God is shaking His church and removing corruption. But we share the blame for giving charlatans a platform.

Al Capone once controlled all of Chicago. The notorious 1920s gangster bribed the city’s mayor, bought the police and presided as king over an empire of casinos, speakeasies and smuggling operations. He dodged bullets for years and lived above the law—and earned the nickname “untouchable” because no one could bring him to justice.

Before Capone finally went to prison in 1932, he justified his crimes by saying: “All I do is satisfy a public demand.” He didn’t take responsibility for the pain he caused because he knew mayors, policemen, community leaders and bootleggers supported him the whole way.

I hate to compare any minister of God to a gangster. But the sad truth is that today there are a handful (well, maybe more) of unscrupulous preachers who share some of Capone’s most disgusting traits. They are notoriously greedy. They are masters of deception and manipulation. They have bought their way into the charismatic religious subculture and used their uncanny hypnotic ability to control major Christian TV networks.

And, like Capone, their days are numbered. Justice will soon catch up with them.

These false prophets probably all started out with a genuine call from God, but success destroyed them. They were lured away from true faith by fame and money, and when their ministries mushroomed they resorted to compromise to keep their machines rolling. Now, in the midst of the Great Recession, God is closing in on them.

But before we rejoice that these imposters are being removed from their pulpits and yanked off the airwaves, let’s hit the pause button and reflect. How did these false preachers ever achieve such fame? It couldn’t have happened without help from us.

We were the gullible ones. When they said, “The Lord promises you untold wealth if you will simply give a thousand dollars right now,” we went to the phones and put the donations on our credit cards. God forgive us.

We were the undiscerning ones. When they said, “I need your sacrificial gift today so I can repair my private jet,” we didn’t ask why a servant of God wasn’t humble enough to fly coach class to a Third World nation. God forgive us.

We were the foolish ones. When it was revealed that they were living in immorality, mistreating their wives or populating cities with illegitimate children, we listened to their spin doctors instead of demanding that ministry leaders act like Christians. God forgive us.

We were the naïve ones. When they begged for $2 million more in donations because of a budget shortfall, we didn’t feel comfortable asking why they needed that $10,000-a-night hotel suite. In fact, if we did question it, another Christian was quick to say, “Don’t criticize! The Bible says, ‘Touch not the Lord’s anointed!’” God forgive us.

We have treated these charlatans like Al Capone—as if they were untouchable—and as a result their corruption has spread throughout charismatic churches like a plague. Our movement is eaten up with materialism, pride, deception and sexual sin because we were afraid to call these Bozos what they really are—insecure, selfish, egotistical and emotionally dysfunctional.

If we had applied biblical discernment a long time ago we could have avoided this mess. There is no way we can know how many unbelievers rejected the gospel because they saw the church supporting quacks who swaggered, bragged, lied, flattered, bribed, stole and tearfully begged their way into our lives—while we applauded them and sent them money.

When well-meaning Christians quote 1 Chronicles 16:22 (“Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm,” NASB) to cover up corruption or charlatanism, they do horrible injustice to Scripture. This passage does not require us to stay quiet when a leader is abusing power or deceiving people.

On the contrary, we are called to confront sin in a spirit of love and honesty—and we certainly aren’t showing love to the church if we allow the charismatic Al Capones of our generation to corrupt it.

J. Lee Grady

By J. Lee Grady

Instead of denying or downplaying this misunderstood spiritual gift, we should have the courage to embrace it.

Last week after I taught a class on the Holy Spirit at a ministry school in Pennsylvania, a 22-year-old guy from Maryland asked if I could pray with him. He had heard me share how I was baptized in the Holy Spirit at age 18, and he wanted the same experience. He was especially intrigued by the idea of speaking in tongues—something he had never done even though he was comfortable around other classmates who had this spiritual gift.

This young man, Eric, understood that he already had the Holy Spirit. (We can’t be born again without the Spirit entering our hearts and quickening Christ’s life in us.) But he knew that Jesus offers us more—that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a second experience in which the fullness of God’s divine power saturates us and anoints us for supernatural ministry.

I explained to Eric that when I prayed for this blessing many years ago, God did not force anything on me. We don’t “have” to speak in tongues, and God certainly doesn’t make us move our mouths against our will. We open our mouths, but it is the Spirit who gives us this unusual heavenly language. Glossolalia makes no sense in the natural—it actually sounds like gibberish—but the Bible says praying in the Spirit strengthens us profoundly (see 1 Cor. 14:2,4).

I laid hands on Eric in the back of the auditorium and asked Jesus to fill him with divine power and to release the Holy Spirit’s language as a manifestation of the overflow. Nothing dramatic happened at that moment, but I told Eric to remain expectant. I’ve learned that oftentimes the release of the Spirit comes easier when people are not distracted by crowds. I encouraged my new friend to go home and pray some more.

A couple of days later I received an e-mail from this brother, letting me know that a small miracle had occurred in his life. He wrote:  “Thank you for praying for me to speak in tongues. That night was interesting because phrases started to pop into my head.  I was determined.  I began speaking the phrases and by the next night I was speaking in tongues as I was falling asleep. Now, every moment that I am not worshiping, praying, eating or speaking to someone, I am practicing this gift. Praise God!”

Many of us fall into the trap of downplaying the phenomenon of speaking in tongues, even after we have received the gift ourselves. We may consider it divisive (and it certainly can be when it is abused) or we’re embarrassed because it seems weird or fanatical to our unbelieving friends or family members.

Yet when I read the apostle Paul’s comments on the issue, I realize that glossolalia was a key component of the New Testament church. No one can deny that. Not only did tongues play a fundamental role on the day of Pentecost when the church was born, but this strange gift also fueled Paul’s personal zeal. He wasn’t bragging when he wrote: “I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all” (1 Cor. 14:18, NASB). He most likely prayed in tongues for hours at a time. He knew he couldn’t carry out his extraordinary ministry without a private devotional life that was soaked in supernatural prayer.

That’s also why he wrote: “Do not forbid to speak in tongues” (1 Cor. 14:39).  He knew that even though some people might be tempted to misuse this gift (and this is usually why people restrict it), we must never, never, never shut it down.

Eliminating the gift of tongues can have a direct impact on the miraculous flow of the Spirit’s anointing in the church. You might as well flip a breaker switch and turn off all the lights. Tongues does not make us holier than anyone else, and if we don’t exhibit love and Christian character it becomes a useless gift comparable to a noisy gong (see 1 Cor. 13:1). But when stewarded properly, and tempered with humility, this seemingly insignificant grace of the Holy Spirit becomes an invisible atomic weapon.

I am not saying we should showcase tongues in church gatherings, scream at people in tongues or make people feel like misfits if they haven’t experienced the gift. When the Corinthians put tongues on the platform and turned their meetings into chaotic circus sideshows, Paul rebuked them sternly. But the same apostle who warned his followers not to flaunt tongues in public also spent countless hours praying in tongues privately—because it is a vital source of spiritual power that we must not neglect.

The young man I met in Pennsylvania has a strong call on his life to reach others for Jesus, and he will be more effective in ministry now that he has added this misunderstood spiritual weapon to his arsenal. I pray you, too, will discover its value.

Pentecost is Sunday, May 23. Here are four reasons we should celebrate the Spirit’s outpouring.

An Iranian evangelist says a spiritual awakening of unprecedented magnitude is occurring behind the scenes in a nation known for its terrorism.

Most Americans have put Iran on a blacklist. We’re concerned about Shiite militants who spread terrorism around the world, we don’t trust Iran’s nuclear weapons plans and we can’t stomach Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s human rights record or his maniac ways.

But my friend Lazarus Yeghnazar, an Iranian evangelist based in England, hopes you will develop some compassion for this part of the world. Most of us associate the Bible with Israel, but did you know that Esther, Daniel, Nehemiah, Ezra and Habakkuk all walked on Persian land that is now called Iran? In fact, the tombs of Esther, Daniel, Habakkuk, Cyrus and Darius are in Iran.

Yeghnazar points out that Iranians were among the first Christian converts. The people known as Parthians, Medes and Elamites, who were in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (see Acts 2:9,11), were from what is now Iran. Jeremiah prophesied that God would “restore the fortunes of Elam” in the last days (see Jer. 49:39). Elam is modern-day Iran.

This promise of spiritual restoration is no longer a far-off dream. A vibrant New Testament church is thriving in Iran, in spite of brutal persecution under Ahmadinejad’s regime. And this growing spiritual awakening in Iran could play a significant role in end-time events.

“In this repressive atmosphere many Iranians are coming to Christ,” says Yeghnazar, whose 222 Ministries is reaching millions through television and Internet broadcasts. Currently more than 3,000 Iranians are converted each month through 222’s work, even though the Iranian government has cracked down on satellite television and smashed satellite dishes in Tehran and other cities.

“The need is so great,” says Yeghnazar’s wife, Maggie, who does special gospel broadcasts for Iranian women. She says the women respond to Christ faster than men because they tend to stay at home.

Yeghnazar and his wife fled Iran in 1988 to base their operations in the U.K. Their Farsi-language programs not only bring Iranians to faith in Christ but also serve to strengthen the underground house church movement. Yeghnazar says the churches are growing so fast in Iran that some leaders have wondered if they should stop evangelizing.

Says Yeghnazar: “One church leader told me they have stopped sharing their faith because every Iranian they witness to comes to Christ. [The leader] told me, ‘We don’t have enough New Testaments to handle the growth.’ There is a huge need for discipleship!”

The challenges in Iran are huge. The country has an extremely high rate of drug addiction, and at least one-fourth of the people are depressed. About 60 percent of the nation’s 71 million people are under age 26—and many of these are university students who are growing increasingly restless under Ahmadinejad’s dictatorship. Police brutality is common—and it is often aimed at Christians who gather in groups smaller than 20 to worship.

“Believers in Iran are not praying for persecution,” Yeghnazar told me, “but they know it is helping fuel the growth of their churches.”

Yeghnazar is aware of the danger lurking inside Iran. The country has exported trained terrorists for 30 years and has fueled the growth of Hezbollah, the Palestinian Intifada and suicide bombers in Iraq as well as radical Islamic movements in North Africa and the Philippines. Yet he believes there has never been such a huge open door for the gospel in Iran.

The evangelist quotes from Isaiah 65:1 to describe what is happening in his homeland. “God said, ‘I permitted myself to be found by those who did not seek Me. I said, “Here am I, here I am,” to a nation which did not call My name.’” Today Iranians are not only coming to Christ in record numbers but they are downloading Farsi New Testaments on MP3 players, receiving smuggled Bibles and training young pastors to start new churches.

“In this repressive atmosphere people are coming to the Lord in record numbers,” Yeghnazar says, noting that almost 200,000 unique visitors come to 222’s Farsi gospel site each month. Many of them are seeking discipleship because they just gave their hearts to Christ.

I’ve been shocked to hear some sword-rattling Christians say they hope someone drops a nuclear bomb on Iran to stop Ahmadinejad. Let’s put aside hate and open our eyes to what God is doing behind the scenes. The next time you hear bad news coming out of that country, remember that a growing underground church full of new converts is spreading from Tabriz in the north to the southern city of Shiraz, where Esther prayed and stopped a genocide.

J. Lee Grady served as editor of Charisma for 11 years and is now contributing editor.

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!”

Hinn’s ministry, based in Texas, eventually posted an official statement online to quell the public outcry. It says:

Pastor Benny Hinn and his immediate family were shocked and saddened to learn of this news on February 17 without any previous notice. The couple has been married for more than 30 years, and although Pastor Hinn has faithfully endeavored to bring healing to their relationship, those efforts failed and were met with the petition for divorce that was filed without notice.

Both Pastor Hinn and the board of directors of the church ask for the prayers of ministry partners and friends as the Hinn family walks through this difficult season. Pastor Hinn also wants everyone to know that he remains firmly and unquestionably committed to God’s calling—as he continues in his thirty-sixth year of ministry—to take the life-saving and miracle-working Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations through crusades, broadcasts, and mission outreaches.

I’m grateful that Hinn released this statement, but I hope he plans to say more soon. He has influenced far too many people around the world to keep us wondering why his marriage is ending.

The charismatic segment of the church has endured a long string of divorces, moral failures and embarrassing scandals among high-profile ministers. The most recent wave began in 2006 with Ted Haggard’s fall (which did not end in divorce, thanks to Gayle Haggard’s tough decision to forgive Ted). Megachurch pastors Randy and Paula White of Tampa, Fla., announced their break-up in 2007; then came similar news from Juanita Bynum and Thomas Weeks III in Atlanta, followed by Jamal Bryant and his wife, Gizelle, of Empowerment Temple in Baltimore. And on and on it goes.

Part of the fallout of these scandals was the widespread disillusionment among people who follow these leaders. We naturally expect ministers to be models of Christ-like behavior, and they have a solemn charge to do so. When shepherds fail, the sheep often faint.

We’ve even seen this in the secular world. When politicians or celebrity athletes experience personal failure, the public wants an explanation. Tiger Woods, for example, waited three long months before finally hosting a press conference last week to admit what he called “irresponsible and selfish behavior.”

Of course no minister is perfect, and every Christian has access to God’s mercy when he makes mistakes. But a spiritual leader is held to a higher standard of accountability and disclosure. Those who assume a public ministerial role incur a “stricter judgment,” according to James 3:1. That means a leader can’t have a moral or ethical breakdown and then just hide it, ignore it or laugh it off.

It also means he can’t spin the statement to his advantage. The church, of all places, should be a No Spin Zone. We must take full responsibility, and that includes publicly owning up to our failures—and stepping down from the pulpit, if necessary, for however long it takes to find healing.

Please understand that I am not attacking a brother in Christ. I honor Benny Hinn for the fact that many people have come to the Lord in his evangelistic events around the world. I also know that leaders often are hit with the worst spiritual attacks because they are on the front lines. I believe we owe it to Benny and Suzanne to pray that their marriage can be restored.

Yet in this season of moral and spiritual crisis we must appeal to all those in public ministry to handle their charge with care. Of all people on earth, those who preach the Gospel of Truth must tell the truth.

We’ve faked the power of Pentecost long enough. Let’s set aside the imitations and reclaim the real deal.
Shortly after Elijah was carried to heaven in his fiery chariot, a group of young prophets asked Elisha to go with them to build new living quarters near the Jordan River. While one of the young men was cutting down a tree, the blade of his axe fell in the water and sank into the murky depths of the riverbed (see 2 Kings 6:1-7).

The construction project came to an abrupt stop. This was before the days of flashlights and sonar devices. These guys were in trouble.

Knowing that his friends could not replace this expensive iron tool they had borrowed, the young prophet cried to his mentor Elisha for help. The wise prophet threw a stick in the water where the axe head had sunk. Immediately the heavy iron blade floated to the surface—defying the laws of physics and proving that nothing is impossible with God. Elisha’s faith saved the day.

We can gain so much comfort from this story. It reminds us that God has power over the natural world. It also proves that He cares about the seemingly trivial details of our lives—and that He is even willing to bail us out of the messes we make.

As I have meditated on this passage in recent days I’ve also applied it to our current situation in the American church. It illustrates how desperately we need to recover what we’ve lost.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that our blade is missing. I don’t know exactly when it fell off the handle, but it seems as if we’ve been trying to build God’s house without the sharp edge of His genuine anointing. We’ve traded the real for the phony. We’ve cheapened Pentecost to the point that it’s been reduced to dry religious programs and circus sideshow antics.

We’ve mastered the art of hype. We know how to fake the anointing. We push people to the floor during our altar times. We know how to manipulate music and crowds so that we can create the atmosphere of the anointing. But in so many cases the real anointing isn’t there. In its place is a hollow imitation.

Some charismatic leaders today are even selling specially handcrafted oils that promise the Holy Spirit’s power. Others sell scented candles that claim to bring God’s presence. And last year one brother was traveling the country with feathers in a jar—claiming that these belonged to an angel with healing powers.

Lord, forgive us for our charlatanism. We need the blade back! We must cry out to the God Who has the power to raise iron from the bottom of a river.

We are not going to advance Christ’s kingdom, or build His victorious church, using scented oils, fake charms, ear-tickling prophecies and goofy charismatic gimmicks. This is all wood, hay and stubble destined for the furnace. What we need today is the sharp blade of the Word that is empowered by the Holy Ghost and fire.

In my world travels during the past few years I have met humble Christians who carry the genuine anointing of the Spirit. I’ve spent time with Chinese believers who see miracles inside their prison cells. I’ve met an Indian evangelist who has seen six people raised from the dead. I’ve met a Pakistani apostle who regularly sees Muslims healed during outdoor gospel meetings.

Last week I interviewed an Iranian church leader whose ministry is leading 5,000 Iranians to faith in Christ every month. In the midst of persecution and political upheaval, a New Testament—style revival is erupting in that Shiite Muslim stronghold-all because the church in Iran is weilding the axe head of genuine Holy Spirit anointing.

Where is the God of Elisha? There is a cry in the American church today that resembles the cry of the desperate young prophet in 2 Kings 6. We have not been good stewards of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, and now the precious power of God has eluded us. We dropped it. Yet we are beginning to acknowledge our blunder.

Let’s fully humble ourselves. Let’s repent of fakery and fraud. Let’s ditch our counterfeits and our cheap substitutes, and ask the Lord to restore the axe blade. Let’s cry to Him for a pure, unadulterated, genuine, life-changing, planet-shaking revival.

We can learn an important lesson from the East African Revival, which transformed a region 80 years ago.

The people of Uganda call it Balokole. In the Luganda language it means “the saved ones,” but the word became synonymous with the East African Revival—one of the most significant Christian movements in modern history.

This revival had humble beginnings in September 1929, just before America’s Great Depression. Historians trace it to a prayer meeting on Namirembe Hill in Kampala, Uganda, where a missionary to Rwanda, Joe Church, prayed and read the Bible for two days with his friend Simeoni Nsibambi. They felt God had showed them that the African church was powerless because of a lack of personal holiness.

