letters to a modern-day Job

I watched a “Key to Miracles”! sermon. Here are 4 thoughts.

I watched a charismatic Word of Faith type preacher deliver a passionate sermon on the “Key to Miracles” to a congregation of in a big church. He was an elderly white man, wearing a coat and spoke with a forced urgency and cultured accent – something between Australian and South African. His responsibility on the pulpit, he said, was to get the congregation to have “faith for the miraculous”, and to be able to “laugh at the impossible.” He peppered his sermons with examples of Jesus doing miracles (OK). Then saying the same power that rose Jesus from the dead is available to us today (kind of OK). Then admonishing us to be like Reinhard Bonkie (famous German Pentecostal evangelist in Africa) who said that God told him that “My (God’s) word coming out from My (God’s) mouth, is the same as My (God’s) word coming out of your (Bonkie’s) mouth.” (if you say this, you got to back it up). He then said that if everyone got on this level of faith and spoke with such authority, God would unleash miraculous power to our lives would change the entire nations. To make it sound even more impressive, he would pepper his speech with Greek words, showing how scholarly he was. (Those Greek words actually didn’t add or take away anything from the main thrust of the sermon, but I figured they were used to “increase” the faith of the congregation. Since to the untrained, Greek words sound authoritative.) He then started peering into the crowds saying that he could “see faith for the miraculous increasing!” as though we could see faith in us like mercury in a thermometer.

I’ve been a part of too many of these sermons. I’ve been on both sides. When I was a youth Christian leader in his 20s, I was training to be THAT speaker. When I saddled with an incurable disease, I was in attendance at many different healing services to just catch a glimpse of God’s power. God is going to heal me of my 20 year fight with eczema! I will smugly show my doctor that God did what he couldn’t do! This didn’t happen … until I was actually out of the church and two decades later! I suppose that’s why watching this sermon evoked many emotions, from a been-there-done-that indifference to nostalgia to wonderful memories during my Christian development years in a leadership role in church and speaker to a reminder of how desperate I was for any sort of relief from my problems.

I remember the big questions that I wrestled with for more than a decade. Does God really exist? Why did God wait until I lost everything before He acted in the way I could recognize? Why did God waste my prime years? Why did God give me a heart for the world and the church only to see them disregard me when they didn’t want to see the deeper things in my life? Are you having such questions?

Before I officially talk about the “real” keys that people had when their breakthroughs were about to happen I want to talk about four thoughts that rose to the surface, as I watched the familiar charismatic word of faith preacher. These thoughts were generated by those years of being on both sides of the sermon, an arduous search for truth, experiencing grave disappointment, then an unexpected redemption. Now I am able to see things from hindsight and add personal experience to the words in the Bible.

Before I go into those three things, I want to give a quick preamble. I am not decrying Word of Faith type sermons. These parts of those sermons have helped many people to give serious weight to the power of God and the authority of the Bible. Some people do have breakthroughs during service, or like me, it provided a starting point for me to know God’s word. However, at the same time, it can be counter-productive to immature Christians that may not appreciate the deeper purpose God has for them or people who are sincere in their beliefs, but experience no miracles when they think they needed it the most.

This post is for those people who wrestle with great struggle, and breakthroughs don’t occur on demand. Because of this, they have to deal with condemnation with themselves or from others. After all, if the word of God is authoritative and can cast disease away and you are still saddled with the problem; what is the implication? A sad implication some might have is: If there is nothing wrong with God, nothing wrong with His Word, then the problem must be you. Don’t let others or yourself condemn you this way. I am writing this series for you because there is more to it.

I want to try to separate the authentic from man-made traditions because those who are struggling already have it difficult enough. We need the truth that leads to abundant life, and not what people think the Bible says. Charismatic Word of Faith type preaching can sometimes carry a bit of both, and that’s why it’s hard to distinguish. Before I talk about what was the most important keys for my redemption experience – the “Real” Keys to Miracles (more like an attitude and posture from revelation than a formula), let me quickly address thoughts about the speaker that might help clarify doubts or crystalize inklings or suspicions you might have as a growing Christian attending such sermons.

Four things came to mind.

