upgrade in our spiritual gifts, power, or anointing, it is helpful to receive prayer from a person gifted with impartation.

There may be more than these five types of impartation, but these five are extremely important for the Church today. If we want to raise up the next generation to live like Jesus, it’s going to take a Church that is able to impart all of these things in all of these ways.

Other People’s Gifts

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good…All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
1 Corinthians 12:7, 11

Sometimes when a conversation comes up about spiritual gifts, I hear someone say something like, “I don’t want that gift,” or “I’m not interested in that.” This is especially true if we’re talking about gifts like tongues or prophecy or healing, etc.

But all the gifts, including these kinds of gifts, are good gifts from a good Father distributed by the Holy Spirit. Is that how we’d want our child to respond if we gave them a bike or a gaming console?

Usually, this defensive response comes from a place of hearing of others who have those gifts and not wanting to feel like a second class Christian if we don’t have them. These kinds of statements really come from a deeper question which is asking something like, “Am I still okay if I don’t have that gift?”

Imagine if you had a son who was watching the neighbor kid get a bike and your son was trying to fight off insecurity or jealousy. He might be asking himself, “Why didn’t I get that?” Or, “Does he think he’s better because he has that?” He might ultimately resign himself to thinking, “I didn’t want that anyway.” But we wouldn’t want our son to feel that way or think those thoughts. It’s not the right response to seeing others get a gift that we don’t have. And it’s not the right heart posture.

Instead, we would want our son to celebrate other people getting gifts even when (and maybe especially when) he doesn’t get that gift. We would also want him to ask for those gifts if he wants them. And we would want him to be secure in the gifts he’s already been given.

All of this applies to us with regards to spiritual gifts. We need to celebrate others who have gifts that are different than ours. We need to pursue and ask for certain gifts if we desire them. And, in the meantime, we need to be secure in the gifts we already have. Fighting off any sense of insecurity, jealousy, or worry that others will think we’re second class Christians will be essential for this. And we need to make sure we don’t denigrate the gifts of the Spirit–any gifts of the Spirit–but especially those we don’t have.

The Supernatural

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.
Romans 15:18-19

Inevitably, when you bring up the desire to engage in the supernatural parts of the Kingdom of God or the desire to operate in the power of the Spirit, you’ll have at least one person in the room say something like, “But I believe everything is supernatural,” or “The Holy Spirit is working in all of our interactions and activities.” It’s sort of like when you invite God’s presence and power to fill the room and the guy in the back says, “But God is omnipresent. He’s always here.”

When people say these sorts of things, sometimes it’s just an attempt at a theological “gotcha” moment. But in my experience, more often, it’s an indication of a lack of understanding of the way the Spirit works and the way the Kingdom works.

The reality is that there are things we do as the church that we can absolutely do on our own strength without any help from the Spirit. We can make people feel welcome, create community, engage in relationships, etc. all without ever depending on Jesus. In fact, many businesses do this better than the Church and they don’t give a rip about the Spirit or Jesus. A lot of people feel more connected and loved at their CrossFit gym than at church. You don’t need Jesus for this. In other words, things like this are not what we mean when we use the word “supernatural.” We can choose to have Jesus at the center of these things (which opens the possibility for powerful Holy Spirit moments), or we can do it in our own strength. It’s up to us.

But there are other things that we absolutely cannot do in our own strength. We can’t see people truly surrender their life to Jesus and get saved in our own strength. We can’t heal people in our own strength. We can’t cast out demons in our own strength. We can’t deliver an accurate prophetic word or word of knowledge in our own strength. These things are supernatural precisely because it is impossible to do them without God’s activity and our dependence on Him.

That is what we mean when we talk about “engaging in the supernatural aspects of the Kingdom.” That is what we mean by “operating in the power of God.” It means engaging in ministry where, if God doesn’t move in power, nothing happens. The results make it very obvious whether it was God’s power moving or just our own.

In the same way, those of us who invite the Holy Spirit to come, who invite the increased presence and power of God in the room, already understand that God is omnipresent. What we are inviting is God’s tangible (or manifest) presence. We are inviting God to step a little more through the veil that separates the natural world from the spirit realm so that we can feel His presence and encounter Him holistically–physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Lives are changed when God’s tangible presence fills the room. People are impacted in greater ways when this happens. This is why we invite God to do it. We desire to host His presence and make ourselves available to Him. When His tangible presence fills a room, He does more to transform lives in minutes than we could do in years.

Our society is fascinated with the supernatural but is mostly engaging with the counterfeit forms of it (New Age, mediums, psychics, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, energy healing, witchcraft, the Occult, etc). But, ultimately, what they are looking for is the real thing, they just don’t know the real thing can only be found in Jesus through the Spirit.

Here’s an unpopular opinion that I believe is true: Any church that doesn’t know how to operate in the power of God or the supernatural aspects of the Kingdom will find themselves very limited in reaching this next generation. The next generation knows that there is more to this world than the natural, but what they don’t know is that the true power and authority to engage in the spirit realm comes only through Jesus. Everything else is a poor counterfeit from the kingdom of darkness. A revival atmosphere where they can actually experience an encounter with God is what they’re longing for.

Are you seeing regular physical healings at your church? Are people regularly finding freedom from demonic oppression at your church? Are the prophetic gifts cultivated at your church so that people hear from the Lord regularly through these gifts? Are people just singing songs and hearing a message or are they having encounters with the living God? These aspects of the Kingdom will be essential for reaching the next generation. If your church isn’t yet engaging in these, it’s time to start now.