Rediscovering Refuge

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the YouTube recording's caption track, read through the transcript panel — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Because of the Times 2009 · The Pentecostals of Alexandria, Alexandria, LA Topics: The Church · Family · Christian Living

Terry Shock opens with praise and thanks — for the ministry already heard in the conference, and for the privilege of standing there under the pressure every preacher in the room understands — and directs the house to two short scriptures, which he reads aloud himself: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble; and where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. His subject is rediscovering refuge, and he prays that the word be anointed and that hearers be anointed to make the change they need.

Scriptures: Psalm 46:1; Proverbs 11:14

The need for refuge.

The world is increasingly dangerous — the serpent of Genesis become the dragon of Revelation — and we are in 2009, whether anyone believed we would make it or not. What has never changed is our need for refuge: not a place to hide, but a safe place to renew and regroup so we can lead and fight again, a place to celebrate victories and regroup from defeats. God is our refuge, and we are his counterparts on earth — people who need refuge and people who must be a refuge. The first mention of refuge in the word of God is the cities of refuge, six of them, three on each side of the Jordan, and as much effort went into the roads that led to them as into the cities themselves: refuge has always been high on God's priority list. (The cities are expounded as the sermon's frame; no wording of their passages is voiced, and the packet indexes nothing from them.) His burden is fresh: he missed General Conference that year, but afterward heard of the new Points of Refuge ministry — Brother Libby leading it, Brother Kinsey on the committee — and he charges the house to pray for those men and protect them. We must rediscover refuge in the church, because many churches are too unsafe; some are downright dangerous.

Scriptures: (none in this movement)

Assassins in the church.

He thinks of the people who no longer come — the rebels and devils who would never stay, yes, but also the ones who meant well, became distracted, and drifted into spiritual disaster, like Abner, tricked into stepping out of the city of refuge to die as a fool. (Abner is narrated, not read; the packet indexes nothing from it.) He tells of being called to an accident scene a few months before: a 23-year-old crewman on a church member's sewer crew stepped outside the trench box he had been told never to leave, and a cave-in killed him; Shock will never forget the man's father on his knees in the emergency room, beating the floor. Some who step out decide it and nothing can be done — but he cannot shake the feeling that for some of the spiritual deaths in the church and the ministry, the church itself bears blame, because while we scream about the dangers in the world, what about the assassins loose in the church? His text for it is Proverbs: death and life are in the power of the tongue. Assassins have taken out people of vision and raw, undeveloped leadership misread as aggression or rebellion; we teach our kids to ask questions because that is how they learn, then kill young emerging leaders for the same reason. In an information age, an explosion of knowledge means an explosion of questions, and the church must provide answers — or at least be a place where people can be talked with, prayed with, and walked lovingly to the line instead of being shown the door.

Scriptures: Proverbs 18:21

Truth in the inward parts.

A place of refuge is not blind protection or a place where anything goes: the cities of refuge guaranteed a diligent process to find and support the truth, and a church is no true refuge unless truth reigns at its core — doctrinal truth, personal truth, interactive truth. He reads John's record of Jesus to the Jews who believed on him: if you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And from David's gut-wrenching prayer of repentance he takes the statement in verse six: behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts. Our churches will never be safe until the pursuit of truth reigns supreme — and people will only tell the truth where they feel safe. Rediscovering refuge also means embracing the law of process: Jesus could have laid his hand on a baby and made an adult, and never did.

Scriptures: John 8:31-32; Psalm 51:6

The eleventh-hour church.

Matthew 20 gives the insight: the householder hired at the early hour, at nine, noon, three, and at the eleventh hour, and when the first came for their pay supposing they should receive more, every man received a penny, and they murmured — these last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us — and the householder answered, friend, I do thee no wrong; take that thine is, and go thy way; is thine eye evil, because I am good? Shock names the disease: an entitlement mentality that resents the eleventh-hour worker's equal place. He tells what went off in him sitting under Brother Haney's preaching at that same conference about preachers taking other denominational churches — that is vision — and settles his own position: he is not the owner of the vineyard, and the next morning he will be back out in it, however the owner runs it. Then, with Wayne Huntley's express permission — Shock called and asked him — he retells Huntley's own story: Huntley was not raised with a great father as an example; when his father got out of control, his mother would take him, as a boy, into the church the preacher had given her a key to, and that is where they would sleep, and he went to school many days from the church pews. That is refuge; that is a safe church.

