Now if ever I heard an oxymoron in the kingdom of God it would have to be the term, “Godly self confidence”. Hang on – if our confidence is supposed to be in Christ, how can there be such a thing as self-confidence? Either your confidence is in Christ, or your confidence is in yourself, your own gifts, abilities and resources. It’s one or the other, right? Not so according to my guest.

Awesome week again this week because my special guest from last week, Dr Barry Chant, is with us again this week. Barry’s just released his latest book, “Living In The Image Of God” and if you were able to join us for some or all of last week you’ll know that he’s really gifted in bringing Biblical truths to light in a way that, well … in a way that really impacts the lives that we live.

Now Barry, last week we were chatting about knowing who we are, understanding our identity in Christ because we’re made in God’s image. A quick recap, what’s that all about? Why is it important to know who we are in Christ?

Barry: Thanks Berni. It’s important to know that because we don’t know who we are then we don’t really know what we’re here for and what we have to do with our lives I guess. But knowing who we are in Christ also gives us a great sense of confidence, a great sense of stability, a great sense of assurance so we can face life confidently.

It’s more than that, it’s not just so you can face life confidently it’s also so that you just have a sense of peace about yourself and you’re not constantly full of self examination and even self recrimination. You’re saying, “my strength is in Christ, my identity is in Christ, my security is in Christ, my hope is in Christ.” It’s knowing a safe place to be I suppose is one way to put it.

Berni: Now today we’re going to look at something you’ve written about in your book called, “Godly Self Confidence”. Now if ever there was a theological oxymoron that would have to be it wouldn’t it? I mean isn’t the whole point of faith that we should have confidence, as you said, in Christ not in ourselves. So what’s this Godly self confidence thing all about?

Barry: Well when we come to Christ, to quote a well known verse of Scripture, the Bible says:

We are Gods workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he prepared in advance for us to walk in.

Berni: Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10.

Barry: You know it, yes.

Berni: You couldn’t graduate from Barry’s class without being able to quote that one so that’s why I know it, that’s the joke.

Barry: And of course other passages say things like:

“If anyone is in Christ he’s a new creation. The old has passed, the new has come.”

So when you become a Christian something happens, you become a new person, which kind of changes everything. If you know that, if you know that you’re a new person in Christ then you have the confidence to be who you are, to act accordingly. Let me give you a very simple illustration.

Many years ago I got involved in a rather bad financial arrangement which left me holding the baby and so I had to go and confront a number of business houses and ask for time to pay it off, which we did. But I went to one place, it was a multi national company and I had to go and face this multi national company and plead for grace.

And I remember standing on the footpath outside and saying to myself a bit of godly self talk. I was saying, “Barry when you go in there you’re going to finish up eventually it’s one man on the side of a desk. You’re not going to talk to the whole company, you’re just going to talk with one man and you’ll be on your side but you’ve got the law on your side too and you can handle it.”

It was over simplifying things but it was a way of reassuring myself to say, “I can handle this, I needn’t be afraid, I needn’t be full of fear or apprehension, I can do this”. And so I marched in and demanded to see the CEO and got in his office and sat in front of him and he was very gracious and kind and we sorted it all out.

That’s kind of a bit of a trite example but that’s the sort of thing where knowing who we are in Christ, knowing that He lives within us by His Spirit, knowing the promises of God in His Word, these are the things that enable us to act with a confidence we would not have otherwise. So it’s not confidence in yourself but it’s a confidence that’s in God as yourself if that makes sense. What I mean by that is you’re not looking for someone else to help you out, you know that with God with you that you can do it yourself with God’s help. So it’s confidence as your self rather than in yourself.

Berni: What about the gifts and abilities that He’s given us, does that come into this as well?

Barry: Oh yeah, it does and different people have different gifts of course so it certainly comes into that and I suppose part of that is having the confidence to use the gifts you have and I see a lot in Bible College work. I see students come into the classes, their first semester, they’re all very shy and nervous and they’re not quite sure where they’re heading, they don’t know how to write an essay or get up and give a talk but by the end of the time you see what they’re doing then and I think of some students that have come almost illiterate but at the end of the day they’re writing good papers and they’re preaching good messages and they’re just doing so well.

And you see they’re gifts have been there but they’ve never really been motivated or been encouraged to explore those gifts and explore their potential and to draw them out and use them. You yourself are a bit of an example of that, where what you’re doing now, I don’t know whether you had imagined that before you started college.

Berni: Not in my wildest dreams.

Barry: I am just so excited to see how God has developed your life and I’m awestruck by it because one of my dreams always is that students will finish up doing a lot more than I’ve ever done and you’re an example of someone who is and I’m just excited about that. But I see it in all sorts of ways with people who, sometimes you think, ‘he’s not going to be much’ and they finish up doing extraordinary things because they learn how to be who they are and how to develop what they have. And it’s through the power of God with them they still do it, they’re still doing it.