Firstly, the speaker claimed he can “see faith rising” in some people. I can see why he says this. Sometimes, what looks like faith on their faces or felt in their spirit. is not the real thing. BUT, just because that faith doesn’t show up in an obvious way doesn’t mean biblical faith isn’t there. In fact, it’s common that when you can’t see obvious faith that great faith is being developed! People can see something in other people that looks like faith … your emotional highs, your incessant claiming of scriptures over yourself, your incessant thanking of God for every small thing or your attribution of good luck to God specially working in your life. But real faith that causes significant breakthroughs or miracles are ONLY recognized by God. It is not up to you to recognize your own faith, so stop condemning yourself on whether you have enough of it or not. People might see your emotional highs or even some acts of bravado, but real faith is not emotional or spoken out. Real faith is better seen by what you do, not what you say or feel. Real faith include fighting real fears personal to you, incentivized by correctly knowing God’s heart and obeying God when it’s difficult to. No one can see this but God.

Jesus hung on the cross and bitterly wailed for the crowds to hear, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Imagine if Jesus said this in the middle of the church, no one would think He had the right kind of faith! But Jesus is justified based on what He was willing to do, and did, rather than what He said as an unavoidable response to the strain of condemnation He took on Himself.

You see, God knows the impossibility or the weight on your soul and knows how much you can take. God knows how much darkness is around you and will not condemn you if you don’t know what to say. But we all know that the Bible says that only Jesus had a perfect faith that can “move mountains”. How? Because Jesus’ faith is defined by what He was willing to do. Jesus might have sounded (to the human eye) like having a lack of faith, His spirit was fearful at the time, but Jesus was still willing to do the impossible and put Himself on the cross.

My first breakthrough occurred when I was afraid to do it. There were real risks involved and once a mature, discerning person realizes the real risks, you can’t have false bravado when you do it. You would be pensive, sometimes fearful and steeling yourself in case the worst happens. But faith is clinging on to God, believing in His loving heart that He has a purpose no one can take away, as you take each step forward… even if each step is a cowardly mini-step and not the with the bravado of taking big jumps, beating your chest for all to see.

The first recorded instance of Jesus saying, “Your faith has made you well” is found in Matthew 9:22 where Jesus heals the woman with the issue of blood. She pushed her way to Jesus, making everyone she touched along the way ceremonially unclean. When Jesus asked, “Who touched me?”, she shuddered – showing that she was uncertain of what she had done, but there was just something in her heart that told her that Jesus is different from the rest. She must have thought: “He is not any ordinary Rabbi or High Priest. He won’t think I am unworthy. He won’t be made unclean by me. He won’t scold me for breaking the Old covenant laws.” She saw Jesus in His goodness, that He was bigger than man-made conventions.  In those days, no one would have thought she had the right kind of faith, if she had, why was she suffering for so many years where doctors could not help? She was not a “church leader” who incessantly quoted scripture over herself for all to hear, in fact, she was a pariah. She would have been considered cursed and “unholy”. But she released the power of Jesus to heal (physically and spiritually) and Jesus, not men, recognized this as HER FAITH.

When I was a successful young Christian leader and many admirers, quoting bible verses left and right (up and down too), many people would say that I had a lot of the right kind of faith and would be invited to places to speak. But when I lost everything and tried to make sense of the wreckage, people would say that they couldn’t see my faith. They couldn’t distinguish the difference between giving up (I wasn’t) and fighting through the dissonance because I was experiencing something too big for my mind to handle. But it is when I lost everything and was no longer the churchy emblem of faith that I found the greatest breakthroughs. The breakthroughs I experienced when I was a “faithless pariah” was far more significant than in my successful church years.

So don’t take stock in what other people say about your faith. Don’t even condemn yourself for “not having enough faith”. God sees your faith when you see His goodness. And it happens naturally as you crawl through the wreckage and He interacts with you WHERE YOU ARE AT. One day, you will look back and realize you actually had “faith” during some of those dark times when you thought you didn’t or when others thought you didn’t. You will only see it from hindsight. The woman with the issue of blood only saw it from hindsight, and only after Jesus said it! She didn’t know how she was feeling at the time!