It is impossible to explain exactly what happened after this prayer meeting or how the resulting spiritual fervor spread. When God comes, unusual things happen. Within weeks after the Rev. Church returned to Gahini, Rwanda, Christians gathered to pray and confess their sins openly. A heavy spirit of conviction fell on the people. Whenever they repented for their sins and failures they would weep uncontrollably, ask others to forgive them and pledge to make restitution.

The weeping spread to farmlands and open fields. Unbelievers who visited these gatherings were converted after they witnessed the sincerity of the Christians. Repentance went deep. Husbands publicly apologized for adultery and farmers repented for stealing cows from each other. Eventually, as the revival spread from Rwanda to Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi, even the centuries-old tradition of polygamy (which was still common among professing Christians) was unraveled in some areas.

Balokole changed African Christianity forever. In a 1986 article for Christian History, Michael Harper writes of the revival: “It’s effects have been more lasting than almost any other revival in history, so that today there is hardly a single Protestant leader in East Africa who has not been touched by it in some way.”

I spent the past two weeks ministering in Uganda and Kenya, and everywhere I went I met people who still talk about the East African Revival—80 years after it began. It breathed resurrection power into dead, traditional churches and triggered aggressive church-planting movements that affected a variety of denominations.

Whether sermons were delivered from pulpits or under trees, six important themes were emphasized in those days: 1) the blood of Jesus; 2) the name of Jesus; 3) the cross of Jesus; 4) the Word of God; 5) the testimony of the saints; and 6) the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Leaders also stressed the message of 1 John 6-7: “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His son cleanses us from all sin (NASB).” As was true in other spiritual awakenings in history (such as the Asbury Revival in Kentucky in 1970), people stood in front of each other and admitted their sins, no matter how embarrassing. The honesty cut deep into human pride and dealt a fatal blow against entrenched sin and religious hypocrisy.

After hearing more details about the East African Revival while I was in Uganda last week, I was convinced that this type of movement is the only thing that will pull the United States out of its current despair. We must have a spiritual awakening, or we die. Political engineering, economic policies, government bailouts and stimulus packages will not save us. No politician, Democrat or Republican, will reverse our course toward destruction.

Our only hope is that a backslidden American church—a church that is as smug, blind and lukewarm as the Laodiceans-—will “be zealous and repent” (see Rev. 3:19).

What encourages me is that God, not man, initiated all the spiritual awakenings of the past—including the First Great Awakening, which gave our country its historic Christian identity. Yes, we play our feeble part by praying, and we must storm heaven. Yes, awakenings come in response to our weak attempts to repent, and we must passionately seek a fresh baptism of holiness.

But we cannot manufacture revivals. Pentecostal fire comes from heaven alone. It is a sovereign blessing from a God who loves us and desires to rescue us from ourselves. We charismatics have generated a lot of our own sound and fury in the past 30 years, but much of what we have created is a shameful substitute for revival. We must become desperate for the real thing.

Today our movement is mired in the shallow waters of self-centered, carnal Christianity. May God mercifully send us our own version of Balokole. May gut-wrenching repentance and public confession of sin interrupt our trendy worship services. May this holy fire spread until the people of the United States see genuine Christians living the message we preach.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. You can find him on Twitter at leegrady.

On the anniversary of 9/11, I learned that we need extraordinary prayer in this time of national crisis.

Last week I attended a prayer gathering across the street from the World Trade Center site in New York City. Several dozen Christian leaders met in a cramped room overlooking the place where terrorists destroyed the tallest monument to America’s financial power and killed more than 2,700 people in the process.

It was the eighth anniversary of 9/11. Flags in the city flew at half-mast while a drizzling rain made the gray mood even more somber. New York City firemen and police officers got respectful applause as they marched in a small parade along Church Street. A few blocks south, in Battery Park, thousands of people filed past a mobile monument that bears the names of all 9/11 victims—including those killed in Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, Pa.

The 50 or 60 Christian leaders who met that day at the Millennium Hotel in lower Manhattan did not come to create a spectacle. No one on the street knew we were there. And no one in the room was making small talk or working deals. Billy Wilson, the leader of the Awakening America prayer initiative, told us at the beginning of our two and a half-hour gathering that we were there to simply cry out to God for a spiritual awakening in the United States.

We were originally supposed to have our meeting on the 55th floor, in a room with sweeping views of the city. But Billy explained to us the night before that a group of lawyers who were working on an important case needed their meeting suite for an extra day. So we were moved to the fourth floor.

I later realized how fitting that was for a gathering of this kind. We did not need to be high. God wanted us low.

There was nothing fancy about the event. Robert Stearns, leader of the Eagles’ Wings Ministries, led us in worship with a single keyboard. Denominational executives from the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), the Assemblies of God and the Foursquare Church wore casual shirts instead of their trademark suits. Mart Green, the Christian millionaire who owns the Mardel company, read from the book of Proverbs and then led us in a simple prayer for a restoration of integrity in the American workplace. A group of students from Lee University sang their songs a capella.

And Vonette Bright, the widow of Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright, reminded us of how God answered prayers in the 1970s when a group of leaders cried to God for revival. She said the Jesus movement of that era was triggered by prayers for the youth of the nation.

At one point in the middle of the program Wilson interrupted the schedule. He asked if we could have a time of unscripted prayer, and he encouraged us to “cry out” to God in a humble entreaty for His mercy.

I really cannot explain what happened next. I felt compelled to fall on my knees, so I slid to the floor and buried my head in my hands. Suddenly I felt overcome with emotion. I had not felt stirred that day by any of the 9/11 events, and even being near the World Trade Center site had not evoked sorrow in my heart. But all of a sudden I was sobbing.

These were not like the tears that occasionally well up in my eyes when I attend a wedding or when I hear a particularly moving song. This was different. These tears were guttural. They were being pulled out of the deepest part of my soul. It seemed as if this weeping did not even originate with me. It felt like a holy cry that God had initiated.

What I was praying went something like this: “Lord, please forgive us. God have mercy on the United States. Forgive Your church, Lord, for our backslidden condition. Cleanse us from our moral failure. Reach down and awaken us. Set our hearts on fire again, for You and for the mission You called us to. We are crying out to you for another chance to reach our generation before it is too late.”

I can’t tell you exactly how long that time of weeping lasted, but I could hear people sobbing in other parts of the room. I knew I did not make this happen. God was in it. And His Spirit was orchestrating the prayers that He needed to hear.

We can’t force moments like this. But I believe that at this critical time in our nation’s history we must release the tears and the travail of the Lord if we expect to see His miraculous answer.

The prophet Joel told wayward Israel: “Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, ‘Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations.’” (Joel 2:17a, NASB). And the Lord spoke through Jeremiah and said: “Consider and call for the mourning women, that they may come; And send for the wailing women, that they may come! Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may shed tears and our eyelids flow with water.’” (Jer. 9:17-18).

Tears have always preceded the outpouring of the Spirit. The fallow ground must be broken before the harvest can come. The alabaster box must be broken before the fragrance of Christ can be released. We must know true brokenness! We must allow the Holy Spirit to pray through us, even if that means He will intercede “with groanings too deep for words” (see Rom. 8:26).

This is the time to cry out. I encourage prayer groups around the nation to dispense with your normal routine and shift into extraordinary prayer. We must weep for our national sins and for the church’s faithlessness. Please cry out until He sends a tsunami of His power to save us.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. You can find him on Twitter at leegrady. For more information about the Awakening America Alliance, go to www.awakeningamerica.us.

Spending time last week with a persecuted Christian brother ruined me forever.

I can’t reveal my new Pakistani friend’s name, even though he gave me permission to use it. I could never live with myself if he died because of something I wrote, but he wants the world to know his amazing story. So I’ll just call him Saleem.

I met this young church leader last weekend during a missions conference in a northeastern state. The same day we met, Islamic radicals were burning Christian houses to the ground in Gojra, an area not far from Saleem’s city. So far, the body count in Gojra has been estimated to be as high as 20, and 19 others were injured when masked militants associated with the Taliban attacked a peaceful Christian settlement.

Last week’s violence flared after a Christian was accused of desecrating a copy of the Quran. One of Saleem’s friends was severely wounded. This happens often in Pakistan, where so-called blasphemy laws make it a capital offense to tear a page of the Islamic holy book or to insult the name of Muhammad. Right now, a 4-year-old girl is waiting in a prison cell to be executed for damaging a Quran.

“The Muslims hate us,” Saleem told me. “But Christians are protesting the Islamic violence. We are peaceful.”

Saleem lifted up his sleeve and showed me two scars near his elbow and wrist. They mark where a bullet passed through one end of his arm to the other when Islamic militants shot him in the city of Lahore in 2005. If you take a close look at Saleem’s scalp, under his thick black hair, you will find many scars from where he was beaten on the head with sticks.

“Many members of my church have been put in jail because of these ‘blasphemy’ laws,” Saleem said—noting that the charges were false. Saleem receives untraceable text messages almost every day from Taliban members threatening to kill him.

Islamic militants are upset because Christianity is growing more rapidly in Pakistan than anyone in government will admit. Official statistics say Pakistan is 2 percent Christian. Saleem claims the figure is much higher. He says many former Muslims won’t state their religion in surveys because they fear reprisals from radical Islamists-and because Christians are denied jobs and forced to live in ghettos.

Although Saleem leads a network of 900 house churches in his city (with an average membership of 200 each), he is not a wealthy man. He and his wife and son share a small house with six other family members. There are bullet holes in their front gate. They keep a water buffalo nearby and sell its milk to make extra money.

Miracles have followed this young pastor, who began directing his church network in 1997. In May 2008, a Muslim man brought his dead 6-year-old son to an evangelistic meeting. Said Saleem: “I saw the fire of God on that child and he was revived. It was the presence of God. It wasn’t me. The doctor stood in the meeting and gave a report. He said the child had been dead.”

In most of Saleem’s outdoor meetings, up to 80 percent of the audience is Muslim. Huge numbers of them are converted to Christ when they see displays of God’s miracle power. “We have seen blind eyes opened, the paralyzed walk, deaf ears opened,” he said. “We see people get out of wheelchairs. We see many miracles in Jesus’ name.”

Saleem added that Presbyterian Christians in his country are totally open to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit: “The Presbyterians speak in tongues. They believe in miracles. They believe that without the Holy Spirit we cannot preach and teach.”

It is one thing to read about persecuted Christians. It was quite another experience to eat several meals with this brother, listen to him pray in Urdu and look at the brand marks on his body. Two days with Saleem forced me to do a reality check.

I realized I’ve been complaining in my heart in recent days about trivial things—the price of gasoline, the sour economy and the slowness of some Internet connections. Now I feel ridiculous. I’ve repented for my ungrateful attitude. I’m going to start each day remembering Saleem and the millions like him who suffer joyfully for Christ.

 We often pray for more of the Holy Spirit’s anointing. But if God gives you His power, will you actually use it?

A few years ago the Lord challenged me about my level of spiritual hunger. He showed me that even though I had stood in many prayer lines and repeatedly sung the words, “Lord, I want more of You,” I wasn’t as passionate for Him as I thought I was.

In 1999 my church sponsored a conference on the Holy Spirit. At the close of one service I was lying on the floor near the altar asking God for another touch of His power. Several other people were kneeling at the communion rail and praying quietly for each other.

Suddenly I began to have a vision. In my mind I could see a large pipeline, at least eight feet in diameter. I was looking at it from the inside, and I could see a shallow stream of golden liquid flowing at the bottom. The oil in the giant pipe was only a few inches deep.

I began a conversation with the Lord.

“What are You showing me?” I asked.

“This is the flow of the Holy Spirit in your life,” He answered.

It was not an encouraging picture; it was pitiful! The capacity of the pipeline was huge—enough to convey tons of oil. Yet only a trickle was evident.

Then I noticed something else: Several large valves were lined up along the sides of the pipeline, and each of them was shut.

I wanted to ask the Lord why there was so little oil in my life. Instead I asked: “What are those valves, and why are they closed?”

His answer stunned me. “Those represent the times when you said no. Why should I increase the level of anointing if you aren’t available to use it?”

The words stung. When had I said no to God? I was overcome with emotion and began to repent. I recalled different excuses I had made and limitations I had placed on how He could use me.

I had told Him that I didn’t want to be in front of crowds because I wasn’t a good speaker. I had told Him that if I couldn’t preach like T.D. Jakes does, then I didn’t want to speak at all. I had told Him that I didn’t want to address certain issues or go certain places. I had placed so many cumbersome conditions on my obedience.

After a while I began to see something else in my spirit. It was a huge crowd of African men, assembled as if they were in a large arena. And I saw myself preaching to them.

Nobody had ever asked me to minister in Africa, but I knew at that moment I needed to surrender my will. All I could think to say was the prayer of Isaiah: “Here am I, Lord, send me.” (Isa. 6:8). I told God I would go anywhere and say anything He asked. I laid my insecurities, fears and inhibitions on the altar.

Three years later I stood at a pulpit inside a sports arena in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. As I addressed a crowd of 8,000 pastors who had assembled there for a training conference, I remembered seeing their faces in that vision. And I realized that God had opened a new valve in my life that day in 1999. Because I had said yes, He had increased the flow of His oil so that it could reach thousands.

Many of us have a habit of asking for more of God’s power and anointing. But what do we use it for? He doesn’t send it just to make us feel good.

We love to go to the altar for a touch from God. We love the goose bumps, the shaking, the emotion of the moment. We love to fall on the floor and experience one filling after another. But I am afraid some of us are soaking up the anointing but not giving it away. Our charismatic experience has become inward and selfish. We get up off the floor and live like we want to.

Pentecost is not a party. If we truly want to be empowered we must offer God an unqualified yes. We must crucify every no. We must become a conduit to reach others; not a reservoir with no outlet.

Search your own heart today and see if there are any closed valves in your pipeline. As you surrender them, the locked channels will open and His oil will flow out to a world that craves to know He is real.

Legalistic religion is dangerous. Here’s how you can detect and avoid the poison of a religious spirit.

After Elisha watched Elijah ascend into heaven, the prophet went to the city of Jericho and performed his first miracle. The men of that city faced an environmental crisis: Their water was toxic, most likely because of the sulphur and other chemicals that had rained down upon nearby Sodom and Gomorrah years earlier. This poison had made the land barren (see 2 Kings 2:19-22) and it was probably affecting people and animals as well as plant life.

So Elisha performed a bold, prophetic act. He threw salt in the water and proclaimed: “Thus says the Lord, ‘I have purified these waters; there shall not be from there death or unfruitfulness any longer’” (v. 21, NASB). His proclamation brought immediate cleansing.

This obscure story in the Old Testament offers us a picture of the gospel’s power. The message of Jesus Christ heals us. The Holy Spirit brings life where death has reigned. He neutralizes the poisons that cause spiritual barrenness. He balances the pH level so that spiritual growth and vitality is possible.

All of us would like to enjoy a healthy spiritual life. But the sad truth is that many of us are barren because of hazardous additives. We have believed a different gospel—one laced with legalism, performance-based religion and salvation by works—when Christ alone is our only source of life.

Jesus Himself referred to these toxins as “the leaven of the Pharisees” (Luke 12:1, NASB). He told us that the Pharisees’ brand of religion, which looked good on the outside, was deadly—and contagious.

Have you been infected? You can take your own pH test by examining these eight characteristics of a religious spirit.

1. A religious spirit views God as a cold, harsh, distant taskmaster rather than an approachable, loving Father. When we base our relationship with God on our ability to perform spiritual duties, we deny the power of grace. God does not love us because we pray, read our Bibles, attend church or witness, yet millions of Christians think God is mad if they don’t perform these and other duties perfectly. As a result they struggle to find true intimacy with Jesus.

2. A religious spirit places emphasis on doing outward things to show others that God accepts him. We deceive ourselves into believing that we can win God’s approval through a religious dress code, certain spiritual disciplines, particular music styles or even doctrinal positions.

3. A religious spirit develops traditions and formulas to accomplish spiritual goals. We trust in our liturgies, denominational policies or man-made programs to obtain results that only God alone can give.

4. A religious spirit becomes joyless, cynical and hypercritical. This can turn a home or a church completely sour. Then, whenever genuine joy and love are expressed, this becomes a threat to those who have lost the simplicity of true faith.

5. A religious spirit becomes prideful and isolated, thinking that his righteousness is special and that he cannot associate with other believers who have different standards. Churches that allow these attitudes become elitist and dangerously vulnerable to deception or cult-like practices.

6. A religious spirit develops a harsh, judgmental attitude toward sinners, yet those who ingest this poison typically struggle with sinful habits that they cannot admit to anyone else. Religious people rarely interact with nonbelievers because they don’t want their own superior morals to be tainted by them.

7. A religious spirit rejects progressive revelation and refuses to embrace change. This is why many churches become irrelevant to society. They become so focused on what God did 50 years ago that they become stuck in a time warp and cannot move forward when the Holy Spirit begins to open new understanding. When religious groups refuse to shift with God’s new directives, they become “old wineskins” and God must find more flexible vessels that are willing to implement change.

8. A religious spirit persecutes those who disagree with his self-righteous views and becomes angry whenever the message of grace threatens to undermine his religiosity. An angry religious person will use gossip and slander to assassinate other peoples’ character and may even use violence to prove his point. Jesus, in fact, warned His disciples: “There will even come a time when anyone who kills you will think he’s doing God a favor” (John 16:2, The Message).

If the poison of religion has contaminated your walk with God, ask Him to pour a fresh understanding of His grace into your barren spirit—and then expect His new life to flow through you.

  In  interview with Charisma, the fallen Colorado pastor reaches out to the Christian community and asks for forgiveness.

After Colorado pastor Ted Haggard admitted to an embarrassing moral failure with a male prostitute in November 2006, the Christian community wasn’t sure what to do with him. Some people wrote him off and kicked him to the curb. A few wept and prayed for the pastor and his devastated wife. We all tried our best to move on—knowing that the American church had suffered a big black eye through the ordeal.

