The Hand Of God: Multiple Uses

 Shaking Hands; Laying On Of Hands, Raising Hands

Shaking hands can bring a bond of agreement, defining a man’s “word” as truth.  The laying on of hands is a powerful tool in the Church to bring healing, impartations, consecrations, and releasing.  The raising of hands can be an act of worship of releasing and receiving. 

I remember going to Jesus 74 in Western Pennsylvania, not knowing what I was attending when I arrived.  I had just been introduced into the baptism of the Holy Spirit and began witnessing healings, deliverances, and spiritual warfare.  I met several other people from my hometown and decided to “hang out” with them through this event.  I remember one night, the Spirit was heavy, falling on entire youth groups as they collapsed into piles while being “slain in the spirit”, something I had never seen before. One young man in our group stood with hands raised in worship, but his face soon became contorted, distraught, in anguish and pain as he faced an inward struggle.  All of a sudden he turned his palms around, as if to be holding on to something, and his knees gave out as if hanging in mid air. All of us around him looked in amazement as his knees again grew strong, his hands dropped, and he dropped to the ground.  Later he confided in me that he was having a vision where satan was attacking him, trying to rob him of everything he had, and he reached out his hands to heaven crying out for help.  He said it was as if the “hand of god” reached down and grabbed his and held him until he could stand on his own.  We could not deny his vision from what we had seen with our vision watching him.

The “hand of God” is powerful, for when His hand is upon you there is confidence, fulfillment, healing, protection, and victory.  It is a powerful tool of strength.  Today, I believe, the “hand of god” manifests itself through the Church.  The Church is His hands and His feet, I have sung often in a chorus.   Let’s look at the power of the use of the “hand of God” upon our lives.

First, a man “handshake” was equal to his bond, his word, his truth and worth.  In a business deal, if two shook hands, it was a sealed deal. Today it has to be written incase one fails to back his word and the court has to be called to settle the differences.  Trust has been lost.  Today we have even lost the power of the marriage vow to prenuptial agreements because one of the two does not keep their word even though rings were placed on fingers on one’s hand as a sign of the sealed deal.

Second, the “hand of god” brings healing and deliverance.  I have seen the laying on of hands as an effective tool that has brought healing and deliverance to people.  It was like those hands grasped the sickness or demonic influences in one’s life and then released that person of them in healing when their hands were released.  I have seen the power of the laying on of hands as “impartation” to receive the Holy Spirit, then the releasing of those hands as the Spirit was released on that person’s life.  I have seen the laying on of hands as an act of support, backing, then release for someone being “sent out”, fulfilling the Great Commission, with the blessing of a local body of Christ, the Church.  Of course all this is scriptural and happened in the book of Acts.

Third, the raising of “holy hands” is an act of surrender, an act of receiving, and an act of worship.  My simple definition of worship is “giving back to God what He has given you.”  I have heaved a Charleston Grey watermelon above my head in worship, giving back the watermelon to God that He had given me as worship. You use your hands to give, and you use your hands to receive. If the Church wants to give and receive corporately, then they need to extend their fingers and hands in praise (see the last blog).

Last, two folded hands in unity, fingers interlocking, different gifting, passions, and points of view, ten distinctly different fingers overlapping in unity becomes “praying hands”.  Praying hands is an excellent visual image of unity that the body of Christ needs to practice.

A hand, composed of fingers that are distinctly different from one another, yet working together, is a powerful tool of the kingdom of god.  The “hand of god” is an extension of the different gifting, passions, and points of view working in service together to bring unity with power, the Church.  The Church is the “hand of god.”

The Hand Of God: The Apostolic Is Like A Thumb

The Purpose Of The Thumb: Creating a Power Punch?

To the question, “What is the purpose of the thumb?” Answers.com/Wiki Answers says, “To put opposing pressure against the fingers enabling the hand and fingers to grip, climb, or make a fist.”  Take a second and look at your hand, palm facing you.  All four fingers are facing your direction.  They are distinctly different in length: pointer, middle, ring, and pinky fingers.  The thumb does not face you; it faces the four fingers for the purpose of applying “pressure against the fingers” enabling the “hand” to “grip, climb, or make a fist.”  It is a process involving all five.

In the five fold gifting, passion, and point of view, I see the apostle like a thumb, it “sees over” the other four fingers, yet can not be effective unless it works with them, serves “pressure” for them, then “releases” that pressure.  It cannot apply pressure on all four at one time, only on the finger needed for the specific function at the specific time.  The thumb cannot do the work alone; it needs another finger! They key for the thumb is knowing when to “apply” pressure and when to “release” it to allow the finger to be on its own. 