1. When we see God in His goodness, God sees us in our faiths. Many times, it is the least churchy looking person or the person many people have written off that see God in His goodness.

This is not controversial to me. It’s only logical because the flipside to seeing God in His goodness means to also see yourself in your moral bankruptcy and physical limitations. Those who think they are “not that bad” can’t see God in His goodness as much as they could have in the same way you can’t see the full brightness of the stars at 4 pm in the afternoon. It’s only under the contrast of the darknest night that you see everything about the stars.

Second, the preacher kept claiming we need more of a certain faith to cause miracles yet doesn’t tell us how to increase it. Obviously, those who experience repeated failures in unanswered prayers will lack belief, it’s natural. And because he couldn’t explain the nuances of what true faith undergirded in grace looks like, immature Christians might mistake the “faith” he is referring to as a sort of emotional high, forced bravado, good works or something you yourself must conjure up. (It’s not. You can still have some biblical faith even when you are at the brink of giving up on God and sinning like no tomorrow. I don’t recommend it though. More in the next post.)

When people mistake “faith” as an emotional high, forced bravado or some kind of self-reinforcing positivity exercise, that’s when people get indifferent to the authentic power of Jesus, and that’s when you get people like Marty Simpson and Joshua Harris feeling that Christianity is just like every other religion. I find it instructive that both celebrities have never gone through tremendous suffering or rejection as both received great celebrity from the church from an early age. As a young worship leader myself, although I never reached the mass acclaim of either, I can see how being celebrated in church naturally makes us want to stay in the echo chambers of the church. I would never have reached my understanding of the Bible had I not been rocked out of my comfort zones or ideological echo chambers.

Case in point, Marty said that “he was losing his faith and he is totally fine with it.” These are the words of a person who has been cuddled by the church and the world. He is attractive to the world and has found natural acceptance by many, even outside of the church. He is fine with it because he already has a physical family and another ideological family to celebrate him after he leaves the church family. It’s easy to avoid questions on the afterlife when life on earth is good. But what if he had NONE of those?

That’s what happened to me. I totally understand the saying “there are no atheists in foxholes.” The question of knowing exactly who God is and confidence (or doubt) in our relationship with Him is avoidable when a grenade can fall into your foxhole at any time threatening to blow your legs off, and then, because of the inherently selfish (sinful, as the Bible calls it) nature of humans (if there is no God), your wife will leave you eventually for better prospects. In a foxhole, you won’t be feeling “okay” about leaving Christianity without any solid replacement.

After going through my ordeal through the real horrors of sickness, and being rejected by the world when you are no longer attractive. I would be terrified if Christianity is false because I had already thought through the implications of all the major religions including atheism. None of them believe in grace by faith alone, and I know how hopelessly morally weak humans can be when they take pride in their own goodness. My own experience and my observations of people around me and through history tells me there is obviously something wrong with human nature and we definitely need to be saved. We need fixing from the sin in our hearts. And, the people that need the most fixing are the people that start off describing themselves as “I consider myself a good person.”

None of the major religions had a founder that claimed to be God himself, so why should I believe them about the afterlife or the secrets to the universe? None of the other religions base their veracity on a historical event (Jesus historically died on the cross and the tomb was empty) and dared to claim that if Christ didn’t rise from the death all your faiths are in vain. Which religion would dare to highlight a self-defeating clause that is based on something historical or objective? A great number of people could have stopped Christianity in its tracks just by explaining the empty tomb or producing the body of Jesus. The Romans were the political powers, they kept persecuting Christians but could not produce the body. The Jewish establishment was the religious power (Pharisees, Sadducees, and Teachers of the Law) from which Christianity sprouted from, so to speak. They were also threatened by this outshoot Jewish cult called Christianity and they too could not explain the empty tomb or produce the body.

Atheism has no answers for those naturally selected to be “losers”. If a supernatural God didn’t exist, it implies that if you are naturally selected to be unpopular, rejected or diseased, there is absolutely no good reason this can be reversed at all. If the sickness doesn’t kill you, your journey to irrelevance will. You might not have a family, and eventually, no one will remember you. Any “goodness” you might receive would be psychosomatic and psychosomatic goodness is trivial and temporary. The Bible accurately points out we are all fallen with sin, the reality that it’s an evil, selfish world out there, but that God’s redemption awaits as REAL as the historical Jesus died and was raised. No other religion is based on a historical event or a savior that claimed to be God, but rather, the inclinations of a sort of guru or philosopher that tickles the mind but ultimately doesn’t provide the answers that really matter.