Berni: Talk to us, I remember the catch phrase “becoming who you are”, talk to us about that because that’s a really interesting one.

Barry: Well it’s a bit like a little baby, a little baby girl who was born, the day she’s born she’s a human being. She’s got all the faculties. She’s no less human than she’s going to be in seventy years time. She’s a human being but she has to learn what it is to be a human being. And so the rest of her life she’s learning to be what she already is, to function as a human being can function. When she’s a baby not a lot baby’s can do, they’re very limited in their skills but as she grows she will learn to do things, she will learn to be who she is.

So when you become a Christian you’re a new person, you’re “born again” to use a Bible term, you’re a new creation in Christ to use the term we quoted before. But new Christians sometimes are still very shallow and very ignorant of what it is to be a Christian but they’re still nevertheless they’re genuinely children of God, genuinely born again. So the rest of their Christian life is becoming who they already are, just learning to develop their potential that’s there with them; learning godly self confidence if you like.

Berni: And for me the thing about godly self confidence, when I finally got it through my thick skull that the gifts and abilities I had – which are in certain areas and not in others, we’re all like that – when I realised that those gifts and abilities I do have are given to me by God to be used for God, that was the most incredibly liberating idea. Because now I no longer have to rely on myself, I have this confidence that God’s given me certain gifts and I’m comfortable in my skin, around those gifts. I’m comfortable also with who I’m not. I’m really comfortable that I’m not a pastoral person; I never will be a pastoral person because my gift is in these other areas.

Barry: That’s exactly it and I had to face the same thing. I started off as a full time minister expecting I would follow the normal pastoral route and I’ve done a lot of pastoral work but it hasn’t been my strength so I function much better in a teaching/writing area. But I’m thinking other things like another Tabor graduate early this month has gone off to Asia as a missionary with his wife and two teenage children.

Now this guy was a business man before he became a Christian and a good business man and he could make a lot of money if he chose to but he’s gone off to Asia to work with orphans and interesting with orphans and the elderly people at one end. He’s got a great compassion for those people and he’s going to succeed, I mean he’ll do that. He’s got the confidence that God will use him to do that and that’s what I mean, for me it’s exciting to see it but for him he’s saying I can do this which is a big thing to take your wife and kids off to Asia, teenage kids and do such a thing but he believes he can do it.

Berni: Well I got to tell you even though it’s an oxymoron it is an awesome concept, godly self confidence.

Barry: It is, yeah. For me it has been just the realisation that sometimes I’ve thought, “I should get someone else to do this” and I think, well actually I can do it. I mean Tabor Sydney started like that. I was thinking that someone else to come and start the Tabor College in Sydney and never found anybody and one day I was praying and I just thought God said, “You do it”. I thought, “Ooh actually I could”. And so the college has been going for twenty years now and it speaks for itself what happened.

Berni: God bless you, we’ll chat again tomorrow.

Love makes the world go round, right? So how come at any one time there are about 50 wars on the go around the world? How come there’s so much pain and suffering? Turns out that there are some things out there – some things in our lives, that are enemies of love.

One of my favourite movies of all time, in fact it’s a series of movies, is the ‘Back To The Future’ trilogy. It’s got everything, it’s got adventure, time travel, of course a touch of romance. And the song they play over and over again in those movies is, “The Power Of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News, great song. And in fact when you look at the songs that come out month after month on the hit parade they’re almost always about love at least 80% of them.

Is that a surprise? No, God is love and we’re made in God’s image. We all need love, we all crave love and yet there are so many things that get in the way of love.

I’m joined again today on the program by my very special guest Dr Barry Chant who’s recently released his latest book,“Living In The Image Of God”. Barry welcome again to the program.

Barry: Thank you Berni.

Berni: I guess any book called, “Living In The Image Of God” has to include a section on love right?

Barry: Well undoubtedly yes. The Bible says that God is love and it not just that the Bible says it, in actual fact if God is not love then He’s no good to us. A God who is not love is no God at all.

Berni: Bad news huh.

Barry: Yeah it is and so it not just because the Scriptures says it on necessity God must be a God of love because what would we do if He wasn’t? How could we survive if He wasn’t? If God is going to be God there are certain things that He must be and love is one of them.

So love is always an integral part of God, and that by the way is one of the reasons we believe that in the Trinity, the God head of three persons in one, it’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit because you can’t be love and you can’t love if you’re a single person on your own. And so if God had only ever been a single unit as some religions depict Him then before creation how could He be love because there was no one to love.