It is amazing though, that the only way the hand can “receive” is when all five are extended wide open.  When all five are extended it can catch larger objects, hold them, and release them when necessary.  I have seen hands upraised toward heaven, fingers extended, reaching, waiting to grasp what the hand of God is ready to release to them as an “act of worship.”  Extended hands in worship are beautiful, and when done in unity in a corporate setting, phenomenally awesome!  But to grasp all that the Lord wants to give them, all five fingers have to collapse around the object to grasp, have a grip, or hold what has been given to them.  If one of them does not cooperate, it is easy to drop the object, never getting a firm grip on the object, and sometimes totally missing the object. All five working together can grab a hold of and grip the fullness of God corporately.  When one of the five does not cooperate with the other four, the hand is severely crippled and nothing can be held effectively.

In a fist, the thumb naturally lays over the other four fingers, protecting them, keeping them together, applying pressure to keep them all in place. When “googling” the word “fist”, I got the definition: “Noun: A person’s hand when the fingers are bent in toward the palm and held there tightly, typically in order to strike a blow or graps.”  A fist is powerful, and the Body of Christ, the Church, needs the thumb, the apostle to “lay over” the fingers in protection, creating power when all five fingers bow with one another. In unity there is “power”!  The Church will manifest its “power” when all five fingers, all five gifting, passions, and points of view bow together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Satan cannot survive a power punch from the “hand of God”, His Church, when all five are working in unity together.  Jesus said that “a kingdom divided can not stand”, and if all five do not bow together (to his Lordship), and even one rebels refusing to bow, you can not have a fist!  The power of the punch is totally lost.

In terms of spiritual warfare, the Church needs a punch of unity, a punch of power, a punch created by all those in the Body of Christ, no matter what gifting, passion, or point of view, bowing together.  Satan and his kingdom of darkness has no defense for that kind of punch.  The fullness of Christ with his death on the Cross and resurrection from the grave completed the fullness of Christ on earth, a punch Satan could not stand, for as Jesus said, “It is finished” when he died on the cross. That “fullness in Christ” is in the “hand of God” when Jesus “released” it into the “hands of God”, his Father, who then released it in the form of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ on to the Church.  The Church has the potential for knock out punches every time the five fold works in unity.

The fullness of Christ was exposed at the Cross when the supernatural (the vertical), God’s only Son, died, “laying down his life for our sins” while penetrating the natural world (the horizontal) creating the Cross.  That same supernatural power can penetrate today’s natural world effectively when all five passions, and points of view are willing to “lay down their lives for their brethren,” laying down the horizontal arm of the Cross.  The Church has been given the “fullness of Christ” vertically and horizontally: the CROSS!  God’s love is shown both vertically and horizontally. 

With the recognition of, the maturing and developing of, and the releasing of the apostle in to the Church, the Church will again see the protection, the “seeing over” what the Holy Spirit of Jesus is doing, again!  The restoration of the apostle in the five fold is crucial if the “hand of God” is to work with all five fingers!

The Hand Of God: What Does It Look Like?

Hold Up Your Hand And Take A Close Look

If you hold up your hand and examine it closely, you can learn some practical principles of the five fold.  In past blogs we have seen that each finger has its own distinct fingerprint although from a distant all fingers look the same.  Each fingerprint is distinctively different in their own unique way, yet must rely on the other fingers to be effective as part of the hand.  Missing any one of the fingers causes one to have a “crippled” hand.

As a child, I remember going down the Midway of the York Fair listening to one of the Carnies boasting that one could come into his tent to see “The Claw Man”, a man who had lobster claw hands.  I understand, that the man who you paid to see actually looked like he had claws because he had a disease where his four fingers were fused together as one with only a movable thumb.  He was considered a “freak” in the Freak Show Midway.  God designed for a hand to have five moveable parts that worked together, now fingers fused, nor one extremity being alone.  Hands were never designed to be only movable thumbs. 

Unfortunately this is how the Church has looked in the last couple centuries. The fingers have fought to be separate entities, separate from the other fingers.  In I Corinthians 1:10-13 Paul writes: I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.  My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says I follow Paul”; another “I follow Apollos”; another ”I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”  Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?