The inclinations of gurus or the intellectual sophistry of philosophers are curious fodder, or short term intellectual entertainment for those who are comfortable, but not those who are truly struggling.

2. Charismatic preachers tell us all the time we need more faith to unlock breakthroughs, but seem to not be able to tell us how to have more of such faith. (That’s the in next post.)

Third, if the speaker could do the impossible, why was he overweight? It’s not even “impossible” to lose weight and yet he admonished us to achieve the impossible. Perhaps he has a reason no one knows about, but to most outsiders looking in, it’s hard to take such a message seriously. This sounds like a trivial point, but it bears wondering. Is he really flowing freely and witnessing powerful moves of God on a regular basis? Or is he more form over substance?

“Beware … by their fruits you will know them.” Matthew 7:15-20

Undoubtedly, there are charismatic speakers that have depth and substance, but there are some that don’t – but it’s hard to tell because they preach similar stories. And, loud confident preaching can be mistaken for Godly authority. Stage presence and charisma can be mistaken for divine countenance that comes when one is full of the Spirit.

To tell the difference, you have to look at the fruits of their lives for confirmation of what you are suspecting about them. Have they really experienced big obstacles and greater redemptions? Do their lives exhibit the fruits of the spirit? (Gal 5:22-23).

People who are full of the Spirit have testimonies that are not trivial and have been tested by the evils of the world. In order words, what happens to them is something worldly people will notice, and not just overfriendly Christians that are looking for any small good event to confirm their faiths.

For the Gentiles strive after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. (Matthew 6:32)

Throughout the Bible, God’s favor on His children was always used to convince the world that there is something different about His children. Here Jesus tells us God will add the things the world “strives” for plus even more, this the reason why the world takes notice… because you obviously got something they don’t but want. (Notice I didn’t use the word “unknowingly need” but “want”, which is what worldly striving is all about. One doesn’t strive for something they “unknowingly” need… like reconciling with God and having a renewed spirit, because firstly they don’t know they need it, and it’s not something easily seen with their 5 senses!)

My once-in-a-lifetime story of catching the stockmarket bottom during the financial crisis of 2009.

One of my first experiences of this type of God’s powerful grace was during my Abyss period. Not only was I hopelessly sick and couldn’t function properly so I was confined at home for more than 2 years, but I was also financial dire straits because although I was learning part-time to trade the stock market, I wasn’t doing well and I kept draining savings due to my medical bills.

In a masterful stroke (I mean God is the master, not me), I managed to catch the bottom of the financial markets during the great financial crisis and went all-in on March 2009. I didn’t catch the financial markets as a professional working with other professionals, but when I was in great pain, not even fully conscious most of the day due to medical drugs and isolated at home. It took balls of steel, a great calmness in the midst of potential financial ruin, wisdom and discernment from God and continual obedience to God the whole year before to keep learning things that seemed to not be useful at the time.

And yet. all those things that I learned that was not immediately useful came together as a whole at the right time to make a decision that would change my life forever.

Here, I learned that God’s timing is perfect.

And when God wants you to work on something we should do it, even when it seems that it’s not immediately useful or you are struggling in your loneliness. Here, I learned the blessing of obedience to God and also that powerful breakthrough moments usually have a setup time that is not glamourous and can be full of doubt. How many years did David learn to protect animals and practice his sling while people made fun of his “low” stature before God used those exact skills to save the nation of Israel when trained soldiers could not? How many years of rejection and isolation did Joseph have in prison? I imagine Joseph having to hone his connection with God in the midst of his isolation in prison. Could he have been able to interpret dreams so accurately without those years in prison where he had to focus on God 24/7? Could Joseph have the skills for resource management if he were not plucked out of his father’s small tribe and into the greater world of Egypt? Could Joseph have understood Egyptian politics and governance if he didn’t become the favorite servant/butler of Potiphar, the chief of the guard?

