Hi all,
During the time I was on staff as the Bible school Director of a large megachurch, about 1998 or 1999, a well known teacher was a guest speaker during a week-long conference. Because of my position Barb and I were seated on the front row a few seats from the Pastor. At one point the speaker asked the congregation to come forward and leave $100 cash or checks written to her on the platform as a point of faith. When I say ‘asked’ I am being polite. More like yelled at, urged, exhorted, preached at, all with a dose of condemnation for those who didn’t comply. It was to get from God whatever the desire was: Healing, financial breakthrough, loved one to be saved, or something else.
Barb and I were horrified at her manipulation, and were even more horrified when senior members of the church staff got up and did as she requested. To my great shame I too got up and left a check on the platform in what would prove to be the last ‘fear of man’ act of my life. I glared at the pastor as I walked back to my seat, wanting him to put a stop to the nonsense. But at the same time I felt pressured by him and my immediate boss (the Associate Pastor) to comply.
Some time after that set of meetings I got the dreaded phone call from the pastor. When I saw the caller ID on my office phone I froze in fear, but just then the Lord spoke to me: “I’m the one who put you here and I’m the only one who can remove you.” All fear of being fired left, peace came, and I answered the phone. (I wasn’t fired)
The core teaching from; ‘Give $100 to get your answered prayer’, finds its roots in the earlier Word of Faith teaching of the 100 fold return.
That phrase is from Mark 4: 1-20, the Parable of the Sower (Planter). In v1-8 Jesus teaches the parable of the planter planting seed; Some fell by the path and birds came and ate the seed. Other seed fell on stony ground, but because it had no soil once sprouted it dried up and withered away. Some fell among thorns (weeds) and the weeds choked off the seed so it never grew to the point it produced. And in v8, some fell on good ground and produced some thirty, some sixty, and some one hundred fold.
He went into detail privately with the disciples in v13-20, explaining the ground represents the human heart, and the various conditions the Word (Jesus is the Word) finds when it (He) is planted in hearts. The good soil produced He said now for the 2nd time in v20; “Some 30, some 60, some 100 fold”. The rest of the chapter through v34 is related to this parable, including the instruction to be careful what we hear, and that how we value the things of God is how He will give to us. (v24)
Word of Faith (WOF) teachers took the ‘100 fold return’ out of context, turning it into a teaching about giving – give to get – that if you give $10 God will give you back $100 or $1000. Clearly that is wrong. Here is what Jesus meant by the expression; “some 30, some 60, some 100 fold return.”
This was a common agricultural assessment of a crop.
Farmers would talk of getting 30, 60, or 100 fold return on their crop in any given year. The ‘100 fold return’ is not a mathematical statement, but rather one of completion, maturity, the best one could get out of the given situation. Consider that if a seed falls on stony ground and only sprouts, that is the best it could have done in that situation. If a seed falls among thorns and weeds and grows up but gets choked off, it is the best that seed could have done in that situation.
The good heart is like good soil and produces 100 fold – not a literal amount, but of maturity and completion. It produced the highest and best it could because it had good soil. Today we use 10 or 100 in the same way. For example: On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your interaction with our team member today? Or: How pretty is she (or handsome is he)? A 6 or 8? How do you like our product on a scale of 1 to 100? You aren’t literally saying you found the number 10 or 100 as a mathematical formula, rather a representation of the highest and best. That’s how Jesus was using percents.
I read once somewhere about a farmer whose crop got hit by hail. But it wasn’t a total loss, for he was able to harvest enough to pay the bank what he owed and live on for the next year. But all around him farmers were completely wiped out, unable to meet their loan payments. While the farmer was very disappointed with his crop, a friend pointed out he was in far better condition than any other farmer in the area, telling him he got a 100 fold return – he got the best return he could for the given circumstances.
Let me say it another way. Sometimes because the situation is rocky, you will only get a 30 fold return – but that is the best you could do given the situation. Sometimes ‘weeds’ may have grown up to interfere with a transaction or family situation, giving you only 60 fold of what you wanted. But for the situation, 60 fold was the best you could do. You got the most out of it by God’s grace that could be had for that situation.
This kind of thing happens all the time in our lives – God’s grace in difficult situations – and we need to start seeing that while we often don’t get the fullness of the ‘crop’ we desired, we did by His grace get the fullness of what we could given the situation. It may be just 30 or 60 fold, but it was the highest and best possible outcome for the given situation.
Can the devil hear your prayer language? (And is there a prayer language with which we speak to the devil?)
I Corinthians 13: 1: “Though I speak in the tongues (languages) of men and angels, if I don’t have love…” In Romans 8: 26-27 we are told our infirmity is that we don’t know how to pray as we should, so the Holy Spirit joins us so that we pray ‘according to the will of God’, speaking of tongues.
A key point in that verse is that tongues is to the Father. It isn’t to the devil. There are intense tongues spoken in intercession during which you know you are heavily interceding for someone and the Father uses that prayer to Him to help the oppressed be free of demonic forces and strengthened spiritually and emotionally, but the prayer is to the Father. I remember once seeing a famous TV preacher bringing someone on stage for deliverance and telling the crowd to stretch their hands towards the woman and pray in tongues ‘against the devil’. Nope, that isn’t what the New Testament says. Tongues goes to the Father. The devil doesn’t shriek at the sound of your prayer language. He isn’t afraid. To him, it’s a language like any other of men or angels – from which he came.
We might ask: Does the devil understand the words of an American, German, Chinese, Spanish or Italian? Yes, for the devil and his minions are all over the planet. So does he also understand languages of angels, from whom he fell? Yes, of course. If I move to Germany and need to speak German, I was raised with American English and will remember it. So what difference does it make if the devil understands what I am praying to the Father, whether in my native language or a heaven-given language I never learned?
I asked the Lord in a visitation when He was teaching me some of these things: “Why tongues? It’s so controversial and misunderstood.” He replied (shortened): “If you can receive this, the earth was delegated to man, so for the most part the Father and I function by invitation in the earth. Though we retain our right as Creator. But man doesn’t know how to pray as he should. The Father had to find a way to by-pass man’s ignorance to get His will done on earth. He does this by giving a person a language they never learned, by-passing their ignorance, and filling that language with His will and His emotions and His desires, in their spirit. Then they pray it to Him, completing the loop and make the transaction legal. For truly, truly I tell you: No one will be able to bring accusation against us on that day. All will be revealed to have been done justly and in righteousness.”
That may be lots to think about, enough for today, I’ll close the series next week. Until then, blessings,
John Fenn
