Tree of Life Blog

1. With no harvest, there are no sheep for the church!
   1. A church needs people!  It needs people to pray, people to serve, people to love, people to give, people to marry, people to fellowship with and worship.
   2. All ministry begins with you sharing your faith with others.
2. The workers for the harvest are few!
   1. So you need to do the work.  Timothy was not a pastor, but Paul told him to do the work of an evangelist.  It’s the same for all of us – if we are evangelists we need to do the work of an evangelist, if we are not evangelists we need to do the work of an evangelist.
3. The whole point of growing as a Christian is so you can bear fruit.
   1. The most natural fruit of a Christian is Christians
4. The first thing Christ did when calling apostles was tell them to be fishers for people
5. The harvest is HUGE.  We need loads of workers
   1. I never get upset a new church in town – the harvest is HUGE
6. Christ did not just pray and hurt for the harvest, He went out there and met people.
7. Maths.  94% of all ministers are reaching 9% of the world’s population.

1. Everything that happens is the will of God.
2. God has a purpose for you being poor.
3. Jesus was a poor man.
4. That you need to do something to get faith.
5. That you need to do something to get blessed.
6. That God’s blessing is linked somehow to your behaviour.
7. That the devil works for God.
8. That God’s love is merit based.
9. That grace works without you believing it.
10. That God only hears prayers if you pray long and hard and after midnight.
11. That some people have special anointings to be healed and rich, and others don’t.
12. That God is angry or wrath with you about something.

Now you may be reading the title of this week’s blog on dealing with difficult people and think either I have made a mistake or I have lost my mind. Well, neither is true. I believe we need to be two-faced in dealing with difficult people – will you let me explain?

I don’t mean that we are nice to people’s faces and spiteful behind their backs. That is what the definition of two faced generally means. Someone who is polite about you when you are in earshot, and then rude about you when you are not. That person lacks the fear of the Lord because Lev. 19.14 says one of the hallmarks of someone who fears the Lord is that they do not curse the deaf. In other words, they are not rude about someone when they cannot hear them. We need to be God-fearers and God-honourers! We don’t just do what is right and talk good about people to benefit us, we do it because it is the right thing to do before God. So I am not talking about that definition of two-faced.

My definition of two-faced in terms of a way of helping you deal with the difficult people in your life comes from the life of Moses. Let’s look at two Scriptures describing Moses, shall we:

And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. (Exodus 34.29)

And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in mount Sinai. And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face.(Exodus 34.32f)7

When Moses spoke with the Lord something very special happened to him – his face began to shine.  So Moses had a shining face. He fasted and prayed and climbed a tall mountain and on the mountain God spoke to him face to face. He enjoyed a great fellowship with God and that made his face shine. So it is correct to say that Moses had a shining face.

But when Moses spoke to the children of Israel he covered his face with a veil. So it is correct to say that Moses had a veiled face. Why did Moses cover his face? We can see here why:

So when Aaron and the people of Israel saw the radiance of Moses’ face, they were afraid to come near him. (Exodus 34.30, NLT)

When Moses came near the people who were not walking with the Lord as intensely as he was, who were not in the presence of the Lord like him – quite frankly, his shining face scared them.

This principle or picture is something that happens today across the church, and as a Christian you may have been on either side of it. If you start becoming a radical disciple of Jesus Christ, and start living a Christ-like life, it scares people. If you genuinely bless those who persecute you from the heart, it scares people. If you pull someone out of a wheelchair and they are healed, it scares people. If you have heard God speak to you and He has told you things to come, it scares people. If you spend hours praying in tongues and worshipping your Father, it scares people. If you give 10% of all you earn and gain to the house of the Lord so there is meat in His house, it scares people. If you fast for a couple of days, it scares people. If you go to church every single week, even if your in-laws are round, even if it is a nice sunny day, it scares people. If you are patient and kind and always hope and always believe, it scares people. If your strength and joy come from the Lord and you rejoice in all circumstances, it scares people.

What often sadly happens in response to the people being scared – and often the people who are most scared are in the churches and Christian, but just Christian enough, if you know what I mean – what sadly happens is that people then back off from the Lord. They lower their level of faith and commitment to that of the crowd around them. They let the peer pressure get to them and they lose their shining face to fit in with the people.

