In the early days of the Gospel’s spread throughout Asia Minor, “God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.”[1] Now, maybe you’ve heard that before—but if that doesn’t make you stop and scratch your head, maybe read it again. Picture something like this happening in your hometown. Sicknesses fall to the sweat of a man passing through. A demon comes out of your neighbor three houses down. Would you not be full of wonder? Awe? Terror?
What we might call a “healing anointing” resting on this apostolic father was, and is, indeed “extraordinary.” And just as the apostolic sometimes attracts inappropriate attention and adoration, so too do miraculous signs that cause us to wonder. The crowds see the power, but never the silent formation in the wilderness through the decades prior that wrought the authority. Seven sons of a senior Judaic priest named Sceva, having an existing itinerant deliverance ministry, see the power carried in Paul’s used Kleenex and—perhaps innocently, perhaps naively, perhaps exploitatively—began to “adjure [demons] by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.”[2]
But this is war,[3] not a rodeo. Eleven words answer them:
Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?[4]
“And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on” and “mastered” all seven of them, “so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.”[5]
No one wants to get whooped so badly they can only escape by running through the public square bruised and bloodied in their birthday suit. But for all the popular fervor over “signs and wonders” putting the power of God on public display, only God can know the men and women with “hearts fully loyal to Him, on whose behalf He can show Himself strong.”[6] Paul (a nickname for a man known to his family and home region as Saul) was almost violently apprehended by Jesus as a young man, and spent decades getting sorted out afterwards[7] before his wardrobe had any peripheral power. Peter sabotaged himself in cowardice before Jesus restored him. “Boanerges” John, a slightly elitist “son of thunder”[8] as a watery young man, became the aged wine of a tender father when he knew Jesus had His affections set on him.[9] Twenty-plus years shaped David between a young shepherd boy in Bethlehem’s back hills to a man with whom the God of Israel could entrust with the crown and throne of Israel.[10]
As Art Katz wrote,
The whole preliminary work of God is to disqualify us before we can be qualified….[But] how many of us are itching to go out and make our mark for God? And yet God does not think it lavish, wasteful, or extravagant to give Moses another forty years of waiting in the wilderness until he is completely emptied out, and then God calls him.[11]
The whole preliminary work of God is to disqualify us before we can be qualified, and to be sure that qualification only comes through Jesus.[12] Yet He entices us into obedience, fruit, and joy with reward: the faithful will “shine like the stars in the Kingdom of their Father,”[13] govern cities,[14] and restore the earth under the global leadership of King Jesus.[15] But before the glory of the millennial reign and subsequent restoration of all things,[16] the prophet Joel tells us—warns us—of the “great and terrible”[17] Day of the LORD, wherein the sun will darken, the heavens themselves will tremble, anguish will mark mankind, and the severity of the hour will push “even the elect” to the end of their endurance.[18] In the midst of this incredible calamity, the LORD promises He will “pour out [His] Spirit on all flesh,” such that dreams, visions, and prophecy will be common occurrences throughout the global Body.[19]
Who can steward such a move?
Jesus illuminates the armor that guards us from sharing the humiliating fate of Sceva’s sons in the “Sermon on the Mount,” recorded most thoroughly in Matthew’s Gospel account. This “Constitution of the Kingdom” confronts our interior lives with forensic precision; indeed, “every idle word spoken will be judged”[20]—but so will our thought lives. Did you nurture your anger in your meditation, or did you pray for those who persecuted you?[21] Did you exploit someone’s person so you could entertain the idea of intimacy with them, or did you “make a covenant with your eyes”?[22] Did you white-knuckle the resources available to you and covet more, or did you live free from possessive greed and give generously?[23] Did you cultivate an ongoing conversation with the One who knows all your thoughts?[24] What did you do with everything made available to you? Did you love the LORD with all of it?
The manifest display of God’s powerful arm reveals things in our heart we perhaps have not seen; consider Simon the sorcerer’s allegiance to bitterness undergirding his inappropriate pursuit of a healing anointing.[24] Before eternity, we will live through the hardest, darkest, and most glorious hour of human history—the Day of the LORD. How we posture ourselves now—or disciple and mentor those entrusted to our shepherding care to posture themselves—bears down upon how responsible we will be in that Day; how resilient, how faithful, and how unoffended we will be. How trustworthy we will be with the power He intends to pour out.
Scripture gives us no few examples of men and women who serve as antitheses of Simon the sorcerer’s example, who did not seek a platform to gain power or prestige. Jesus’ cousin John, who was among the first to recognize the Voice of the Lord,[25] and submitted his reputation to it all his (short-numbered) days. The apostles were all rowdy young men with egos and litanies of issues who were brought into a journey of discovering the beauty and wonder of the Man from Nazareth, and He transformed them into “workmen approved,”[26] into the apostles we glean from still today. Christ made war on the infidelities of their hearts, and they submitted to it. Truly, we must “carry our cross daily.”[27] Only then can we bear the fruit of the Spirit.[28] Only then can we be found worthy of the Kingdom, and worthy to bear the necessary witness ordained to the nations.[29]
When the power of God is poured out, He will entrust the nameless, faceless servants and stewards who have prioritized His Name above their own. May we be a people who give ourselves to His purposes, and allow Him to prepare us for that end.
Maranatha.
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Acts 19:11-12, ESV
[2] Acts 19:13
[3] Genesis 3:15; Revelation 19:11-18
[4] Acts 19:15, ESV
[5] Acts 19:16
[6] 2 Chronicles 16:9
[7] See Acts 9; Galatians 1:13-2:10
[8] Mark 3:16; Luke 9:49-56
[9] John 13:23; 19:26; 1 John 2:1-2
[10] The biography of David is recorded in 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, and 1 & 2 Chronicles. We recommend this teaching series from Mike Bickle for leadership lessons in David’s life: https://mikebickle.org/series/studies-in-the-life-of-david-2015/
[11] Art Katz, Apostolic Foundations
[12] Colossians 1:12
[13] Daniel 12:3; Matthew 13:43
[14] Luke 19:17-19
[15] Isaiah 2:2-4
[16] Revelation 20:1-21:5
[17] Joel 2:11
[18] See Isaiah 24, Joel 2, Matthew 24. Quoting Matthew 24:22
[19] Joel 2:28-29
[20] Matthew 12:36
[21] Matthew 5:21-26, 44
[22] Matthew 5:27-30; Job 31:1
[23] Matthew 6:28-34
[24] See Acts 8
[25] Luke 1:44 (in-utero John heard Mary’s voice as she carried Jesus in her womb); John 1:23, 36
[26] 2 Timothy 2:15
[27] Luke 9:23
[28] Galatians 5:22-26
[29] Matthew 24:14
