I would venture to say that evangelicals will sell you a book about winning in all circumstances apart from faith in God, but they will not confess that such a victorious life happens in the soup of disaster,  discomfort, disease,  weakness, and loss.  Their children will grow up and mouth the same lies and fables.  The treasure of all God’s people in every age has been his presence.  Genuine Christians are not obsessed with winning.  Joseph was not revered because he won every battle or defeated every assault, but because God chose to be his companion.  David was comforted by God’s presence in the valley of death’s shadow.

The victorious, unlike the Lord who bought them, never weep. They will say that poverty is wealth, and that disability is on no-one’s ticket.

The life of gospel-lit people is going to show the imprint of the king.  The graphic display will be both embossed and engraved.  Eternal life, however, is primarily encrypted and out of sight, so the extent to which God puts the believer on the stage of public witness will depend on the believer’s private cooperation with the Holy Spirit.  People should not expect to be recognized as spiritual because of their food, drink or clothing. A person speaking in a public setting breaking into tongues is a truly puzzling phenomenon.  If a sentence in tongues does not get translated immediately then we can assume that the speaker is engaging in self-edification.  It is obviously a way for some people to affirm their spiritual status.

The forgotten flavours: prayer and help

It would be sheer madness to expect to find oneself decked out with greater works than Yeshua.  There are people whose imagination takes over when they see the word possible.  What disease is there which, like biblical leprosy, is incurable, is subject only to observation, and is practical death sentence? If we do not know what disease(s) meet those criteria we should know with certainty that amputees are not receiving their limbs back, and there is no miracle required to turn guns and ammo. A prayer life is perhaps the best spice for Christian life, and it is noit a public deal. Sadly we have forgotten how to pray. Instead of petitioning God we are decreeing and declaring. If Christ approached the business for whcih he came into the world with a request and tearful cries, we can do no better than to approach the same Fathetr and not seek the Father’s help through our daiily prayers. We have forgotten what it means to be spiritual. God allows us to miss the mark even when the best Helper is prresent, Many believers take no cue from the Spirit’s mission of helping us into our witness to the world. Salvation is hjelp, loving the ungodly is help, and the Holy Spirit is Help in name and mission. All thr miracles we have seen and can operate do not mean we have our ears perked to the voice of God, or that our hands and feet are bonded to work for others. It is love that never fails, never falls to the ground, is the infallible quality that identifies God and us as His.