Double Take

So my time in Charleston is at a very near end. I am moving back to Atlanta in a week's time at which point I may be saying goodbye to many friends that are now graduating. I wonder what my parting words should even be. I know some of them still do not have a relationship with Jesus and I pray still that they will. Is there anything I can say or do to change that, not really, but I can show them love in Jesus' name and keep in touch with them while continuing to pray for the Holy Spirit to draw them. I just feel like so many times I have had deep conversations with people about God that do not lead anywhere not realizing that it is the Holy Spirit that has to do the work. If there is anything I have learned more so than ever during my time in Charleston is that God has called us to be a light, to be separate, but attractive to a dying, dark world. When we are acting the way we should in Christ people will be asking us for what we have. If we were as passionate and radical as the Christians of the early church things would be much more different, also Christians would be much more in tune with God's Spirit and the power/signs that accompany it. I had a friend tell me today that he was losing faith for praying for healing because he has only ever seen anything happen, but one time. It is becoming more and more apparent to any christian in America that something is wrong, because the power of God seems to be absent from our churches and we have nothing, but traditions of men. As I still think about Jesus' ministry I cannot say I have really witnessed anyone in my life that looks like Jesus, where there are healings, deliverances, supernatural signs going on regularly around someone's ministry. I will say I have heard plenty, but seeing is much different from hearing or reading about. One thing that struck me the other day is that no person in the NT was commissioned to evangelize without having authority to cast out demons. I know this might sound insane or primitive, but I believe demons are very real. How can you say the Bible is true without believing that? This is the commission that is not so popularly quoted from Mark, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well." Mark 16:15-18 Notice the first sign he mentions is the driving out of demons. The disciples used these signs to confirm the good news of the Lord, but today it seems like we are either not speaking the actual gospel or have just lost all faith that he can do anything like this any more today. Even though we know in a head knowledge kid of way that things like this do go all over the world including in America. The media does not give it much attention though. I think we are somewhat afraid of the power of God, because when it comes it changes everything, we can't get by with a lukewarm heart, we either believe or reject it and live how we want to, which is the terrible fate of some. Interestingly it was the most theologically knowledgeable people of Jesus' day that rejected him the most and the miracles that accompanied his teachings. I just hope that I will not turn a blind eye to the unbiblical Christianity I see all around me. We desperately need the Holy Spirit, but the comforts and worries of our lives in America have lured us from recognizing our need for dependence on God alone. I just want to stop treating God and his plan for my life as a back up plan or a safety net and realize that it He is the reason I am alive and knows exactly what I was made to do. Let your truth come back into the church and let us not neglect critical points of the christian life just because it isn't seeker friendly or we might cause division. We need to be seeker saving and not seeker friendly. Seekers are looking for the true Christianity that Jesus died to make possible not a club full of "swell" or "hip" people. Thank you Lord, for calling me by your own glory and goodness, I pray that your spirit would not be hindered or grieved in my life, but would flow freely as I decrease and you increase in the spring of my soul. Amen