I didn’t know what to say to Haggard when the news broke two and a half years ago. Like so many others who had read his books, listened to his sermons and admired his church, I felt betrayed. I sent one brief e-mail to let him know I was praying. After he appeared in the HBO documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard earlier this year, I decided to ask him if he would talk to Charisma about his healing process.

Ted and Gayle drove to Orlando and we talked for more than two hours over lunch. I thought it would be awkward, but both of them were as gracious as they were eager to share their hearts. They still seemed to carry a lot of pain. Their emotions were still raw from having the ugliest details of their personal lives broadcast on national television.

The Haggards agreed to do a print interview, and I gave them the liberty of writing their answers so that they could be sure the sound bytes didn’t get distorted. I wanted them to express their hearts clearly. Below is a short version of that interview. The longer version has been posted on our Web site and is available here.

Charisma: You probably feel as though you’ve been to hell and back since your moral failure in 2006. How are you doing now?

Ted Haggard: My visit to hell on Earth as a consequence of my own actions was both devastating and eye-opening. It took a tree to fall on me, but I did get the point. As a result, my spiritual life is undoubtedly stronger now. I am becoming the man I always prayed to be. Becoming worse than a leper in the eyes of others has deeply humbled me, to say the least.

Charisma: Do you have any plans to go back into ministry?

Ted Haggard: Since the release of the HBO documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard in January, we’ve had millions of visitors to tedhaggard.com and thousands of e-mails that included words of encouragement and invitations to speak and write. We’ve appeared again on Oprah, had two appearances on Fox network and have spoken in a variety of venues. It’s all humbling and embarrassing. But it does seem to help others, and we are being received with more love and respect than I’ve ever had in my life.

Charisma: For about a year you were under the discipline of a team of ministers. What did you learn from that?

Ted Haggard: I learned that what I had been teaching others for years is true: We should all live our lives as though there is no such thing as a secret. And I realize how much my sin costs others. Secrecy empowers sin. What I should have done is find a safe place to openly confess my sin and find a path to effective repentance. I am deeply sorry for those I have hurt and disappointed in my process.

Charisma: No minister actually plans to have a moral failure. What mistakes did you make that led you to make wrong choices?

Ted Haggard: I wrongly thought I could take care of my problems without embarrassing my family and friends. I feared the consequences and shame so much. I didn’t trust others enough to talk about it. I thank God, though, that the crisis got things out in the open so I can enjoy honest communication and freedom today.

Charisma: What do you say now to people who struggle with gay feelings?

Ted Haggard: I am not a psychologist, so I don’t have any advice for others who struggle the way I did. Nor do I know with certainty that my childhood experience contributed to my problems. Some of my counselors have made that connection, and the treatment of that childhood experience completely removed all compulsive thoughts and behaviors. I no longer deal with conflicting desires the way I did.

Regardless, though, I do not believe my childhood experience is an excuse. I am responsible and I have repented. I highly recommend qualified Christian counseling for anyone losing their fight with any kind of compulsive thoughts or behaviors. I believe our generation of believers is going to have to accept that it’s not always lack of faith if we need counseling for assistance with integrity. If I had gone to counseling, I probably could have completely avoided my crisis.

Charisma: How has the church treated you since your fall?

Ted Haggard: A growing segment of church leaders are choosing to publicly forgive us and welcome us. Other church leaders are quiet, which I think may be the way they communicate that we are irrelevant and/or embarrassing to them. Others haven’t known what to do so they have done nothing. When people are quiet, mean, judgmental, ignorant, angry or distant, I think that is justice, and I don’t blame them. When others are kind, gentle, loving, helpful, supportive and gracious I consider it a gift and am grateful.

Gayle Haggard: Since returning to Colorado Springs, we have discovered many church people who were as eager to reconnect with us as we were with them. In this atmosphere of love and forgiveness, true healing and restoration is taking place.

Charisma: Women watched you from a distance, Gayle, and wondered how you could stay with Ted. What do you tell women whose husbands have had affairs?

Gayle Haggard: The reason I could stay with Ted was that I settled in myself that he is worth it. Sure, I was hurting. I felt totally let down and betrayed. My heart was thoroughly broken. But I had to believe that in spite of all the pain Ted loved me and I loved him and our relationship was real. I determined that he was worth fighting for, our marriage was worth fighting for, and the honor and dignity of our children was worth fighting for.

I encourage women with the words that encouraged me: Love covers a multitude of sins. When I pressed myself to forgive and love Ted, I healed. When I judged him and scrutinized him for all the pain he caused, I would spiral down into despair. Love never fails—if we choose love and let it do its work, we are all better for it.

We can quibble over when the previous wave of the Holy Spirit ended. But what’s important is that we follow God’s presence into a new season.

Some readers were offended when I declared in an online column a few weeks ago that the charismatic movement is dead. One woman even accused me of heresy, since—in her words—I believe “the age of the Holy Spirit has ended.” (I didn’t say that.) Others on the opposite side of the spectrum asked why I waited so long to state the obvious. All this discussion prompted me to address the issue further.

I am not a coroner. But I do believe the historic period we call the American charismatic movement ended a while ago. By making that pronouncement I was NOT saying that (1) the Holy Spirit isn’t moving today; (2) the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit aren’t available to us any more; or (3) people who are associated with this movement are all washed up.

On the contrary, we could be on the cusp of one of the most dynamic spiritual awakenings in history, and it will most certainly be accompanied by the supernatural work of the Spirit. Yet if we want to shift with Him into the next season we must lay aside old mindsets and worn-out religious paradigms that we picked up during the past 40 years. When God comes to do “a new thing,” as Isaiah promised He would (Isa. 43:19, NASB), we must embrace new priorities, recalibrate our spiritual values and set aside the baggage of the past.

New wine requires new wineskins. New growth only comes after pruning. Change is often painful.

The history books will record that the charismatic movement began in 1967 with the Duquesne revival in Pittsburgh (there were earlier birth pangs with Episcopalians in the late 1950s) and that the movement waned by the late 1980s. Charismatic renewal was a visitation of God—ushering millions of people from mainline church backgrounds into an experience with the Holy Spirit and renewing many older Pentecostal churches.

There were subsequent outpourings of the Spirit in the 1990s, of course—namely the Toronto Blessing and the Pensacola Revival—but the overall movement was fragmenting. The televangelism scandals of 1987 and the implosion of the Discipleship Movement two years later made it obvious that something was rotten underneath the polished veneer of charismania.

This doesn’t mean the past 20 years have been insignificant. Huge advances have occurred on the international mission field. Yet some of the most notable spiritual trends in the United States in recent years have been associated with evangelicals who don’t have ties to charismatics. These include Rick Warren, Beth Moore, Louie Giglio, Henry Blackaby, Bill Hybels, Andy Stanley and Erwin McManus. We are naïve (and arrogant) if we think the only people God is using in this hour are members of our own charismatic subculture.

When I say the charismatic movement is dead I am issuing an obvious challenge. It is time for us to lay aside the past so we can embrace the future. We are in a season when church leaders should be asking the hard questions:

• Are we locked into the past in an unhealthy way?
• Are we using language, methods or ministry styles that are stale, dated and ineffective?
• Are we training younger people to lead the next generation?
• Are we willing to slaughter any sacred cows and pet doctrines that hinder outreach and church growth?

Old Testament laws forbid people from touching anything dead (see Lev. 21:1,11). That’s because corpses spread disease. Dead things stink and defile.

This is certainly true of dead religion. It can make a church barren and lifeless, even if it is hidden under a superficial coating of trendy songs and casual clothes. It’s not enough to update your music and take off your tie. We need the new life of the Spirit. Something new must happen inside us.

God once told Moses to put a bronze serpent on a stick and hold it in the air. When people looked at the snake they were healed. Centuries later, King Hezekiah destroyed this image because people had begun to worship it (see 2 Kings 18:4). What God meant for good later became a hindrance. Sometimes spiritual things have an expiration date!

Of course God’s moral law never changes, and neither does His character. But He may not move today in the same way He did in 1975; the strategies He gave us in 1990 are not necessarily for churches now. The Holy Spirit doesn’t want us to follow a rote formula; He wants us to seek His presence as He moves through history.

It really doesn’t matter what we label the next movement. What’s important is His renewing presence. Rather than worshiping God around a monument to the past, let’s find out where He’s going and follow the glory cloud.

If you think your past has disqualified you, take courage from the life of this Gentile widow.

It is truly profound that Ruth’s name appears in the royal genealogy of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Matthew tells us: “Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David the king” (Matt.1:5-6, NASB).

In Old Testament times women’s names rarely appeared in genealogical records. Women were invisible. They were not valued for their gifts or talents; they simply faded into the background—even though they worked hard, served their husbands and raised children. Women had no voice.

For that reason alone it is amazing that Ruth’s name appears in this biblical list. Yet it is more shocking that a destitute Gentile widow from the land of Moab ended up in the lineage of Christ. If normal cultural rules had been observed, Ruth would have been disqualified. She had too many strikes against her.

First she was a Moabite. These people traced their lineage to the incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters (see Gen. 19:30-38). Ruth was carrying a huge load of family baggage, as well as the shame that is attached to sexual impurity.

Second Moabites had been cut off from the assembly of the Lord because of the way they had treated the nation of Israel during their wilderness journey. Deuteronomy 23:3 says the idolatrous Moabites were alienated from the Lord’s presence to the 10th generation. Ruth must have felt a deep sense of rejection.

Third Ruth was not only a widow but was probably considered barren. She had been married to her husband, Mahlon, for several years yet she never had a child. In Old Testament times women were expected to produce heirs immediately after they married, but Ruth remained childless until her husband’s untimely death. Widowhood and barrenness placed a doubly depressing stigma on her.

Yet against this sad backdrop the book of Ruth presents a beautiful picture of Christ’s redemptive power. When Ruth pledges her loyalty to her mother-in-law, Naomi, she takes a courageous step of faith and chooses to serve the God of Israel. In response to both of these women’s faith, God not only provides for them in a miraculous way but also enables them to find a place in His salvation plan. By the end of the story, Ruth marries into a Jewish family and she gives birth to an heir; meanwhile Naomi’s tragic emptiness is turned to joy.

What does their story mean to you today? No matter how many strikes are against you, God wants to use you in His awesome plan. If He can do it for Ruth, He can do it for you!

If you want your life to count for God, all you have to do is participate with His grace and follow the same steps Ruth took:

1. Leave your shame behind. Walk away from your past by trusting fully in the blood of Jesus to forgive and cleanse you. Even if you have experienced abortion, rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence or addiction, you can leave your Moab and move to Bethlehem, the “house of Bread.” God has made it possible for you to transfer from darkness to light.

2. Turn away from your idols. Ruth had to leave Moab even though her sister-in-law, Orpah, chose to stay in that land of idols. Sometimes we have to make hard choices when following God. But you must make a clean break. Don’t give in to the temptation to compromise.

3. Get out of your comfort zone. It was not easy for Ruth to go with Naomi to Bethlehem. It was a foreign land and she had no guarantee of provision. Yet when she took the risk she discovered the amazing goodness of God. Many Christian women today have been living in the same spiritual ruts. You must get out of the pew and take a risk. God has a spiritual adventure for you, but you won’t find it if you just sit there. Like Ruth, you will find your destiny in the harvest field.

4. Find a mentor. God never intended for us to walk through life alone. He provides us with spiritual mothers and fathers as well as friends to encourage and counsel us. Ruth chose to serve the Lord because she saw God’s kindness reflected in Naomi. And it was Naomi’s counsel that prodded Ruth to go to the threshing floor of Boaz where she found God’s ultimate purpose.

As I travel I find so many women full of spiritual potential who feel trapped by depression, disappointment, grief, shame and physical pain. Yet when they look to the church for help they often find that the patriarchal attitudes of the Old Testament are alive and well.

The church has failed when it comes to helping women discover and implement their spiritual gifts. Women’s ministry has focused on trivial things like fashion shows and recipes when God desires to train His daughters to win souls, disciple new believers, start and run businesses, fund kingdom enterprises and transform communities. We have ignored the message of the book of Ruth—and as a result many women have remained spiritually barren when it was God’s intention that they become dangerous weapons that make the devil tremble.

Women please hear me. Jesus has included you in His plan! Allow Him to reveal to you how much He loves you and how He desires to use you. He wants you to leave a spiritual legacy, just as Ruth did. May you be filled with the same courage, faith and determination that marked her life.

The genuine power of the Holy Spirit is not just about miracles—we must also embrace holiness.

Very few evangelical Christians today observe the traditional church calendar. Sure, we know when to celebrate Christmas and Easter, but more obscure holidays like Epiphany or All Saints Day have long been forgotten—usually because we consider them “too Catholic.”

But we have a strange way of treating Pentecost, which happens to fall this year on May 31. Even those of us who wear the Pentecostal label rarely commemorate it, either because we forget to count the weeks after Easter or because we don’t place any importance on a date that gets lost somewhere between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day.

That’s odd when you consider that the Apostle Paul and the early disciples attached great significance to Pentecost. During his third missionary journey, Paul hurried to reach Jerusalem in time for Pentecost (see Acts 20:16), and he told the Corinthians that he planned to stay in Ephesus until Pentecost (see 1 Cor. 16:8). Paul had Pentecost on his mind; he marked time with it; it provided a sacred rhythm for his spiritual life. He was, without a doubt, the ultimate Pentecostal.

Before the coming of Christ, Pentecost was a joyful Jewish festival celebrating the wheat harvest 50 days after the first fruits offering. But the Old Covenant version of this holiday was just a foreshadowing of the great spiritual ingathering that occurred after the dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the first followers of Jesus. Pentecost was heaven’s inauguration ceremony for the church, complete with rushing wind, flames of fire and an astounding display of glossalalia. In that moment the men and women gathered in the upper room were visibly endued with supernatural power—and 3,000 people were converted in response to Peter’s preaching.

Pentecost was no small miracle. The fire that’s described in the second chapter of Acts was not unlike the fire that fell on Mount Carmel during Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal. But the fire of Pentecost came not to consume Elijah’s soggy wood but to set surrendered hearts ablaze. It came to show us that in the era of grace, God fills frail human vessels with His powerful Spirit—and anoints a new priesthood that is not based on race, gender, age or economic status.

How desperately we need a fresh anointing of Pentecost today. But if we want it, we must go back to the original formula.

Before John the Baptist was beheaded he prophesied that God would endue His church with power. He announced that Jesus Christ would give His church a double portion of His Spirit. John said: “He [Jesus] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt. 3:11, NASB, emphasis added). When the day of Pentecost arrived, sure enough, both wind and fire were evident. True Pentecost has both.

We’ve known the wind during the past 40 years of the charismatic movement. We have felt “times of refreshing” in the Holy Spirit’s renewing presence. We’ve enjoyed His healing, learned about the gifts of the Spirit, claimed His prosperity and received His supernatural power.

Some of us have spent a lot of time on the floors of our churches, soaking in His miraculous anointing. We love to shake, bake, rattle and roll. We saturate and marinate in the anointing. We experience Holy Ghost goose bumps. And sometimes, because of our immaturity, we use the Holy Spirit’s power to feed selfish desires or meet emotional needs.

But genuine Pentecost does not consist of wind alone. It’s not just about noise or feelings. John said Jesus would baptize us in fire as well as power. What is the fire of the Spirit?

Fire has a refining element. John the Baptist said: “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and he will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:12). When it comes to Pentecost, holiness is not a side issue. It is the essence of the Holy Spirit’s work. When He comes in power, He also comes to burn up the sin in our lives. He comes with conviction, searching our motives, uprooting our unforgiveness and shattering our pride.

Our problem is that we treat the whole scene in Acts 2 as if it were a party. We want hoopla instead of the fear of God. We spend all our time splashing in the shallow end of His river when He has deeper things for us. We are afraid to embrace Jesus’ winnowing fork, and we resist when the fire of His Spirit comes to burn up our selfishness.

My Bible says wind and fire appeared on the day of Pentecost. We will not see Pentecost-style harvest without both. I pray you will ask for the double portion.

Put on your seat belt. What we are experiencing is so much more than an economic recession.

Unless you are Rip Van Winkle and have been asleep for years, I’m sure you feel the daily convulsions that are rocking our world. Change is hitting America right between the eyes. Everything that can be shaken is being shaken—from banks and insurance companies to car manufacturers and media empires.

Trusted brands, including Chrysler and United Airlines, may go out of business within months. Newspapers are laying off employees in droves as readers go digital; bookstores like Borders can’t compete with Amazon.com. Pontiac is officially dead, and the city of Detroit—once the proud global headquarters of the auto industry—is rusting and jobless.

What we are experiencing today is more than an economic recession. The upheaval is affecting us politically, socially, technologically and spiritually. It feels as if God has pushed a giant red reset button in heaven. Change is being forced on us.

Meanwhile there is a big problem in the church: We Christians don’t have a great track record when it comes to embracing change. We are slow adapters. Often we insist on doing church exactly like Grandpa did, and then when we realize we are outdated it’s too late.

For a few months I’ve been pondering the changes happening in charismatic churches and praying about our future as a movement. I’ve been asking hard questions and wrestling with my own fears of change. And I’ve reached some uncomfortable conclusions:

1. The charismatic movement as we know it has ended. I celebrate what God did in recent years to bring the Holy Spirit’s renewal to the church. My life was totally changed by it. But the cloud is moving, and we cannot pitch our tents around the revivals of the past. While we embrace the eternal things He gave us in those days, we must discard the styles and methods that are no longer fruitful so we can advance.

That doesn’t mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. We cling to what is good. But we must leave behind the excesses, extremes and flaky doctrines that give us a bad name. The one-man show is over. The prosperity circus was a failure. We must abandon the deceptive hype of the past. People today are craving authenticity—not shallow words and empty promises.