That is not a good way to deal with the difficult people who cannot handle your level of faith and intimacy with the Lord.  Don’t give up the shining face – don’t back off from prayer, from giving, from faith, from feeding on the Word, don’t back off. Never never give up the shining face – be radical, be audacious, be a disciple!

But you have to learn to veil your face so you don’t scare people. Your faith in God might be at Ferrari level, and you might be able to drive at 280mph, but it is not wise to do so in a built up area! Someone will get hurt, or they will get scared.

Learn to veil your face. What does that mean? It means a number of things in a number of different situations and all of you reading this need to ask the Lord for wisdom in this, because there are times your face needs to shine and the people need to know you have been with Jesus! But here is some practical wisdom to help you begin:

• Don’t discuss your prayer and worship times with people who don’t understand prayer. If someone is struggling to believe that God even exists, they are going to think you are crazy if you tell them about the two hours of tongues you talk in every day. If they are a new Christian it’s just going to condemn them. When you come back from a conference and tell them how amazing it was because you spent three hours singing the same song and the glory was just everywhere they are not inspired or challenged. Learn to veil the face. Keep the secret place secret!
• Be natural about supernatural things. When ministering healing to someone, don’t put on a false voice or false words or trying to be someone else. Learn to be yourself and be casual about moving in the power of God. That way you don’t unnecessarily scare people.
• Not everything has to be shared at once. One of the things that used to happen in Dagenham and is now happening across the Network as we raise up young preachers is that people cannot tell time – you ask them to take the offering and they speak for 20 minutes. No – we don’t need all that, we just need one Scripture, and one point and 3 minutes is fine. Learn to veil the face – you don’t have to share everything all the time.
• Make sure you still spend time with God. Don’t forget to take the veil off, get in your prayer closet and pray and worship and love and read the Word and listen to the Word and be in church every Sunday.
• Make sure you have some close friends who are never scared about your face.

 

 

We all want to help people. As Christians we really want to help people and love them – as Christ has loved us, so we should love the world. I get that, and I believe that. But sometimes what we think is loving is not helpful to someone and is actually hurting them. One of the key things we need to understand to be successful Christians is there is a difference between hurt and harm.

Once I had to have emergency root canal surgery, but I had a funeral to speak at in the afternoon so I decided not to get my mouth anaesthetized. The dentist really hurt me, but he did not harm me, he made me better. Drinking Cokes harmed me, but didn’t hurt. We need to act in ways that don’t harm people, not don’t hurt them. It might hurt your adult child if you tell them they cannot live at home if they smoke drugs and don’t get a job, but it will harm them if you don’t. It might hurt someone if you do not let them minister in the church because their lifestyle is lacking in some way, but it will not harm them. It will harm them and the whole church if you let them minister.

So how do we know when to help someone and when to let them help themselves? It’s a great question, and thankfully, the Bible (as always) has some great answers for us.

² Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ… ⁵ For each one shall bear his own load. (Galatians 6.2 and 5, NKJV)

We have to bear one another’s burdens, but we also have to let everyone carry their own load. The KJV sadly has the same word as both which I am sure has confused many people, but the Greek has two different words. The word burdens is the word that gives the picture of a rock falling on you, a massive crushing weight. Sometimes avalanches happen in life, things just fall out the sky and crush you. I would imagine most of you reading this have had days like that and events like that happen – the death of a loved one, a car crash, losing a job. Something that comes out of nowhere and it feels like it might crush you.

The word for “load” is the Greek word for what today would be a backpack, the load that we have to carry – our stuff, our life, our daily load.

So that is a great divide and great wisdom about when to help people and when not to help people. If it is a crushing weight that has fallen out of the sky, you have to bear it with that person. If they have lost their job, their washing machine breaks and their car fails its MOT in the same week, get in there open your wallet and help that person.  But if someone is month after month spending more than they earn, you are not helping them by giving them money – you are harming them. You need to let them carry their own load.

When things fall out the sky and crush people, we should stand with them, help them lift the load. But we should not be carrying people’s daily life about – they need to do that. If someone doesn’t work, they shouldn’t eat says Paul. We can pray for people, but people need to also learn to pray themselves every day. We can help feed people the Word, but they need to daily feed themselves.