Love is meaningless without an object of love but because there is a plurality of the God head then there’s an eternal love relationship of a kind of love no human being has ever begun to tap into fully. It’s just a love that we don’t even begin to understand I think because our loving is always so mixed up with our receiving love as well. But He is a genuine altruistic, giving, loving relationship which is so superb and so magnificent and so unbelievable, I guess in heaven we’ll have some idea of what it’s like.

But what God has done He has shown us His love by sending His Son to die for us and that’s what the Scripture says, and history tells us that too, that God sent His Son Jesus who became a human being, lived among us and showed His love for us. Also, not just in His living but His dying, it was on the cross that He demonstrated His love.

Now it seems like I’m taking a long time to answer your question but before we can understand how love works for us …

Berni: You’re a theologian you can do that.

Barry: Before we can understand how love works with us we have to see how God demonstrated His love and that’s how He did it, by becoming human in the person of His Son and giving His life for us. And the big thing happened on the cross. By the way it’s not just He suffered physically. I mean, a lot of people have suffered physically over the years, some have suffered horrific tortures. The suffering that Jesus experienced was the suffering of bearing the weight of the world’s sin and if you think about that, I said in an earlier program that even at one sin a day we commit twenty thousand sins in fifty years roughly so if you pile all those sins and imagine all your sins piled on Jesus.

It’s like if you think of some occasion where you did something you really, really regret and you think, ‘Oh if only I could wind the clock back; if only there was a Groundhog Day I could do it differently’. You can’t and that regret lives with you and you’d do anything to change what you did but you can’t do it. Imagine all your regret and all my regret and all the regret of all the people in the city where we live, in the country where we live and the world where we live and all previous cities and previous countries and previous generations, all of that sin all piled upon Jesus and not just the sin of really nice people like you and me but the sins of the butchers of the world, the Pol Pots and the Stalin’s and all people like that, all their sin all piled upon Jesus and that’s why Jesus cried out:

My God why have you forsaken me?

Because for the first time in all eternity sin had somehow invaded the Godhead and it was unbelievable, unbelievable weight.

Berni: And you have a chapter in the book called, “Enemies Of Love” and that’s … talk to me about the “Enemies Of Love”, why do we have that chapter in the book?

Barry: Because love is demonstrated in the way that God gave His Son Jesus who bore our sins, to demonstrate His love. The things that would have stopped Jesus from doing that would be perhaps pride for example or fear for example and they’re the things that are enemies in our lives. Sometimes it’s pride that stops us loving because loving always involves a total giving of ourselves and we’re not prepared to do that sometimes. Sometimes loving involves apologising and admitting our weaknesses, confessing that we failed in some way; we don’t like doing that so pride holds us back from really loving as much as we would. And fear’s another one, we’re afraid to love in case we get hurt, in case we get rejected especially if we’ve been hurt already on a previous occasion.

Berni: And anyone who has loved has been hurt right?

Barry: Yeah pretty much. Yeah the best way to avoid it is to stop loving, but of course it’s a very bad solution.

Berni: And the more we love someone the greater the hurt.

Barry: Yeah of course, people we love most are the ones that can hurt us most. So the fear of that often holds people back, there are many people who have been burnt in bad relationships and are just afraid to form another relationship or afraid to love somebody in case they get hurt and burnt again.

So they are two big enemies but there are lots of others as well. Selfishness of course is an obvious one because you cannot be selfish and loving at the same time. To understand all that we come back to God all the time, back to His gift of love through His Son Jesus and the Bible says, the first letter of John:

This is how we know what love is because God loved us and He sent His Son to die for us, that’s how we know what love is.

And he goes on to say:

We love because he first loved us.

And when we experience the love of God in our lives then we begin to understand how we can love other people.

Berni: So here we all are, we’re all imperfect human beings, hopefully we’re trying to live out our lives in the image of God, what’s the one thing that we can do in our lives to make sure that we aren’t an enemy of love, an enemy of Godly community? How do we avoid being enemies of love?

Barry: Well I’m coming back to the same point again and again and again but it’s knowing Jesus and really trusting Him and I guess loving Him first and experiencing His love first. The thing is we need His help even to do that, it’s hard for us to do that on our own, in fact it’s impossible so we need His help, we must come to Him, we invite Him into our lives and Paul wrote to the Romans and said:

The love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

And that’s what we have to have; we have to have God pouring His love into us so that we can then show that love to other people and without that it’s pretty difficult to do.

Berni: Yeah, it seems to me in my experience of having quite a dramatic conversion at age thirty six, so that’s almost two decades ago, not quite, when God’s love started to hit my heart what I wanted changed, it’s like my appetite for things changed so of course it’s a process and it’s a process that’s going to last all my life here on this earth. But I started to want to love people and I think that’s what you’re talking about, God’s love actually changes our desires.

