Written by Kirk Cowman
Some time ago I was with a group of pastors from our family of churches. The leader of the meeting was discussing an experience he’d had recently at a retreat. While at this retreat the leader said he fell to the floor and lay there unable to move. He spoke of others crying uncontrollably for long periods of time, and of people being healed of physical ailments, all through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. It all sounded weird to me. As the leader continued talking he expressed his desire that all of us experience this sort thing. I wanted to run from the room.
The account of Paul’s third missionary journey in Acts 19 sounds a lot like what that leader was talking about. People are being healed by handkerchiefs and aprons that Paul had touched (verse 12). People were casting out demons and evil spirits were beating people up (verse 16). It all sounds weird, doesn’t it?
I was raised to be a modern thinker where everything is explainable through science. Yet as I read the book of Acts and especially Acts 19, I can’t explain how people were healed by handkerchiefs, I can’t explain evil spirits, and I can’t explain why people who had practiced sorcery for years would burn several million dollars’ worth of books on sorcery (verse 19). Fantastic things happen throughout the book of Acts, unexplainable things, weird things! What does a 21st century disciple do with all the supernatural events in the book of Acts? Have you ever wrestled with that question?
We tend to have two responses to the things we see in the book of Acts. We either discount it as something that happened in the past but doesn’t happen today, or we ignore it and explain it away as being the perceptions of uneducated people or something else (we may not know the explanation, but we believe there is a natural explanation).
Instead of looking on the supernatural in the book of Acts as weird or trying to explain it away, what if we began to look on it as normal and church today as abnormal? We believe in a supernatural God, a God who created the universe with a word and breathed out stars (Psalm 33:6). We believe in a God who took human form, died and brought himself back to life. Why would we think it weird that a supernatural God would do supernatural things in our church today? Shouldn’t it be the other way around, that if a supernatural God is not doing supernatural things in our church then that is weird?
Instead of thinking people are weird because they are listening to God, seeking healing or casting out demons, what if we embraced the supernatural as normal. What if we began to believe and expect that a supernatural God will do supernatural things for his people. I wonder what might happen if we truly embraced the supernatural? I wonder if the things we see in Acts might just become normal in our church today.
Do you embrace God’s supernatural work today? What might it cost you to embrace the supernatural? What might it cost you not to?
Take some time today to tell God about your thoughts and feelings when it comes to the supernatural. Ask him to open the eyes of your spirit to the truth about it. Listen to what he has to say about the supernatural and what he wants for you today.
