This is Pastor Tim’s latest message on the power and authority that Jesus bestows on us to minister like he did.
The flow is simple… Jesus announces his mission (Luke 4:18-21) and then sets about demonstrating this by preaching the kingdom of God, healing the sick and driving out evil. He calls followers and then bestows incredible purpose on them by granting them the same power and authority to minister like he did.
Great thoughts from Micael on the tension between healing and suffering in the Christian faith…
This Wednesday night Brittany’s life group is opening the doors to anyone who wants to come and watch a movie called Father of Lights. It is the third in a trilogy of films that documents God’s grace and power around the world today. In the film you will meet people ministering in the same power and authority that Jesus commissioned his disciples with in Luke 9. That is power and authority to preach the kingdom of God, heal the sick and drive out evil. Expect to see people trapped in darkness set free!
It ties in perfectly with our current series on ministering like Jesus. Through compassion, proclamation and power the kingdom of God advances in a broken world. Sometimes it seems like doing the ministry of Jesus (and the early church) is for people in a far off land. Hopefully what Father of Lights inspires us with is seeing people like you and I praying for the sick, telling people about the love of God and reaching out to the least and lost in our midst.
This Sunday we will look at that passage in Luke 9 and discover what authority and power we have been given. You may be surprised!
ps. if you want to come along on Wednesday night email Tim – tim.giovanelli@manlylife.org
From time to time (not regularly enough) I like to go and have lunch at the local Manly Salvation Army with other members of the Manly community. It is a free feed, and attracts a diverse bunch of people in need of some care. This morning they had this fantastic message on a board as people entered the hall.
At church we have been looking at how Jesus ministered to people. Matthew 9 provides a summary of what he did; “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Full of compassion, preaching the truth and demonstrating the power of God to heal and restore. Jesus helped people.
In fact if you look at the proceeding chapters of Matthew’s gospel, that is the ministry of Jesus – healing the blind, raising the dead, forgiving people’s sins, calling the unrighteous to follow him, curing chronic disease, demonstrating power over nature, teaching people about the kingdom of God. To sum it up – Jesus helped people.
So when we come to the next verse in Matthew 9 it shouldn’t be rocket science as to what we are called to do as his followers; “Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into this harvest field.” In other words, for God’s sake, go help somebody!
Jesus responded to need. So should we. We view people as created in the image of God, destined not for destruction, but for rescue, redemption and restoration. We can do that in simple ways through our compassion, through sharing the good news of grace and by praying for the power of God to heal and restore. For God’s sake, let me encourage you… go help somebody. Just like the Salvos…
Last week at church we looked at how Jesus, the early church and the Apostle Paul ministered. The key verses was Romans 15:17-20 where Paul talks about leading people to Christ through what he has said and done, and in the power of the Spirit. It is this combination of compassion, preaching and signs and wonders that has a tremendous impact on growing the kingdom. I have a huge passion that we as a church should learn to minister like this.
Again this week we will be looking at how Jesus ministered. The key verse will be Matthew 9:35-37; “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
We hear several times in the Gospels that Jesus is moved by compassion. This is always in response to encountering need, whether it be physical, spiritual or material need. The difference between how we often minister to how Jesus ministers is that he does it with the resources and ways of God. Out of compassion he brings the good news of the kingdom through teaching, preaching and signs and wonders.
Of course the next verse in Matthew 9 is about the harvest field being plentiful and the workers being few. My sense from this passage is that Jesus is saying that if only we learn to minister like this and be available to be used by God, then we will have amazing opportunities to see people impacted by the kingdom.
How often do we see someone in need and put off ministering to them?
How often do we sense God speaking to us about helping someone and we ignore the call?
How often when faced with need do we try and use our own power and strength rather than God’s to help?
See you on Sunday – we will have plenty of space for ministry at the end of the service. Feel encouraged to minister with compassion, truth and power!
We are about to start a new series at Manly Life on ministering like Jesus. For many of us, the idea of knowing about Jesus is fine, but actually doing the things he did can seem like a step too far. For that reason we will be looking at the simple ways he ministered life to people, and how we can do that too. For us, 3 things will underpin that and they can be found in how the Apostle Paul ministered like Jesus.
He says in Romans 15:18-19 – “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God.”
Simply put, Jesus ministered with compassion through his deeds. He ministered authoritatively through his words, and he ministered powerfully with signs and wonders by the Spirit.
A quick example – the woman at the well who Jesus ministered to in John 4. He takes compassion on a woman who is otherwise an outcast by ministering with a word of knowledge (something he could not have known about her except through God’s revelation) and points her towards himself as the messiah. There it is – compassion, words and power. The result is a changed life!
I think we can all take small or big steps in this direction with our lives. With the end result of seeing transformation in mind, this is a worthy thing to commit our time to! See you on Sunday…
Posted here is the talk at Manly Life by Pastor Tim Giovanelli on 1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-19.
Have a read over this passage and then we hope you will be challenged and inspired in your own giving and generosity.
Some good food for thought. I am always drawn to the Christian traditions that take following Christ seriously – and holistically.
I love reading about the ministry of Jesus. Particularly I am drawn to his healing ministry recorded all through the Gospels. In Luke 5:17 it says “the power of the Spirit was with Jesus to heal”. A quick example would be in Luke 5 where a man covered in leprosy begs Jesus to make him clean. It says Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately, we are told, the leprosy left him. What must it have been like to have been there to see that. More importantly what would it have felt like to have been this man? Amazing! His longings to be healed met with God’s power and love! New life…
For, Jesus, Paul, and the rest of the early church lived in regular expectation that God would heal people’s physical bodies. This relates in part to the OT prophecies that in the messianic age God would heal people (Is 53:5 – the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed). Jesus says the Kingdom of God is here… no wonder we then read about so much healing in the New Testament.
