Читать книгу The mission remains! - Johannes Sieber - Страница 4

Can you remember a time before YouTube? I do. One of the first videos I saw on YouTube was about a man with rasta’s. He looked a little wild, like he came straight out of a skate park. This man would walk around the streets asking people if he could pray for them. Often he would even tell people where theyhad pain. The passersby were very surprised that this man knew where it hurt. When this wild guy started praying for the people, they were even more amazed. For the pain gave way, and they could move as if they had never had an injury or pain. In these videos of Todd White1, this happened not just once, but over and over again. This attracted my interest. So it did seem possible to experience the things I heard about in church and read about in the Bible. Later I experienced such things myself – more about that later. Then I heard about movements in Asia where hundreds and thousands of people came to faith and whole places and countries were changed. Therefore, it is possible to experience spiritual awakenings, as we read about them in books from the past.

How do you feel when you hear such things? What does it stir in you when you hear stories of the past and of faraway places where God is working mightily? As for me it triggers an incredible hunger to experience this myself. But I also feel a tension: for a long time I only knew theoretically about the work of the Holy Spirit. I listened to sermons that urged me to avoid this or that, or about beautiful theological flights that probably should have motivated me. I often asked myself: What does this have to do with my life? How do I get to where I can experience these things myself that I saw in the videos? Don’t you feel like there’s more to what we can experience with God? Is the church just a place where the mighty deeds of God are reported, or is it a place where you and I can experience it for ourselves?

In the Bible, tremendous things happen all the time, for example in the story of Philip. Philip inspires me and makes me hungry. He went into a city and healed the sick, cast out demons and called for repentance. This gave such a tremendous uproar that the whole city was turned upside down. The Bible says, “And there was great joy in that city.”2 That city experienced a transformation. Philip could do no more than you and I, was neither more giftednor more famous. He had the same Holy Spirit as you and me. That makes me eager to experience the same adventures as he did.

A priest once said that where Jesus went, revival and change happened; where he himself went, they would offer him a cup of tea. What happens when you come to a town? Do people bring you coffee or do you bring radical transformation?

I live for revival to happen through me and the people I am surrounded with. We want to be available to the Holy Spirit so that He can use us for whatever He wants to do. We long for revival. What about you?

Don’t you think something should change? Who is actually right, the Bible that says we can experience the same things as Jesus and the apostles did back then, or we who do not experience them? One of the two must be corrected, right? Either the Bible or I. But I don’t want to correct the Bible, because it is God’s word. If we believe the Bible, then this question cannot leave us cold.