Preach Magazine Issue 3 - Preaching and the Holy Spirit | Page 17

FEATURE

Jenny Hawke is also uncomfortable
with the certainty of ‘God told me’:
‘One thing that the Vineyard is really
good at is that we’re taught to say “I
sense that” or “I feel that God might
be saying”. We don’t tend to teach
“God told me”. I’ve been in other house
churches and charismatic fellowships
where people will stand up and say
“The Lord Says…” and you think “Yes,
OK, but you might have put your spin
on it”.
‘And I can well understand some
people not being comfortable
with some of the Holy Spirit
stuff because it’s a bit
weird and it’s not
always explainable
– downright crazy,
really, some of it.’

Hawke refers
back again to
the legacy of John
Wimber. ‘All the times
I heard him speak
he’d go on all the time
about the Scripture and the
background and the context and
what’s God saying then and what
God’s saying now and then he’d just
stand there and say “Holy Spirit
come”. That was the beauty of John
Wimber; he never shouted, he never
whipped things up, there was no
hysteria, he’d shut things down if he
thought it was getting silly.
‘What I see is the danger of cynicism
as opposed to just asking questions. If
you look at it and say “I don’t believe
in prophecy”, it’s a cynicism that
taints it and closes your mind off to
stuff and I think people do lose out.’
1. Hodder and Stoughton, 2014 (pp 95, 125).
2. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/
march-web-only/enduring-revival.html

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KRISH KANDIAH
PRESIDENT OF