How to Have a Home Church (Part 1) – What a Real Home Church Needs

You want to know how to get rid of people in the church? Start messing with their weaknesses. I will give you an illustration, and this person, of course, does not exist, and you’ve never known such a person. Let’s say his name is Joe Smith, and he has been to Bible school. He wants to teach, and he’s drooling at the mouth, “Teach the book,” because if you do that, you know, so-and-so. Nothing about his life is right, but he knows what he learned in the seminary. But he abuses his wife; he blames her for everything. Now here’s the Bible teacher, and he’s in the meetings, and what he’s doing to his wife is awful. He’s doing it with Bible verses, and he’s just doing that up here out of pure meanness. He’s got one foot firmly planted in the world and one foot in the church. He smokes pot. He plays pool. Goes to the meetings. Wants to teach the Bible. He treats his wife like chattel.

Do you want to know how to get rid of him? Simple. Confront him with his conduct toward his wife, and he will disappear. Like Casper’s ghost, he will no longer be there. This is a hard problem. We will wrestle with it forever. But you cannot imagine how many home churches that don’t exist today because they did something that you’re not going to do. There’s a problem, and somebody finally has to deal with it. It is so gross, beyond anything probably anybody in this room could even hope to imagine. Then something gets so horrible that it is outside the bounds of anyone, and then some brother, or brothers, someone finally sits down and tries to deal with it. And the minute he does, that church is about to die, because whatever is done, there is a good number of people in that body of believers who say, ” What you did was not Christian. That wasn’t Christian. That wasn’t Christian. You shouldn’t have done that.”

We should have gone ahead and taken this bank robber who bootlegs, makes a living doing drugs on the side, who sells drugs out of his kitchen, and you ask him to either stop doing this or stop attending the meetings. That wasn’t Christian. Gene, you know that never happened. Oh yes, it did. And yes, some said it wasn’t Christian. Well, you want to be a church? Yes. There’s not one of us but sometimes or other we’ll have needs that need to be met. Some of it is love. Sometimes it is care. Sometimes it is helping. Sometimes it’s something that’s really negative and has to be said. Are you going to be willing to not split a church because you don’t think they did it in the way Jesus would do it?

I want to talk to you about that. I think you’re right as long as you’re in the four Gospels, because in the four Gospels, there wasn’t a church. And it’s really curious that the only time the Lord ever clearly spoke about the church in all four Gospels, He was explaining how to excommunicate people from the church. If I am not speaking to you the truth, then you write me a letter and prove my point, and I’ll send you ten silver dollars. That’s what He spoke about. Read it and study it really carefully.

But anyway, there is Jesus, the loving, caring One who puts up with everything. You go over in the epistles, and you’ve got a different world. You don’t have to read the letters. Just read the last chapter of all of them. Just read the last chapter, except Revelation- just all the other epistles. Just read the last chapter. They’re constantly dealing with problems, and hopefully they’re doing it all in grace, and so will we.

Now, I’m trying to talk you out of taking this step forward. I’m going to touch on something else. I think I’m about to put my foot into a quagmire that I’m going to regret, but I’m going to hold my nose and jump in. We should meet one another’s needs. You will fall in love with one another because you will fall in love with the Lord Jesus Christ, and it just follows. You fall in love with all His other sons and daughters. And it just happens that way: The church should heal.

Now, there is only one way that is interpreted, and that’s the Pentecostal way. We heal; that means we do this. Well, that’s not the way we’re going to heal. We’re going to do that, but that is so callous. You’re a perfect stranger. I put hands on you, and you either do or you don’t get healed. I don’t know. I go off to the next city, and I tell you about how there were thousands there, and they came forward, and this one fell out in the Spirit, and this one did this. I have no idea whether those people got healed.

Now here’s my definition of a healer, and we shall go by it. A healer is someone who prays for the sick. If they get well, fine. If they don’t get well, we’ll keep trying. We’ll pray for them, and we will look for other solutions. You don’t have to do that. Just go ahead and make noise. It doesn’t matter. Okay. Try to find someone willing to do that. This comes back to messing with somebody’s life. I was explaining to the brothers today that my view of healing in the church is Luke-arian.

Luke-arian? L-U-K-E dash A-R-I-A-N. That is a man who can heal people. He can work miracles. He can raise one man from the dead. He is known for signs and wonders, and standing right beside him throughout his ministry is an MD to take care of him and others. What frustrates me, I think more than anything else in the world, isn’t that strange that this would frustrate me? Nobody ever asked me to heal them. Now, I’ll go ahead and say the thing that we’re all supposed to say at this moment. It’s not me that heals. It’s God. It’s Christ. It’s the Lord. And praise God and all that. But somebody’s got to pray. Nobody ever asked me to pray one.

I’m going to tell you something else. It’s a Santa Claus request. Come over and put your hands on me. You don’t cost anything. There’s a good chance, or some chance, or a little chance that I’ll get healed. If I don’t, I’m going back to the doctor. Well, I’m Luke-arian. I believe in doctors. We will never say give up all your pills or trust God, and he’ll heal you of your car wreck where you brought you back together and sewed you together in five places. Or some rare Chinese disease nobody’s ever heard of that is absolutely incurable, and then go back to what you’re doing. No, I will not pray with you under those conditions. I will tell you this: you go to your doctor; you do everything the doctor can do. But if you’re going to ask me to pray for you, then you are going to give me your you will give your life to me, and I will tell you what to do. The chances are excellent that you will be healed. I don’t live in the first century. I know disease was rampant in those days. But disease is rampant today, too.

When I was still in the seminary, I tried to get a job in the hospital. I didn’t want to study medicine so that I could learn something about—obliquely learn about—diseases and healing. Now let me explain. I was 18 years old. I was not married. I had never pastored a church, and I believed in healing, but I also believed I needed to know everything I could about it. I have spent my entire life seeking to learn healing, how to cure any disease there is on this earth. Now I cannot tell you I know everything there is to know, but I’m not chopped liver. Probably healing will stay in the church. I’m not Pentecostal, and I don’t wear silk clothes with $5,000 diamond rings on my hand, and I will not hit you so hard with my hand that it will break you. I want your life.

You want to get healed? I want you to get healed. Then we’re in this thing to the bloody end. I am very, very tired. No, I’m very, yes, angry, not tired. I am angry at watching friends of mine die who have never once asked me to turn to me for their healing. I’m speaking about this tonight for the very first time. If I raise up churches, if I preach Christ, if I travel, if I present the Lord, if I show God’s people how to know Him and touch Him, then I ought to have some small part in the acreage of healing. If I don’t, then somebody should question me.  Not only does no one question me, but they never ask me. But you’re going to get the entire spectrum. No, I don’t know as much as your doctor knows, but boy, I know an awful lot your doctor has never heard of. And when I see that you’re willing to give it a run, you, me, and the church will do all sorts of things to teach you well.