You should jump in and help anyone if an avalanche has fallen on their head, but your goal should be to lift that burden and encourage that person to carry their personal load.

We need to re-read the parable of the Good Samaritan, and realize he helps the man who had an avalanche fall on its head (being mugged and left to die is definitely a burden not a load!). But he also leaves the man to carry his own load.

If the Good Samaritan had been a modern Christian this might have happened:

…And when the Good Samaritan said he was leaving the man cried out, “Oh please don’t leave me now.  Stay with me.”  And so the Good Samaritan did as the man bid.  But in staying the Good Samaritan was not able to keep his business flourishing so he lost all his money.  After caring day and night for the man his strength was gone. Soon the Good Samaritan and the man were thrown out of the inn. Homeless and penniless they were soon both taken away and killed by thieves. (found online at http://utahmentalhealthservices.com/the-parable-of-the-good-samaritan-with-no-boundaries/)

We need to make sure that we set healthy fences in our life.  Yes, of course we should love people – especially people with crushing burdens. But it is also God’s command that we enable everyone to carry their own load.

I will not carry someone’s daily load for them. It hurts them. It makes them dependent, and I am then their enabler. We have to help people mature, not keep them perpetually immature.

 

In my last post in dealing with difficult people, I pointed out that everyone needs to understand the power of a fence.  However, to explain what a fence is takes a long time – many people take a while to grasp this vital concept.  Here is a situation I face often that will help you see what I mean when I talk about “the fence”:

Something that sadly happens more often than it should is parents come to see me with their “child”, but their child is late teens or even early-mid twenties. They want me as the pastor to wave a magic wand over their child and fix him or her (normally a him).

Sometimes they come and their son is not even with them. And the parents tell me their story, which will be that their child has not found a steady job, has not got a career, is maybe drinking or eating too much, is certainly playing their Xbox too much.

These parents will love their son to pieces. I mean they will really love their boy. They will have tried a hundred different things to change their boy, they will have prayed, fasted, confessed, wept, loved, ministered, and so on. But he is still keeping bad friends, bad girlfriends and bad habits.

As they talk I find out that they have given their boy everything in life. He had money at school, didn’t have to get a job – he has to revise and study, that’s important – and when their boy quit college or classes, they worked hard to find him something else to do.

When I ask why isn’t their son here to see me they invariably say “He doesn’t have a problem”. And here is the fact I want you all to realize today:  their son is right, he doesn’t have a problem. And I offer to help the parents give their son some problems. They don’t understand what I am saying, so I have to explain.

“The problem is that you as mum and dad haven’t put a fence up around your life, so your son’s actions now cause you problems, but don’t cause him problems”

Henry Cloud uses the following illustration: when the neighbours never water their lawn, but they put your sprinkler system in their garden, then all the watering you do makes their garden greener, but your grass turns brown.

This is why we need a fence, so that people reap what they sow. Imagine being that couple’s son – you don’t need to get a job, you don’t need to study, you don’t need to plan for the future, shop for food. You have plenty of money, time and space to do exactly what you want. You have no problems!

Mum and dad need to build a fence so that their son has problems and they don’t! Their child is happy, they are not.

In your garden, the fences are visible, but we are talking about building invisible fences but they do the same job: they say this is your garden, this is my garden. I am responsible for mine, not yours. Your fences define what is you and not you.

This revelation gives us great freedom. It shows me what I own and what I can control, and what is not mine. Imagine I asked you to do my gardening, paid you to do it, but never told you where my garden began and ended. You would fail in your task! But that is how many people are spiritually – they never delineate what belongs to them and what does not. The fruit of the spirit is self-control, not other control, so you need to learn how to draw a line.

These fences help us keep the good in and the bad out.  They are the way to guard your heart with all diligence, and protect the treasure inside you. We keep the pearls safe and the pigs out!  God Himself has healthy fences – He is light and in Him is no darkness. God has a fence around Him that says “Darkness KEEP OUT”. To be godly we need to have fences too. God limits what He allows in His garden and we need to be the same!

The most basic fence you have is your skin.  In fact we often use skin as a picture of when someone crosses our invisible fences – “he gets under my skin”. Our time, our position in space, our emotions can all be used to set up fences to protect our hearts and our lives.

