Current Issue of Charisma Magazine

A couple days ago I received my copy of Charisma Magazine.  Sometimes it's better than others.  This issue is unique because I know many of the people talked about in the magazine, personally. 

 

A big topic (not the cover story) is the emergence of Prophetic Worship in the land.  Misty Edwards, Jason Upton, Julie Meyers and the Merchant Band.  All people who have been part of the House of Prayer movement out of Kansas City.  I love this stuff, it speaks to me and I believe that it represents what God is doing in the land.

 

And the Obit of John Jimenez.  A guy I didn't know well except on the edges.

 

I bring this up because I have some good friends who I love very much who are evangelical.  When we get together and we talk about people of God we know they know almost none of the people I revere and I know almost none of the people they revere.   Our discussions are limited by a lack of foundational understandings between us.  It is like people from two different countries who only read literature from their own land.  Germans who only revere Goethe and Japanese who only revere Itoh.  They can talk but without basic assumptions or understandings.

 

How did we achieve such a complete divide?  What blindness exists both ways for us?  Worse, many of us are devoted to leaders those of the other ilk do not respect.  I hardly ever listen to WMBI radio in Chicago.  I find many of the teachers on there faithless and in error.  So quoting or referring to them makes what they say suspect.

 

Then I see something like this about people I hold in reverence.  I know that saws both ways.

 

How did it come to this?  How did we become so separate?  How is it that both of these veins of solid Christianity rise up without any recognition from the other side?

 

J I Packer might be the exception.  But other than that there is a great divide between mainstream evangelicalism and Pentecostalism.  I am working with these people on a marvelous project seeking to change the world for Jesus.  I hope our non parallel world views don't collide.  I'm doing all I can to try to not let it happen.  I believe the Devil is behind this divide.  He knows that if we ever came together it would be powerful.  The solid foundations they have with combined with the freedom of the Spirit in Holy Ghost and Power.  That would be something.  I'm all for getting the sound foundation, there seems to be resistance to their coming fully into the things of the Spirit.  The devil has lied to them.

 

Some years ago a prophet I respect prophesied that the day would come when all of true Christianity would look exactly the same.  There would be no more difference.  I assumed that meant that all graduates of Wheaton would speak in Tongues.  Holy Ghost programs would be on WMBI. 

I suspect that isn't how the Lord will do this.  I can't believe that he will water down the truth of Pentecost.  I don't know what will break the back of this religious separation that exists.

 

I have said it before, I sometimes have more in common with Catholics than I do with many Evangelicals.  I am trying to bridge the gap but it is wider than I first thought.

 

Pray for me.  Pray for them. Pray for US!