2. A “new generation” church is emerging. I visit two or three churches every month in this country. Those that are healthy and growing have developed new paradigms. Though they embrace the power of the Holy Spirit, they also place high value on evangelism, small-group discipleship, social justice and world missions. They are extravagant in giving to outreach. They are relational, not event-driven. And they demand character from leaders rather than simply celebrating a man or woman’s spiritual anointing.

No one has coined a term for this movement yet, but it is growing—and it represents the future of Christianity in our country. These new generation churches embrace healthy leadership and don’t tolerate the kind of ministry monkey business that has embarrassed us in recent years. These churches love sinners and preach grace, but they draw the lines necessary to enforce biblical standards.

New generation churches are also connected in a healthy, relational way to other churches, yet they are not denominational in a restrictive sense. They refuse labels. Rather than wearing the cumbersome armor of a religious structure, they are free to pray, dream and be creative about how they should reach the children, high school students, business leaders, drug addicts, immigrants, homeless people, twenty-somethings and church dropouts in their communities.

3. God is tearing down the walls that divide us. For too long we’ve been content to congregate in our comfortable tribal groups. But the essence of Pentecost involves the Holy Spirit’s outpouring “on all mankind” (Acts 2:17, NASB). This means true Pentecostals cannot harbor racism.

God’s agenda in this next season of revival will involve tearing down racist structures—and this will occur not only in white churches but in black and Hispanic ones as well. It also means that church leaders from China, India, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America will have a greater platform to speak into our lives here in the United States. Western Christians must accept the fact that we don’t have all the answers!

4. We face an unprecedented global opportunity for evangelism. I’ve never been the first to try new gadgets. I still like to hold my newspaper and read it on the back porch—and I don’t watch TV shows on an iPhone. But regardless of my creature habits, I can’t stand in the way of today’s technological revolution.

Jesus commanded us to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth—and that requires us to use every means possible. God is in a hurry to reach places like Uzbekistan, Niger and Yemen—and He will likely use podcasts, Blackberries and Facebook to do it. We should claim all new media so that every person on this planet can hear that Jesus died to save us.

Please don’t fight the changes God wants to bring in your life. As you hold on to His unchangeable love, allow Him to push the reset button. Then buckle your seat belt and hold on. We are in for the ride of our lives!

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.

After visits from three evangelists in four days, I figured it out. We’ve neglected the heart of our mission.

Something amazing happened to me last week during a ministry trip to Texas and Oklahoma. God sent three unexpected visitors over the course of four days to confirm something He is doing in the church today.

Last Thursday when I was speaking at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, my friend Sujo John called to say he wanted to drop by the campus and attend the conference with me. Sujo is a full-time evangelist who is originally from India. He surrendered to the ministry on Sept. 11, 2001, when he was buried under the rubble of the World Trade Center.

On that horrific day as Sujo lay under the concrete and twisted metal, he wondered if he would live until nightfall. But that did not stop him from praying with about 20 people who were trapped with him. They all died before Sujo was rescued, but they stepped into eternity with faith in Christ as their Savior because Sujo led them in a sinner’s prayer.

After Sujo learned that his wife, Mary, was safe (she also worked in the World Trade Center but was late for work that day), they both left their lucrative careers in the financial industry and gave their lives to full-time evangelism. Since then Sujo has traveled all over the world sharing his testimony and warning people of the urgency of this hour.

On Friday, the second day of my meetings at Christ for the Nations, I got a text message from Scott Hinkle, a full-time evangelist from Phoenix who happened to be in Dallas. He came to the campus to attend the meeting in the main student auditorium.

Scott grew up in a rough-and-tumble New Jersey neighborhood outside New York City and became a Christian during the Jesus Movement in the 1970s. He has spent most of his adult life taking the gospel to places most Christians avoid. Every year he takes an evangelistic swat team to Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans and wins prostitutes and partygoers to Christ. He is one of the few charismatic ministers in the United States devoted to equipping believers in soul-winning.

After I left Dallas I flew to Oklahoma City to speak at a church in nearby Norman. On Sunday afternoon I got a text message from Kevin Turner, a full-time evangelist who is based near Tulsa. He wanted to come to my meeting at Riverside Church. I was thrilled because I had never met Kevin, even though we’ve talked on the phone many times and Charisma published an article about his unique ministry in 2007.

Kevin directs Strategic World Impact, a ministry that has taken him to some of the most dangerous places on the planet. He was mentored by the late Leonard Ravenhill, the radical revivalist whose writings still inspire many of us today. Kevin carries Ravenhill’s sobering passion for lost souls and has shared the gospel in refugee camps, war zones and killing fields. He can’t talk publicly about most of his work because it would put his colleagues in jeopardy.

It wasn’t until I saw Kevin seated in front of me at Riverside that I realized this might be more than a coincidence. Three full-time evangelists in four days. Was God saying something here? Maybe it was just a fluke. But it caused me to realize how desperate we are in this hour for the ministry of the evangelist—a ministry that we have sidelined and neglected in recent years.

In the 1980s and ‘90s we charismatics emphasized the need for apostles and prophets. I cheered this movement because I believe we should reclaim every spiritual gift in the New Testament that has been avoided or neglected.

We need true apostles and prophets because they keep the church moving forward in our global assignment and provide heavenly direction and strategy. Yet apostles and prophets have been controversial, not only because some people reject them on theological grounds but because some self-proclaimed apostles and hyper-mystical prophets have abused and misused their gifts and authority. Today some of these people have slipped over the edge of orthodoxy—and have taken segments of the church off the cliff with them.

Some have promoted the concept that apostles are spiritual supermen who wield rigid, hierarchical control over churches and leaders, resulting in authoritarianism and abuse. Others have perverted the apostolic model to create a financial “downline” that brings loads of money to a few at the top of the food chain—ignoring the fact that the Bible says apostles should be models of humility who serve from the bottom. And some prophets have traded in their originally pure message to promote bizarre doctrines and cryptic predictions that often prove to be hokum.

Is it possible that while we were celebrating the super apostles and building fan clubs for the prophets we were ignoring the primacy of our evangelistic calling?

I know one gift is not more valuable than another. But when I read about the five-fold ministry gifts listed in Ephesians 4:11, I can’t help but notice the placement of the evangelist. Paul wrote: “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers” (NASB, emphasis added). The evangelist is not more important, and God’s kingdom is not a hierarchy. But evangelism is in the center because it is the very heart of God’s mission.

In this turbulent season when our movement is being shaken, refined and redefined, we must return to the simplicity of our mission to reach the lost all around us. God wants to visit us with fresh evangelistic fire that will burn up our selfishness, refocus our priorities, rid us of quirky doctrinal distractions and ignite our hearts with a holy love for people who don’t know Jesus.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.

We must use the right building materials if we want our ministries to stand in the day of His visitation.

Every state in this country has strict building codes. You can’t just buy a piece of land and throw up a structure any way you choose. Local governments have standards for foundations, floors, drywall, roofs, exhaust systems, water heaters, wiring, lighting and sanitary drainage. In my neighborhood you can’t even erect a shed in your backyard without a permit, and an inspector will always drop by unannounced to make sure you followed the rules.

These codes are important in Florida where I live. You don’t want to discover during a hurricane that your contractor used shoddy plywood or defective concrete when he built your house or condo. Bad construction just might send your roof into a neighbor’s yard!

It’s ironic that our society does not tolerate sloppy building, yet in the charismatic church we place little emphasis on code enforcement. In fact, in our freewheeling movement we celebrate the independent spiritual contractor who uses questionable materials and answers to no one. Much of our movement during the past 30 years has been built like this—and today we are discovering that what we thought was sturdy was actually stuck together with cheap nails, substandard wood, thin glue and duct tape.

That creaking sound you hear is the sagging of rafters. The Lord has entered our crooked house with His holy plumb line and a clipboard—and He is not pleased.

Did you know that God has a building code? I prefer the way The Message Bible translates the apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15: “Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely.”

Paul says Jesus will inspect our buildings using the ultimate test—the fire of His holiness. The New American Standard Bible translation says: “Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident … for the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work” (v.12-13).

I am challenging Christians today to prepare for a building inspection. If we ignore God’s codes our churches and ministries will not stand in the day of visitation. We must especially return to four basic building materials that have been ignored in this current season:

1. Sexual purity. It should go without saying that church leaders must live in moral and marital faithfulness. Yet when we look around today we find that ministries are tolerant of flippant divorce, hidden adultery and even unspeakable perversion. Some ministers admit to serious moral failures yet they never step out of ministry even for a week to get counseling. God has issued His clear warning. Ministries that tolerate sexual sin are already crumbling. It does not matter how big your auditorium is, how massive your television outreach, how many people shout during Sunday sermons or how enduring your spiritual legacy may seem. You can preach about God’s grace all you want, but you are trampling on that grace if you continue to practice immorality.

2. Financial integrity. Jesus drove the greedy moneychangers out of His temple with a whip. He requires faithfulness of His stewards. Ministries that have committed spiritual extortion will have a day of reckoning—not necessarily with the IRS but certainly with the heavenly Auditor. Those who sell prophecies or charge $1,000 to gullible people to make them “spiritual sons” will soon lose their platforms. Those who misuse God’s money to buy Bentleys, vacation homes and expensive clothes and shoes will soon experience the Great Repo.

3. Christlike humility. We cannot build God’s house with pride and carnality. In the early days of our movement God winked at our immaturity—but we have no excuse today. Mature leaders should act like servants, not rock stars or mafia bosses. We must trade in our entourages and high-minded demands and return to the way of the Master—which includes the manger (humble beginnings), the donkey (a humble ministry style) and the towel (serving those we are called to lead). God resists the proud, and any church that embraces the bless-me gospel of egotistical charlatans will not enjoy His manifest presence.

4. Theological soundness. We can walk in humility, integrity and purity and still fail if we mix error with truth. We must preach Christ and Him crucified. We must contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints. We must guard the flock from deception and avoid the subtle lies and compromises that creep in from our culture and from occult influences. In segments of our movement today, charismatic theology has been diluted with New Age spirituality, universalism, pop psychology, Gnosticism, false prophecy and just plain weirdness. We need to reactivate the neglected gift of discernment and get rid of the theological hay and stubble that has caused our movement to lose its credibility.

Are you ready for your inspection? May God give us the grace to renovate the areas of our lives, our churches and our ministries that have not been built according to His standards.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. 

In this day of compromise, we must restate the obvious: God requires leaders to play by the rules.

Almost two years ago a dynamic preacher from a growing church in the Southeast was caught in adultery. His distraught wife talked with the “other woman,” an exotic dancer from another country, and shared Christ with her. Meanwhile a small group of pastors “covered” the situation and hurriedly sent the embarrassed pastor to a few weeks of counseling. In the end, the pastor and his wife divorced and members of the congregation who didn’t have all the facts blamed her for the breakup.

Today this pastor is still in the pulpit—although his preaching has a hollow tone. Some members of the church left when they learned of the pastor’s unfaithfulness. Yet many others stayed because they felt they shouldn’t judge the pastor for his sin.

This situation has been repeated over and over in recent years. Jamal Harrison-Bryant, pastor of the 10,000-member Empowerment Temple in Baltimore, was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock. His wife, Gizelle, citing adultery and cruel treatment, filed for divorce in 2008. Yet Bryant preached a now-famous sermon in the church in which he used King David’s story of adultery with Bathsheba to defend himself.

“I am still the man!” he shouted from the pulpit as worshippers stood and cheered. “The anointing on my life is greater than any mistake.” He made it clear that he had no intention of being defrocked or disciplined. To Bryant, anointing surpasses character.

All this moral failure among leaders today has average Christians confused. Is there ever a time when leaders are disqualified? Is restoration always immediate? Are we acting like Pharisees if we demand that leaders sit on the bench for a while to recover from their mistakes and prove their character again? It is time for us to restate some obvious rules:

1. There are definite qualifications for Christian leadership. The apostle Paul made it clear that there is a litmus test for leaders in the New Testament church. In 1 Timothy 3:2-7 he says a leader must be (1) above reproach; (2) the husband of one wife; (3) temperate (not an abuser of alcohol or other substances); (4) prudent; (5) respectable; (6) hospitable; (7) able to teach; (8) a good manager of his own family; (9) respected in the community; and (10) not a new convert.

In his letter to Titus, Paul offers a similar list and adds further qualifications, including (11) not self-willed; (12) not pugnacious; and (3) not fond of sordid gain.

Notice that only one of these qualifications (“able to teach”) involves anointing. Paul says nothing about a leader’s ability to prophesy, heal the sick, see visions, talk to angels, raise funds, sing, shout or make audiences swoon. Neither does he require certain academic credentials. Character is the key.

Many scholars agree that “husband of one wife” was a New Testament-era way of saying “he must be a one-woman man.” In other words, he cannot be an adulterer. (Nor can he be polygamous.) Leaders must walk in sexual purity. They must adhere to the biblical definition of marriage and stay faithful in that context.

2. Those who do not meet these qualifications must step down. If Paul demanded character of his leaders, it stands to reason that those who fail in any of these areas should be removed from office—at least until they regain the character quality after a time of rehabilitation. When leaders failed, Paul also recommended that they be strongly rebuked “in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning” (1 Tim. 5:20, NASB). Their sin was never to be minimized, excused or swept under a rug.

This strict approach was not optional—and Paul warned Timothy about the temptation to be partial. He told him: “Maintain these principles without bias” (v. 21). Biblical discipline cannot be sloppy. We can’t remove one guy for adultery and then offer kid-glove treatment to another guy just because he is our friend. As painful as it is to remove a gifted leader from his or her position, it must be done to preserve the fear of the Lord.

3. The church will not thrive if discipline of leaders is neglected. Paul sternly warned Timothy about ordaining any church leader prematurely. He wrote: “Do not lay hands upon anyone too hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others” (1 Tim. 5:22). In other words, leaders actually incur a strict judgment from God if they ordain a leader who does not meet biblical qualifications. If ordaining unapproved leaders becomes a habit, corruption will take root in the church and we will eventually face God’s corrective judgment.

The Corinthian church was warned that the deceitfulness of sin would infect them all if they did not deal with the immorality in their midst (see 1 Cor. 5:7-13). John told the church in Thyatira that they would lose their influence because they tolerated false teaching that led to immorality (Rev. 2:20). Sin has sobering consequences.

We can’t rewrite the rules. I pray that leaders in the independent sector of the church today will stop the monkey business and restore biblical order.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma 

This week’s announcement about evangelist Todd Bentley’s hasty remarriage and restoration is sending a confusing message to the church.

I groaned when I learned early this week that Canadian preacher Todd Bentley, leader of the controversial Lakeland Revival, had decided to divorce his wife, Shonnah, and marry his former ministry intern, Jessa Hasbrook. The news surfaced after almost nine months of silence and speculation, during which time the board of Bentley’s Fresh Fire Ministries in British Columbia publicly scolded him for committing adultery.

In a statement released March 10 by Rick Joyner, the popular author and minister who is overseeing Bentley’s restoration process, we were told that (1) Bentley married his new wife several weeks ago and moved to Joyner’s base in Fort Mill, S.C.; (2) Todd and Jessa agree that their relationship was “wrong and premature” and that it “should not have happened the way it did”; (3) Bentley will remain out of public ministry while he seeks healing; and (4) Joyner will oversee the healing process with input from Dallas pastor Jack Deere and California pastor Bill Johnson.

It was also announced that Bentley plans to relaunch his ministry, called Fresh Fire USA, in Fort Mill, and that Joyner is now collecting donations from supporters to help rebuild it. (The Canadian ministry Bentley started has now been renamed Transform International, and it has severed ties with the evangelist.)

In a few places in his statement Joyner expressed tough love, especially when he said: “We know that trust has to be earned and that Todd will have to earn the trust of the body of Christ for future ministry, which will not be easy, nor should it be.” He also made it clear that true repentance and restoration “can only come if we refuse to compromise the clear biblical standards for morality and integrity.”

But there were some glaring omissions in the statements released this week that indicate a fundamental weakness in our freestyle approach to “restoring” fallen leaders.

First of all, it is outrageous that Shonnah Bentley, Todd’s first wife, does not seem to be an issue in the current discussion. Her name is never mentioned in Joyner’s statement—while Todd is mentioned 18 times. We are never told how Shonnah is handling the divorce. How will she manage to care for the three children she and Todd share? She and the kids seem invisible in this process. Yet if anyone needs healing and restoration, is it not the other half of this broken family?

Second, we charismatics still seem to have a habit of elevating gifting above character. It’s almost as if the end justifies the means. (So what if a preacher ruins one marriage and makes a hasty decision to marry a younger woman—the important thing is that we get him back in the pulpit to heal the sick!) That is a perversion of biblical integrity. God can anoint any man or woman with the Holy Spirit’s power; what He is looking for are vessels of honor that can carry that anointing with dignity, humility and purity.

What is most deplorable about this latest installment in the Bentley scandal is the lack of true remorse. In his own statement, Bentley apologizes for his actions and says he “takes full responsibility for my part for the ending of the marriage.” But how can he be taking “full responsibility” if he willingly chose to have a girlfriend on the side—and then married her immediately after his divorce was final? Why did he hide for several months when he should have been listening to counsel and seeking reconciliation with his first wife?

Many Christians today have rejected biblical discipline and adopted a sweet, spineless love that cannot correct. Our grace is greasy. No matter what an offending brother does, we stroke him and pet him and nurse his wounds while we ignore the people he wounded. No matter how heinous his sin, we offer comforting platitudes because, after all, who are we to judge?

When the apostle Paul learned that a member of the Corinthian church was in an immoral relationship with his father’s wife, he did not rush to comfort the man. He told the Corinthians: “You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst” (I Cor. 5:2). Sometimes we must draw a ruthless sword in order to bring genuine healing. The “wounds of a friend” are faithful to bring conviction and true repentance (see Prov. 27:6).