Barry: Like the story I told a while ago on a previous program. A young man’s who’s gone to Asia as a missionary, previously a successful businessman, loved business, loved the rough and tumble of it. He’s got a new love, his love is now orphans, old people who are forsaken and abandoned and living at poverty level, that’s where his heart is now. So yeah, God changes your heart but He’s motivated and so Paul says elsewhere in the Scripture:

It’s the love of Christ that constrains us.

Or to take another translation ‘compels us’, and when we experience Gods love in our lives that’s why we then change and we then have a whole different aspect and our love reaches out to people we never would have looked at loving before and even thought about perhaps. And so that’s when you get people like Mother Theresa and people like that who so experienced Christ’s love in their lives that they’ve just got to manifest that and reveal it in the way they live and attitude towards others.

Berni: Barry it’s fantastic, thanks for the time today.

Barry: It’s been a pleasure Berni.

The universe is vast – beyond measure, beyond imagination. The forces and the powers at work across the galaxies, across the universe as a whole, are totally, incomprehensibly huge. And yet the most powerful thing that’s ever happened is not the big bang. The most powerful thing that’s ever happened, was a simple act of love.

Yesterday on the program my guest Barry Chant was sharing with us some of the natural enemies of love. Pride’s right up there, our fears and our insecurities, selfishness. It’s something Barry talks about in detail in his latest book, “Living In The Image Of God” and I’ll share with you later how you can get a copy of that.

Today we’re going to quiz him a bit more about love, love is a big deal since God is, after all, Love. And I want to move one step beyond – the enemies, the obstacles, the problems to the solution, the power of love.

It’s love that defeated Satan at the Cross; it’s love that set you and me free from sin. God is love and there is no force more powerful than God’s love itself. So let’s have a chat today about the power of love in our lives.

Berni: Barry it’s great to have you with us again and from all of us thank you so much for making this time available.

Barry: It’s a pleasure.

Berni: You talk in your book about four different kinds of love; can you just give us a bit of an overview of each of those four?

Barry: Yeah, this is important. You all realise that I’ve pinched a bit of stuff from C S Lewis there but I’ve changed it in some ways.

Berni: Otherwise it would be called plagiarism. No just kidding

Barry: His work is footnoted but I found Lewis’s work extremely helpful in this and his book, “The Four Loves” is a book that’s well worth reading but I take a slightly different approach. Lewis does a couple of very helpful things, one is we talk about love and for some people love has a very narrow meaning or even a wrong meaning sometimes so it’s important to clarify what we mean by that.

That’s the first thing. So Lewis divides life into two areas, “gift love” and “need love”. Now most of us are familiar with“need love”. That’s the kind of sexual love for example, it’s a kind of need love; affection is a kind of need love. But then“gift love”, he talks about things like, well I talk about things like compassion which is a giving love and particularly about, to use a Bible word, a kind of love that’s called “Agape” which is an unconditional love.

So there are at least those four categories and sometimes we talk about love and the only kind of love some people know is sexual love or maybe family or affectionate type love, sometimes they’ve received some compassion somewhere but it’s important to understand all of those different kinds and to understand that the power of love lies in all of those in some measure but particularly in Agape which is unconditional love.

Berni: Tell us a bit more about that because that word “Agape” being a Greek word is not genuinely used in conversation.

Barry: It isn’t, you’re quite right, and if you look at it in English it looks like“a gape” which is not helpful. But it’s disinterested, not uninterested, but disinterested love . In other words love that has nothing to gain out of loving; love that is unconditional. So, for example sexual love always involves not just giving but receiving because you find the other person attractive in normal circumstances and so there’s a giving and a receiving that goes on. Affection the same, there’s a giving and a receiving; you give affection you receive affection usually.

But Agape it’s sort of expressed by saying, “I love you anyway”, the sexual love is, “I love you because you’re beautiful and you make me feel good and everything” but I don’t care, you look ugly and everything else but I still love you, not you Berni. (Both laugh) I don’t care what you look like, I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what you say, you say, “I love you anyway”.

Now that is the supreme example of love and that’s the kind of love that is talked about in the Bible for God and for God’s people. It’s a love that involves very much an act of the will so in the Vulgate translation of the Bible, Catholic translation done by Jerome many, many years ago, instead of saying God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, Jerome says, “God chose the world so much that He gave His only Son’”. He uses the Latin word “deligre” which means “to choose” because he’s trying to convey the idea that there’s an act of choice involved in loving, in real loving. It’s nothing to do with what you get out of it or what feels nice, it’s you choose to love because the other person needs that love.

Berni: And that sort of love is a really powerful force isn’t it?

