Faith +
“Navy Seals of the Body of Christ”
“Tip of the arrow”
“Forerunners”
These were just some of the phrases I grew up hearing. Anyone at IHOP was considered to be at the forefront of what the Lord was doing on the earth. And if you left or were “only in the church” you, well, weren’t part of all the action. Not everyone could be John the Baptist.
I was shielded from the brunt of this as a child. My parents did an excellent job of keeping us grounded.
But still living in the IHOPKC bubble, it seeped through. I remember a competitive edge in many of the IHOP-related things I did as a kid. Who was in the prayer room more, who woke up the earliest (I abstained from that competition), who fasted more...
Thankfully my parents asked us if we wanted to fast and we would fast reasonable things as kids like TV or sugar. But I knew kids who were trying to do water or Daniel fasts. Nope.
As I reflect on the effect it had on me and everyone else, I can draw one main conclusion. We were saved by faith +.
Although everyone would preach a gospel of “faith alone”, deep down we lived differently.
We thought that if we added to the faith alone bit, we were better Christians. This is sick and distorted for about a million reasons.
It caused people, including myself, to look down on “normal” people. Were you really a good Christian if you weren’t spending 40 hours in a prayer room? People who just went to church on Sunday were seen as second-class.
This subtle messaging created a frenzy in people. It was suddenly a gospel of faith plus works. And it made people work. People had to earn their salvation, or at the very least earn God’s love and affection. God would love you more if you did your sacred trust hours.
I think most people at IHOP went there because they wanted to love Jesus. The toxic culture seeped in slowly though. Causing people to work themselves to exhaustion, live in poverty, question their salvation and love for God if they missed their sacred trust hours, and occasionally get abused by psychos.
In the last year, I have begun to notice the impact it has had on me.
A heavy yoke was put on me by people who themselves couldn’t even carry it (if only there was a Bible story about people who did that…). It was hard for me to miss my prayer room hours, even for legitimate reasons. I felt guilty every time I skipped a Tuesday fast day.
I would participate in the yearly fast at my church because I wanted to encounter God and because I didn’t want to be “less” spiritual.
The fruit of the mantel of IHOP was guilt in many ways. Guilt and condemnation. Which if I remember correctly is not the gospel.
I would feel guilty if I didn’t pray enough, spend enough time in the Word, or fast enough. But there was never a “finally” moment. You could never arrive at a destination and just rest in the Lord.
If you somehow managed to accomplish your spiritual goals for one day, you had to do it all over again the next day. There was no resting in the Lord.
I was surrounded as a kid by people who I thought were killing it. Meeting all the benchmarks. Turns out they weren’t. They weren’t even doing the basics of the gospel.
This message of faith plus works also communicated that you can pray and fast and get God to do what you want. Hear me right, I am not saying that we shouldn’t pray and ask the Lord for things. But prayer and fasting are not meant to be used to try to manipulate God to do whatever you want.
If God wants to do what you’re asking, then He will. If He doesn’t, then He won’t.
When I was in times of distress or pain and I wanted God to break in, I thought I just needed to pray a certain way and He would finally do what I needed. If you can just pray a certain way or fast a certain way then God will do what you want. The idea sounds great, but it doesn’t work like that.
God is a mystery. I pray and ask Him for things all the time. But there is no perfect formula to get God to do what you want. Not how it works. It actually sounds like how witchcraft works.
I’ve been sifting through this problem this last year. I’ve noticed that the performance do-more attitude at IHOPKC never allowed me or anyone else really to simply rest in the Lord. You could never rest in the finished work of the cross (which by the way Mike happened to never preach about, wonder why).
My church is starting to go through the book of Galatians. The overarching message of the book is simple: Faith Alone. You cannot earn your salvation, God’s affection, or a ticket into heaven.
And if you or anyone else says or acts otherwise, let them be condemned.
Putting a heavy yoke on people and essentially making them go back under “the law” is the opposite of what Jesus did.
Because of Jesus, I have inherited God’s righteousness. I did nothing to earn it, I don’t deserve it. It’s a free gift for me.
Instead of trying to prove to Jesus that I’m a good soldier who can work hard, I’ve decided to just enjoy the free gift of salvation.
All my hours in a prayer room did not make me better than anyone else. It didn’t make me more holy.
Prayer and fasting is good. It’s a way to connect to the Lord. But if you do it to prove something to yourself or God, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
I’m walking into the freedom of faith alone. I don’t have to earn God’s love or affection. I don’t have to pray harder and longer to get Him to do what I want.
I do need to make an important distinction. I am not talking about a message of “well if it’s faith alone I can do whatever I want not”. For crying out loud that theology will get you into serious trouble.
We cannot earn our salvation. But God has still put guidelines into all of our lives that we need to obey. If we sin and do not repent and turn, there will be consequences. So do not take this as a license to do whatever you want because you’re “under grace”. That makes a mockery of the cross.
I am still detangling some of the subtle mindsets that I’ve believed for all my life. I pray to God because I love Him. I ask Him for things because He is a good God and if He doesn’t do exactly what I want He probably has a good reason for it.
I cannot earn my salvation. I cannot make God like me more if I “work” harder. He already loves me the same way the Father and Son love each other. That’s enough for me. His way is much better than the IHOP way.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash