download .pdf

People are always asking what God is up to. “Up to?” Well, apart from running the universe and being in church on Sundays, he keeps pretty busy!

God is not sitting around idly drinking heavenly coffee; he is at work daily in our world of cars, TVs, supermarkets and hamburger shops. Jesus said, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17). If people do not notice, it shows what they are made of and does not necessarily reveal anything at all about God. God’s work is there for all to see and yet so many people fail to notice what is going on. This is nothing new. For example, Jesus cured a man who had been ill for 38 years and not one single person recognised the hand of God in it. For that matter, what about the universe and the billion intricacies of our own bodies? Some people cannot see God in any of it. Perhaps there is not a lot that can be done for them.

The work of God is carried out by God the Holy Spirit. That has never been any different. From the beginning of time, the Spirit has been the holy servant and executor of the will of the triune deity, each divine person ready and willing to serve the others.

This Ministry Letter began when I was thinking about God’s practical programme; what could I write about? One thought led to another and then revelation burst in on me and set me glowing, thrilling my heart. The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth and he led me to this great truth. It really needs to be analysed and discussed at length but I will compress it into a few words.

The Holy Spirit has the same agenda as Jesus had

There it is – a wonderful, stunning truth. The Holy Spirit continues doing what Jesus began to do.

The Holy Spirit worked with Jesus all the time, and he still does. He is truly the Spirit of Christ, identifying himself with Jesus. When Jesus left the earth, the Spirit was not slow to pick up where he left off. He fulfilled the paraklete role. What was that role? The Bible does not leave us in any doubt. Jesus spoke of him as “another paraklete” – that is, another beside himself (John 14:16, 26, 15:26, 16:7). The Spirit took up Jesus’ role after Jesus left for glory.

The Holy Spirit was in everything Jesus did and spoke. The Spirit was quiet for only three days, when Jesus was in the tomb. That was just as the Lord had warned the disciples: “Night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4). Today, with Jesus in glory, the Holy Spirit carries on, just as active as before.

There seems to be a general supposition that in Bible days the world was nearer to heaven, that God was more accessible and that things happened then. Bible people were already saintly and could believe, always doing something dramatic. That is how we human beings tend to think – people used to be greater and all great men are dead men. The Bible is not a hagiography, however. It exposes all the players for what they really are – “warts and all”. An old song ran: “Lord, give us more Elijahs to pray the power down to heal the sick and also send the rain.” Actually, Elijah did not heal the sick. In ancient Israel after Moses, little was seen of the supernatural.

The glorious fact is that today God is far closer than in those long-ago scenes. God shows his hand today a million times more than he did then. Jesus changed the whole economy of God. These are the days of the Holy Spirit – the days.

If Elijah could believe, we have even more reason to do the same. Ezra did, too. He dared to lead 50,000 people loaded with treasures on a five-month journey through areas where local warlords were parasites living off the travellers passing through those sparsely populated territories. Ezra refused a band of soldiers to protect him and his precious train, saying he trusted God. He came through and not a single life or a single scrap of gold or silver was lost. He had literally nothing to encourage his faith. He never experienced anything supernatural – no healings, visions or manifestations; he had just the Pentateuch, or Law, the five books of Moses.

That was how thing were at that time. Then came the day of Pentecost. It lifted the floodgates of power and God has shown no reticence since. God is alive, ahead of us, beckoning us onward, joyfully calling, “Come on!”
The call of God today is for faith, faith and faith again – faith in action and action in faith. Even if all power rested upon us, without faith nothing would happen. Without faith the power is switched off. So many people cry out for gifts, power, demonstration and manifestations. We can desire and “ask amiss”, inspired only by a vision of power, a desire to be noticed or noteworthy, would-be men and women of God. When some pray and pray and pray, could it be that “they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7)? (The Greek is polulogia.) Do we believe in the power of our own prayers or the power of God? God’s answer is for us to get on with what has to be done, however impossible it may seem – by faith. Faith alone releases God’s omnipotence.
The secret of power is first baptism in the Holy Spirit and then to move ahead in faith; be a Moses, be a David facing Goliath, challenge the hosts of Midian, dare to be an Ezra, link arm-in-arm with the apostles who lit lamps all over the pitch black world.

That is still how things are now. The Holy Spirit has come and is here now in a way that was unknown before Jesus ascended to heaven. Jesus has sent him to remain with us. He makes today the day of salvation, the day of the Spirit, the day of great things for God, the day of miracles. Today is the day of new Davids, Gideons, Ezras and Elishas, taking over from their namesakes who knew nothing about baptism in the Spirit or the abiding Spirit. This is the day for new and greater exploits of faith.