When the pivot time came of the stock market bottom came, I, like many others, was paralyzed in fear. You see, stock market bottoms occur when the fear around you is at maximum and when people give up trading, not when everyone is happy and confident. Even my professional friend working in a hedge fund admitted he was too scared to go long in the market.

After a year of building my own model of how to detect stock market bottoms, I remember God asking me this when it seemed that there was good quantitative evidence of a potential stock market bottom.

“Ken, based on all the studies you did in the financial markets, theoretically, if you ignore the negative news headlines, isn’t this the best time to invest, not the worse?”

“Yes.”

“Ken, have you made the decision based on the strength of your analysis not on how you feel?”

“Yes.”

“Are your goals based on greed, or just doing what is right? In other words, Can you still do all the things I want you to do? Even if the financial markets don’t recover quickly, and your money is stuck for 3 years, will you be okay with that? (Seek Truth, develop my character, persevere on building skills that I can be useful in society).

“Yes,”

“Am I the ultimate source of your foundation, and not on your own works alone?”

“Yes.”

I realize that when it comes to the financial market, it’s when we can curb our fears and greed that it allows us to make the best decisions. But humans have always been slaves to their fears and greed … that’s why there are so many stock market bubbles. I realize that my Christian faith actually made me a better trader, it gave me an edge over those who have no safety net other than their possessions or the opinions of others.

After answering these questions in my heart, one day as I was meditating on God, I felt God give me a supernatural peace amidst the turmoil. The verse came alive, “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.” (2 Tim 1:7)

I went ALL IN.

1 year later, I sold off my stocks for close to a 300% gain.

A newbie like me has a zero chance to do something like that. And even if some caught close to the bottom, how many would go all-in when the bad news was so bad that so many wanted to give up trading altogether? How many would actually hold for a 300% gain? Many of my friends sold off their stocks for a 20-30% gain. What kept me in the trade when they exited? My friends all have more experience in the stock market. Note: I do not consider myself a financial guru. It’s not like I am so smart to be able to trade like that all the time. But I recognized that God helped me the most when I needed help the most. He did what only God could do when I was dying slowly in my sickness and draining savings all the while. This didn’t only keep me in the financial markets game, it kept me in the game of life. I finally felt I have a chance to make something of myself if God truly exists. My heart could finally start to believe that God can turn my sickness and life around. Doctors couldn’t help my eczema for decades, but somehow I felt God can still do something with the remainder of my life. I was totally out of the job market, but somehow, I felt I could still make something out of my career, though I was still sick. Of course, there was no obvious straight line connecting the dots for me to have a victorious life or career… I was still sick and the world already treated me like I was irrelevant. In those times where the dots were unclear, I just told myself to get to know Jesus and His Grace better and to seek Wisdom … and, when a dot starts to materialize, to jump on it. This helped me far more than any charismatic healing service or human advice.

This is what God’s grace with divine wisdom looks like. Because I realized that although I worked hard to make sense of the stock market by reading every book I could find, it was only just a month before that God inspired me to see the market in a particular way that I didn’t read in a book.

I realize that a crumb of God’s grace is worth more than a mountain of human effort; that the foolishness of God is better than the wisdom of man.

So be careful, because there are charismatic speakers who have never quite experienced the magnitude of the great struggles and great victories they preach about. They preach more from theory than a comprehensive experience. The church environment is different from the world environment. How many preachers had to learn to use God’s word and divine wisdom to not only survive but thrive in a cut-throat business industry? Few. Many usually have overcome smaller problems and then extrapolates biblical truth from those experiences. It is easy to live with lower levels of God’s truth when you are problem-free, but not when facing “an Abyss”.

The reason I raise this is that speaking into people’s lives with the authority of a pulpit carries a great responsibility. When preachers preach more from theory without the maturity of experience, they may go overboard and place and unintentionally place a burden on people. I’ve seen some speakers exhort and proclaim leadership on certain people that they really shouldn’t. That immature person became a leader in the church, and eventually caused a lot of harm to himself and the congregation. I’ve seen some speakers say negative things about a person, the person was sincerely seeking and came away anguished. But when a speaker can speak over a person’s life accurately and with God’s wisdom, it can be a great thing. So here are 2 tips to get a sense of whether you should allow him (or anyone) to speak into your life.

