I have just been on the phone with my Mum and Dad: thanking them for their gift. Dad and I did the sums: I’m 54: he will be 82 in ten days, when it is his birthday. And after some days I feel it. Yesterday, with a jog and a heavy interval session in the gym, everything is stiff.
But breakfast is made, the son’s lunch packed, and coffee made. Time for the word, and today’s text applies for this time. For every act of power can be faked: every true event has an imitation: as there is ersatz coffee and the real stuff.
We need to seek the real stuff.
And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
(Acts 19:11-20 ESV)
It is worth nothing that those confessing their sins and burning their grimoires were Christian. Believers. Under the ministry of Paul: this was not a perfect church.
It was deeply imperfect. The church has always been imperfect. We all need to reform. to repent, to move away from our habits of unrighteousness, me included.
In general, when the church itself is repentant and reforming themselves, the power of God moves upon them: when we are not we are merely left with symbols, showing the form of religion but without power. (which segues to the birthday illustration)
We need to avoid the ersatz and symbolic religion, that safely contains the spirit in a concrete pipe, well away from the people, and calls this post modern, appropriate, non shibbolethist[1], and progressive. We need to ignore those who promote themselves, using the techniques of their the showman or the nightclub.
Instead we need to seek the raw power of God, burn the books of our techniques of manipulating God (they neither work, and that is what shamanism is — from the Tao to Wicca). God wants us to do his will. Let us do that, not ours.
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[1] I am trying to find a generic word for anti c(sexism, racism, lookism, homophobia, islamophobia, lookism, ageism…. fascism). Shibboleth was a word one tribe in Israel could not say, and it was used to define the enemy. Hence the coining of a new word. Heck, it is my birthday, I will try to do this, like making keep calm memes, rarely.