A Holy Uproar!

Shift Your Focus… If you didn’t take the time, go back and read Acts 5—you’ll enjoy it!  This is Christianity at its best. This is church as it was meant to be.  This is real power evangelism and authentic church growth. This is the unstoppable force Jesus had in mind when he said to Peter and the others,

“Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

I don’t know about you, but I long for this scene to be replayed in my church. I’m not too excited about the jail and flogging part, but to cause such a holy upheaval through our active witness in the community is church as Christ intended.  I would pay good money to see that.

I have seen that, by the way.  Several years ago, I met a church planter in Ethiopia. He was in a training session I was leading, and afterwards I interviewed him.  He was twenty-three years old at the time and his name was Mulu.

Two years prior in one of our conferences, Mulu had an encounter with the Holy Spirit.  Full of the Spirit, he went out to a remote Muslim-dominated village and began to preach Christ. He led so many of villagers to faith that the Muslim leaders hired an assassin to shoot Mulu. When Mulu walked into the assassin’s path, the man couldn’t pull the trigger.  So the assassin went to Mulu to ask him about this powerful force that had prevented him from pulling the trigger. Mulu led his would-be killer to Christ.

The frustrated Muslim leaders then threw Mulu into jail, thinking that would put a stop to his teaching. Within three days, Mulu led forty-three prisoners to Christ, so the jailers threw him out of jail. To make an exciting but very long story short, despite threats, beatings, assassination attempts, intimidation and jail, Mulu, this twenty-three year old, uneducated church planter, had led over 2,000 people, many of them Muslims, to faith in Christ at the point of our interview.  In the best sense of the phrase, Mulu had become a holy terror to the forces of darkness.  Furthermore, it was Mulu who should have been training me!

Peter…Mulu…you…me:  It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, what your circumstances are, once the Holy Spirit truly gets a hold of us, we will cause a holy uproar wherever we go.

“The triumphant Christian does not fight for victory; he celebrates a victory already won.” ~Reginald Wallis

Prayer… Holy Spirit, take hold of my life, and turn me into a holy terror!