The poverty spirit - where did it come from?

The problem of poverty began in the garden.  There, we had everything we needed.  Adam’s job was to guard the garden against the presence of evil, but he failed. He stood back when the enemy appeared, and instead sent his wife to face the serpent. Not a good model for Biblical manhood! Every form of trouble that has afflicted the human race stems from that fateful encounter.

God told Adam and Eve they could eat of every tree except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if they did they would surely die. When Eve spoke with the serpent, she added to God’s words, saying God had commanded them not to eat the fruit, nor to touch it.  There was a good reason for the command God did give — to eat of the tree would give Adam and Eve the right to determine good and evil independently of God. There was no reason, however, why they should not touch it.  What was she doing?  She was making God appear to be extreme and unreasonable by giving out arbitrary commands for no reason.  Thus she portrayed God as a legalist.  Not only that, she twisted God’s words another way.  God had said they could surely eat of every tree, but Eve simply said they could eat of the trees.  So Eve minimized the privileges she had been given, while at the same time making God appear to be making unreasonable demands on her and Adam.

What was going on in Eve’s mind?  It must have been something like this: she and Adam looked at all God had given them, but chose to focus on the one thing He had not. Even though all the needs they could ever have were more than provided for, it was not enough. They had to possess the one thing God had said they did not need and which belonged to Him alone.  That twisted desire caused her to misrepresent and slander God to the enemy.

And this led to the birth of both poverty and the poverty spirit. Poverty because it led to their ejection from the garden into the barren world outside, and the poverty spirit because they had chosen to define themselves as people who never have enough.  Ever since then the saying of Proverbs 27:20 has been true: “Never satisfied are the eyes of man.” Even though we live in one of the richest nations in the world, we are always able to find someone who has more than we do to provoke us to envy.

What is the lesson of this for us? The serpent gains entry whenever and wherever people begin to question God’s Word or twist it in an effort to make God appear unreasonable.  Do we have hidden resentment against God?  If we do, we will surely begin to misrepresent him and find fault with him.  It is common today for people to portray God as saying things He does not say in an effort to discredit God and Scripture by making both appear unreasonable.

The enemy played on this fatal weakness in Eve.  As a result, she was prodded into taking action to secure for herself what she could not believe God for.  From that moment, fallen men and women became takers, not givers, as God, the greatest Giver, had intended them to be.

There is a trend in some professedly Christian circles today to undermine the authority of God’s Word.  Take a lesson from Eve — we do so at our peril.

Edited for clarity 12.08.2015.

Your labour is never in vain

In the spring of 1980, my good friends Robert and Alice Ward were married at St Mark’s Church Kennington in central London. As an aside to this story, Alice’s grandfather, Lord Eccles, was responsible for founding the British Library located today near King’s Cross station in London, which I visited in 2014. It houses Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete copy of the New Testament dating from only three hundred years after Christ. When I saw it, I was so moved I began to weep. Beside it lay a fragment of one of the ancient Oxyrhyncus papyri with the opening words of Revelation on it, inscribed not much more than 100 years after the apostle John  first wrote down his vision. How people can question the veracity of the New Testament in the face of thousands of textual witnesses like this is beyond me! But back to the story. Robert and Alice’s wedding reception was held in the House of Lords, part of the edifice known as the Palace of Westminster, which houses the British Parliament, the most prominent feature of which is Big Ben. Following the reception, I stayed overnight with an architect and his wife, who recounted to me their sad story of being married for nearly twenty years without any children. That was the first time I ever prayed for a childless couple, and nine months later their baby was born. That set me on a lifelong journey of praying for couples and seeing babies born, the two most recent of which at the time of writing are just a few months old.

The following morning I had the honour of preaching (for the first time in my life) in an Anglican church. St Mark’s Kennington was at that time one of the great spiritual centres of London. The vicar (pastor) was a very godly man, Sir Nicholas Rivett-Carnac, who had previously had a distinguished career in the military. I asked him for permission to pray for the sick, in line with a word I felt I had received from the Lord to “preach the gospel and heal the sick.” He took a chance on me! Following the message, I gave an invitation for anyone who wanted prayer. To my astonishment, scores of people came forward. I wound up praying for people well into the afternoon and did not leave the church until around 2 pm.

Here is the point of my story. I was at that time in the early stages of founding Emmanuel Church in the cathedral city of Durham in northern England. I (and those with me) experienced vociferous opposition from local pastors, who felt our intention was to steal their sheep rather than see the kingdom advanced. This opposition, along with some severe spiritual warfare we encountered in relation to other matters, had left me at a very low ebb. In fact, I felt all I had done was for nothing. One morning I was sitting at my desk, reading Scripture. I came to 1 Cor. 15:58, which reads, “Therefore my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain." The words leapt out at me from the page, and God encouraged me greatly. Life flooded back into my spirit. And at that moment, the mail arrived. When I went to fetch it, I found a letter addressed to me. It was from a young lawyer who had been at that service at St Mark’s many months before. She wrote in the letter how she had been suffering from clinical depression so severe she had had to give up her practice and for the most part remain housebound. Somehow that morning friends had managed to bring her to church. She came forward for prayer. When I laid hands on her and prayed, she was instantly and completely healed. She had been able to resume work and had entered into a relationship with a young man she hoped would lead to marriage.