We have much to say about this, but the key is that we use consequences to set fences with those around us. How many adult children would be happier and healthier today and be living a totally different life if mum and dad has said “no more money for you until you get a job”, “you cannot live here if you smoke weed/ bring your girlfriend to stay/ get drunk” in this house? Consequences are the barbed wire that stops people climbing our fences and putting their rubbish in our garden.

Next week: backpacks, avalanches and the Good Samaritan gone wrong.

 

 

We are in a series right now about dealing with difficult people. The first part is here, the second part is here and they cover knowing when to deal with people and how to deal with immature people.

Today I want to introduce a simple concept, which I call the fence. The first time I preached on this in Tree of Life Dagenham was the first time I ever had a standing ovation from preaching. Understanding the power of the fence in relationships sets people free. We will spend a number of posts looking at this.

Whenever you form a relationship with someone, you come together with them. You put your gardens together. The problem arises when one person continually puts their rubbish in the others garden. So you live together, but one person does all the cleaning and tidying. You are mates but one of you pays for all the drinks for the evening out. You are dating but you are the only one who calls or texts. Your children are teens now but not doing any housework or listening to you.

What the fence does is provide a line that says what is yours and what is not yours. What you have to deal with and not deal with.  So imagine Billy and Julie are married, and Julie spends £300 on shoes. Billy is not happy, he is annoyed. So he yells and shouts at Julie. She gets annoyed about being yelled at and storms off.

Now when you put a fence up you help people realize what is theirs to deal with. Billy’s anger is not caused by Julie, it’s happening with him – that’s his garden and he needs to deal with that. No one else can make you angry. Julie’s spending problems are Julie’s problems.

Now if Julie is spending Billy’s money, then Billy needs to build a fence in the money, and not let Julie have access to it if she is overspending. But he still needs to exercise self-control with his temper.

The fence helps us – it helps us know where to exercise self-control, and helps us not try and control others. How many parents are getting up in the morning running around the house trying to ensure their 15 year old children are not late for school? Let them be late a few times.  A fence puts their behaviour and the consequences in the same place! You should not be continually reaping what someone else is sowing. Let the guy who goes out drinking stay outside until he sobers up.

Now there is far more to it than that, fences are not walls, and should have gates. We will discuss this points as we progress, but today’s lesson is this: what is mine to change and what is not. You cannot change the behaviour of another person and to try to will lead to insanity. You can change your behaviour. You can take responsibility for your thoughts and your actions!

For some further teaching on this, please click here to listen to four hours of teaching I did in our Guildford church absolutely free of charge.

 

Last week we started a new series on how to deal with difficult people (you can read part one by clicking here) because it is something that I am asked about a lot as a pastor.  It’s also something I seem to have gathered a bit of experience in through the years.

Last week we discussed to know when to fight.  Today, I want to help you know when to make that decision.  I am going to teach you something that will help you a great deal, it is this: you cannot correct immaturity.

If a two year old is having a tantrum, you cannot have an adult conversation with them about priorities and good decision making priorities.  You can only feed them, nurture them and wait for the day in which they mature to that level.

Pastoring and leading, and any form of dealing with difficult people, is the same.  Most people in the average church are very immature.  They get upset by little things.  They make decisions based on base emotions, not spiritual wisdom.  They don’t let the Bible get in the way of what they believe.  If as a pastor or elder you tried to correct everything, you would just make the tantrums worse, run people off and cause a great fuss.  You have to learn how to feed people without correcting them when they are too immature to correct.

It’s not easy – you need patience and you need wisdom, and you need to know what is important and what is not.  This is possibly one of the trickiest things you will ever do.  You will need to understand jurisdiction (for my messages on this, please have a look at gatesofthecity.net from this year’s conference) and understand how to build a culture of honour.