Paul actually delivered the unrepentant Corinthian man to Satan “for the destruction of his flesh” (5:5) so that he could be saved. That does not sound very nice. Many today would call Paul’s tactic harsh and legalistic. But that is because we have lost any true sense of the fear of the Lord—and we don’t realize that our laxness about God’s standards is a perversion of His mercy. When the sin is severe, the public rebuke must be severe.

In all the discussion of Bentley and the demise of the Lakeland Revival, I am waiting to hear the sound of sackcloth ripping into shreds. We should be weeping. We should be rending our hearts—as God commanded Israel when they fell into sin (see Joel 2: 13-14). To give guidance to a confused church, our leaders should have publicly decried the Lakeland disaster while at the same time helping both Todd and Shonnah to heal.

We have not mourned this travesty. We have not been shocked and appalled that such sin has been named among us. We act as if flippant divorce and remarriage are minor infractions—when in actuality they are such serious moral failures that they can bring disqualification.

If we truly love Todd Bentley, we will not clamor for his quick return to the pulpit. While we certainly want him to be fully restored to fellowship with God, we cannot rush the process of restoring a man to ministry. Leaders must live up to a higher standard. We must demand that those involved in Bentley’s restoration not only love him but also love the church by protecting us from the kind of scandal we endured last year.

You don’t have to compromise with our sex-saturated culture. By God’s grace you can stay in the sexual safety zone.

There were some raised eyebrows last week on the campus of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., when I hosted a special meeting—the day before Valentine’s Day—on the subject of fornication. That’s not a word you normally associate with a lecture topic, but hey, I had to get attention. And since the hormones on most college campuses are as dense as Florida humidity, I figured the kids would be all ears when I attacked the subject.

I was right. At times you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium, especially when I talked about how most American young people aren’t even sure how to define sexual activity anymore. (Today’s college seniors were nine years old when President Clinton tried to redefine sex during the Lewinsky scandal.) At other times the students burst into nervous laughter, especially when I told how I gave my son-in-law a lecture about sexual boundaries in front of 700 of his classmates when he was dating my oldest daughter.

I thought it might be helpful to share these key points with a wider audience, since many of the readers of this column are single. And even if you are married, it would be good to take a quick refresher course in self-control—since we live in a nation that is losing all moral restraint. Here’s what I told the group at Southeastern:

1. Don’t redefine your morality. I’ve seen Christian young people roll their eyes when I say the word “fornication” because it sounds so much like King James English—sort of like “sodomy,” another word we avoid in our PC culture. But we need to be careful how we bend the meaning of words. Terms that are in the Bible should not vanish from our modern vocabulary just because they offend some of the hosts of The View.

When “fornication” is used in 1 Thessalonians 4:3 (“For this is the will of God … that ye should abstain from fornication” KJV), the Greek word is porneia. It’s the root word for pornography, but it means a lot more than sexually explicit material. It includes sex between unmarried people, homosexuality, bestiality, prostitution, incest and adultery.

According to the apostle Paul, sex as God intended is limited to marriage between one man and one woman. Period. The Episcopal Church has no right to broaden the definition. Neither do Bill Clinton, Newsweek, Oprah or HBO. Don’t let moral relativism infect your brain.

2. Don’t sell your birthright. Losing one’s virginity used to be a serious issue, but today fornication is just a standard sitcom plot device. It’s considered normal. People are considered weird if they didn’t have sex by age 14; and if anybody dares to teach abstinence in a public school he is labeled a Neanderthal.

In TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Nip/Tuck or Grey’s Anatomy, life revolves around who’s in bed with whom. There’s even a TV series on Showtime called Californication that follows the life of a sex addict. What TV producers don’t usually explore are the consequences of immorality. Audiences probably wouldn’t laugh if the couples hooking up on these shows had to deal with genital warts, gonorrhea, AIDS, abortions, post-abortion trauma or clinical depression—all real fallout from illicit sexual behavior.

If you are a single person today—whether you have lost your virginity or not—it’s time to reclaim your purity and save sex for marriage. We’ve forgotten the story of Esau, who forfeited his birthright through one stupid act. He traded his inheritance for a bowl of stew. You really can throw your life away through one act of fornication.

3. Get ruthless with your weaknesses. Jesus sounded stricter than a Catholic school principal when He talked to His disciples about self-discipline. He told them: “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Matt. 5:29, NASB).

Jesus was not advocating self-mutilation. He was using sarcasm to emphasize how serious sin is—and He urged His followers to take radical steps to avoid the snares of temptation. In our sex-soaked society, it is more imperative than ever that we draw boundaries.

Got a problem with pornography? If you can’t discipline yourself to avoid offending Web sites, get rid of your computer. Do you end up engaging in heavy petting or intercourse with your girlfriend or boyfriend after a few minutes of kissing? Draw lines and stick to them. And if you can’t stick to the rules, ask for intervention. If you don’t you are headed for spiritual shipwreck.

4. Live a transparent life. The Bible never advocates that we battle sin alone. We need each other. James 5:16 says: “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.” In some cases you will never get victory over temptation until you share your struggle with another Christian and seek counsel and prayer.

So many believers today are living with secrets. Many women (and men too) were molested as children by a relative or friend—yet they have never shared their pain. Many young guys are trapped in a dark world of pornography and masturbation but are too ashamed to admit it. Many Christians struggle with same-sex attraction yet they fear that if they confess their thoughts they will be rejected.

You will never discover the abundant life Christ promised until you clean out your spiritual closets and deal with all your dirty laundry. Total forgiveness and cleansing is available, but confession and repentance must come first.

5. Develop the fear of God. Paul had sober words for the Thessalonians who ignored his admonitions about sexual sin. He told them: “He who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thess. 4:8). It couldn’t be clearer: If you disregard sexual boundaries, you are on thin ice.

What we desperately need in the church today is a conscience awakening. Too many Christians have warped judgment—and they don’t even feel godly remorse when they break God’s law. If you have any form of sexual sin in your life, flee it immediately and make a 180-degree turn. He will grant you the grace to live a life of purity.

We need to be careful. Current fads involving angels, ecstatic worship and necromancy could push us off the edge of spiritual sanity.

No one fully understands what Nadab and Abihu did to prompt God to strike them dead in the sanctuary of Israel. The Bible says they loaded their firepans with incense, ignited the substance and “offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them” (Lev. 10:1, NASB). As a result of their careless and irreverent behavior, fire came from God’s presence and consumed them.

Zap. In an instant they were ashes.

When Moses had to explain to Aaron what happened to the two men, he said: “It is what the Lord spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near to Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored’” (v. 3). Although we don’t know the details of what Nadab and his brother did with the holy incense, we know they were careless and irreverent about the things of God.

This ancient story has relevant application for us today. We don’t use incense or firepans in our worship, but we are expected to handle God’s Word with care and minister to His people in the fear of the Lord. In other words: No funny business allowed. We aren’t allowed to mix God’s Word with foreign concepts or mix our worship with pagan practices.

Yet as I minister in various churches around this country I am finding that strange fire is spreading in our midst-even in churches that call themselves “Spirit-filled.” Pastors and leaders need to be aware of these trends:

1. Deadly visitations. In some charismatic circles today, people are claiming to have spiritual experiences that involve communication with the dead. One Michigan pastor told me last week that some church leaders he knows promote this bizarre practice and base it on Jesus’ experience on the Mount of Transfiguration. The logic is that since Jesus talked to Moses and Elijah on the day He was glorified, this gives us permission to talk to dead Christians and our dead relatives.

Although little is said about these experiences from the pulpit (since the average believer is not ready to handle this “new revelation”), people in some streams of the prophetic movement are claiming to have visitations from Aimee Semple McPherson, William Branham, John Wimber or various Bible characters. And we are expected to say, “Ooooooo, that’s so deep”-and then go looking for our own mystical, beyond-the-grave epiphany.

That is creepy. Communication with the dead was strictly forbidden in the Old Testament (see Deut. 18:11), and there is nothing in the New that indicates the rules were changed. Those who seek counsel from the dead-whether through mediums and séances or in “prophetic visions”-are taking a dangerous step toward demonization.

2. Ecstatic rapture. Not long after ecstasy became known as a recreational drug, someone in our movement got the bright idea to promote spiritual ecstasy as a form of legitimate worship. The concept evolved from “spiritual drunkenness” to the current fad in which people gather at church altars and pretend to shoot needles in their arms for a “spiritual high.” Some preachers today are encouraging people to “toke the Holy Ghost”-a reference to smoking marijuana.

I hate to be a party pooper, but the Bible warns us to “be of sound judgment and sober spirit” (1 Pet. 4:7). There is plenty of freedom and joy in the Holy Spirit; we don’t have to quench it by introducing people to pagan revelry. Christian worship is not about losing control. Those who worship Jesus do it “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), and our love for God is not measured by how violently we shake or how many times we fall on the floor.

Recently I told a friend in Pennsylvania that when people get tired of this drug imagery it won’t be long before we see some Christians having sexual experiences at the altar. “It’s already happening,” my friend said. He described a recent “worship concert” in which one of the musicians simulated sex while stroking a microphone and whispering sensual phrases to Jesus. What is next-orgasmic worship? God help us.

3. Angels among us. Angels have always played a vital role in the life of the church. They are “ministering spirits” sent to protect, guide and strengthen believers (Heb. 1:14). But suddenly angels have become the rage in some segments of our movement. People are claiming to see them everywhere, and often the stories don’t line up with the Word of God.

During the Lakeland Revival last year in Florida, a man from Germany took the stage and claimed that an angel walked into a restaurant while he was eating a hamburger, took his intestines out and replaced them with a gold substance. Others have testified that angels took them to heaven and operated on them. And many are claiming that angels are dropping feathers, gold dust and precious gems on worshippers.

I know God can do anything. He can make an iron axe head float, hide a coin in a fish’s mouth and use a little boy’s lunch to feed a multitude. Those were genuine miracles that He can still do today. But we still have to use caution here. There are counterfeits. If we promote a false miracle or a false angel in the Lord’s house, we are participating in strange fire.

I know of a case where a man was caught planting fake jewels on the floor of a church. He told his friends he was “seeding the room” to lift the people’s faith. I know of others who have been caught putting gold glitter on themselves in a restroom and then running back in a church service, only to claim that God was blessing them with this special favor. Where is the fear of God when Christians would actually fabricate a miracle?

This is a time for all true believers with backbones to draw clear lines between what is godly worship and what is pagan practice. We want the miracles of God, but we also want the fear and reverence of God. We cannot allow this strange fire to spread unchecked.

The HBO documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard dredges up a lot of pain and sometimes blames the church for the Colorado pastor’s problems.

In November 2006 the American evangelical movement was dragged through an embarrassing credibility crisis when Colorado pastor Ted Haggard admitted to a sexual relationship with a male prostitute. This week it’s déjà vu all over again. In a documentary about Haggard’s moral failure, HBO dredges up the ugly scandal and shows us how Haggard is coping with life now that he’s out of the ministry.

After watching an advance copy of The Trials of Ted Haggard, I’m wondering if this film should have been made at all.

“The people I know at New Life love the Haggards and extended forgiveness to Ted from the first day the scandal broke. But Pelosi edits out that side of the story.”

Although the 42-minute movie was directed by Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, it is not a political rant. Pelosi followed Haggard and his family around for months (with their full cooperation) to explore how the disgraced pastor survived his ordeal after being fired from New Life Church and then moving to Arizona to seek counseling and a new career as an insurance salesman.

The film itself is both heartwarming and painfully mocking. Haggard is blunt about his sexual struggles (he says he started dealing with gay feelings after experiences in the seventh grade), he apologizes for his behavior and he calls himself “a first-class loser.” His wife, Gayle, explains why she stayed with her husband after the affair became public (“I don’t believe in writing people off”) and says she and Ted enjoy deeper intimacy today because he has faced his brokenness.

Thankfully Haggard makes it clear that he has not changed his views on biblical morality, telling Pelosi that he still believes heterosexual marriage is God’s plan. This is surely the first time HBO has ever aired such conservative views on that subject.

But the tragic flaw of The Trials of Ted Haggard is Pelosi’s attempt to blame New Life Church for Haggard’s problems. She seems aghast that he was fired simply for sexual immorality-and then characterizes the restrictions placed upon him by New Life’s elders as “exile.”

Haggard plays along with the blame game at times. When Pelosi asks him, “Where are your friends now?” Haggard stares across an Arizona sky and answers: “They left. I violated the rules.” When she brings up the subject of his restoration process-which required him to leave Colorado and submit to a counseling process directed by pastor Tommy Barnett of Phoenix First Assembly of God-Haggard says: “The church has said, ‘Go to hell.’ The church chose not to forgive me.”

(The truth: No one at New Life, Phoenix First or any other church wanted Haggard to go to hell. It was unfortunate, however, that one New Life leader was quoted as saying that Haggard needed to “disappear.”)

Pelosi paints New Life Church and Haggard’s restoration team as the bad guys. In actuality, Haggard’s church gave him a generous severance package that included a year’s salary, continual care for the Haggard’s special-needs son and months of counseling.
The people I know at New Life love the Haggards and extended forgiveness to Ted from the first day the scandal broke. But Pelosi edits out that side of the story, except when she shows footage of New Life members crying when they first learned of his fall.

The saddest part of the film features a clip from a sermon Haggard gave several years ago at his church. He tells his congregation to embrace integrity and warns them not to keep secrets or live double lives. Those words, juxtaposed against news clips about the prostitute Haggard visited frequently in Denver, remind us that we will face painful consequences if we preach one thing and live another.

Haggard tells Pelosi: “I can certainly understand why people can’t stand me.” I want to shout from the housetops that the Christian community loves Ted, that we forgave him in 2006 and that we forgive him now (especially since new revelations surfaced this week about another man who says he was involved with Haggard).

The world needs to know that forgiveness doesn’t negate the need for church discipline, nor does it automatically solve the complex problems people create for themselves and others when they fall as hard as Haggard did.

It’s tragic that the men who loved Haggard the most-particularly Larry Stockstill, the Louisiana pastor who managed the disciplinary process-don’t get the respect they deserve in this movie. After extending amazing grace to the Haggards, they are skewered by Pelosi, HBO and, at times, by Haggard himself.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think Haggard should have told Pelosi that it just wasn’t time to air his public pain on national television. He could have stayed in obscurity for a few more years while embracing his healing process-but Haggard chose not only to make this film but also to go on talk shows this week with Larry King and Oprah Winfrey.

What’s done is done. Hopefully secular audiences will focus more on the positives of Haggard’s faith and less on his cynicism. One thing is for sure: The trials of Ted Haggard are not over. Stay tuned for the sequel.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.

Last week Ted Haggard’s wife, Gayle, dared to defy the high priestess of America’s new morality.

Last week former Colorado pastor Ted Haggard hit the talk show circuit to promote the new HBO documentary about his fall from grace, The Trials of Ted Haggard. I’ll admit I wasn’t too excited about Haggard going public with the story of his relationship with a male prostitute, but there was a bright spot amid the awkward interviews. When Ted and his wife, Gayle, appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show Jan. 28, Gayle dared to defy Oprah and her audience.

Oprah tried her best to pin Ted down and get him to admit he is a homosexual. Ted balked, saying that his sexuality is complicated. He explained that he had sexual experiences in the seventh grade that confused him. He spoke of sexual impulses that he struggled with but didn’t act on until he hit 50.

Oprah told Ted, who is now 52, that he should just accept his “identity” rather than hiding it or running from it. Then Gayle, who has raised five kids and knows a lot about discipline, struck a nerve. She told Oprah that just because a person has certain inclinations doesn’t mean he has to act on them.

Oprah got upset at that point. She even got out of her chair and said to Gayle: “That’s where I disagree with you”-and her audience cheered. (I couldn’t help but wonder if they had been cued.)

I was cheering for Gayle-not just because she has modeled Christian forgiveness during this embarrassing scandal but also because she clearly articulated the gospel during the interview. She stuck her neck out and defied the false religion of our times.

Oprah is the closest thing we have to a high priestess of America’s new morality, and she seems obligated to push the politically correct idea that it’s OK to be gay. She is paid a lot of money to promote this agenda, and she’s good at it. She is articulate in her arguments and velvety smooth in her affirmation. Just come to Oprah, all you who are weary and burdened, and she will console you.

Oprah’s feel-good doctrine is the same one adopted in the last 30 years by mainstream psychologists, Hollywood producers, gay rights organizations and some mainline churches. It basically says that if a person struggles with any level of same-sex attraction, they shouldn’t fight the urges or label this a sin or a sexual disorder. They should simply accept their gayness, celebrate their new sexual identity and then hop in bed with whomever they please (unless of course they want to settle down into a same-sex marriage, which all state governments should legalize).

This “just accept who you are” argument certainly doesn’t make sense for other categories of sinful behavior or emotional dysfunction. Consider these examples:

* I’ve prayed with countless people who struggle with addictions to alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs. In most cases they were using the substances to numb their emotional pain and they hated their condition. When they received prayer ministry and counseling they found the grace to break free from these addictions. Can you imagine a counselor telling these people: “Why fight it? God gave you an addictive personality! Embrace it!”

* I know several single straight guys who struggle to stay sexually pure. They want to honor God and save sex for marriage, but sometimes they give in to the temptations of pornography or they cross barriers they shouldn’t when they’re dating. If I embrace Oprah’s philosophy, I should just tell my friends to accept these temptations as their “identity”-as in, “Go ahead, God created you to be a fornicator! Let your hormones control you!”

* This week I met a man who spent more than 10 years in prison and is officially classified as a sex offender in police records. He found Christ during his first year of incarceration, and today he is a strong Christian. He has been out of prison for 10 years, and has had no further criminal incidents, yet he occasionally struggles with lustful thoughts. Should I tell him to stop trying so hard and just accept perversion as a way of life?

