It is time for us to wake up! For our full salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. Romans 13:11
Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

I wrote last week about the raw, organic, non-GMO gospel… This diet move that’s happening in the natural world mirrors a spiritual hunger that many Christians are longing for today when they look at the Bible, their local churches…everything. They want to read the Bible with raw, real organic lenses that aren’t processed or filtered with a man-made assumptions and theologies. They just want to see it like it is—they want to experience God in the unprocessed and authentic. 

[Feel free to skip this paragraph: Cessationism believes that the Holy Spirit stopped (ceased) working in the life of believers in power in the 300’s AD and therefore there are no spiritual gifts like healing and no miracles today. Google it if you want a deeper explanation.]

In preparation for this study, I see denominational leaders and respected professors at historically cessationist seminaries toying with the idea, “What if…? What if we can have the Holy Spirit’s power and keep our doctrine that denies the power of the Spirit working in modern times? How can we experience the power and peace and joy of the Holy Spirit and still maintain our historic doctrine?” Undoubtedly, that’s a big step for them.

But their students and parishioners aren’t being so cautious: They’re discarding the cessationist dogmata and reading the Bible for themselves and realizing that the promises of the Holy Spirit’s power residing inside of us can no longer be ignored by theologies that strain to keep the power of the Spirit at bay.

When I was a young believer, during the Jesus Movement of the ’70’s, many long-haired, hippie Christians were trying to recreate the ‘early church’. They believed that the established churches and denominations of the day had blown it…they’d taken Jesus out of the equation (after a salvation experience) and inserted a ‘form of religion’ in His place. And these so-called ‘Jesus People’ wanted the real Jesus back in the position of Lordship where He belongs. Well, they started their own churches and impacted established churches…but ultimately pretty much managed to recreate the very institutions they had escaped not many years before. But the cry of their heart for Jesus was not satisfied…

When I read about respected cessationist leaders trying to tell Christians that they can deny the Holy Spirit is working in powerful ways today, and still have that power, I know something’s happening. They’re hungry for the real and authentic Holy Spirit and are trying to square the power they’re seeking and finding with their own teaching.

I believe the same thing that happened with the Jesus People movement back then is happening with the Holy Spirit movement today: People are throwing worn-out opinions aside that apologize for the Spirit and stick Him in the corner of history and they’re embracing the Holy Spirit for themselves.

The Holy Spirit is waking God’s people up and challenging their sleepy interpretations of the Word of God with truths that are visceral. Today’s verse tells us that we need to be like a little child to inherit the kingdom that Jesus is bringing. That’s humility… and allows the Spirit to wake us up.