LEARNING TO LOOK ALONG THE BEAM INSTEAD OF AT THE BEAM

"When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others mocking said, "They are filled with new wine." Acts 2:1-13 ESV

I must confess that I am a born skeptic. My default response when I hear of miracles or signs and wonders is to immediately question, doubt, and look for a rational explanation for what I see or hear of. Now don't get me wrong,I have witnessed, experienced, and participated in many supernatural events over the course of my life and ministry. I have had visions, seen miraculous inexplicable healings, and have had extraordinary encounters with God. But...I have still been a skeptic and doubted.

I have gone to Pentecostal/Vineyard meetings and have watched behaviors that in my skepticism have cynically been determined by me to be nothing but learned behavior, auto-suggestion, manipulation, group psychology, hypnotism, wish fulfillment, self fulfilled prophecy, cultural expectations, parroted, mimicked or learned behavior, demonic, hysteria,and just plain flesh. In short, I have been able to in my own thinking, to explain away supernatural behavior and phenomenon through some combination of my own psychological or sociological theories of what was really going on.

I have been one confused person. On one hand, I have professed a theology of the reality of the supernatural, the miraculous, the perpetuity of the gifts, the power of God, healing, etc.; while on the other hand, generally denying most everything I have seen that does not fit into my grid and paradigm of how God operates in His universe.

Two things have happened to me that have changed my way of thinking. First, I was at a meeting a month ago where twice the Holy Spirit fell upon me and I went down on the floor. You have to understand, I don't do going down on the floor ( i.e. being slain in the spirit). I have been in meetings where everyone went down but me and I proudly boasted to myself that I did not succumb to charismania and emotionalism. But that night , something supernatural happened to me. Shortly after this, in front of the whole church, the pastor spoke words over me that could not have been spoken except by the Holy Spirit. He did not know me from Adam and read my mail so to speak. I instantly knew that God was talking to me. Finally, a group of people did nothing but gently and silently lay hands on me in prayer and the next thing I knew, in front of the whole church I was laughing hysterically and weeping tears at the same time. my pride could not stand it. I did not know what was happening to me, except that the Lord was on me and flooding my broken, despairing heart with overwhelming joy. My life has not been the same since that night.

The second thing that happened to me was reading C.S. Lewis. Lewis once wrote a profound essay titled "Transposition". In his essay, Lewis suggests, that there is a continuity between things that are natural and things that are supernatural; the reappearance of the supernatural in all the elements that make up our natural life. So the supernatural, for example in my life, expressed itself through human vehicles of laughter and falling down on the floor.

Lewis talks about the phenomenon of tongues on the day of Pentecost. An undeniable spiritual event , the descent of the Holy Spirit, expressed itself in the strange phenomenon of speaking in another language. To the bystanders at Pentecost it resembled to them and their understanding, drunkenness; today many scientific or rational observers would call it hysteria, babbling, or some nervous disorder. So how can such natural actions like falling down on the floor, laughing hysterically, or the movement of vocal cords express the supernatural power and indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God?

Lewis suggested the analogy of a beam of light in a dark tool shed. When he first entered a shed, he saw a beam and looked at the luminous band of brightness filled with floating specks of dust. But when he moved over to the beam and looked along it, he gained a very different perspective. Suddenly he saw not the beam, but, framed in the window of the shed, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 93 million miles away, the sun. Looking at the beam and looking along the beam are quite different.

The "post-modern" American church excels in techniques of looking at the beam. Another word for this is "reductionism". Reductionism is the process of reducing human behavior down to rational and explicable natural reasons.

This modern world is so adept at looking at the beam from every angle. It is a world hostile to faith. I know that I was and in the process I defined God right out of the equation and many Christians have done the same. Is it no wonder why we are seeing and hearing of amazing moves of God in Asia, Africa, and South America while the church in Europe has become irrelevant and non existent?

I am amazed that societies that take for granted the existence of an unseen supernatural world, seem to have no problem seeing who is along and behind the beam of a thunderstorm, a sunrise, a healing, a depression, a sickness, or unbroken habits. But we reductionists can explain them all and reduce all phenomenon to their component parts.

On the great day of Pentecost, think about how many missed God because of their reductionism? Are we doing the same? Reductionism has caused many of us to be trapped in our woodshed(Borrowing from Lewis's analogy) and miss going along the beam the glory of the illuminated trees, the sky, all the way to the sun! We will never have a sense of the greatness and power of God as long as we stay in the natural and do not follow along the beam to the supernatural. We will lose the "Godness" of God and his ability to do as Paul says in Ephesians 3;20, "far above anything we can ask or even imagine, according the power that works within us..." I want to challenge you to begin looking at the beam of a person falling down, speaking in a tongue, laughing in church, shaking, crying, wailing, etc. ; but also to be looking along that beam and see that behind human behavior (that may seem weird or uncomfortable to you), the Holy Spirit and the power of God are at work.

Looking from a reductionist perspective as I did, most spiritual phenomenon had a natural explanation. Soon a sinner repenting was contrived emotionalism; the day of Pentecost for first century witnesses, an outbreak of drunkenness; being slain the spirit, self hypnosis; but, faith, looking along the beam, sees natural acts as sacred carriers of the supernatural power of God.

As I have begun looking along the beam, I still get uncomfortable with some things that I see.I find myself resorting to my default reductionism at times. When I do that, I am missing out on God being God to His glory. The fact is that I need to learn from the Day of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost is a perfect picture of the beam and the source: God's voice on earth, speaking through human beings in a manner that there could not even comprehend.

When I look along the beam I am beginning to see God along the beam of the weird stuff that I don't understand. I have chosen to begin looking along the beam for now on. I want to be open to God being God and looking for His hand behind the natural events I see. I want to be okay if I don't understand the beam if along the way it is leading to the living God. I do not want to go back to a safe, controlled, confined, doubting, skeptical, unbelief any more. If I stay on just looking at the beam in the woodshed I will miss the glory of the Son of God who comes into time and our natural world and our human bodies and does strange, wonderful, and marvelous supernatural things in our world.

Looking along the beam,
Pastor Bill