Sometimes I believe that we become blind to just how much we are creatures of the current culture. In the old days of Pentecostalism, people used to go to church services for days on end. In fact, Pentecostals originally came up with the idea of “Campmeeting” which usually entailed folks “camping out” during week-long or month-long revivals. If you go back and read some of the books of that era, they contain marvelous testimonies of healings, miracles, and other gifts of the Spirit. While typing this, I recall the testimony of a young girl who was healed of terminal cancer after the minister had laid hands on her for the 15th time. That means that she attended at least 15 consecutive services prior to her healing. In today’s church, we have “Friday Nights with [Whomever]” and three-day seminars that promote multiple preachers. The seminars usually involve a myriad of topics so that each preacher may be the seminar “expert” on whatever topic he’s preaching on. These kinds of services do not lend themselves to what James calls the “implanting” of the Word for the “saving” of the soul.
In James, we read:
receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. (James 1:21b, RV).
In parsing this verse, from the Greek I cobbled together the following pseudo-translation:
you take into your grasp the permanently affixed and established inborn asset, exceptionally functioning of its own in you Word, the empowering Word, to save the souls of y’all. (James 1:21b, Smythe pseudo-translation).
(I live in Texas so “y’all” is not only grammatically correct, but completely appropriate).
If we take a hard look at this verse we see that it is only the “implanted” Word that saves the soul, not stylistic preaching. The negative is also true: “without the Word implanted, y’all’s souls aren’t going to be saved.” (In Texas, we’d say “ain’t fixin’ to be saved.”) John Lake recognized the truth of this verse with regard to healing when he said:
That is where people blunder. They will pray for a day or two and then they quit. You pray and keep on day by day and minister to your sick and they are well. (John Lake, Behold, I Give You Power)
With regard to praying, Lake was not saying that one had to constantly ask God to heal the sick. Rather, he meant that the Word had to be constantly ministered to the sick one which is why he instituted his healing rooms.
In this age of emails, iPods, and cellphones, we aren’t attuned to things taking any time. Implanting the Word so that it saves and heals does take time, usually quite a bit longer than a Friday Night with your favorite preacher.
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