use
Wisely evaluating prophecy
MORNING MUSING September 1, 2011 STRIVE TO EXCEL IN BUILDING UP
The words of our title were written to a rip-roaring charismatic church. A God-sent, authentic apostle had pioneered that church some years earlier during an eighteen-month stay in their city (1 Corinthians 14:12, Acts 18:11). The phrase ‘building up’ is used several times in the letter written several years later by Paul. In this epistle he also tells them, “I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still in the flesh” (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). Both when he was with them, and now, years later, apparently they were babes, immature and unspiritual. It is quite appropriate to be a babe when we begin, but later? How sad Paul was, his father heart was grieved when he heard news of their still undeveloped immature state, it was perilous and tragic. They were misrepresenting God in the world and doing damage to their own souls, and to each other in addition. Perhaps this musing will touch on things primarily relevant to those who attend and are part of the charismatic churches of the twenty-first century though those who are members of ‘non-charismatic’ churches and reject charismatic things because of the excesses and stupidities that masquerade as spiritual life and ministry in some quarters, should also read on for there will be something in this short musing for them too. We all need to humbly learn of God, there is no other way to go forward. Where we need to correct our abuse of God’s gifts we must do so and where we need to embrace what we have rejected because of a withering prejudice we must do that too for it is all too easy to reject some of the gifts of God because of the patent misuse evident in some churches instead of receiving and entering into the variety and bounty of the gracegifts with which Christ by the Holy Spirit desires to equip and enable the members of His body to build each other up and also be the body of Christ through whom He speaks to the world.
MORNING MUSING December 31, 2009. PROPHETIC VISION
The writing of this particular musing has involved a greater degree of struggle for me than usual. I began to write it on the last day of the first decade of the twenty-first century feeling that some reflections were in order. We need to view with God given prophetic vision, the events and changes taking place during the ten years we have just passed through.