Here are 5 keys to help you navigate this difficult terrain:

• When people storm off, don’t chase them.  The father never chased the prodigal son but waited until he grew up and developed the maturity to come home.  Some people will get annoyed at you for all sorts of reasons, let them go.
• When people are upset for silly reasons, it can often be easy to placate them.  A dear friend of mine was called by a pastor who was in terrible distress as his keyboard player would not move to the other side of the stage to play due to the plug socket placements.  There was almost a riot in the church.  The simple solution was an extension lead.
• When people are upset for silly reasons, that is a massive wake up call that you need to start maturing them.  Start working your way forward with them, showing them that the love that God has for them has to flow through them.
• Create a progressive culture.  This means you focus on the leaders and those who are superstars.  Don’t spend all your time with the people who are easily offended and immature.  Let them know to fit in with your church, organization, business that they need to get with the programme and grow up.
• Gently push people into a walk with the Lord – a life of prayer and spirit.  Don’t be afraid when you see people making a silly decision, rather than correct them, ask them: have you prayed about this?  What Scriptures are you basing this on?  What does the Word say?  Bring people back to Christ.

 

I am going to blog for the next few weeks on something I know is dear to your heart because it is dear to everyone’s heart, and that is: how do I handle difficult people.

One of the biggest keys to handling difficult people is to know when to fight and when not to fight.  Jesus talks clearly about counting the cost before starting a fight.  That is great wisdom which we should all take on board.  I have seen many pastors start a building and never finish, I have seen many people start a fight they could never win.

When David was encountered by the king of Gath he was scared of the king, and knew he could not win a direct combat against him, so David pretended to be mad to escape the fight.

You see every time you fail, you demoralize the people around you.  Failure, like success, creates an atmosphere.  For example, there are times people have said things about me or done things to me and I could legitimately take them to court.  I never will, because I know when I will not win a fight.

I was once asked to appear on a large Christian TV station, and do a debate programme about healing.  I was happy to do it, I believe in healing and I want the world to know about healing.  But as I talked to the network and the people making the TV programme, it was clear that the adjudicator of the programme was anti-healing.  He kept calling me a fanatic, an extremist, and so on.  Listen – I am not about to waste my time playing a game of football when the referee is a player for the other team.  You will be off-side every time you are about to score.  You will get penalties against you for no reason.

I bowed out, I have other things to do with my time!

One of the battles that is very rarely one is the winning over of a betrayer.  Jesus never went to counsel Judas Iscariot.  It wasn’t worthy of His time.  When someone wants to leave our church or resign, I will not ask questions, I will not try and change someone’s mind over an issue like that.  It is a waste of our time.

Pick your battles carefully.

This week a number of our Living Churches (cell groups, house groups, life groups, put your particular name here!) have been studying the Holy Spirit.  Having been in three of these groups this week, the same questions have come up again and again.  It’s one of those areas where confusion abounds because of so much tradition and religion.  And it’s where we need to go back to the Bible and get answers from the Bible.

Let’s start by separating the two experiences of being born again and being baptised with the Holy Spirit.  They are utterly separate experiences.

Being born again is when your human spirit – the spirit that is inside you as a human being, the core of your being, the part of you that was breathed into your great, great grandfather Adam by the Lord Himself (Genesis 2.7) – is transformed from sin into righteousness, from death into life, from darkness to light.  This process is the reverse of the fall where Adam’s spirit went from life to death and light to darkness.

That transformation occurs when you believe that Jesus is risen from the dead and you confess with your mouth that He is Lord (Romans 10.9-10) and the end result of that process is you are saved.

To believe that Jesus is risen from the dead, you have to obviously believe that He died.  To believe that He is Lord, or Kurios in the Greek, you have to believe He is fully God.  So, when you believe that Jesus died on the cross, that He rose again, that He is fully God and fully human, then you realize and see that He took your sin and selfishness on the cross, then a divine exchange takes place and all the life in the spirit of Jesus is transferred into your spirit.  A transformation so dramatic and life-changing that Jesus calls it being born again.  From the moment you are born again, your human spirit is holy, blessed, anointed, pure and sealed.  It is the exact image of Jesus’ spirit (1 John 4.17).

Notice there is no filling of the Holy Spirit at all in the new birth.  You can argue that the Holy Spirit has a place in the new birth, either in initiating the process or in convincing you that Jesus died for our sins (John 16.7) but you cannot argue that the new birth gives you a measure or portion of the Holy Spirit.

In fact, I want to discourage very strongly any use of analogue language in reference to the Holy Spirit across the whole Tree of Life family.  He is not a force, He is a person.  I know that a lot of charismatics talk like He is a force: “Well, I need more Holy Spirit”, “I need another dose of the Holy Spirit”, “I have some Holy Spirit, I need a fresh filling because I leak”.  None of that is true.  Either you are full of the Holy Spirit or you are not.  It’s digital, not analogue.  There are two kinds of people in the world: those filled with the Spirit and those who are not.  There is no gradation or increasing measure or partial filling.