Scriptures: Matthew 20:10-15

Refuge in the home.

Our churches are unsafe because our homes are unsafe. Melanie and he have named 2009 "elephant season" in their house — identifying the big issues that were little and cute when they first married and have grown until you cannot just open the door and let them out; you have to remodel something. We stay so busy we do not connect, or busy so we will not have to, and ministers hide behind the work of God — play the God card, and the game is over. The fact is plain: there are too many emotionally dead couples leading churches, and we need a resurrection — one that takes both God and man, the supernatural and the natural, as at Lazarus's grave, where Jesus spoke resurrection into the body but people had to unwrap him and set him free. (Lazarus is narrated as application; the packet indexes nothing from it.) Hurt and offense will come — with a woe to the one who causes it, he notes in paraphrase — and hurt at home and hurt at church is magnified hurt, because those are the places we were supposed to be able to be safe. (The offense saying is carried in paraphrase; the packet prices it and does not index it.)

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

The enemy is me.

To quote Pogo: we have met the enemy, and he is us. No one has inflicted more pain, confusion, and limitation on Terry Shock than Terry Shock — his failure to prioritise his relationship with God, and with his wife and their two children, above anyone or anything else; his failure to slow down, think big thoughts, and keep asking what God is saying now. He tells of preaching Father's Day in that very church, an emotional wreck over his father and his father-in-law, and of Brother Lumpkin following him to his office afterward to ask whether he was going to settle to preach sermons instead of truly minister. It started almost three years before: a small group at his house, led by counsellor and minister Sharon Turner, where the two closest men to him, Pastor Tim Rutledge and Ryan Franklin, called him a machine — meant as a compliment — and Melanie told him that night they were right: an emotionless machine, driven by duty at all costs. He made the decision to go to Sharon Turner for personal and professional Christian counselling. Tubing, snorkelling, scuba diving: most people just hang on; he decided he would scuba dive emotionally. And he ties it back to his opening text: where no counsel is, the people fall — he used it as his text for this very reason, because if emotional health is not war, there is no war.

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

Success redefined.

One main reason we are not safe: our definition of success in the ministry is grossly distorted. Success is not proven by positions, friends, connections, homes, cars, clothes, trips, and stuff. He tells of a friend in the clothing business whose customers would buy clothes before a conference and return them after it — and asks what we have contributed to an atmosphere that makes anybody feel they had to. If success is based on what is accumulated on earth, then poor sister Freeman is a first-class failure — and so is Jesus: no home (he voices Jesus' own saying of the foxes, the birds, and the Son of man with nowhere to lay his head — the packet prices that wording, voiced without a location, and does not index it), no wife or children, no chariot, not even a donkey, no position. Jesus would be considered a complete failure by the definition of success adopted by many in that room — and that proves how unsafe we are. True success is seeking the will of God and doing it.

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

The red-word revival.

Why do we not have the power we desire? He sends the house back in their minds through the great revivals of the book of Acts and the Epistles, the outpouring at Pentecost, the Ascension, the burial, the crucifixion, all the way back to God in the flesh laying the foundation — because it is foolish and deadly to empower immaturity: we never put a loaded magnum in the hands of a three-year-old. (The Acts material is narrated as history; no wording of it is voiced in the sermon, and the packet indexes nothing from it.) The gifts are power; the fruit stabilises — what our gifts draw, our lack of fruit will repel — and the reason we are not safe is that Christ is no longer our supreme example for everyday life; the spirit of religion is deadly even in an Apostolic church. What is needed is a red-word revival: everybody reading the red words like never before. And he reads them aloud himself, located one by one — from Matthew 5, beginning at verse 38: an eye for an eye answered with the turned cheek, the cloak given with the coat, the compelled mile gone twain, give to him that asketh thee, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them which despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; from Matthew 7: judge not, that ye be not judged — with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again; and one more, from Luke 6: as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. Our churches do not have to remain unsafe places, and our families do not have to remain unsafe families — but it comes down to whether we will be safe people, and the only way is to get Jesus back where Jesus is supposed to be: what did he say about my everyday life? That is what I will do.

Summary scripture index (the exact union of the sections above): Psalm 46:1 · Proverbs 11:14 · Proverbs 18:21 · John 8:31-32 · Psalm 51:6 · Matthew 20:10-15 · Matthew 5:38-45 · Matthew 7:1-2 · Luke 6:31

Scriptures: Matthew 5:38-45; Matthew 7:1-2; Luke 6:31