Core convictions
The life and work of Christ culiminated in his death on the Cross. There Jesus became the Lamb of God who died to atone for the sins of those who put their trust in him. If you make him your Saviour then he must also be your Lord and that means you become one of his disciples – followers – with all that entails.
We are convinced that ordinary believers are meant to have a supernatural impact wherever they go by following Jesus. His core message of Jesus was outlined in an incident described in Luke 4. Jesus saw himself as someone anointed with the Spirit of God to accomplish the following purposes:
- preach THE good news to those in distress
- heal the broken-hearted
- set the captives free and
- proclaim liberty to the captives.
The first thing that Jesus needed ordinary religious people to do, was to receive him and draw on his anointing to get their own lives sorted out and cleaned up through obedience to his words. He gave his followers and by implication later generations of believers, the same commission and the power to accomplish it. So through the power that only God the Father can give, we help people to get free and healed and we help them to help others in the same way.
Most people have never heard this message, preached, taught and demonstrated. Where people have heard about the Christian faith, it is often reduced to a matter of intellectual assent or dogmatic belief. We believe it is about having life in all its fullness – but to experience that life, you need to be free and healed. And you need to live a lifestyle of service to others.
Jesus said “Go into all the world … and these signs will follow those that believe…”
Signs follow in our ministry because we believe this message is for us too: People are led out of distress, broken hearts are healed, marriages are restored, people are set from from emotional and spiritual captivity and there are miracles of healing.
About faith, revival and revelation
We believe that faith is a verb. Faith is not what we believe, but it is the connection that enables us to do what we are called to do and to experience the promises that God has given us. We believe though we do not see; but faith is what empowers to see God’s goodness in action, through us. We believe that God is sovereign, the creator and sustainer of the universe but he chooses to involve us. Indeed, he generally chooses to limit himself to working through and with people.
In other words, revival will not one come as a supernatural intervention of God, rather it will be the result of a supernatural lifestyle, as a growing number of people bring their lives into alignment with the revealed word of God. We believe the word of God is expressed in the scripture and take biblical scripture as our reference standard. But we also fully aware that the Bible is interpreted through cultural and personal filters – our own included. For this reason, we believe that the experience of God speaking to us in the situations of our lives is essential and learning to hear his voice in our daily lives has to be our priority. Only then can we share in the experience of Biblical figures who did not have the written scriptures and still led vibrant spiritual lives. In other words: we live in in the expectation of relationship with a God who wants to speak to us, directly and individually and we refer to the Bible to confirms or correct our doctrines, beliefs and revelations.
We notice that in the Bible accounts, we do not see God revealing himself only after a perfect theological foundation has been laid. Instead we see God revealing himself to the uneducated and the poor in spirit. We see the educated experts of the law struggling to fit the revelation of Christ into their preconceptions. Nevertheless, we see Jesus teaching that his purpose was to fulfil and not to abolish the scriptures.