Barry: It is, yeah and when I talk about the power of love that’s the kind of love in particular. The other kinds of love are powerful as well in their own way and I’m not demeaning those but this unconditional, disinterested Agape love, that is something so special, it’s uniquely God’s then it becomes uniquely God’s people.

Berni: When I think about the people whom I willingly allow to influence me are invariably the people who loved me when I didn’t deserve it. Those people actually have a far greater licence in my life to say something than people who haven’t and that’s the Agape love thing isn’t it? They loved me when I didn’t deserve love.

Barry: Okay. You apply it to a marriage for example, I love my wife because she’s beautiful and attractive and it’s kind of a sexual thing. I have affection towards her, she’s affectionate towards me so that’s good. Where there’s compassion – I’m sorry for her because she’s married to me. And those three loves they’re all very important parts of our marriage, with the other one the will to love, the unconditional love, the first three are fragile and can easily lose their way which happens in lots of marriages.

It’s the fourth one that’s the really safe one, the one that holds the thing together because that says, even though maybe for reasons of health we’re not functioning sexually or even though we’ve forgotten to love each other with compassion and care we’re going to love anyway, we make up our minds to love and I can say for our marriage, I’m fifty two years married, now that’s been the strength of our marriage because most of the time we love being married but I must confess there are some times when it hasn’t been that nice, not too often these days.

That’s because we have chosen to love. We both said after the day we got married, that was it, we through the key away, there was no door out, we had chosen to live together and we still choose to live together in marriage.

Berni: Barry can I ask you about this because kind of listening to you it sounds almost like there’s no heart in this, it’s a decision, it’s a head thing but it is a heart thing too isn’t it?

Barry: Well it’s interesting you say that because the word Agape was not popular in Biblical times, we have very little reference to it used outside of the Bible, I think there’s only three extant manuscripts that use the word for that reason, people thought it was a cold word and they didn’t like to use it and they’d much rather use a warm word, warmer like the Latin word “amore” like the Italian. It’s a warm sort of word, they preferred those words. This was a word that God chose because He wanted, I think, to understand that while the other kinds of love are valuable this kind of love is the one that at the end of the day is the only one that will stand at the end of the day. If all the others fall this one will still stand.

It does seem cold, it does seem almost calculating in a sense but it isn’t because a warmth comes out of it and the others kind of stand on it and build on it. So it’s part of an overall kind of package deal if you like but it’s the most important part.

Berni: Someone’s listening today who’s been hurt in love, maybe in a marriage relationship, maybe in a Church situation, they’re struggling to believe what you’re saying about God’s love for them, what do you say to that person today?

Barry: Well first of all experience Gods love for yourself for a start, you’ve really got to reach out to God and let His love touch your life, that’s the first thing because when you’ve experienced Gods love then it’s much easier to love other people.

Berni: How do you do that?

Barry: Well it’s remarkably simple, just talk to God and there’s no queue, you don’t have to wait for press one, press two, press three, press four, you just go straight through.

Berni: Wow, cool.

Barry: You actually get through to a live person and He speaks to you. And prayer is like that, the beautiful thing about prayer, the amazing thing about prayer is that anytime, anywhere God hears us when we pray. And if we genuinely come to Him with a sincere heart say, “God I just need to feel your love, I need to know your love in my life”. Now He’s going to answer that prayer and that then enables us to love other people and to make love work out in practice. So it starts with Him.

Berni: And should we ever doubt we need to just look at the cross.

Barry: Yeah that’s exactly right.

Berni: Thanks Barry. And look Barry’s written this fabulous book ‘Living In The Image Of God’, if you’d like to get a copy the easiest way is go online and visit www.barrychant.com and you’ll be able to order a copy there.

One of the issues that divides the church all too often is the question of being filled with the Holy Spirit, or baptised in the Spirit as some like to say. Is it for real, is it something weird that someone dreamed up recently? What’s really going on.

How you going today? Ready for something really, really interesting, a bit of a challenge for some? Good. Speaking of challenging I’m joined on the program again today by Dr Barry Chant, author of the recently released book, “Living In The Image Of God”.

Now Barry, as well as being a pastor and a teacher is a learned theologian, two PhD’s at last count, although why would anyone need two doctorates is beyond me, just kidding, and one of the things he writes about in his book is Holistic Spirituality.

In other words it’s the whole person who’s called to follow Jesus, body, soul and spirit. Barry comes from Pentecostal tradition and so today I’m going to ask him to share with us his perspective, his understanding on what being filled with the Holy Spirit is all about.

The Bible commands us, Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18:

To be filled with the spirit.

And yet it’s an issue that has caused so much division through the Church between the Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians on the one hand and the more Conservative/Evangelical Christians on the other and I do hesitate to use any of those labels to pigeon hole people in any way but if God is spirit, if we’re commanded to be filled with the Spirit I wonder why is this such a hot issue? Why is this such an issue of division across the Church?

Berni: Barry welcome again today. Listen what’s your take on this? Why are we so divided on this subject?

Barry: Thanks Berni, nice to be with you once again. Yeah it’s a good question isn’t it? You’d think that our desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit is something which would unite us rather than divide us.

Berni: Yeah.

Barry: Look sometimes it’s just a matter of terminology. Sometimes people talk at loggerheads because they’re using the same words but with different meanings. For example, there are people who think that the phrase, “baptised in the Holy Spirit” refers to conversion and so if you suggest to them they’re not baptised in the spirit then they get quite justly upset. On the other hand for Pentecostal’s the phrase “baptised in the spirit” refers to something different from conversion and so they have a different understanding of that and just these different understandings can cause confusion.

So I’m in the practice of avoiding that term and use something different. So I have a book for example, called, “Empowered By the Spirit” which avoids the controversy over the term baptised.

Look I don’t really want to argue about that, all the terminology, that’s the worst thing we can do. The question is to go back to what you said in your introduction, are we filled with the Spirit? That’s the question. For me, my attitude has been for many years I just want to be a Spirit filled person and so whatever it takes I’ll go for that.

I do find it hard to understand why there’s such an edginess about say something like speaking in tongues in certain quarters when there doesn’t really need to be. It’s simply a way of recognising that God’s Spirit has come into your life. Let me back track a bit on that one because again the phrase, “speaking in tongues” is another way that is controversial.

Berni: We’re going to talk about that tomorrow.

Barry: Okay.

Berni: We’re going to talk about that tomorrow on the program. Today though, tell me what does the Bible say about being filled with the Holy Spirit? What does the Bible say?

Barry: Well first of all what Jesus said, you’ll remember, when Jesus died, was crucified, was raised again that He spent some time with His disciples and He told them that they should not leave Jerusalem until they had been empowered by the Holy Spirit and all the Gospels record that one way or another.

Now this is a remarkable thing because here was a group of men who spent three years with Jesus. They had helped Him with baptism’s, they had helped Him with His preaching and His teaching, they had done some healing, they’d done some miracles, I mean they were right in there with Jesus.

Berni: Almost like going to Tabor College really wasn’t it?

Barry: Well it’s almost as good, yeah. (Both laugh) I shouldn’t say that, it’s almost blasphemous, nothing could compare with that. To have three years with Jesus Himself …

Berni: Awesome.

Barry: I mean just unbelievable. So they’re with Him for three years and yet when He rises from the dead and now they’re witnesses of His resurrection as well and talk to Him, risen from the dead and He still says to them, “You’re not ready to go and preach, wait until the Holy Spirit comes upon you”. And I just think if Jesus disciples if after all that, they’re not ready to go and preach, who in the world do I think I am if I think I’m ready without the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

That’s the first thing. And secondly of course the Bible just says straight out that we need to be Spirit filled people. I think it’s a pity we’ve come to argue about some of the terminology because that’s really not the issue. The issue is, is the spirit of God working in my life? And certainly when we look at the New Testament there’s not a hint anywhere in the New Testament about the thing the disciples experienced was only for them.

Berni: Well I was going to ask you about that.

Barry: It’s just not there and people say, “Oh that was only for Bible days”. Look, even historically it’s not for Bible days just. If you look through some of the writings of the Church fathers in the second or third or fourth century there are consistent references to the fullness of the Spirit and spiritual gifts like prophecy and healing, casting out of demons, all those things.

They’re not just in the Bible they go on for generations, for centuries after the Bible was finished. So it’s not even historically true to say those things cease with the completion of the New Testament but also of course the Bible itself affirms that. There are many places in the New Testament which record stories of people who are already Christians receiving the power of the Holy Spirit.

Berni: Well the Ephesians are amongst them aren’t they?

Barry: An obvious example. But the same applies to the Church of Samaria, the new Church of Samaria as well. The same thing happened after it was some time between when they received Christ as saviour and believed the Gospel until they were empowered by the spirit but then the New Testament letters, they’re constantly talking about the need to be Spirit filled and it’s just over and over again.

And then we have passages like in Corinthians talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, extraordinary gifts like working of miracles and healing the sick and prophesying and speaking in tongues, all these things are listed there and there’s not a reference anywhere, there’s not a hint anywhere in the New Testament that says these are only for this generation, it’s just not there. Now people try and find reason to argue that it was, that it does say that but it’s not a very convincing argument.