It would be absurd to discourage these people from seeking change. The very essence of the gospel is that Christ gives us the power to live a holy life. We are helpless to overcome sinful urges on our own, but when we have the presence of Jesus in our lives we discover the truth of Romans 6:14: “Sin shall not be master over you (NASB).”

God does not want us to stay the way we are! The apostle Paul told the Corinthians: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). That is the hallmark of genuine Christianity.

The issue on the table in this debate is whether homosexuality is (1) a sinful condition that can be overcome by the grace of God; or (2) an inborn genetic quality that should be accepted like skin color or a personality trait. Oprah and the majority of the mainstream media today are obviously pushing the second viewpoint. “Sin” is not in their vocabulary.

We cannot be silent while this debate rages. Let’s tell our culture that Jesus Christ’s amazing grace has the power to transform people whether they are gay or straight or anything in between.

Forces in our culture want to rip the foundations of Christian faith right out from under America. Here are four lies we must challenge.

This past week I spent four days preaching at Emmanuel College, a Christian liberal arts school in northeast Georgia. I love speaking to college students because they are spiritually hungry, they love passionate worship and I don’t have to wear a tie.

On the third night (after a young man got saved and delivered of drug addiction—yeah God!) I told the kids I needed to get brutally honest. They gave me permission to shoot straight. Because I genuinely care about them—and because they will be spiritual leaders before too long—I warned them about four lies they must confront.

Every Christian in this country must learn to dissect these lies using the Word of God. The devil is working overtime today to gain control of our nation’s soul. We are in a life-and-death struggle. This is not a time for Christians to be squishy in their faith or spineless in their convictions. We must plant our feet on the bedrock principles of the Bible and oppose each of these lies:
“We must start preaching about hell again instead of worrying about who might leave our church or how it might affect our TV ratings.”
1. Hell does not exist. Jesus preached about hell more than anyone in the Bible. His words dripped with love, but He didn’t soft-pedal when addressing the eternal consequences of sin. When He began His ministry, he read from the book of Isaiah, announcing that He had come not only to “proclaim the favorable year of the Lord” but also “the day of vengeance of our God” (Is. 61:2, NASB).

The real gospel is a double-edged sword that offers both the “kindness and severity of God” (Rom. 11:22, emphasis added). That’s why hell is one four-letter word we should use more often—not to condemn people in mean-spirited judgment but to warn them that mercy has a time limit.

The world rejects the concept of hell because it’s too exclusive. Our Oprah-ized culture insists that everyone deserves a warm and fuzzy life free of consequences. “How can a loving God send anyone to hell?” people ask. If we truly love them we will explain that hell is not a metaphor—it is a real place of dreadful separation from God that sinners choose when they reject Him. We must start preaching about hell again instead of worrying about who might leave our church or how our unpopular message might affect our TV ratings.

2. God didn’t create the world. 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, so you can be sure the scientific community will bombard us this year with more “proof” of this sketchy theory. The mainstream media and academia insist that evolution is pure fact. Anyone who dares to challenge it is considered a religious idiot.

What people don’t realize is that Darwinism, besides being laughably lacking in scientific basis, has roots in spiritualism. Welsh naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace shared many of Darwin’s beliefs and encouraged him to publish his book. Wallace believed in spirit guides, participated in séances and was intrigued by all things paranormal. He promoted the “science” of evolution because it supported his anti-God views. Is it any wonder, then, that this doctrine he and Darwin propagated has been used to undermine Christianity ever since?

The world does not want to believe in a Creator because if He is real, then He has ultimate authority over His creation. On the flip side, man has no moral responsibility if he crawled out of a primordial soup, grew fins, then legs, and then became a talking ape. Evolution is not really about science at all—it is about rebellion against God’s rule over us.

3. All religions lead to God. This isn’t a new lie, but it is enjoying a revival today. President Bush has obviously flirted with the idea, since he has told reporters that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Barack Obama attended a church for 20 years that teaches that Jesus is not the only way to salvation—and he has publicly acknowledged that he believes this.

The doctrine of universalism—which states that all people will ultimately gain salvation and enjoy heaven—has become the religion of the masses. Even some charismatic and Pentecostal preachers such as Carlton Pearson of Oklahoma and D.E. Paulk of Atlanta have abandoned biblical orthodoxy to embrace this heresy. They are now on a crusade to rewrite Christian theology—and they have allies in some mainline denominations (such as the Episcopal Church) where the authority of Scripture is denied.

Christians who embrace universalism are like the prophets of Baal in Jezebel’s court who had been neutered. They preach a powerless message that cannot change anyone. We must arise in the spirit of Elijah to confront this deception and prove to the world that the one true God answers by fire.

4. Man can redefine morality. This is perhaps the most deadly lie of all. Everywhere we look today, leaders in media, politics, education and entertainment are plotting the virtual overthrow of conventional morals. They want a hedonistic world with no rules and no guilt. This was most obvious last month when Newsweek published a cover story brazenly claiming that the Bible approves of same-sex marriage.
A lying spirit has invaded many mainline churches and is convincing weak Christians to change their views about homosexuality, abortion and fornication. Evil is called good while those who stand for the biblical values of purity and traditional marriage are labeled bigots.

If we ignore these lies they will engulf us. We need a zero-tolerance policy for spiritual compromise. While we must demonstrate overwhelming compassion and love for sinners, God requires us to oppose cultural brainwashing. We cannot be silent on the issues the devil is attacking.

If you are wavering in your faith on any of these four fundamentals, get honest about your doubts, repent of your lukewarmness and dig in God’s Word until your mind is renewed. Don’t become a brainwash victim.
J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.

We must pray that our new president will honor the God of our fathers and seek counsel from His prophets.

The hearts of millions of Americans were stirred on Tuesday as we watched Barack Obama place his hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible and swear to uphold his duties as president. The cynicism and divisiveness of politics gave way to civility for a few moments as Obama stood on that massive stage in front of the Capitol and spoke of a “new era of responsibility” that he hopes to initiate.

We’ve seen similar patriotic moments in our lifetime, but Obama’s speech chiseled a landmark in our history. His message was especially poignant when he noted that his own father might not have been served in a local restaurant 60 years ago—yet today he “can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.” The tears of older African-Americans in the crowd testified that Martin Luther King’s dream has been realized.

I salute Mr. Obama as my president and I welcome the racial reconciliation that his election symbolizes. But we all know that presidents aren’t proven by ceremonies, nor are they ultimately judged by their speeches or the response from the crowds. Today the inaugural stage will be dismantled, the decorations will be put away and the confetti will be swept up. And President Obama will face one of the most challenging jobs on the planet.

I am praying that he will learn the lesson of Barak.

Yes, there is a man in the Bible who shares our president’s name. Barak was chosen by God to lead Israel at a time of serious military and economic crisis. The Canaanites were plotting an invasion, so Deborah—the prophet of the Lord at that time—called on Barak to defend Israel even though Jabin’s iron chariots far outnumbered Israel’s ragtag army.

Barak had an unusual response to Deborah’s request. He told her: “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go” (Judg. 4:8, NASB). This may sound like an admission of weakness, but Barak was no mama’s boy. He is actually listed as a hero of faith in the book of Hebrews (see Heb. 11:32). So why did he insist that Deborah accompany him?

Barak knew he could not be a successful leader without the Lord’s prophet by his side. He needed the counsel of God. He wanted the supernatural wisdom and favor that comes from honoring the Lord and His word.

Every leader in the Bible was measured by his or her reliance upon the one true God. The Bible gives us a long list of the kings of Israel, and each one either stood or fell depending on how he aligned himself with God and His true messengers. Those who honored God and listened to His prophets experienced economic prosperity and military victory; those who turned to idols and listened to false prophets failed miserably.

Saul disobeyed Samuel’s counsel and ended his rule in disgrace. Jeroboam set up golden calves for the people to worship, and because he disregarded the prophetic warnings of Ahijah he also failed. King Ahab refused to listen to Elijah’s rebukes, and instead surrounded himself with the prophets of Baal. His rule ended in tragedy.

There were a few kings in Israel, however, who chose godly counselors. David gave the prophet Nathan access to his palace and permission to speak into his personal life. After David’s sex scandal and political cover-up, Nathan’s confrontation brought him to repentance.

After King Hezekiah realized that he faced the most serious military threat in Israel’s history, he repented and prayed for deliverance. Isaiah the prophet then showed up and told him: “Because you have prayed to Me … I have heard you” (2 Kin. 19:20). Isaiah predicted the demise of the Assyrian army, and in one night the angel of the Lord slew 185,000 men.

Many other leaders in the Bible responded faithfully to God by choosing godly counselors to guide them. King Josiah consulted with the prophetess Huldah. Even kings of pagan nations were blessed when they listened to God’s prophets. Darius and Cyrus appointed Daniel as a top adviser, and King Ahasuerus elevated Mordecai to his highest cabinet post.

How will Barack Obama be measured as a president? Hopefully he will be much more than just a symbol of racial healing. I am praying that he will seek out the Lord’s prophets and turn to God with the same fervor that Barak exhibited when he sought Deborah’s guidance.

Obama sent a few signals during his inauguration ceremony that affirmed our nation’s Christian values. His choice of California pastor Rick Warren to offer the invocation hinted that our new president is willing to include evangelical Christians in his policy discussions. But if President Obama truly wants to make the most positive mark on American history, he cannot simply position a few token Christians on his stage while the prophets of Baal surround him.

The racial healing our nation is experiencing right now will prove to be superficial if Obama veers our nation away from the God of our fathers and rejects His moral principles. In his speech on Tuesday, President Obama said he felt “humbled” by the events surrounding this historic election. The test of his humility has now begun. It will be made obvious by who he listens to.

Many secular forces—from inside Congress, from Hollywood and from foreign nations—hope to use Obama to promote wicked agendas. Will he seize this moment and recognize his ultimate need to depend on God? Will he turn to God like Barak and lead our country into its greatest hour of victory? Or will he follow the path of Ahab and become a stooge for Jezebel and her false prophets?

It’s time for the church to pray like never before that true prophets will have access to the White House and that our new president will honor God in the way he leads America.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.

In its Dec. 15 cover story, the magazine tried to rewrite the Bible. Don’t believe the lies.

by: J. Lee Grady

If awards were given for shock journalism, Newsweek would win the prize for its provocative Dec. 15 cover story. The headline, hanging above a simple black Bible with a rainbow-striped ribbon sticking out of it, reads: “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage.” With one big kaboom, writer Lisa Miller dropped a literary bomb on 2,000 years of Christian scholarship by suggesting that Jesus would have been OK with Matthew marrying Mark and Luke marrying John.

We are accustomed to mainstream journalists shoving evolution down our throats as if no scientist in the world doubts that theory. But Miller’s diatribe against traditional Christian morality takes cultural brainwashing to a new level. She is a good ventriloquist (she makes the Bible say a lot of things it doesn’t say) but the real dummies are the people swayed by her biased reporting.

In case you haven’t read her treatise (click here), Miller bends the truth back and forth until she makes a pretzel out of certain Bible passages—while suggesting that David and Jonathan may have been messing around. There are so many lies per column inch in this story that an editor should have killed it—or at least demanded some objectivity. I guess the folks at Newsweek decided it’s their job to rewrite biblical morality. Here’s how Miller missed it by a mile:

Lie #1: The Bible doesn’t define marriage as one-man/one-woman. Miller insists that heterosexual monogamy can’t be found anywhere in the Bible. She must not have opened to the first page. The first three chapters of Genesis provide the ultimate biblical foundations for marriage and family. God created a man and a woman as perfect and equal partners—and blessed their union, making it the most holy of relationships. It doesn’t get any more fundamental than Adam and Eve.

Lie #2: Old Testament polygamy negates the relevance of biblical monogamy. The fact that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had multiple wives—or that David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then added her to his collection—doesn’t unravel one-man/one-woman marriage. The Bible never says God sanctioned polygamy; it was man’s carnal nature that caused him to dominate women (see Gen. 3:16) and treat them as property. Biblical patriarchs were not perfect—and their multiple wives were evidence of their sin, not proof that God rewrote the rules so they could have a harem. It was not until Jesus Christ broke the power of sin that men found the grace to build faithful, monogamous marriages.

Lie #3: Lesbianism is not called a sin in the Bible. While Miller reluctantly admits that the Old Testament condemns sex between men “in a handful of passages,” she claims that sex between women isn’t addressed. Wrong again! The apostle Paul clearly denounces lesbianism in Romans 1:26, where he calls homosexuality between women “unnatural” (or “against nature”) as well as a “degrading passion” (NASB). Miller gets an F in New Testament 101 for skipping over that obvious verse.

Lie #4: Old Testament laws against homosexuality don’t apply now. The book of Leviticus calls homosexuality “a detestable act” (20:13) and an “abomination” (18:22)—a strong term that means “a vile, shameful, or detestable action, condition or habit.” Yet Miller insists that since Jewish ceremonial laws don’t apply today, then sexual standards in the Torah can be discarded. In fact, she calls the passages in Leviticus “throwaway lines.” Big mistake. God’s moral law is tied directly to His unchangeable character, while ceremonial law was linked to the old covenant—which He set aside when He enacted a new covenant in Christ. The coming of Jesus did not make stealing, murder or adultery lesser sins. Neither did His coming legitimize homosexual practice.

Lie #5: New Testament condemnation of homosexual behavior is misunderstood. Citing a common argument used by some gay-affirming churches, Miller suggests that the apostle Paul’s condemnation of gay sex in Romans 1 only applies to really despicable Roman emperors and other sexual predators who practiced male rape or multiple forms of perversion. In other words, if two men just want to make love—with no violence involved—then their erotic expression is perfectly OK.

Where does Miller get permission to make this bizarre argument? Certainly not from the biblical text, which says it as plain as day: “In the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (Rom. 1:26). This passage affirms that any form of sexual contact between men—violent or not—violates God’s law.

Lie #6: The Bible never excludes people from God’s blessings. Miller quotes liberal theologian Walter Brueggemann, who insists that the Bible “is bent toward inclusiveness.” This is where she really makes big blunders in her reasoning. She asks: Would a God of love send anyone to hell? Since Jesus came to liberate sinners, and since the church is called to evangelize people from all racial and economic groups, surely He will shower His love on people of all sexual persuasions, right?

This is where Universalists, inclusionists and gay-affirming churches miss the message of the gospel. They love to talk about God’s forgiveness, but they deny the necessity of repentance. They refuse to see that God made the road to salvation narrow. And they ignore the reality that eternal punishment awaits all who refuse to come to the Son of God on His terms.

Paul the apostle was quite exclusive when he talked about sexuality. “Do not be deceived,” he wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:9, “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.” No one can explain away that passage. The God of the Bible draws clear lines. His mercy is great to those who come to Him in humility, with a willingness to change; but for those who arrogantly insist on living in their sin, only judgment awaits.

Many naive people—including biblically illiterate Christians—will be deceived by Newsweek’s gay-marriage arguments. Let’s sort through the lies and choose God’s truth over the depravity of modern American culture.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.

20/20 Hindsight: What I Hope We Learned From the Lakeland Revival

Looking back at what happened in Lakeland, I wonder if we can agree on what went wrong.

Late last week the board of directors of Fresh Fire Ministries—which Bentley resigned from in August—released a lengthy statement to update its supporters on Bentley’s condition. The letter confirmed that (1) Bentley is “resolute in his intentions” to divorce his wife, Shonnah—and that “he admits to being 100% responsible for the divorce”; (2) his relationship with his former intern is ongoing; (3) the evangelist drank inappropriately during the revival; and (4) he has yet to enter into a clear system of accountability with Christian leaders who have offered to help him. The six-page statement, which defended the impact of the Lakeland Revival, did not excuse Bentley’s behavior. “We believe there are currently no biblical grounds for Todd to leave his wife and children,” the board members said. They added: “The nature of the present relationship between Todd and his former staff member is that of adultery.” 

Lesson #1: Accountability. Accountability. Accountability. I wish just saying the word over and over could impress the concept in our minds. Leaders must live according to biblical standards. Period. Bentley’s board admitted in their statement that after the Lakeland meetings went into full swing, Bentley developed troubling behavior patterns. That would have been the right time for someone with apostolic courage to demand that Bentley step down for a season until he got his spiritual life in order. If we really want New Testament miracles and New Testament impact, maybe we should embrace New Testament discipline. 

Lesson #2: The one-man show is over. New Testament ministry is about teams, not hotshots. Paul shared the workload with Barnabas, Phoebe, Clement, Priscilla, Aquilla and many others. And he protested when people tried to make him out to be a god. When will we learn that the superstar syndrome actually thwarts genuine revival because it causes audiences to focus on man instead of Jesus?  I know there are those who insist that Bentley didn’t want people to notice him. But if that’s true, why did he cover himself with tattoos a few years ago, when he was in the ministry? I’m not a stickler about tattoos, but in Bentley’s case they definitely should have been a red flag. Anyone who craves that much attention needs counseling before they get on a stage. 

Lesson #3: Chill out. The Fresh Fire board, in last week’s statement, admitted that one of their biggest mistakes was allowing Bentley’s meetings to go on week after week without a break. Bentley tried to preach continually without rest, and as a result he burned out. Most likely his staff burned out too. No Sabbath, no time for family, no time to unwind. No human being can keep such a schedule without imploding.  Isn’t this also true for the American church scene? Our rule has become, “The show must go on.” We are driven to keep the seats full and the money coming in. The more we work, the more we grow—so we have to work harder to maintain the growth and pay the bills. The pace becomes more and more frantic until the engines fail and the wheels fall off. Building God’s way requires patience, pacing, regular maintenance and plenty of downtime to receive His ongoing guidance and grace. 