People who are truly moving in God’s power should ultimately continually growing in the fruits of the Spirit. If they are lacking love, peace, patience, kindness … and self-control over a long period of time, then I have to question whether they really are that anointed. This includes basic things like frequent arguments with his wife or being overweight for no good reason. 

This is not controversial in my opinion. How can God’s spirit rest on a person if he can’t even control his appetite or have the discipline to exercise a little more? Once again, I am not referring to people who are overweight because of health reasons or are genetically inclined to be on the chubby side or are too elderly. I am referring to people who obviously cannot control their eating, choose not to exercise and are significantly overweight.

“Beware of false prophets … by their fruits you will know them.” Matthew 7:15-20

People who have been exposed to the true redemptive power of God know His heart of grace along with the power that comes forth. These people speak with gravitas and a unique humility. I’ve seen REAL works of the grace of God – people that society had forgotten that became millionaires through God’s help, real illnesses that doctors couldn’t solve that are healed. When you talk to these types of people, the way they speak and the spirit of which they speak are very different from most. When they talk, they don’t have to raise their voices and you will still want to listen to them. Anyone who has truly seen God and His power and grace end up that way.

People who are full of the Spirit have a special unmistakable countenance and speak with authority though they do not raise their voices. They also usually have non-trivial testimonies of great struggle, challenges, and restorations. This spirit is palpable even without a performance on stage. People full of the spirit also exhibit the fruits of the spirit outside of the pulpit.

Take for example Jesus’ continence when standing before Pilate and the maddening mob. Here Jesus was, beaten and bloody and standing before Pilate, who is the judge and executioner. And the Bible says that Pilate was “terrified” of Jesus. Pilate was terrified of Jesus EVEN BEFORE he knew the Jews called him the Son of God. Jesus spoke, not with bravado as though He was preaching a sermon, but with a godly aura and spirit trapped inside a broken voice that comes with being whipped till the flesh of his back was torn. When Jesus spoke, it wasn’t loud or in a performance manner, but everyone, including the most powerful man in the building, listened. Pilate’s soul was stirred.

In the world, a criminal is shaken before a judge. In Jesus’ case, it was the other way around. Pilate knew that he could only judge Jesus’ physical and temporal life, while Jesus can judge Pilate’s soul for eternity.

There are good preachers with gifts of prophecy or healing and there are not so good ones. You can’t know easily which is which because you are not present in their lives every day to testify their claims. But, you can see the trajectory of the fruits of the spirit in their lives, and you can sense their continence. Is the preacher’s spirit one of self-pride and empty bravado, or a humble, but powerful gravitas? Does the preacher instill confidence outside of the pulpit?

This article 6 signs of a toxic apostle by Charisma magazine also additional signs to look out for in this regard.

3. People who are full of the Spirit have a special unmistakable countenance and speak with authority though they do not raise their voices. They also usually have non-trivial testimonies of great struggle, challenges, and restorations. This spirit is palpable even without a performance on stage. People full of the spirit also exhibit the fruits of the spirit outside of the pulpit.

Fourth and probably most importantly:

What he spoke of reminded me of so much of what people would tell me when I was a young Christian leader serving in multiple churches growing up. I hear advice and admonition from different churches as they deal with the real struggle of people. “You have to pray together in agreement!” Some say. “You have to claim healing verses for yourself.” Some say. “You have to live with your problem. God doesn’t need to help you if he doesn’t want to. Just be happy you have heaven waiting for you” Some say. All these admonitions seem to have some truth to them, but I can tell you that in the face of great, life-changing problems, they are lacking. I know that if you are going through this, you will agree with me.

These same charismatics saw that my problems continue to get worse, and they assumed that I was too faithless, or had too much negative energy. They didn’t have the foresight to stick around to see the completion of God’s will on my life. Fortunately, I learnt over time that the Church can be very flawed, but God himself is reliable.