Now, you might live in the light of it in an increasing measure.  You might get distracted and harden your heart and forget about Him, but once you are baptized with the Holy Spirit you get 100% of Him and He will never leave you or forsake you after that happens.

I personally believe the reason why you will hear many Pentecostals say things like “You get some of the Holy Spirit when you born again, but you then need more with the baptism” is because they are afraid of upsetting evangelicals by pointing out to them that they need the Holy Spirit and do not have the Holy Spirit.  Of course, that is further aggravated by the Scripture saying that “if you do not have the spirit of Christ, you are none of his” (Romans 8.9) and people confusing the human spirit of Christ with the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of Christ, and this reference in Romans is talking about the new birth.  At the new birth, your human spirit becomes one spirit with Christ (1 Cor. 6.20) and you have the spirit of Christ, a spirit that is righteous, pure and holy.  You do not immediately have the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was not afraid to say to his born again disciples that they needed the Holy Spirit, and nor should we.  Paul was not afraid to ask the question “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19.6).

You see the moment that Jesus met the disciples after rising from the dead, they believed in their hearts that He was risen from the dead and they confessed Him as Lord.  They were born again.  They were Christians.  But they did not have the Holy Spirit.  In fact, Jesus said you could not even get the Holy Spirit until He had ascended.  So for a few weeks, the disciples were born again and not baptized in the Holy Spirit.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is for power (Acts 1.8) and is accompanied by speaking in tongues (Acts 2.4).  There is no incidence of anyone getting baptized in the Holy Spirit in the New Testament who did not speak in tongues.  We must not ignore and must not minimise speaking in tongues.  We absolutely must not forbid it for to do that is to directly disobey Scripture.  Now, Jesus told the disciples not to go and minister until they had that power.  Evidently three years of being discipled by Jesus Christ Himself was not enough – they needed to be filled with the Spirit and speak with other tongues before being permitted and commissioned to preach the gospel and pastor and minister.

Tree of Life is a tongue talking church, and we want everyone who comes to our churches to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues just like the book of Acts.  It’s that simple.

I wish I could go to every Bible College in the country and say what Jesus said to people: until you are filled with the Spirit and speak in tongues, shut your mouth.  Do not go and preach.  Do not pastor.  Do not go anywhere.  It is that important.  It is the way Jesus said to do things.  Save us from ministers who do not have power!  Save us from false doctrines about the Spirit that cripple the church and make the kingdom all about talk without power!

So in recapping here: being born again is an encounter with the risen Christ and transforms our human spirit and the purpose of being born again is righteousness.  The baptism of the Holy Spirit is an encounter with the ascended Christ and filled us and immerses us with the Holy Spirit and the purpose of the baptism is power to witness.

They cannot be the same experience.  Sometimes they are virtually simultaneous in time (like in Acts 10), other times there is a gap between them (like in Acts 2, Acts 8 and Acts 19).  The phrase “filled with the Spirit” is synonymous with baptised in the Spirit.  You do not need a third (or fourth or fifth) experience or blessing.  You do not need to be being filled.  Once you are baptized in the Holy Spirit you are filled.

If someone is not born again, my number one goal is to get them to be born again.  If they are born again, but not baptized with the Holy Spirit, my number one goal is to get them baptized in the Holy Spirit.  If they have both, my number one goal is to get them to renew their mind and guard their heart.

You need to be born again.  You need to be baptized in the Spirit.  You do not need a fresh touch and fresh fillings all the time after that, you just need to live in the light of what you have received.

Finally, let’s talk about tongues quickly.  I could say a lot more but the truth is that praying in tongues is for every single Christian.  God wants you to speak in tongues.  It’s that simple.

Not every Christian has a ministry in tongues – of giving messages to the church in tongues, but all of us should be speaking in tongues to edify ourselves, build ourselves up and open the door in our life to the supernatural.  Tongues is the Holy Spirit bypassing our minds and speaking through our mouths.  That is life changing.  It is impossible to describe how life changing this is.