Lesson #4: Character is more important than anointing. Some revival groupies disagree with me on this. They’re so desperate for a display of miracles that they’ll take a zap from someone who has questionable morals or shoddy values. They don’t mind who lays hands on them as long as they are thrown to the floor while the crowd cheers. I love revival too, and I’ve spent time on the floor soaking in God’s presence. I love the anointing. But please: Can you show me in the Word of God that character is not required of leaders? The Bible says imposters who work miracles will spend eternity in hell. Working miracles does not win anyone brownie points with God. Ministers of the gospel need both godly character and powerful anointing. Why did we ever settle for the idea that we should have one without the other?

Lesson #5: Lay hands on no man quickly. Many of us are still grieving over the fact that a large number of charismatic leaders stood on a stage in Lakeland in June and publicly commissioned Bentley. Some praised him for his integrity and humility while others prophesied about the nations he will evangelize and the increased spiritual influence he will wield. Today those proclamations (readily available on You Tube) seem hollow and embarrassing.

 Some who stood on that stage insist that God told them to do a public commissioning service. One recently hinted to me that it was a mistake. I’ll let them sort that out. Personally, it saddens me that our movement has been tarnished by what appears to be a serious lack of discernment. In the crazy world of independent ministries—which already lack proper accountability—leaders should take the time to investigate a preacher before commending him on international television. 

Lesson #6: You can’t have revival without repentance. The word “revival” is thrown around loosely these days. If a few people fall on the floor, get goose bumps or see gold dust, we are ready to christen it a revival and put it on television as soon as possible. After all, if large crowds gather, it must be God! I’m tired of imitations. History shows that genuine revival is more than a bunch of blessed bodies in a pile. We need more than angel feathers, emotional euphoria and limp pep talks about getting high on Jesus. We need the strong Word of God that convicts hearts, demands repentance, slays sin and has the power to produce converts who will withstand temptation.  

With Lakeland behind us, let’s celebrate the testimonies that came out of it, enjoy the songs we sang during it and pray for the restoration of the man God used to start it. Then, let’s learn from our mistakes and press on to better things.

Three prominent charismatic ministries have suffered huge setbacks this month. What does this mean for our movement?

Foreclosure. Eviction. Bailouts. We’re hearing those terms a lot these days, and not just in the newspaper’s business section. In the last two weeks three charismatic churches that once enjoyed huge popularity have fallen on hard times.

In Tampa, Florida, Without Walls International Church is facing foreclosure. The megachurch, which once attracted 23,000 worshipers and was heralded as one of the nation’s fastest-growing congregations, shrunk drastically after co-pastors Randy and Paula White announced in 2007 that they were divorcing. On Nov. 4 their bank filed foreclosure proceedings and demanded immediate repayment of a $12 million loan on the property.

In Duluth, Georgia—northeast of Atlanta—sheriff’s deputies arrived at Global Destiny Ministries and ordered Bishop Thomas Weeks II to leave the property. According to documents filed in state court, Weeks—who divorced popular preacher Juanita Bynum in June—owed more than $511,000 in back rent to the building’s owners. He was escorted out of the building on Nov. 14 while a church service was in progress.

In another part of the Atlanta area, leaders of the Cathedral at Chapel Hill announced that their church is officially for sale. The massive Gothic building—which at one time housed one of the nation’s most celebrated charismatic churches, with a membership of 10,000—has slipped into disrepair after lurid sex scandals triggered a mass exodus. The church’s founder, Bishop Earl Paulk, has turned the 6,000-seat church (valued at $24.5 million) over to his son, Donnie Earl, who in recent years has abandoned orthodox Christian doctrines and embraced universalism.

In addition, the bank that called the loan on Without Walls also began foreclosure proceedings on its satellite campus in Lakeland, Florida. That massive campus with its 10,000-seat sanctuary was once known as Carpenter’s Home Church. Under the leadership of Assemblies of God pastor Karl Strader it enjoyed huge success, but its membership dwindled in the 1990s, and it was sold to the Whites in 2005.

A crisis hit Without Walls two years later when the Whites announced from their pulpit that they were divorcing. They did not give specific reasons, but Randy said he took “100 percent responsibility” for the breakup. He later told Charisma: “This was a decision of last resort after years of prayer and counseling.”

In the case of the Cathedral at Chapel Hill, many parishioners walked out 16 years ago when it became known that Earl Paulk and other staff members were involved in wife-swapping. Paulk created a bizarre culture of secrecy to cover the immorality, which included his affair with a sister-in-law—and resulted in the birth of Donnie Earl (who thought he was Earl Paulk’s nephew until last year). The church has only had a few hundred members in recent years.

Today, Donnie Earl has embraced the inclusionist doctrines of Oklahoma pastor Carlton Pearson, who left the faith in 2003 and was labeled a heretic by a group of African-American bishops the following year. The younger Paulk now preaches that all people, not just Christians, are saved. He told Charisma last week that the Cathedral “has expanded to include all of God’s creation—Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, gay, straight, etc.” And this distorted message is broadcast from a pulpit that hosted the premier leaders of the charismatic movement during the 1970s and 1980s.

Even before Weeks was charged with assaulting Bynum in a hotel parking lot in August 2007, the pastor of Global Destiny Ministries defiled his pulpit during a “Teach Me to Love You” marriage conference. He told married men they should use profanity during sex to heighten their experience, and he brought couples on stage to play a game in which men were asked to name their favorite female body parts.

Lord, help us.

Was it supposed to end like this? How did a movement that was at one time focused on winning people to Christ and introducing them to the power of the Holy Spirit end in such disgrace?

I hear the sound of bricks and steel beams crashing to the ground. The wrecking ball of heaven is swinging. It has come to demolish any work that has not been built on the integrity of God’s Word.

All of us should be trembling. God requires holiness in His house and truth in the mouths of His servants. He is loving and patient with our mistakes and weaknesses, but eventually, if there is no repentance after continual correction, His discipline is severe. He will not be mocked.

Romans 11:22 says: “Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off” (NASB).

God is not married to our buildings. If He allowed foreign armies to burn Jerusalem and its glorious temple, He will also write “Ichabod” on the doors of churches where there is no repentance for compromise.

I pray the fear of God will grip our hearts until we cleanse our defiled pulpits. Let’s examine our hearts and our ministries. Let’s throw out the wood, hay and stubble and build on a sure and tested foundation. It is the only way to survive the meltdown.

What happened in Wales in 1904 was genuine revival because it was triggered by repentance and resulted in mass conversions. Why do we seek anything less?

Moriah Chapel in Loughor, Wales, is not a fancy building. Constructed in 1898 and surrounded by crumbling tombstones, the church is plain and uninviting except for a monument near the front door that might be mistaken for a war memorial. It is, in fact, one of the few tributes to Evan Roberts, the young Welshman who preached in this chapel in the fall of 1904 and triggered one of the greatest Christian revivals in modern history.

This week I stood inside the chapel and studied its plain walls and the rickety stairs leading up to its narrow balcony. I got behind the wooden pulpit and looked over the empty pews, some carved with initials. I stood beside Roberts’ modest grave. I was reminded that God uses the weak things of the world to confound the wise.

There was nothing outwardly remarkable about Roberts or the place his ministry began. He was the simple son of a coal miner. He worked as a blacksmith and aspired to be a minister. After he uttered his famous prayer, “Lord, bend me,” at a conference in nearby Blaenanerch, he felt overwhelmed by a burden for Welsh souls. His first revival service at Moriah Chapel touched only a handful of people. But crowds began to pour into the church from nearby villages after the Holy Spirit fell on the place in November 1904.

Within a year it was estimated that 100,000 people had come to Christ. Hardened men who normally spent their families’ incomes on liquor ran into the churches and repented. Coal miners stopped cursing. Teenagers gathered at train stations and sang hymns or testified publicly of their conversions. Crime stopped.

Wales was transformed.

To be fair, it’s important to note that the Welsh revival did not revolve around Roberts, at least not in its early days. It was not a man-centered movement—even though the secular newspapers tried to place all the attention on the young preacher. Years before the revival erupted at Moriah Chapel, spiritual birth pangs were felt in other towns in Wales in meetings led by Presbyterians and Salvation Army evangelists.

The fervor was building. An altar had been prepared, and dry wood was waiting for a spark.

That obviously happened when Roberts visited Blaenarerch. God took a hot coal from His altar and touched Roberts at age 26. He was gloriously baptized in the Holy Spirit there while others watched him kneeling in a pew. By his own account, he wept so much that three women came over to console him and to wipe the perspiration from his face. The love of God, he said, was boiling inside him.

Roberts described the experience like this: “After many had prayed I felt some living energy or force entering my bosom; it held my breath; my legs trembled terribly; this living energy increased and increased as one after the other prayed until it nearly burst me. … I cried—‘Bend me, bend me, bend me; Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!’ … What came to mind after this was, the bending in the day of judgment. Then I was filled with sympathy for the people who will have to bend in judgment day, and I wept. Afterwards the salvation of souls weighed heavily on me. I felt on fire for going through the whole of Wales to tell the people about the Saviour.”

Two profound characteristics marked the Welsh revival: First, invisible waves of conviction drew people to repentance. (Often sinners wandered into the meetings and immediately knelt at the altars.) Second, Christians felt an urgency to share Christ with everyone around them because of the reality of hell and God’s judgment. They seemed almost possessed by the love of God for the lost.

In his meetings Roberts often shared a four-point plan for living the Christian life: (1) confess all known sin; (2) deal with and get rid of anything “doubtful” in your life; (3) be ready to obey the Holy Spirit instantly; and (4) confess Christ publicly.

After visiting Moriah Chapel and rereading the accounts of the Welsh revival, I find myself longing for an authentic move of God. I am so weary of the fake and the fabricated. In this day of media manipulation, it seems we can use smoke and mirrors to create “revivals” that have neither conviction of sin nor conversions.

Oh, we think we have the power. We boast about the size of the crowds. We brag about miracles. We are ready to declare a revival if Christians fall on the floor or give big offerings. But when the music stops, the TV cameras are turned off and the money is counted, what do we have? Nothing but a cheap imitation.

Where is the God of Elijah? Where is the God of Evan Roberts? Where is the true power of God that can sweep over a city and bring backslidden Christians to repentance and hardened sinners to experience the greatest miracle of all—the miracle of new birth?

I invite you to stoke the fire of the Spirit in your life. Let the hot coals of heaven purge any known sin from your heart. Repent of all compromise. Be ruthless with any idols. Let the love of God boil inside you until your heart is overflowing with love for sinners. Let’s believe that it is possible for the Holy Spirit to draw our wayward nation back to God.

J. Lee Grady is the editor of Charisma. He spent this last week preaching in Wales

In this season of spiritual shaking and financial uncertainty, we must press into the secret place of praise in order to overcome discouragement.

I’m a big fan of newspapers, but I haven’t enjoyed reading mine lately. The news has been intensely negative for the last few months. Plus, the number of advertising pages is shrinking because of the economic crisis. So when I picked up my very thin copy of the Orlando Sentinel today, I had to search hard to find anything positive. (I am happy, of course, that the Florida Gators crushed the Tennessee Volunteers over the weekend!)

On today’s front page, one article explained how the economic downturn is affecting kids. Psychologists are warning parents not to talk about job loss, foreclosures or high gas prices in front of their children because they may internalize fears, causing them to lose sleep or fail classes. Experts call this phenomenon “trickle down anxiety.

“I believe the book of Psalms is in the middle of the Bible because praise must be at the core of the Christian life.”

When discouragement hits me, I know I must fight back immediately. If I wallow in my sorrow or entertain my fears, the devil steals my joy and robs me of the strength I need to serve God faithfully. I’ve made a list of the seven most common things that tend to drag us down:

1. Difficulties. When circumstances don’t go our way, our emotional reaction to the pressure can cause severe stress and even sickness. Whether it’s a devastating hurricane, a family conflict, a wayward teenager or a bankruptcy, a trial can break us if we allow it to.

2. Disappointment. Many Christians become discouraged when they struggle unsuccessfully to overcome sinful habits. The enemy of our souls whispers, “You’ll never stop doing that.” Then he throws more temptation our way and lures us into defeat.

3. Dismay. The dictionary defines this as “a sudden and complete loss of courage because of danger or trouble.” Fear is the greatest enemy of faith. It has the power to paralyze.

4. Death. I have two friends, both ministers, who lost their sons recently in car accidents. Both young men were strong Christians, so their parents at least have the assurance that their boys are with the Lord. But this does not take away the grief. Often, the death of a loved one can trap us in depression.

5. Delays. God gave me some promises a long time ago that have not been fulfilled. As birthdays tick by, I’m tempted to think He’s playing tricks on me. When promises elude us or expectations dry up, we question if God really promised anything or if He changed His mind.

6. Daggers. I get lots of angry letters from people who don’t like something I wrote. Last week, in fact, a person who identified himself as a Christian said he hoped I would “roast in hell” and then described my spiritual condition in profane terms. Normally those kinds of off-the-wall comments don’t affect me, since I know hate mail is part of my job. But if I’m fighting discouragement on some other level and my guard is down, toxic criticism feels like a kick in the groin.

7. Darkness. Demonic opposition is invisible, but it is real. In August I preached in a city in Bolivia where the people practice witchcraft and worship frogs. When my friends and I arrived we were greeted by a row of 10 huge sculptures of the devil, all on proud display along the main avenue. The images didn’t scare me, but there was a heavy blanket of oppression over the entire place that made me feel like catching the next plane home. Thankfully I ignored the feelings and preached anyway—and several people became Christians that night.

So how do we resist discouragement? I believe we must learn King David’s strategy. We must run to the secret place.

When David returned to Ziklag and discovered that the Amalekites had raided his camp and kidnapped all the women and children, he was probably tempted to give up. He had lost everything—and his own men were threatening to stone him. Yet the Bible says: “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God” (1 Sam. 30:6, NASB).

How did he do that? We only need to turn to the middle of our Bibles—the book of Psalms—to read what David did when he spent time with God.

I believe the book of Psalms is in the middle of the Bible because praise is at the core of the Christian life. Praise was certainly at the heart of who David was. God’s presence was the “one thing” he sought above all else (see Ps. 27:4).

David wrote: “For in the day of trouble He will conceal me in His tabernacle; in the secret place of His tent He will hide me; He will lift me up on a rock” (Ps. 27:5). To effectively encourage yourself in God, you must find the secret place, shut the door to all distractions and speak to God until the heaviness has lifted.

David was not reserved when He shut himself away with God. He prayed, sang, shouted, clapped his hands and danced. And he talked to himself. He said with confidence: “Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear; though war arise against me, in spite of this I will be confident” (27:3).

We normally think it strange when someone talks to himself. But the Bible actually encourages us to do so when we are praising the Lord. If you are fighting discouragement, one of the best things you can do is hide yourself in a room and begin to tell God how awesome He is. If you can’t sing well, put on some lively praise music and follow along. The important thing is that you open your mouth and speak—because by doing so you are canceling the enemy’s lies.

Many Christians only praise God in church once a week. No wonder so many of us are spiritually frail. We’ve also lost the art of true biblical confession. When our souls have been overwhelmed by bad news, we must counteract by declaring our faith out loud.

After David spent time in the secret place, he said confidently: “And now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me, and I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy” (27:6). Praise, when it is uninhibited, has incredible power. It paves the way for breakthrough. It cuts the cords of fear and anxiety. It unleashes holy joy and pulls us out of the pit of depression. It scatters demonic darkness.

Don’t give the devil an advantage in this day of adversity. If you are facing difficulties, disappointments, delays or any other discouraging circumstances, remember the priority of praise.

J. Lee Grady is the editor of Charisma

Written By J. Lee Grady, Editor of Charisma 

Singer Ray Boltz’s shocking announcement that he’s gay offers us a chance to adjust our attitudes.

How should we respond when a fellow Christian embraces a gay lifestyle? Do we give him a hug and tell him we wholeheartedly respect his decision? Do we just keep quiet and pray? Or do we grab a Bible and offer a stern lecture?

I know it’s an uncomfortable subject, but I’m delving into it because recording artist Ray Boltz has come out of the closet. The 55-year-old singer, winner of three Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association, told the world last Friday that he just got tired of fighting his same-sex feelings. He told the Washington Blade, a gay magazine, that he now lives “a normal gay life” and feels liberated.

I am sure the gay community rejoiced that Boltz has joined their side of this debate. Now they are waiting to see our response. Many of them expect Christians to yank Boltz’s music off the radio, stage bonfires with his CDs and send cryptic death threats. (Hint: None of these is the right reaction.)

Best known for a string of Christian hits in the 1990s including “Thank You” and “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb,” Boltz told the Blade that he disclosed his repressed homosexuality to his wife and four grown children in 2004, the year he retired from his music career. He quietly moved to South Florida and began dating. His divorce from his wife of 33 years was finalized this year.

His confession was brutally honest: “I’d denied [my homosexuality] ever since I was a kid. I became a Christian. I thought that was the way to deal with this and I prayed hard and tried for 30-some years and then at the end, I was just going, ‘I’m still gay. I know I am.’ And I just got to the place where I couldn’t take it anymore.”

When I first heard Boltz’s announcement I felt betrayed, the same way I feel when a famous preacher admits to an affair or when a good friend leaves the faith. I’ll admit I immediately began composing a biblical lecture in my head.

I was upset that Boltz chose to stop fighting same-sex temptation after all those years of marriage. I was sorry to learn that he feels “closer to God” since he embraced his suppressed gayness. Most of all I was annoyed that his decision sends a distorted message to our culture that Christianity doesn’t offer the power to overcome sin.

But as I asked the Lord to share His heart with me about Boltz’s situation, I realized that our corporate response to this is as much about a right attitude as it is about right doctrines:

1. We must weep. The prophets who called ancient Israel to repent for apostasy did so through tears. Not only did they declare the word of God, but they also spoke with His tone of voice. I pray we will refrain from speaking God’s words to gay people until we have wept long enough to internalize His heart for them.

It’s easy to get angry at the people who are making wrong choices, but self-righteous anger does not produce the character of Christ in us or anyone else. Weeping, on the other hand, tenderizes us. It adjusts our self-righteous attitudes.

