Fire In My Bones

At the Empowered 21 Conference last week in Tulsa,
thousands of people celebrated the renewal of a movement.

At
a time when many Christian conferences are suffering from sluggish attendance,
at least 10,000 people jammed into the Mabee Center on the Oral Roberts
University (ORU) campus last week to honor the pioneers of the Pentecostal
movement and to pass the torch of Holy Spirit renewal on to the younger
generation.

The
Empowered 21 event, nicknamed E21, was a bold attempt to bring every stream of
the charismatic and Pentecostal movements together under one huge roof. When I
arrived on Wednesday night for a welcome dinner, I met leaders from the Assemblies
of God, Church of God in Christ, Foursquare Church, Pentecostal Holiness,
Church of God of Prophecy, Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) and even the United
Pentecostal Church International—plus directors of such varied ministries as
Teen Mania, Every Home for Christ, International House of Prayer and Convoy of
Hope. We even had Matteo Calisi, an Italian man who gives leadership to
thousands of charismatic Catholics.

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Last week many of
our brothers and sisters lost their lives for Christ. How should we respond to
the cry of the martyrs?

Last
week while millions of Americans crammed into theaters to see Alice in
Wonderland in 3-D, many Christians in other parts of the world were
attacked, raped or killed for the cause of the gospel.

This
past weekend I received an urgent message from my friend Christopher Alam, a
U.S.-based evangelist, who was writing from Southeast Asia to inform me of a terrible
atrocity in Myanmar.

We can’t reach
the younger generation with yesterday’s stale religion. It’s time to unclog our
wells.

Last
week I spoke to a group of ministry leaders associated with a particular
Pentecostal denomination in South Carolina. Many of these men and women are
hungry for a fresh move of God, but they are also aware that they aren’t
effectively reaching people for Christ. Most of their small congregations are
getting grayer by the day.

I
told these folks they have only two options: Change or die.

Too often the American church has tried to put the Third Person of the Trinity in a box.

Hundreds of years before the Holy Spirit was poured out on the early church on the day of Pentecost, the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, newly anointed as a priest, got a free preview of how God would send the Holy Spirit to empower His people. The preview came in the form of a Technicolor vision that included a stormy wind, a cloud that glowed with fire, flashes of lightning and strange, four-faced cherubim that were empowered by God’s divine energy.

Ezekiel wrote of these heavenly creatures: “In the midst of the living beings there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches darting back and forth among the living beings. The fire was bright, and lightning was flashing from the fire. And the living beings ran to and fro like bolts of lightning” (Ezekiel 1:13-14, NASB).

Christians were
shocked last week after learning that Benny and Suzanne Hinn are divorcing. Do
ministers owe us an explanation for their failures?

Judging by the calls and e-mails I received last week, charismatic
Christians were confused and dismayed when the Los Angeles Times broke
the news that healing evangelist Benny Hinn and his wife, Suzanne, are getting
divorced. The comments I heard were mostly sympathetic: “I am so grieved.”
“This is a wake-up call.” “This is heartbreaking.” “I’m praying for the Hinns.”

And a few people were angry: “What is happening?” “Here we go
again.” “This is why the secular world looks at us and laughs!”

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If you find
yourself in an anxious season of difficult transition, take comfort from the
life of Isaac.

If you had told
me seven years ago that I would resign my comfortable magazine job in 2010 and
make a shift toward public ministry, I would have asked if you were smoking an
illegal plant. I liked my paycheck and my benefits. And in 2004 I was trying to
figure out how I would put four kids through college when I had no extra money
in the bank.

Fast forward to
2010, to the middle of the Great Recession. They say the economy is showing
signs of improvement, but I don’t see this in Florida, where the foreclosure
rate is still one of the nation’s highest. Yet right in the middle of these
uncertain economic times, while the unemployment rate is hovering around 10
percent, I sensed God telling me to make a career change.

Why did an
innocent statement about protecting unborn life unleash a national uproar?
Today’s feminist groups need a reality check.

I’m not sure what
the folks at Planned Parenthood expected football star Tim Tebow to do in his
long-awaited Super Bowl ad on Sunday night. Condemn women to hell if they’ve
had abortions? Show photos of aborted fetuses? Wave a gun at abortionists?

Tebow is a big
guy, but both of his ads were polite and harmless—maybe even too safe. And the
22-year-old Heisman Trophy winner appeared in the 30-second ads with his mother,
for crying out loud. She was even holding his baby picture!

Why did this ad
cause so much hyperventilation?

Oral Roberts was not a sophisticated guy. Men of faith rarely are. He was born in poverty, and his early…