Whenever in my cycle of Scripture readings I come to 1 Cor. 15:58, the emotions of that day, the letter and its contents come back into my mind. We can experience times in our walk with God when we seem to hit rock bottom. Like the Psalmist, we cry out for deliverance, and sometimes God does not show up in the way or at the time we want. The apostle Paul himself appears to have suffered times of desperation we would probably describe today as some form of depression, where the “sentence of death” was passed on him (2 Cor. 1:9). His struggles with the Corinthian Christians, documented particularly in the first seven chapters of 2 Corinthians, are a testament to that. Yet even in our affliction, God’s comfort overflows. In fact, if my reading of 2 Corinthians 1 is correct, it may well be that it is only through affliction that the greatest, deepest and most powerful comfort truly comes.

His comfort came to me that day. The letter could have come and brought encouragement at any time in the months since the woman had been healed. But the fact is it arrived on my doorstep moments after God spoke those powerful words to me through Scripture. If God had turned up visibly along with the letter and said, “I told you so!” it could hardly have had a more powerful effect. It often comes back to me when times are tough.

I pray God will bring a measure of His comfort and encouragement to you through my story. Maybe it will land on your doorstep at just the right time!

Chronicles of faith - an introduction

I want to encourage you with stories about some of the experiences I have had with God. Yet I have a dilemma. Years ago I decided to stop attending conferences where speakers gave overhyped presentations about how God had so quickly and lavishly blessed their ministry. I am sure many of these men were quite sincere. Somehow, however, their presentations left me feeling a failure. Then I came across stories told by leaders who had gone through trial and suffering but remained faithful. God had met them too, but often in different and less dramatic ways. And so it has been with me. It seems that often it has been at a point of deep discouragement that God does something that shows that he is God!

So I hope these stories will be a blessing and encouragement to you. All of us have access to a relationship where God speaks to us and, from time to time, breaks into our lives to show his glory.

Katie Overbeek: EP project

God has given Elaine and I eight wonderful children. All of them are gifted in different ways. We have sought, as best we can, to support each of them in their own journey to develop the character and gifts God has given them. Katie is our oldest daughter. She is married to Josh, and is the mother of our wonderful grandson Joseph. When she was 9 years old, she was prayed for by our friend Marc Dupont, whom many of you may know from his prophetic ministry in Toronto and around the world. Marc said she would be a Psalmist to the nations. Many years later, it was our privilege to give Marc a copy of the first CD she recorded, which was very kindly produced at cost by her friends David Kuwabara and Nathan Finochio, both skilled professionals based in New York City. They are now planning to work with Katie on producing a second project, which will be done to the highest standards. Katie has always had a gift to produce powerful and Biblical lyrics to accompany great music. I think that is so important when so much of what we sing today can be superficial. I am sure God’s desire is to use her music truly to glorify him. As parents, we continue to watch and pray as God develops his purposes in Katie, Josh and Joseph. At the age of 2, Joseph is already singing along with his mom. Our desire is for the knowledge of God to be passed down from generation to generation. Our part in this process now for the most part is to pray and encourage them as best we can. As long as we live, we will never stop being parents, whether to our own children, or to others in the body of Christ.

Our hope is that many others will be touched by Katie’s music. These are not days in which we need more Christian ditties.  These are days in which we need more musicians like Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley.

Here is a link to the project. Thanks for your prayers and support.

https://vimeo.com/134053977

Katie Overbeek: EP project

Fixing broken relationships

Young people today are tasting the bitter fruit of broken relationships. Many have been raised without any real father. Yet God has created them with a longing to be fathered, whether they understand it or not. What we, the church, have to offer them is powerful provided we can back it up with a supply of real fathers. The church must become functional and properly ordered, a place of security and integrity in relationships. Young people are longing for the experience of relationship that postmodern culture denies them. Women have sacrificed family for career and are now living to regret it. Their assumption of leadership roles in business and government places them in a boxing ring where men, by nature, fight to win. Is it any wonder that young women are now smoking more than young men or that women’s life expectancy is projected to come down eventually to the level of men’s for the first time? Extreme feminism is under attack — by women as much as by men. Men who have abdicated their roles are feeling the emptiness. Studies show “house husbands” develop more health problems than other men. Young people have lived with a generation of men who have abandoned their families in search of their own happiness and they are sick of it. They are looking for stability and commitment while believing a philosophy which teaches the opposite. No wonder they are confused and under stress!

This is not a time to match what the culture is offering by trying to entertain people or make them feel good. It is a time to preach the loving, disciplining, directional care of the Father. It is a time to preach the cross and commitment to goals higher than ourselves. I believe there are millions of young people out there waiting to hear the call to this kind of discipleship — if we will preach it and live it ourselves.