If we are praying for God to move, we are behind the times because he already has moved and is still moving today. Meanwhile, he is waiting for us to move. The agenda of the Spirit is the same as that of Jesus. But what is our agenda? Is it connected with his? Jesus offers us his agenda: “Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).

Acts 1:1 uses similar terms – “all that Jesus began to do”. That is a reference to his daily ministry. Christ’s supreme objective was redemption, a divine task. Sinners had no part in it other than to be saved. By suffering and resurrection, the Redeemer would finish a work that no one else could share. “I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no Saviour” (Isaiah 43:11). He brought that holy purpose to a triumphant and glorious finality. It would shape all eternity. He had often predicted those ghastly hours of arrest, humiliation and agony as “my hour” until in John 17:1, he said, “Father, the time has come.” Then, in his dying moments, he raised his voice in a shout that must have dismayed Satan and all his minions: “It is finished!” (John 19:30). That work need never be renewed or repeated. It was a deed that typified God himself on the throne of the universe and was as if woven into the fabric of the very stars, a divine decree, the salvation of God.

Having established eternal salvation, God brought us into partnership with the same Spirit. The Church became God’s great new creative concern and channel. Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Until Jesus’ return the years were to be filled with endless activity. The ultimate aims of God could not be achieved by a single miracle stroke, but only by the millions of those he called and chose. He planned to bring them through fires of trial to reveal pure gold, one multitude after another.

There was one special work of Christ, announced by John the Baptist, that he did not do before he departed from us: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matthew 3:11). During the ministry he had begun, he baptised nobody, but he promised that he would continue his work after his resurrection. He began baptising in the Spirit ten days after he left the disciples gazing into heaven. In a thousand ways, Jesus continues today, the same yesterday today and forever, his ministry unchanged.

God speaks. The Bible refers to the living God 23 times – 12 times in the NT – and it signifies a God who speaks. God challenged the world’s gods that do not speak and are not living gods. Psalm 115:5 draws that distinction – “They have mouths, but cannot speak.” Speaking is the sign of personality. He made that a gulf between us and the animals. God means us to talk. In one early instance God told Moses to speak to Pharaoh and Moses excused himself, saying he was not eloquent. The Lord asked, “Who gave man his mouth?” (Exodus 4:11). Over 400 similar references to the mouth and speaking occur in Scripture. A god who does not speak is not worth listening to! The God of Pentecost gave the disciples “utterance”. 

The creator Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, is palpably manifest. Lofty and withdrawn quietists do not want such a God, a God who is ready for action and plain-speaking. They profess to sound the waters of time and space like spiritual explorers as if God were hiding away in some lost corner, in a world of transcendence. Mystics listen for vibes penetrating the ether, heaven’s cosmic rays, and think of God as a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Yet on the Spirit’s agenda, the task is to continue the work of the One who trod the earth, coherent and identifiable, and not the work of an indeterminate esoteric cloud.

God is the living God and leaves no room for speculation. God came in flesh, and was mangled for our sins on the cursed cross. Jesus was the image of God, portrayed the love of the true God, here on earth, too real and palpable for mystics and the learned, for God has “hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children” (Luke 10:21). Dr Campbell Morgan said the “learned” were those who can put two and two together. Yet those very people have often developed a capacity for failing to see the obvious. The Gospels tell us that “the common people heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37 NKJV) – and they still do. Jesus revealed profound truths to women. He is the Christ of hallelujahs, clapping, dancing, revival and hot gospel “steam on the window pane”, the Jesus that John described “which we have looked at and our hands have touched” (1 John 1:1).

When Moses spoke to God he used concrete terms. In a most astonishing prayer Moses said, “Unless you go with us, what else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:16). God alone made Israel noticeable. He identified with them. That God is no mere whim or fantasy. The world will have to put up with God as he is, reachable, knowable, and even friendly. There is no other God. If anyone seeks God, they will find that he is seeking them. 

That is the God we know. He is in constant action on earth. Our God lives and acts. That is what this Ministry Letter is about, Jesus was here and “went about doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil” (Acts 10:38). It would be a hollow “sameness” if he did not do the same things now as he did then.

It was the great promise of Jesus to be with us always. The Holy Spirit would take over his agenda. The Spirit is the active Spirit of Jesus. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit and … us! The syndicate of salvation, resourced by omnipotence.

God’s call represents the invitation of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, our greatest opportunity, to a life investment paying eternal dividends. If we fully enter the Christ-Spirit purposes, we are backed by endless means. Tie our own aims to theirs as they move forward and we will know an unparalleled fullness of life – in the greatest possible project, proclaiming the gospel to a lost world.

All non-God operations are temporary but the Jesus-Holy Spirit and church partnership will swing past anything else that moves. This has been God’s order since the time of creation and it will go on for ever – with or without us. We are free to be losers if we want – or heroes of faith.