God can work with you in places the Church wouldn’t think possible. God can work with you even in the middle of your drug or drinking addiction, even at the very moment you are in the middle of your drinking session. The Church (and the world) sometimes lean towards recognizing formulas and dogmas (like keeping positive, quoting power verses over yourself and others, being laid hands over by recognized popular evangelists), but God recognizes a relationship with Him and knows your personal struggle.

Even if you feel so far gone that even the Church forsakes you, God Himself will not; and He can work with you from anywhere, even if you stuck in your parent’s basement with no prospects.

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To summarize, here are my 4 thoughts:

1. Men cannot see the faith that produces miracles, including you. Only God can recognize it when you see Jesus the right way and walk in obedience. So, when we see God in His goodness, God sees us in our faiths. Many times, it is the least churchy looking person or the person many people have written off that see God in His goodness because to see God in His goodness also requires you to see yourself in your depravity.

2. Biblical faith not an emotional high, a blind endeavor, or an exercise in “positivity”, that’s why you can’t compare it to other religions. It’s a specific element that’s rooted in the heart of Jesus and His finished works on the cross and only recognized by God. It releases salvation power, and it is usually followed or accompanied by wisdom, God’s purpose and transformation of character.

3. People who are full of the Spirit have a special unmistakable countenance and speak with authority though they do not raise their voices. They also usually have non-trivial testimonies of great struggle, challenges, and restorations. This spirit is palpable even without a performance on stage. People full of the spirit also exhibit the fruits of the spirit outside of the pulpit.

4. God can work with you in places the Church wouldn’t think possible. God can work with you even in the middle of your drug or drinking addiction, even at the very moment you are in the middle of your drinking session. The Church (and the world) sometimes lean towards recognizing formulas and dogmas (like keeping positive, quoting power verses over yourself and others, being laid hands over by recognized popular evangelists), but God recognizes a relationship with Him and knows your personal struggle.

In this experience, I pen today’s words. I speak not with untested confidence but with a deep respect for how small and frail we are, how dangerous the world can be, and how great and mysterious God is. These words I write emanate from deep wounds that ended up as meaningful scars. If I seemed very measured when I speak, it is not because I lack faith in God; it is because what I write is based on real-life events that would never leave a person the same after going through it. A person who has truly gone through horrors that brought them to the edge of insanity would be measured and have a natural hesitation when addressing those experiences. The subject matter would have left real pains and real scars and has to be respected. If fact, if a person can easily gloss over his experiences, I would question just how challenging those days really were.

If you are greatly struggling, or in an Abyss, and just don’t know how to interact with God in order to unlock the breakthrough your soul is so desperate for, then please allow me to distill down what I learned biblically that really helped me. There are some things you must have FIRST, before you do the other good things like worship, praying, and serving. Very often, I observe Christians do all those things without having the right understanding of God, and this leads to burnout, disappointment or even numbness. When we don’t get our posture towards God and have a clear understanding of the Covenant we have with Him today, it is like pushing on a string instead of pulling it. We can expend much effort and the string doesn’t go where you want it.

Let me try to share what posture we should have first in the next post.

Here goes…

.Continued in The Real Key to Miracles Part 2: When healing sessions, prayers, trying to elevate your faith, claiming bible verses over your life and anything doesn’t work. Don’t make it about you, make it about God. Grace is attracted to humility and God’s power is made perfect to your weakness.

END of post.

 

 

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The full “Real” Key to Miracles series below:

On The Real Key to Miracles Introduction: There are people undergoing great struggles that pray for God to help but nothing seems to happen. I’ve been that person. May I share the most important spiritual keys to my journey to restoration?

On The Real Key to Miracles Part 1: I recently watched a charismatic “Keys to Miracles” sermons. After looking from hindsight of my over 20 years of debilitation, seemingly unanswered prayers and rejection from such churches, I want to share 4 thoughts on the potential problems to the seeker and also the church around him if the message is incomplete.

On The Real Key to Miracles Part 2: When healing sessions, prayers, trying to elevate your faith, claiming bible verses over your life and anything doesn’t work. Don’t make it about you, make it about God. Grace is attracted to humility and God’s power is made perfect to your weakness.

On The Real Key to Miracles Part 3: Only One Thing is Needed, and It shall not be taken away from you.