It’s not enough for us to preach to people. We must pray for them first. When they meet us, they need to see our moist eyes, not scowls and pointed fingers. Compassionate prayer bathes our message in God’s mercy. It requires us to humbly identify with sinners as we recognize that each one of us battles some form of brokenness or addiction.

2. We must love homosexuals. Preachers are fond of making grand declarations of God’s hatred of homosexuality, and we are prone to cheer them on. But Tim Wilkins, a recovered homosexual who is now director of Cross Ministry in Wake Forest, N.C., pleads with Christians to tone down the angry rhetoric. He says that every time a preacher makes a demeaning remark about homosexuals in a sermon, he wounds 70 percent of his listeners who either (1) silently deal with same-sex attraction themselves; or (2) have family and friends who do.

A 2007 Barna survey showed that 90 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers believe Christians display “excessive contempt toward gays and lesbians.” Could this be one reason we are not reaching large numbers of homosexuals with the gospel? If we don’t show genuine love, we can expect them to ignore us.

It was Jesus’ offer of friendship, not a sermon, that brought the hated tax collector Zaccheus to repentance. When Jesus called the little guy down from the sycamore tree and said, “Today I must stay at your house” (Luke 19:5, NASB), He erased all the rejection Zaccheus had endured from the moralizers who had condemned his thievery. (And Jesus didn’t get more popular with religious people when He made this new friendship.) Perhaps we need more hospitality and fewer sermons!

3. We must contend for the faith. Ray Boltz’s disappointing decision represents a national trend. Many people today are embracing homosexuality as an appealing alternative. They are listening to teachers, psychiatrists, talk-show hosts, Hollywood celebrities, sympathetic family members and even some mainline Christian ministers who say sexual orientation is totally genetic—and unchangeable.

These people have bought the lie that says a person who feels same-sex attraction must always be controlled by those desires. Not true! Jesus paid the ultimate price so that we can have freedom from every kind of sinful behavior.

We don’t have the right to compromise God’s Word, no matter how many people decide to come out of the closet. But let’s remember that the message we are called to proclaim to the world is not “Homosexuality is wrong.” That’s a true statement, but it has no power to change anybody.

The gospel we must shout from the housetops is that Jesus loves all of us, no matter our condition, and that His forgiveness can heal our brokenness. I pray Ray Boltz will soon discover that truth in a fresh way—and I hope he’ll write many more songs about it.

Written by J Lee Grady, Editor of Charisma

The Holy Spirit has provided a way for us to sort truth from error. But in this season of spiritual compromise, discernment is not popular.

When I began making regular ministry trips to Nigeria a few years ago I learned that a peculiar Nigerian minister named T.B. Joshua was causing quite a stir in that country. Often referred to as “the Man of God” or “the Man in the Synagogue” by his followers, this African preacher founded a massive religious compound in Lagos called The Synagogue, Church of All Nations. He began attracting big crowds because of his healing powers.

I was initially excited to hear about a new healing ministry on the international scene, but when I talked to pastors in Lagos I learned that no mainstream Christian church or denomination in Nigeria embraced Joshua as authentic. In fact, Pentecostal leaders had denounced him publicly because of his occult background and because he mixed Christian terminology with pagan healing methods..

I finally sat down with Joshua in 2003 to confront him about his story (including his claim that his mother carried him in the womb for 15 months because he was “special”). After being in his offices, talking with his zombielike followers, interviewing ex-members of his cult and watching videos of his bizarre methods (which include a form of magic writing), my own gut feelings confirmed what I had already been told by countless pastors in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja and other cities: This man was not operating by the Holy Spirit’s power.

What was even more shocking was seeing planeloads of Christians from South Africa, Europe and North America arrive in Nigeria to attend this man’s meetings. The excited pilgrims came to receive a touch from God. They wanted a spiritual impartation. Some left claiming they had been healed.

It was through this experience that I realized how desperately devoid of discernment the American church has become.

When the charismatic movement was at its zenith 30 years ago, Christians rediscovered the gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in the apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. We embraced healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues and miracles—gifts that had been ignored by the mainstream church for centuries. We also learned that discernment is one of these nine supernatural gifts (see 1 Cor. 12:8-10). We were taught that since the devil has the ability to counterfeit, and since Satan’s activity includes “all power and signs and false wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9, NASB), God’s people must be equipped with the supernatural power to tell the difference between the true and the false.

God gave us spiritual gifts in a package, and discernment is part of the set. It is not optional. Yet today it seems we’ve set discernment aside—perhaps because we’re suspicious of any gift that requires us to exercise clear judgment.

We live in a confusing season marked by spiritual compromise, moral relativism and deceptive imitations. In our culture today up is down and right is wrong. Oprah tells us that Jesus is not the only way to God. Spirituality is up for grabs, and you can define it however you want. The broad way to destruction is celebrated while the narrow way to salvation is criticized.

And in some charismatic churches, hunger for the supernatural is encouraged while leaders seem reluctant to put boundaries around it for fear of seeming intolerant. We stopped teaching discernment because it forces us to draw lines. We desperately need to return to what the Bible teaches us about this important subject: 

1. We are commanded to discern.
The apostle John instructed us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). The word “test” means to “examine as metal”—the process a jeweler would use to prove authenticity. Metals may look the same; only when you apply heat will you find which ones are fake or of low quality. All that glitters, in such cases, is not gold.
  We don’t like to test because it seems harsh. We don’t like confrontation. We want to be nice to everybody. But it is the Lord who tells us to test the spirits. Will we please people, or fear God?

 2. Discernment is a sign of spiritual maturity.
The author of Hebrews told his readers that they were immature babies who couldn’t handle eating spiritual meat. “Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Heb. 5:14). The implication here is that those who don’t learn to discern are spiritually stunted.

Is it possible that we in the American church have been so focused on satisfying our own material or emotional needs that we have gotten stuck in perpetual infancy? The Bible offers a remedy: Grow up! We will never come to full adulthood in a spiritual sense if we don’t develop discernment.

 3. Discernment is damaged when leaders compromise.
The prophet Ezekiel denounced the priests and governors of Israel because they didn’t teach the people to discern. “They have made no distinction between the holy and the profane, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean” (Ezek. 22:26). Discernment, according to this passage, is shaped by the choices leaders make.

When shepherds don’t build fences, sheep wander into wolves’ territory. That’s why God holds leaders to a stricter standard. In some cases today, leaders have brought their flocks to feed near toxic streams. The gospel has been polluted by false prophecies and poisonous doctrines and, in some tragic cases, by the direct impartation of immorality and greed from the pulpit.

Do you want discernment? It will probably not make you popular. But I pray we will be willing to risk our popularity in order to become mature disciples of Jesus—and to guard the American church from deception.

WRITTEN BY J LEE GRADY, EDITOR OF CHARISMA

Weird teachings about angels have become the norm in some charismatic circles today. It’s time to demand sanity on the subject.

* Evangelist Todd Bentley, leader of the Lakeland Revival, stirred up interest in angels when he wrote about Emma, a female angel he said wears a long white dress, floats above the floor and resembles Kathryn Kuhlman. 

* A young evangelist who was preaching in Canada last spring held up a jar with a feather in it and told the congregation it belonged to an angel who visits him. He said the angel was coming to the service to release riches and healing to those who wanted prayer.

 * Leaders of the prophetic movement often speak of angels that bring healing, wealth or special anointings. Some have described angels as tall as skyscrapers while others say they have seen tiny angels the size of insects. One prophet spoke of angels who are sleeping inside the walls of churches. Another segment of believers claim that the glowing circles of light that often show up on photographs are angels in the form of “orbs.” 

With such exotic teachings on the rise, we desperately need some biblical guidelines. If you believe everything you hear these days, angels can be huge, tiny, spherical, male, female, feathered or non-feathered. What’s next? Yipping dog angels? Mermaid angels with fins? Court jester angels with bells on their hats? 

Since my earliest days in the charismatic movement I was always taught that the Bible is our guidebook for doctrine and practice, and that the early church’s experience in the Book of Acts should be a pattern for us. This would direct us to assume that if a spiritual experience is not in the Bible, then it should not be considered normative for us today. 

When I look at what the New Testament teaches us about angels, and specifically what the book of Acts shows us about them, here’s what I find: 

·            Angels who looked like men told the early disciples that Jesus would return one day (see Acts 1:11)

·            Angels are actively working behind the scenes to minister to the saints, especially to offer protection (see Acts 12:7-11)

·             In one case an angel directed Philip where to preach (see Acts 8:26)

·             Angels sometimes appeared in visions to give instructions, as one did for Cornelius (see Acts 10:3,7,22)

·            An angel came to Paul to strengthen him and to assure him that he would preach to Caesar (see Acts 27:23-24). 

If we look at Paul’s epistles, we find only a few references to angels—and most are actually warnings to the early church about a wrong emphasis on angels: 

·             Paul warned the Galatians that false angels can bring deception (see Gal. 1:8)

·            Paul warned the Corinthians about “angels of light” that are messengers of Satan (see 2 Cor. 11:14)

·            Paul warned the Colossians about misguided people who worship angels and deceive people with their emphasis on mystical experiences that are rooted in their hyperinflated egos (see Col. 2:18). 

The book of Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were considering going back to Old Covenant worship. In the first chapter the author makes it clear that angels have a lower place in God’s economy when compared to Jesus Christ. 

Many Bible scholars believe the readers of this epistle were being tempted to go back to an Old Covenant paradigm in which angels played a more significant role. The author of Hebrews warns these believers to focus their attention instead on the Son of God, who is more glorious than angels. We can make some basic assumptions about angels in the New Covenant era: 

1. Angels help the church fulfill its mission, and they protect and guide the saints. Every one of us has probably experienced the activity of angels in our lives—often without knowing it because they are usually invisible. 

2. Angels sometimes intervene with directive messages. But there is no case in the New Testament church in which an angel gave his name or brought attention to himself.  

3. Angels don’t teach or explain doctrine. In our movement today, some leaders have suggested that certain angels (such as “Winds of Change”) have arrived to usher in new movements. Emma has been described as a “nurturing angel” who brings a prophetic movement. But nowhere does the Bible suggest that angels bring moves of God. Jesus commissioned the church to advance the kingdom by preaching the gospel. Angels know this and they are expecting us to do our job. 

4. Angels don’t bring healing. The New Testament church was commissioned to bring healing “through the name of Jesus,” and Jesus was always the focus for anyone who was healed miraculously. The story of the Pool of Siloam falls under the Old Covenant system, since this phenomenon occurred before the ministry of Jesus. And when Jesus came to that pool He proved to be a better solution to those who waited for the stirring of the waters. 

5. Angels look like people, and in every case in Scripture they appeared to be male. However, in some cases their appearance was frightening because they carry with them the glory of heaven and the fear of God. 

6. False angels preach a different gospel. One of the devil’s strategies is to send counterfeit angelic messengers who bring teaching that is contrary to biblical truth. There are many flaky, weird and foolish concepts being circulated in our movement today that must be corrected. If we don’t hold tightly to Scripture, we might unknowingly give birth to a cult that could bring great damage and division to churches worldwide. It’s time to get back to the Bible! 

Written by J. Lee Grady.  This is worth noting on this terrible situation.

Evangelist Todd Bentley had heralded the Lakeland revival as the greatest Pentecostal outpouring since Azusa Street.

From his stage in a gigantic tent in Florida, Bentley preached to thousands, bringing many of them to the stage for prayer. Many claimed to be healed of deafness, blindness, heart problems, depression and dozens of other conditions in the Lakeland services, which ran for more than 100 consecutive nights. Bentley announced confidently that dozens of people had been raised from the dead during the revival.

 But this week, a few days after the Canadian preacher announced the end of his visits to Lakeland, he told his staff that his marriage is ending. Without blaming the pace of the revival for Bentley’s personal problems, his board released a public statement saying that he and his wife, Shonnah, are separating. The news shocked Bentley’s adoring fans and saddened those who have questioned his credibility since the Lakeland movement erupted in early April.

I’m sad. I’m disappointed. And I’m angry. Here are few of my many, many questions about this fiasco: 

Why did so many people flock to Lakeland from around the world to rally behind an evangelist who had serious credibility issues from the beginning? To put it bluntly, we’re just plain gullible.  From the first week of the Lakeland revival, many discerning Christians raised questions about Bentley’s beliefs and practices. They felt uneasy when he said he talked to an angel in his hotel room. They sensed something amiss when he wore a T-shirt with a skeleton on it. They wondered why a man of God would cover himself with tattoos. They were horrified when they heard him describe how he tackled a man and knocked his tooth out during prayer. But among those who jumped on the Lakeland bandwagon, discernment was discouraged. They were expected to swallow and follow. The message was clear: “This is God. Don’t question.” So before we could all say, “Sheeka Boomba” (as Bentley often prayed from his pulpit), many people went home, prayed for people and shoved them to the floor with reckless abandon, Bentley-style.

 I blame this lack of discernment, partly, on raw zeal for God. We’re spiritual hungry—which can be a good thing. But sometimes, hungry people will eat anything.  Many of us would rather watch a noisy demonstration of miracles, signs and wonders than have a quiet Bible study. Yet we are faced today with the sad reality that our untempered zeal is a sign of immaturity. Our adolescent craving for the wild and crazy makes us do stupid things. It’s way past time for us to grow up. 

Why didn’t anyone in Lakeland denounce the favorable comments Bentley made about William Branham? This one baffles me. Branham embraced horrible deception near the end of his ministry, before he died in 1965. He claimed that he was the reincarnation of Elijah—and his strange doctrines are still embraced by a cultlike following today. When Bentley announced to the world that the same angel that ushered in the 1950s healing revival had come to Lakeland, the entire audience should have run for the exits.

 Why didn’t anyone correct this error from the pulpit? Godly leaders are supposed to protect the sheep from heresy, not spoon feed deception to them. Only God knows how far this poison traveled from Lakeland to take root elsewhere. May God forgive us for allowing His Word to be so flippantly contaminated.

 A prominent Pentecostal evangelist called me this week after Bentley’s news hit the fan. He said to me: “I’m now convinced that a large segment of the charismatic church will follow the anti-Christ when he shows up because they have no discernment.” Ouch. Hopefully we’ll learn our lesson this time and apply the necessary caution when an imposter shows up. 

Why did God TV tell people that “any criticism of Todd Bentley is demonic”?  This ridiculous statement was actually made on one of God TV’s pre-shows. In fact, the network’s hosts also warned listeners that if they listened to criticism of Bentley, they could lose their healings. This is cultic manipulation at its worst. The Bible tells us that the Bereans were noble believers because they studied the Scriptures daily “to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11, NASB). Yet in the case of Lakeland, honest intellectual inquiry was viewed as a sign of weakness. People were expected to jump first and then open their eyes. Just because we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit does not mean we check our brains at the church door. We are commanded to test the spirits. Jesus wants us to love Him with our hearts and our minds.  Because of the Lakeland scandal, there may be large numbers of people who feel they’ve been burned by Bentley. Some may give up on church and join the growing ranks of bitter, disenfranchised Christians. Others may suffer total spiritual shipwreck. This could have been avoided if leaders had been more vocal about their objections and urged people to evaluate spiritual experiences through the filter of God’s Word.

Why did a group of respected ministers lay hands on Bentley on June 23 and publicly ordain him? Did they know of his personal problems? This controversial ceremony was organized by Peter Wagner, who felt that one of Bentley’s greatest needs was proper spiritual covering. He asked California pastors Che Ahn and Bill Johnson, along with Canadian pastor John Arnott, to lay hands on Bentley and bring him under their care.  Bentley certainly needs such covering. No one in ministry today should be out on their own, living in isolation without checks, balances and wise counsel. It was commendable that Wagner reached out to Bentley and that Bentley acknowledged his need for spiritual fathers by agreeing to submit to the process. The question remains, however, whether it was wise to commend Bentley during a televised commissioning service that at times seemed more like a king’s coronation. In hindsight, we can all see that it would have been better to take Bentley into a back room and talk about his personal issues.  The Bible tells us that ordination of a minister is a sober responsibility. Paul wrote: “Do not lay hands upon anyone too hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others” (1 Tim. 5:22). We might be tempted to rush the process, but the apostle warned against fast-tracking ordination—and he said that those who commission a minister who is not ready for the job will bear some of the blame for his failures. I trust that Wagner, Ahn, Johnson and Arnott didn’t know of Bentley’s problems before they ordained him. I am sure they are saddened by the events of this week and are reaching out to Bentley and his wife to promote healing and restoration. But I believe that they, along with Bentley and the owners of God TV, owe the body of Christ a forthright, public apology for thrusting Bentley’s ministry into the spotlight prematurely. (Perhaps such an apology should be aired on God TV.) 

Can anything good come out of this? That depends on how people respond. If the men assigned to oversee Bentley offer loving but firm correction, and if Bentley responds humbly to the process by stepping out of ministry for a season of rehabilitation, we could witness a healthy case of church discipline play out the way it is supposed to. If all those who were so eager to promote Bentley now rush just as fast to repent for their errors in judgment, then the rest of us could breathe a huge sigh of relief—and the credibility of our movement could be restored. I still believe that God desires to visit our nation in supernatural power. I know He wants to heal multitudes, and I will continue praying for a healing revival to sweep across the United States. But we must contend for the genuine, not an imitation. True revival will be accompanied by brokenness, humility, reverence and repentance—not the arrogance, showmanship and empty hype that often was on display in Lakeland.

 We are weathering an unprecedented season of moral failure and spiritual compromise in our nation today. I urge everyone in the charismatic world to pray for Bentley; his wife, Shonnah; his three young children; Bentley’s ministry staff; and the men and women who serve as his counselors and advisers. Let’s pray that God will turn this embarrassing debacle into an opportunity for miraculous restoration.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. To read Charisma’s news story on Todd