Berni: Can I ask you? Is part of the reason that people shy away from this, you know the experience of the Toronto blessing, some stuff happened there that a whole bunch of people are critical of and don’t understand, I’m not judging in any way saying good, bad or indifferent but is that in part what influences people?

Barry: Partly, and you mentioned the thing of the Toronto blessing which was mainly around 1995 but we can go back a long way before that and find …

Berni: Oh I forget I’m talking to a Pentecostal historian now.

b Unfortunately even go back hundred’s of years when revival movements often tend to have their radical element whatever revival, whether it was the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century or the Methodist of the eighteenth to whatever it is, there tend to be radical elements and sometimes the radical elements will scare people off. And that’s happened in the last hundred years as well. Because of some radical element some people have backed off and you can’t blame them in a sense because some weird things have been done. Yeah that is one of the reasons. And it’s very hard for people to change their traditions, it’s extremely hard especially if a Church, once they’re set up in a certain tenant it’s very difficult for them to change that.

Berni: I guess the thing you said earlier that really resonates with me is from your perspective, your position is you just want as much of God as God’s going to give you.

Barry: And when people come with that attitude … I was praying with a beautiful young woman, a Presbyterian background a few months ago and she began to pray for the Holy Spirit to come, she said to me, “I’ve had a Presbyterian upbringing, I’m grateful for that, they’ve taught me the Scriptures but I just need more of God, I just need more of God.” She emailed me the next day to say that as she was walking back along George Street afterwards – right in the centre of Sydney for those who don’t know Sydney, it’s a main street in Sydney – and she said she just quietly found herself speaking in tongues and then she started to cry and just weeping with just a great sense of God’s love and joy touching her life.

And she said, “I’m trying to wipe these tears off without everybody in George Street saying, ‘what’s wrong with this girl?’” God had just touched her but the reason why? She just said, “I just wanted God in my life, I want more of God”.

Berni: That’s the answer isn’t it? Barry thanks for that.

Speaking in tongues – drop that into the conversation in some Christian circles and you’ll be in some hot water pretty quickly. And yet as weird as it may seem to some people, the Bible actually talks about it. Well, what does the Bible say, and what does it mean for us here and now?

If you were able to join us yesterday on the program you would have heard my guest, Barry Chant, talking about being filled with the spirit or baptised in the Holy Spirit and whether you agree with his take on God’s Word in this whole area or not, well it’s not really the point. The point is that God wants us to want Him. God wants us to want as much of Him as He’s prepared to give us.

So if you didn’t catch that discussion I’ll let you know at the end of the program how you can listen to that online. But today we’re going to chat about something that’s even more contentious than baptism of the Holy Spirit amongst Gods people and that is praying in the spirit or praying in tongues.

Now we’ve never talked about that on the program and this is episode number one thousand seven hundred and ninety five of A Different Perspective. Barry’s only one of two or three people whom I would allow to talk about this subject on this program.

Why? Two reasons. Firstly he’s a scholar and a theologian whom I respect deeply and secondly as someone who’s pastored Churches and taught many students over many years, he has the compassion to share his understanding of this subject in the right way. So agree with him, disagree with him that’s fine but hear him out.

Berni: So Barry in a sense today it’s over to you, welcome to the program.

Barry: Okay thanks Berni; it’s nice to be here again.

Berni: Speaking in tongues, praying in the Spirit is something that for many, many people is really kind of, well weird. It doesn’t fit I guess with the western mind set not that all of our listeners come from the western world, far from it. Tell me why does this whole speaking in tongues thing feel so weird, why does this subject cause so much division in God’s Church today?

Barry: I’m not sure I can speak for all the people who don’t like it; I don’t know why some of them think the way they do but can I just make one little technical comment? I prefer to use the phrase praying with the Spirit rather than in the spirit. Praying in the Spirit I think embraces a lot more than speaking in tongues.

Berni: Okay.

Barry: It includes praying with the fruit of the spirit for example, so praying with love, praying with joy, praying with peace, praying with patience and so on, praying with kindness so it’s a much bigger subject but praying with the spirit is technically a Biblical term, it technically does mean speaking with tongues because although it’s the Holy Spirit who enables us to do it, speaking in tongues actually comes from the human spirit and the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 14 says that quite clearly. He says:

When I pray in a tongues my spirit prays. So I will pray with my understanding and I will pray with my spirit.

He’ll pray both ways with language that he knows or languages that he knows and the language of the spirit. So when we’re speaking in tongues it actually doesn’t come through the mind or the intellect, it comes from the Spirit. Now some people find that a problem because that say, what’s the point of saying something you don’t understand if it’s coming from his spirit not his mind? Which is a fair question but yet it’s clearly taught in Scripture that we don’t understand intellectually what’s happening.

But if you think about that we do a lot of things we don’t understand.

