I know a lot of conservative Evangelicals who simply want nothing to do with the gift of tongues—the type who recoil at anything Pentecostal. And fair enough, when what you know about Pentecostalism is from sources far removed from their day to day, such that all that is heard sounds frankly demonic.
On the other hand, Pentecostals have a large heart. They want others to join in with them, but can't understand the antagonism. All they can do is weakly, with great hope, offer a hand, knowing it probably will be rejected yet again—and move on.
I believe realising there are true and false gifts is one of the keys to bringing both sides together. How could that be?
Read more: Towards unity around the gift of tongues: 12 differences between true and false tongues
The problem
So Scripture says two contradictory things, a few times:
God wants everyone to be saved (1 Tim 2:4), but also declares the wicked will have their part in the lake of fire apart from God.
Read more: How the two wills of God help us think about healing
Jesus claims to be God and is confronted by the Pharisees.
Spiritual warfare can involve a clash of ideas? Yes—and more!
Pentecostals put a big emphasis on spiritual warfare. Typically what they mean by this practically is lots of prayer, speaking in tongues, decreeing and declaring, binding and loosing, and other spiritual activities.
In Word Faith circles, and perhaps wider, this stems from an understanding of the spiritual realm as being where all the action is. Need healing? Start in the spirit. Need finances? Confess positively and decree it in the spiritual realms. Need breakthrough of any kind? Pray in tongues.
Read more: What is spiritual warfare? How does it involve a clash of ideas?
A lot of cessationists will argue that Isaiah 53:5 "by [Jesus'] stripes, you are healed" is referring to a spiritual healing. It can look that way at first—if you are biased against God healing people.
Jesus had direction to preach to the Jews first and then the Gentiles, but one Canaanite woman managed to break that.
Read more: Directionalism Appendix 3: Prophesying to, preaching to and healing everyone anytime
I want to quickly revisit another confusion I've observed: that people will see a technique followed by a miracle a few times and conclude that this is the way to manufacture a miracle. We've found the key! The secret! If we just pray like this, or fast for this long, or say these things, or do it this way, we'll see miracles every time!
The immediate difficulty with this is that it is so secret that it's not in the Bible.
There's a lot in this, so I've tried to summarise the main points here. There are one or two extra points that I didn't draw out but which flow on from what has been said.
Key principles:
We are to expect many glimpses of the perfected kingdom of God, many reflections, while we be like Christ to others and witness. However, full perfection will only come in the new heaven and new earth after Jesus' Second Coming.
In relation to healing, deliverances and praying:
Throughout this series, I am trying to establish a framework through which we can operate under so that we don't fall into presumption or sensational extremes. It's not "this is how you are to pray", but rather, when you pray or engage in spiritual warfare, keep these things in mind. These are boundary markers that God has given us to stay in his will.
Now, my chief Old Testament set of examples, has a counter-example within it. Joshua directs God! Could it be that we have power in and of ourselves? Could my whole argument, which attempts to be based securely on an exegetical reading of the Bible, be wrong?
Read more: Directionalism 4: Commanding healing vs asking God
Of course, cessationists have nothing in this, as they don't even believe that the Spirit can speak to us today, let alone heal. But directionalism is a charismatic understanding that makes better sense of why some healings occur and others don't.
Returning to the original four ways that Pentecostals explain a lack of healing:
The person praying or the person being prayed for didn't have enough faith (Matthew 8:26, 13:58, 14:31, 17:20; Hebrews 11; Romans 10:17; and more)
The person being prayed for has unconfessed sin (1 John 1:6-10)
The person praying didn't do it right (didn't fast – Mark 9:29; didn't say the right things; didn't have the right technique)
The devil did it (Job; Luke 13:11-16; Matthew 9:32-33; 2 Corinthians 12:7)
There are in fact Scripture passages on these and I've highlighted them (I don't think there's any backing for doing the right technique: that's just our tendency to take God out of the picture and rely on ourselves). But I want to add another two that I think are much more prominent than any of these:
Read more: Directionalism 3: What this means for when God doesn't heal
Pentecostals are right to point out that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, so let me start in the Old Testament for this fantastic set of examples. I call this "directionalism" because it is about following God's direction and being humble enough to lay down what you think is most crucial, in favour of following God's fresh direction for each situation.
You would think that being promised the land of Canaan would mean that you could just go up and take it. Why ask? There is no presumption: God has said this will be yours (Joshua 1:1-9). "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force." (Matthew 11:12) Go up and fight!
Yet that's not what God wanted at all.
Read more: Directionalism 2: The principle of following God's direction daily
What we are dealing with here is the question of what to think about miracles and healings, for Christians today, particularly in light of how we deal with failures and disappointments in this area.
In brief, a lot of churches believe these things have ceased since the first Apostles died, believing that their purpose was to establish the Gospel, and once that was done, it was not needed any more. That's cessationism, as in cease-ing-ism. As a charismatic blog, I won't deal with this in any detail.
Presumptionism is my word for what the Word of Faith Pentecostals believe (not all Pentecostals are Word of Faith). This is that God always wants to heal and deliver people from demons. This stems from a belief that Jesus wanted his disciples to do what he did, and gave them power for it, and there's no indication that that would stop. It also is backed up by regular occurrences of healings and deliverances. But it goes one step further and argues that we should expect everyone to get healed and delivered.
Read more: Directionalism 1: An answer to both Cessationist and Presumptionist views
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