Thoughts From Ephesians 4 - Part 3

 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high,
    he took many captives
    and gave gifts to his people.”

9 (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.  Eph. 4:7-16

              On X or Twitter today, there was a post condemning Francis Chan for supporting verbally, at a conference put on by these men, Mike Bickle, Benny Hinn, and a number of "prophets" who lately have been exposed by Mike Winger as being frauds. It appears that some of these "prophets" would go on Facebook and glean information about people in the audience and then give words of knowledge that the prophets shouldn't have known, astounding everyone.

          So what do we see here? First of all, we see vs. 14, people in the church being like infants tossed to and fro by false doctrines. It's hard to fault them too much because we all start out in this world and in faith as babies. My full-grown children are always trying to protect their babies from me who will feed them anything. And it's true, kids will stick anything in their mouth. One of our grandchildren has been x-rayed because batteries were missing from a toy. Paul is saying that we start out as spiritual infants and gifts are given to the body to make sure those infants grow up to be sturdy, mature Christians.

         Next, teachers like Francis Chan can open the word to us and teach us how to grow up. His teachings over the years have been life changing and he has influenced hundreds of thousands at Passion conferences and other speaking events. His book Crazy Love is challenging and true. He has the gifts of encouragement, preaching, teaching... but he probably doesn't have the gift of discernment. He believes the best about anyone and just wants to encourage them.

        Lastly you see a guy like Mike Winger. He has the gift of discernment. He sees all the frauds and wolves in sheep's clothing and wants to protect the infants out there as they are growing up, not to swallow "batteries". He discerns what are issues and what aren't also. There are tons of "discerners" on the internet warning people, but most of them are warning against premillennialism, dispensationalism, Arminianism, reformed doctrine, Pelagianism, and things that are non-essentials that are just differing opinions in the body. We need discernment to protect us from discerners and Mike gives that in his teachings.

       Jesus, after dying on the cross, descended into Abrahams bosom (my take), freed them and took them to Heaven after proclaiming to those in Hades His victory and their judgement, and a number of days later, after returning to Earth to encourage His disciples, ascended again and sent the Holy Spirit to indwell believers and bestow on them, according to His will and His plan for each individual and the body, a or some gifts to make the body a complete, functioning organism with the goal of growing spiritual babies into spiritual adults that glorify God.

       People like Francis Chan and Mike Winger are needed, and rather than blasting them for being unloving, lacking in grace and mercy, judgmental, self-righteous (accusations against Mike Winger and frankly, anyone with the gift of discernment) or non-discerning and promoting false teachers and doctrines (accusations against Francis Chan and all encouragers - Paul accused Barnabas of this for promoting Mark on the 2nd mission trip), we need to bind the body together in love realizing that we need all the gifts to make this work.

      Social media and influencers do all they can to divide the body while thinking that they are uniting the body to think like them. We need to be wise to Satan's schemes. Let's grow up!