Berni: Oh my wife certainly does. (Both laugh)

Barry: Music is an example, for instance there are many people who enjoy music that cannot read a note of music, have no idea of the names of the instruments are that they’re listening to but are deeply moved by the music. So romantic music makes us feel all gooey, and military music we want to salute the flag, and toe tapping music we want to tap our toes. And the music touches us almost instantly and it affects our mood and it speaks to us non intellectually, not foolishly but it’s not part of our intellect, it is an emotional response or a spiritual response almost.

Now praying in tongues is a bit like that, it’s not an intellectual exercise but it is a deeply spiritual one that affects us. Deeply spiritually because it’s our spirits that are praying and the other thing probably that puts people off is the phrase ‘tongues’. It would actually have been helpful if the translators had used the word language instead and said it’s praying an unknown languages rather than unknown tongues. That would have perhaps given it a more recognisable format because that’s all that’s happening, say all but that’s what’s happening is when we pray in tongues we’re actually simply praying to God in another language not necessarily a human one.

Berni: Can I ask you about that? Of course Pentecost they did pray in human languages.

Barry: But that’s the only case we know of in the Bible when that happened and there’s no evidence another case it was necessarily human tongue, in fact Paul hints in 1 Corinthians 13, a very well known passage, saying:

I may pray in the tongues of men and of angels.

There seems to be room there to be saying that speaking in tongues maybe in fact speaking some kind of heavenly or angelic language, sometimes we just call it a prayer language, it is using a prayer language and certainly the Scripture says that when we speak in tongues we are speaking to God and not to men, Paul talks about praying in tongues and giving thanks in tongues and I prefer to use, well you used the word when we started, praying with the spirit because speaking in tongues is really praying in tongues, it’s praying to God from our spirits rather than from our minds.

Berni: Can I ask you what’s the point because it does seem foreign to a lot of people and I understand that? What’s the point of it?

Barry: Well it enables us to communicate with God in a way that we’re not limited by our human restrictions. In Romans chapter 8 the Apostle Paul says, we don’t know what to pray for us Lord but the spirit helps us in our weakness and I think what’s happening when you speak in tongues sometimes we don’t know what to pray for, we don’t know what we should ask for, we don’t know how to pray but the Holy Spirit enables us, when we speak in a heavenly language He enables us to pray in words given by the Holy Spirit.

Bob Mumford a well known speaker used to say, ‘It works like this, you’ll be praying in your own language and saying, “Oh God I really need a new BMW, my old Holden is no good, my Ford’s no good, I need a new BMW”. And then,’ he says, ‘you start to pray in tongues. What the Holy Spirit has you saying is, “Don’t listen to him Father, his Holden’s fine, he doesn’t need a new car at all”.’

That’s an extreme example but in a sense it’s saying the Holy Spirit knows what to pray for and makes us pray for the right things but it’s more than that too, there’s a spiritual encounter with God through speaking in tongues and I’ve seen this so often. Just three days ago in a local Church where I preached, I prayed for some people after the service to be filled with the Holy Spirit at the request of their pastor.

We prayed together and one young lady, she began to cry as we were praying then she began to speak in tongues, about half an hour later I just went up to her and said, “How are you going? Are you okay?” “Oh yes”, she said, there’s tears running down her cheeks and she’s smiling at the same time and she just experienced God and it’s such a joy just to look at her and it wasn’t just that she spoke in tongues something happened to her. Look I say the same for myself. I first spoke in tongues when I was fourteen years old, I still haven’t got over it, it still touches me.

What bothers me is that sometimes people attack speaking in tongues and they’re actually attacking prayer and I think why would you not want to pray better? Why would not want to explore a better way of praying or a different way of praying? And to me I find that bewildering at times and it can only be misunderstanding or prejudice or tradition that makes them think like that because surely if there’s a way we can pray with the Holy Spirit helping us pray better we should embrace it and we should go for it.

So I never make an issue of it but these days I don’t want to argue about it but I am an advocate of it because I really, in my own life experience of such benefit and I just love to see other people sharing that benefit as well.

Berni: Okay Barry what would you say, very quickly, to someone who says you have to speak in tongues in order to be a Christian?

Barry: Oh that is simply not true, it’s simply not true. There’s no hint of that in the Scriptures. That is one of the things that turns some people off when people have made that claim, it is simply not true. Only one thing makes you a Christian, that’s your faith in Jesus Christ.

Berni: What a great place to finish. Barry thank you so much for having joined us over this past couple of weeks, we really do appreciate it and if you’d like to get a hold of Barry’s book, “Living In The Image Of God” just stop by www.barrychant.com and you’ll be able to grab a copy. God bless you mate, thank you very much.

Barry: Thank you Berni.