Is this for today though?
I was watching an interview with John Wimber last week. John was the leader of the Vineyard church and he was describing his conversion. The basic gist is that he gave up drugs to follow Christ only to find all of the churches he went to telling him that God doesn’t heal like that any more today. Needless to say, he wasn’t impressed and pursued the promise of healing in the church. What ensued was a remarkable move of God across the world where thousands of churches woke up to the power of the ministry of the Holy Spirit today.
I pray that Manly Life will do the Jesus stuff. Both in our meetings and out on the streets… Is that realistic? Sometimes modern faith or modern churches seem to have very little to do with what Jesus did. You can spend your time talking about the music, or the building, or the ministers annoying habits… but how often do we talk about the stuff Jesus did happening amongst us?
When I lived in Kenya I would often preach at open air meetings. Some of the guys I ministered with suggested that at the end of preaching the Gospel there should also be made an opportunity for people to come forward to be prayed for healing. That had never occurred to me… I had never thought of doing that after all I thought our job as Christians was just to tell people about Jesus. But 2 things happened… firstly I read the scriptures and realised this was what Jesus would do… preach and heal… secondly I began to saw God do these things in and around the ministry I was involved in. These were supernatural things I couldn’t deny like evil spirits coming out of people and healings.
In Luke 4 Jesus sets outs his mission and a part of it was recovery of sight for the blind… But is this just a spiritual blindness? John Baptist disciples ask in Luke 7 – are you the one? Jesus answers… “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor.” Clearly Jesus came to bring holistic healing and refreshing. This is not just a kingdom of talk but of power.
It seems to me there are two types of faith, safe faith and Jesus faith. In safe faith you don’t expect much, and you don’t get much. It mainly ends up about ideas and reasoning. I would suggest that it often reflects the experience of the person… and we all have a way of theologizing our experiences rather than believing and pursuing the promises of the scripture. Jack Deere who wrote the excellent book Surprised by the Power of the Spirit was one such safe faith Christian. He didn’t believe in the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit in the church to heal people… until he experienced the power of the Holy Spirit himself. If you are on a similar journey I recommend his book!
All of this stands in contrast to the Jesus Faith… Jesus announced the kingdom of God is here… then he demonstrated it. In other words God begun a new work of restoring things! That is what Jesus did. That is what the early church did. And history tells us that often when revival breaks out it is accompanied by a move of the Spirit…That is why we often hear stories from overseas, where Christianity is fastest growing of signs and wonders accompanying the preaching Jesus as Lord. Check out Iris Ministries for some amazing stories.
So Jesus faith is closer to what he did, what the early church did and what the NT writers encouraged us to do… But it can also involve disappointment. In the time between Jesus ministry and his return we do not fully experience the total renewal of the Kingdom of God. But Jesus taught us to pray to long for the kingdom and to ask for his Holy Spirit. It is always hard when for every story of healing we know of people who have prayed and haven’t got well… Clearly just as the kingdom involves healing and restoration it still involves patience and endurance in suffering! Paul who ministered powerfully in the Spirit would still talk about his thorn in the flesh.
But what should we do – stay safe or seek the kingdom of Jesus? I know what I would prefer…
Finally to get practical how do we see the power of God released amongst us today? In the NT healing is called a Spiritual Gift – with things like prophecy, miracles, wisdom… Spiritual gifts are concrete expressions of God’s grace given for the building up of the church… In Ephesians 2:22 we are told the Spirit dwells in the church. This is the same Spirit that was at work in Jesus ministry and is then poured out on the church (you can read about it Acts and the early church Fathers…) and this is the same God at work in his people today!
Healing is a part of being a church body… 1 Corinthians 12:7 says the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 1 Co 12:9 talking about how these gifts are given… “to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit”. So this is to be understood as gracious gifts of the Spirit in the gathered community for the sake of building up the people of God. This is about the church being built up just as much as for your own individual blessing… how encouraging is it when we see God move in our own churches? Everyone grows in faith as a result.
So why is healing given to us? How does it build the church up? Well it is a sign of the new creation; the kingdom of God breaking in. Indeed it is the same as in Jesus ministry – people are being made new! It also grows faith in us which is a blessing because there is enough out there these days to beat faith out of us… Gordon Fee calls gifts like healing truth verified by power… It is a gift… simply it is God being compassionate to us. This is one concrete way that we can know – from time to time – that God loves us! The ultimate expression of course is always the cross of Christ, but gifts of the Spirit are to be understood as a concrete expression of grace for the church – that God gives from time to time out of love!
Final, final thing… is to talk a bit about ministry times. At Manly Life we make sure there is time in our gathered meetings to create space to let God move. It is easy to do all the talking at church but God is present by his Spirit – in the preaching, the prayers, the worship, the fellowship… and present to heal and move amongst us. Sometimes you have to let God speak. In John 10 Jesus says my sheep know my voice… So we ask him to come by his Spirit and minister to us, to speak to us, to heal us. We may get a word of knowledge about a specific healing God wants to do, or we may simply pray for those with need. God is good, and in my experience even if we are not immediately healed, receiving prayer is always a blessing. Of course there is much more to say but I will stop there. Thoughts? Please leave a reply…
Here is the sermon from Vision Sunday 2013. Pastor Tim Giovanelli looks at how God builds his church through giving everyone a role to play and infusing the church with His Spirit.
Note: The orchestra playing in the middle of the sermon goes for about 5 minutes. It is of an orchestra playing in a town square which starts with one individual playing and grows until the whole orchestra has emerged to join him.
