When God Validates a Man or Ministry–and He Can, He Does! | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Uncategorized

Edward Knippers

So Good Friday, the travesty of justice, ends with the greatest act of validation I know of, the resurrection.

Jesus, unjustly slandered and accused, is raised from the dead by God.

“Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know,” Peter says. (Acts 2:22).

* * *

I mean, sometimes God showers the kind of grace and favour on people which a million dollars of advertising would not buy, as when a single mum read Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life to a desperate murderer, who dramatically escaped from jail, and then, sort of, allowed her to call the police on him.

Or think of the astonishing success of The Prayer of Jabez though there was clever marketing in its dramatic editing into a small, short book. Its message in essence is: Pray big, faith-filled prayers, and God is more inclined to answer. We’ve heard variants of this lovely and true message before. I think the run-away success of this book was God showing favour on Bruce Wilkinson, who had quietly done remarkable things for many years with his Walk Thru the Bible Ministries. (Incidentally, I frequently pray the prayer of Jabez, particularly when stymied, and this has contributed to changing my life.)

* * *

Interestingly, the people God chooses to validate are often visibly flawed people, which maybe why God chooses to validate them, to show that, despite our scepticism, his favour rests on them.

I can think of a remarkable series of God’s validation in the life of a pastor I knew. He was numb and not praying well after a family tragedy. David Pytches, who paved the way for the charismatic renewal in Britian prayed for him, and he slain in the spirit and overwhelmed with the knowledge of God’s love for him.

He in turn prayed for a twenty year old boy, who was “pole-axed,” slain in the spirit, and is now among this country’s most gifted preachers and Christian writers.

I heard a woman tell this story about him. 23 years ago, their two year old, had advanced cancer, and the doctors in Great Ormond Street had given up hope. This priest visited for lunch, and was told about the child.

“Have you prayed?” he asked.
“Oh yes!” they said.
“Can I pray?” he asked.

And he took the child, and prayed with the simple intensity. And the parents heard the prayer, and knew that things were going to be different. The doctors at Great Ormond Street were reluctant to test the boy again, but did. He is now 25 years old.

The couple, an architect and psychologist, resigned their jobs, went through difficult financial times, but went into ordained ministry and full time prayer ministry respectively. “If prayer has such power, why would I want to be doing anything else?” she said.

* * *

When I worshipped in this man’s church, a large, wealthy one, the days of anointing had given way to a time of insecurity and control. I am reading R.T. Kendall’s The Anointing, which describes this phenomena of “Yesterday’s man” like Saul, who initially started out in the spirit’s power, but now operates on ambition and manipulation. Staff appointments in the church were a revolving door, as anyone who disagreed with him or his wife–or whose giftedness threatened either–were publicly and humiliatingly dismissed. Lay people who disagreed with him or his wife were treated with astonishing, finely calculated, manipulative cruelty; if not for the earlier acts of validation in his youth, we would have been tempted to wonder if he were a Christian.

Once, this man’s eldest teenager ran away from home. A young Ugandan minister, John Mulinde visited him, and the vicar described his despair. “Well then, we must pray,” said Mulinde.

Mulinde prayed. When he stopped, he phone rung. It was a woman whose husband the daughter had run away with.

The vicar was instrumental in introducing him widely in this country. What validation for Mulinde, who is now embroiled in his own scandal and disgrace, as I discovered when googling him while writing this.

* * *

Yes, God often bestows validation to those who most need it, either to validate them in other people’s eyes, or for their own internal reassurance that God’s favour rests on them.

I started out in lay ministry in 2001, at a time of great personal stress: exhaustion, marital stress, and the difficulties of trying to write with two lovely young children, one a toddler.

I wondered if I should even be doing ministry, or getting my own life, house and relationships in order.

Two small things happened to reassure me. A woman in my Bible study was distraught. She was divorced and remarried, and as is not uncommon in these circumstances, her nine year old son, Jake, had lost his faith.

I remembered what I was like at 9, and prayed with real feeling for sad, confused Jake, with the sense of going through the holy place, into the Most Holy Place, and seeing the face of Jesus, between the wings of the cherubim. “When you prayed, it was like balm on the group,” she said. The next week, she said “Jake said he’s decided to become a Christian.”

The same week, I asked my mentor how I could pray for her. She had a rascal son, who had been a millionaire, had married a Latin American, and got a Mexican partner, who used him as a front of his dealings with Mexican drug-dealers and gun-runners. He had lost all his money, and was out of a job. She said, “Well you could pray for Dan, but it would take a miracle.” The next week, she met me, eyes shining. “There has been a miracle. His uncle, Dick, asked his cousin to give him a job—and he did.” And it required him to move to Virginia, away from Texas, where his unsavoury acquaintances were.

And then I began to pray bigger, dreamier prayers—and many were answered—like moving back to Oxford. And it was reassuring to know in my bones that Jesus looked at me at smiled, though I was weak, struggling with discipline, with weight, with patience. That he thought I was okay, because he loves me as I loved my messy, breaky, chattery, incorrigible toddlers—and thought they were okay—and more than okay!!

That God loves you, that he answers your prayers, that he thinks you’re basically okay because you are his child…ah, that’s the best form of accreditation!