Two sets of thoughts.

One.

I do realize that the Charismatic Movement has in many places grown abusive or tone-deaf to the fullness of Scripture.

And many of those of us who are associated with Bethel, have grown to treat the part that they have as synonymous with the whole truth.

It’s not, gang.

They have a small piece.

And many have become uncritical, unjudging, undecisional groupies of everything that comes from Bethel, MorningStar, or [pick your denominational influence].

However, two

Jesus didn’t command us to dwell in perpetual powerlessness.

He charged us repeatedly to pray.

He also charged us to dance between intimacy and principles. Many of us in the Bethel constellation have dropped the complex weaving together of principles for an oversimplified answer to every problem.

Bill Johnson, the Heiligenthals, and others, however, have held onto the principles of 1) resurrection that Jesus said would happen, period, and 2) to love not in reaction to the devil, but rather in reaction to the Father.

I am not saying Bethel got everything perfect. Some of their material on the fivefold ministry is absolutely dubious.

Much of the teaching on the fivefold ministry is downright toxic because it is not couched in the language of “this is what we have seen”, “let’s discuss”, and “what have you seen?”.

But this, a desire to see healing and miracles take place, is one area where they shine. A transformed mindset.

Meanwhile you Calvinists and Reformers have taken all sorts of verbally and spiritually abusive shits in Bethel’s and the Heiligenthal‘s front yard.

And Now Comes My Greta Moment To the Calvinists

Your brother and sister didn’t ask you to bash their dignity or their theology. They friggin asked you to pray for resurrection, in accordance with John 11, and you are acting like Mary and Martha who were allegorized resurrection.

How dare you….

Your responsibility is to, in light of God’s sovereign hand, to ask Him, based on the possibility that it might be given, in alignment with the Sermon on the Mount.

To jump on board and seek for His hand to move in this family’s life and not to decide the frame of what that looks like.

The sovereignty of God was designed to embrace God’s capacity to do what He wants, which includes resurrection.

If the parents determine to pray for resurrection, your job is to get off of your lazy asses and pray as they request, in accordance with the full kingdom agenda.

It is not to bash them as crazy, and tell them how heretical they are.

Jesus didn’t die so we could have the opportunity to doubt whether or not He would work, paired with the fear of our perverted view of His sovereignty.

It is to rest our lives in the hope that He just might do something that is different than your expectations.

We are sick of chronically powerless, inauthentic, partial Christianity that treats God as a dictator who has ceased to work now that the canon is finished.

We want more and we affirm Scripture and the nature of God demand there is more.

That is all.