MATURITY (part 1)

Mature – it’s how I like my English Cheddar. ‘Aged’ is not quite the same concept. Though wine can age well, people rarely do, and fresh bread never ages well. Generally, maturity speaks of reaching the most advance stage in a process, being fully grown, or fully developed. Biblically, it refers to wisdom over knowledge [1 Corinthians 2:6], the ability to discern [Hebrews 5:14], and just as important – the ability to help others [Ephesians 4:13-15].

Ever since I first stumbled into the Charismatic Movement, aged 15, discernment was the true treasure to have. Back in 1977, people still had a possessive approach to the gifts, identifying themselves as prophets and healers and speakers in celestial tongues. The indignant church conservatives said we all lacked discernment, otherwise we’d see through these emotional charlatans. As a bewildered teenager, I too longed for spiritual discernment. In my ignorance, I never felt easy with such a crude literal understanding of God’s supernatural interventions. God wasn’t so much handing out gifts, like it was someone’s birthday, He was simply being true to Himself – He was being gracious. It was another five years or so before I learnt that the word charismatic was from the Greek word charis – meaning ‘grace’.

As one of the last Baby-Boomers (b.1962), seasons change. In the Summer of ’86 and ’87 my diary was filled with weddings, now, sadly, I’ve already lost a number of dear friends to cancer and heart disease – the seasons change. As far back as the last decade of the twentieth century, there was talk and books about being post-Charismatic – yuk! What does that even mean? A new form of cessationism for ageing Jesus-hippies!?

We believed for so much, hoped for so much, prayed and wept for a move of God, but come 1994 disillusionment flooded in. We read reports of the Toronto Blessing, and thought – been there, done that, got the t-shirt. There’s nothing new here, ten years earlier Wimber and the Signs & Wonders bandwagon had rolled into town – we got slain, we got filled, we got healed, we got delivered(!), we bought the teaching tapes and signed up for the regular worship cassettes. However, the majority of the church back then, even the so-called Charismatics, weren’t ready. Our Westernised minds had more questions than desire, more cynicism than faith.  

STOP!!

I repented. It was now 1996, at the time, I lived within walking distance of Holy Trinity Brompton. I attended the meetings – meetings, huh? What meetings? We stacked away the chairs, found some carpet space, and invited the Holy Spirit to fall afresh. Wow! What’s not to like?  

In 1999, I was at a similar meeting, it was just off Oxford Street in central London. John Arnott (of the then called, Toronto Airport Vineyard Church) was the guest speaker, and I, with some forty minutes notice, was the guest worship leader. The sixty or so Senior Pastors and business leaders who were present all found their piece of carpet, and then – BAM! I’d played Hillsong’s Shout to the Lord, and a couple of well-known Vineyard classics. Was I the nameless musician requested by Elisha in 2 Kings 6:15?

The third millennium was almost upon us, I was definitely no post-Charismatic, but nor was I spiritually satisfied, like Tommy Tenney – I was among the God chasers.

In the year 2000, I found myself in Toronto, and some 90-minutes down the road in Strafford, Ontario, I was having extended and nightly ‘carpet time’. Later that same year, I was in Argentina, among real Revivalists, no carpets in Argentina, but still, plenty of time on the floor, spiritually refreshing, prophetically enlightening and also probably good for my back. It was here, during my first visit to South America and the southern hemisphere, I met Dr Paul Cox – and discernment fell into place like a jigsaw. I’d witnessed pieces, I had an inkling of the gift, and now, a spiritual puzzle was almost complete – though with hindsight, perhaps creating more questions than answers, but as I prayed and ministered during my second week in that country, I witnessed the extraordinary in terms of discernment and deliverance.  

In Argentina, since the early days of that extensive revival, which had begun shortly after the humiliating defeat in the Falklands War, spiritual warfare had been taken seriously. Not only honest preaching, but strategic level intercession bore the fruit of thousands of converts, and also, conservative sceptics were being converted too – converted to a fuller Bible, one without all the redaction that certain systematic dogmatics had placed on God’s precious Living Text. If God was real? And He was! Then the enemy was real, and the heavenly realms were indeed inhabited, not by flesh and blood, but by powers and principalities that were hostile to the advancing Kingdom. Note I said, advancing Kingdom. Where the church is doing little, or even less, of any true spiritual value, the enemy has already won. When we start to make a difference – darkness awakes. But don’t be panicked, with just our Saviour’s breath, lawlessness and its kind is overcome [2 Thessalonians 2:8]. That breath is what made Adam a living creative spirit [Genesis 2:7], it was the same Jesus-breath in John 20:22, that empowered the disciples, rather than destroying them. Go on, join the dots… can you now see your spiritual authority in Christ Jesus to overcome darkness and bring the sounds of deliverance?

This has been long intro. to the subject of maturity. Nevertheless, I share my stories, because, in faith, I’m trusting that you also have had similar Spirit-infused encounters. If you’re a Baby-Boomer (1946-1964) or older, (please note, these age ranges can vary slightly depending on how you Google the information), or perhaps you’re part of Generation X (1964-1980), then you’ve probably been in those early Charismatic meetings where spiritual keenness, ignorance, and God’s grace generously collided – the repetition of simple songs that never got boring, carpet time, visions, even healings. You long for more, or perhaps at this stage in life, you’d just settle for a repeat. As with the older folk in Ezra 3:11-13, seeing the new being constructed and worship being practised, we find ourselves weeping. There’s a witness in our spirit. Something is missing. In the original days of the desert Tabernacle, Moses’s face shone from his God encounters. The Tabernacle of David seemed to introduce a less formal yet far more extensive time of praise [1 Chronicles 16], Obed-Edom found a new spiritual home there, and it was the structure that God promised to restore [Amos 9:11 & Acts 15:16]. Then, when Solomon’s Temple was consecrated, the manifest glory of God brought the musical proceedings to an untimely interlude. Did the people weep in Ezra 3 because of a missing building, or because they discerned His missing presence?  

In this season of maturity, we need to turn those tears, those disappointments, and even those unfair criticisms we’ve hurled at others, into something far more worthy of God’s values, we need to support and help the New Gatekeepers. Wake up and smell that ethically-sourced decaffeinated coffee, the Millennials (1980-1994) and GenZ (1994-2012) are now holding the Keys of the Kingdom and a false Key of David. False, because according to Revelation 3:7 only Christ held the key and made the decisions to open or to close. Yet I sense the church is choosing to open and close ministries, give unnecessary time to distractions, while dismissing valid Kingdom priorities. As Jesus said, “For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.” Matthew 23:13. Too harsh?

Listen up! This is not a time to retreat, or jump ship, to lick your wounds and steer a different path – we are not the remanent! Such thinking only leads to isolationism. We are spiritual parents, but remember, harsh words, criticism and dismissiveness is not going to win anyone over. You already know that – painfully, from experience. In addition, many of us were wounded by an older generation, they laughed in our faces, sniggered at our ideas, and held to their traditions forgetting that a true expression of church belongs only to Jesus. As John Wimber repeatedly discerned, “The Lord is saying, ‘Give Me back My church.’”

With an air of cynicism, we seem to be giving it to everyone but Him.

It is time for prophetic voices to arise, yet not like John the Baptist, shouting from the desert and looking weird. Please, it’s no longer the Eighties, or the Nineties, or the Noughties – our spiritual credibility is not linked to how strange or loud or socially-detached we can be. We should have moved on by now – maturity, maturity, maturity. There is a biblical context for this season, a God purpose, a spiritual strategy, though sadly, that will all have to wait until NEXT TIME.

Simon Rennie, July 2025.