by Sandy Simpson, 9/24/10
I guess you think this is going to be an article about cholesterol or saturated fat. No. This is an article on how to get away from those who use pantheistic terms for the work of the person of the Holy Spirit and claim they can pass the Spirit to you by the laying on of hands!
We hear a lot these days from New Apostolic, Word of Faith leaders on how to become “saturated” or “soak in the Spirit”. This cooking term becomes nearly blasphemous when applied to the Latter Rain idea of getting “more” God. I was reminded of this unbiblical teaching by another in a long string of email newsletters from the ElijahList promoting “saturation”, this time in promoting a Third Wave music artist.
"The Door is Open" by Kathryn Marquis--Saturated
with His Presence, His Glory, and His Heart...From the desk of Steve
Shultz: This debut recording from Kathryn
Marquis is more than a CD; it is an experience of the Lord, saturated with
His presence, His glory, and His heart. “The Door Is Open” is a
journey through the open door of Revelation 4:1, into the high and the deep; a
cross-genre prophetic soaking and worship experience flowing through
psalmist and worship leader Kathryn Marquis. (ElijahList email newsletter 9/24/10)
Other references to being “saturated” are legion and show that this is a consistent teaching over a long period of time, especially since the Toronto/Brownsville explosion of Latter Rain ideas in the 1990s.
Apparently this person, along with all Third Wavers, has NOT “gained more understanding of the Word” because if they have to plead to “receive the Holy Spirit” they are not saved by Biblical definition. Those who are born again have already received the Holy Spirit (Gal. 3:2-5). They should rather ask the Spirit to enable them to minister TO OTHERS (1 Cor. 14:12)! The “old timers” were not waiting to be “saturated in the Spirit” but were following the Biblical principle of waiting on the Lord to answer their prayers and act according to His will.
Ps 27:14 Wait for the
LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.
So waiting on the Lord is a Biblical concept. Waiting to have the Holy Spirit provide you with a “drunk in the spirit” experience is not.
It is our desire that you
enter into a deeper walk with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy
Spirit. Soaking, drinking, marinating, pickling and basking are all one
in the same term that will help you come up higher and go deeper in your
relationship with God. Your Holy hunger
will be rewarded by an awareness of God's very presence and by an experience of
Him that will result in your every day practicing the presence of God.
Psalm 34:8 instructs us this way, "Taste and see that the Lord is
good." Our
walk with God is an experience and a reality that we actively participate in.
(Soaking Moments by Janis Smith,
http://aspireministries.com/templates/System/details.asp?id=37274&PID=404898)
The Bible does not tell us to soak, marinate, bask or seek pickling in the presence of the Lord. And we have all been given one Spirit to drink (1 Cor. 12:13) if we are truly born again. Those who would walk with God must first have a relationship with His Son, be born again in the Spirit, and then obey His commands. The definition of Christian maturity, a “deeper walk with God”, is defined in the Bible this way:
Heb 5:14 But solid
food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to
distinguish good from evil.
Eph. 4:13-14 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 fulness of Christ. 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 men in their deceitful scheming.
A deeper walk with God means becoming more mature by discernment through the study of His Word, which the Holy Spirit uses to train Christians.
Joh 14:26 But the
Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach
you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
Those who seek ecstatic experiences have their priorities backwards. God does not teach His children through some mystical “soaking”. He expects them to dig deep into His written Word and allow the Holy Spirit to apply its timeless truths to their lives. He does not expect “Christians” to wait to be pickled.
There is nothing in the Bible about soaking or saturating in the Holy Spirit. We are to worship in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24), which means that the teaching in the Church must bring worship to the Lord by upholding the timeless truths of the written Word.
Rom.
12:1-2 ¶ Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your
bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual
{Or
reasonable} act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test
and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
You don’t renew your mind by either learning to empty it or opening it up to any sensual experience that comes your way. God renews your mind through His Word. We are not to ask the Lord to provide us with cheap emotional thrills, which titillate the soul and have nothing to do with the spirit, and call that “worship”. We are to worship the Spirit in the context of the Triunity of God, remembering that the Centerpoint always will be Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit draws our worship to Him.
John 15:26-27 "When the Counselor comes,
whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from
the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you
have been with me from the beginning.
John 16:13-15 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you
into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he
hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to
me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs
to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is
mine and make it known to you.
This is why I tell people who have found themselves caught up in major “saturation” in their churches and want to get away from those heretical practices, to look for a church that is Bible-believing and Christ-centered. That means the Bible is the highest authority in all matters of faith and practice, and Jesus Christ and the Gospel remain the central focus of the church along with teaching sound doctrine.
So don’t be saturated, get unsaturated. Don’t let your spiritual cholesterol get out of whack. Get back to the Word and worship God in Spirit and in Truth.