Every Christian should be speaking in tongues as part of their personal prayer and devotional life.  Every church service we have, Celebration or Living, should welcome and encourage people to speak and sing in tongues to the Lord.

We are truly a church full of the Spirit!  Let’s celebrate that and never be ashamed of it.

Those of you who know me know I often talk about the fact everyone – especially leaders – should have a north wind face.  The Scripture tells us:

As the north wind drives away rain, so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue (Proverbs 25.23)

You need to develop a face that says to people: this conversation is over.  We are not having this discussion, I don’t talk about these things.  Developing a north wind face can save your life, your spirituality, your career and your church.  It is very important.  There will always be people who want to backbite others to you.  There will always be people who want to criticize others to you.  There will always be Absaloms wanting to draw you into their rebellion against God and His appointed leaders.  Always.  And a little leaven can leaven the whole lump.

It only takes 2mg of rat poison, an amount that weighs next to nothing, to kill a man who weighs over 15 stone.  It only takes a little bit of backbiting to destroy a whole church.   And the way to stop it is to develop this face that shuts people up.  The north wind face.

I am adamant that we are going to build a church culture that is unfriendly.  Unfriendly to scoffers, mockers, legalists and false prophets that is!

We need to realize the church has the God-given right to exclude people whose presence is unhealthy and undesirable to our services and our culture.  God is love, and we have to have an atmosphere of love in the church.  Anyone causing unnecessary rain and storms should be driven away with our north wind face.

Jude 12 tells us that our love feasts can have spots in them.  People who intrude into the church and impose their hatred on our love, their bitterness on our love, their strife into our harmony.  Jude tells us the hallmark of these people is “they speak evil of those things which they know not”.  Jude also tells us that they are carried away by winds.

If something can be moved with the wind, it is not substantial.  It is light, and unweighty. So don’t start worrying that we might scare off people who are supposed to be with us – they can’t be moved by the wind of your face or mine!  But those who are here to cause trouble will be blown away off to cause trouble elsewhere.

So what kind of people do we show the north wind face to?  Who do we want blown away?

1. Backbiters.  That’s what Proverbs 25.23 says.  We want people who do not have the courage to run us down to our face out of the church.  If someone comes to you to run me down, give them your north wind face.  You can be assured I do when they come to run you down!  Backbiters become Absaloms quickly!
2. Slanderers.  It is no mistake that the devil is the slanderer.  People who use their tongues to abuse the character of another are not working for God!  Psalm 31 tells us slander broke David.  If it can break David, it can break any man of God.  Help your pastor – when someone comes with slander give them your north wind face
3. Double tongued people.  One of the qualifications for deacons is that they not be double tongued, saying one thing then saying another.
4. A murmurer.  The Bible is clear: do all things without murmuring or complaining (Php. 2.14).  People who are always speaking out what is wrong with the church, the worship, the preaching, the services, the leaders.  Give them your north wind face.  Don’t make it hard on your pastor to have them lead the unwilling, discouraged, murmuring, complaining people.
5. Talebearers.  These are the people who invent stories.  It happens.  If you haven’t seen it yet, hang on!  They separate friends, they pollute the church.  You have to get them looking at your north wind face if they come to you.  Where there is no wood, the fire goes out, and where there is no talebearer, the strife ceases (Proverbs 26.20).  I don’t know about you but I want to come to a church without strife.
6. Liars.
7. Those who cause divisions and fights.  “Now I beseech you brethren, mark those which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine you have learned and avoid them” (Romans 16.17).  It is important to know the history of people – people don’t change, they do the same in every church they have been in.  I never get overly excited when someone comes to us from another c hurch.  I want to know why they moved, I want to know what problems they had in the old place.  Because they will arise again, I can assure you.
   Some people love causing offenses!  They just love fighting.  If you say A, they will say B because they want to fight.  They will disagree over the most minor of points, they love fighting over frivolous issues.  Mark those people and avoid them.

I want to create a culture of transparency and love.  Where people are happy to come to church.  Where we are not easily offended.  Some people will never get with the program.  Some people are ravenous wolves.  Some people are here to spy out our freedom.  Love them, but when they backbite and slander show them your north wind face.  Either they will grow up and change for the better or leave.  That’s between them and God.  We have a duty to honour the Word, honour our church and honour our church leaders.