The evangelist and prophetic were lining up behind Paul; the teacher aligned with Apollos; the pastoral shepherd stood behind Cephas, all three claiming to be apostolic.  Is Christ divided? Unfortunately, historically, the answer has been yes!  The Church has been a “freak show” in the Midway of history, for it has not seen the fulfillment of Jesus’ Priestly Prayer for the Church and his believers as recorded in John 17 yet.  I believe that fulfillment is still coming as the five fold continues to be reinstituted in the Church as originally planned: for the purpose to mature the saints into the image of Jesus as well as bringing unity in the Body.

The hand needs all its fingers to operate independently, yet corporately with each other.  If you have only one finger in use, it is difficult to pick up anything. With all fingers working together it is a simple task, even picking up the minutest thing.  If all fingers work together, they can “grasp”.  In order to “grasp” the wisdom and knowledge of Jesus Christ in his fullness, all five fingers need to be working independently yet together.  If all five fingers of the five fold as outlined in Ephesians 4: 11 work together, then “the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (vs.12-13).  The fullness of Christ is the hand of God.

Another Mystery Of The Gospel: The Fingerprints Of God

 Different Prints But The Same On The Hand Of God

Throughout my life I have been asked, “Have you felt the hand of God on you, son?” by Church fathers?  Physically, not really; spiritually, definitively! Well, if his hand has been on me, and we take those fingerprints to a lab to test them, what would we find?  We might find each finger to be uniquely different, yet dramatically the same.

One finger may have the print of a passion, gifting, or point of view that sees the world as being lost, hurting, needing a Savior, and has the passion to proclaim the message of salvation, redemption, reconciliation, grace, mercy forgiveness, etc. to everyone and anyone who does not know Jesus.  It would also be a print of birth and rebirth, a desire to start a new by turning from old ways only to embrace new ones. We call that the evangelistic spirit, but upon closer examination of that fingerprint, all we would see is the fingerprint of Jesus.

The next finger may have the print of a passion, gifting, or point of view that sees a hurting world but is driven to give comfort and care to those hurting.  It may also see other believers as needing to be nurtured in their every day walk and faith journey towards maturing into the fullness of Jesus Christ.  We call that the pastoral shepherding spirit, but upon closer examination of that fingerprint, all we would see is the fingerprint of Jesus.

Another finger would have the print of a passion, gifting, or point of view that sees the world only through the Logos Word, the written Word of God, the Bible, desiring to imprint and embed the written scripture in the heart and spirit of every believer and nonbeliever.  His desire is for every believer to worship in “spirit and in truth.”  Grounded in the “truth” of the written word, the Logos Word, he would want to release the “spirit” of that Word into a living, active, experiential Rhema Word. We call that the pastoral teaching spirit, but upon closer examination of that fingerprint, all we would see is the fingerprint of Jesus.

Another finger would have the print of a passion, gifting, or point of view that sees the world needing to commune with God.  Built upon the evangelist having man bridge the gulf of his relationship with God through salvation while being nurtured through pastoral shepherding and grounded on the Word of God through the teacher, this fingerprint would want each believer to be in the right relationship as a believer with the God whose fingerprints are on their life.  We call that the prophetic spirit, but upon closer examination of that fingerprint, all we would see is the fingerprint of Jesus.

Another finger would have the print of a passion, gifting, or point of view that sees the Church as a whole.  It’s individual print would be complicated because it would have the pattern of an evangelist, pastoral shepherd, a teacher, and a prophet, yet a distinct print of its own, for it could see all the distinctive prints in its own, yet the beauty all the prints united together for the maturity of individual believers in the image of Jesus and corporately for the Body of Christ.  We call that the pastoral apostolic spirit, but upon closer examination of that fingerprint, all we would see is the fingerprint of Jesus.

So which finger is the pointer finger, the finger pointing the way?  It could be any of the five: the evangelistic finger pointing the lost to be found, the pastoral shepherd finger pointing nurture and care to the hurting and development and growth to believers, the teaching finger pointing our chapter and verse scripturally in the Bible instructing one how to live it out daily, or even the prophetic finger pointing always pointing to Jesus in everything the believer does, or even the apostolic finger which is like a thumb, resting on top of the other four fingers but whose job is to make the hand “grasp” or hold on to something only through the use of all five fingers.

Which is the ring finger?  Traditionally the wedding ring is placed on the fourth finger, but again it could be placed on any one of the five fingers because each one individually works in conjunction with the other four by being served by and serving the other four.  This brings accountability and unity to the entire hand.  Each of them is instrumental in making and preparing corporately the “Bride of Christ”, The Church.  Each has a function that brings “oneness” that only marriage can to diversely different people.

If we are made in the likeness of God, as I have been taught in Church all my life, then in child like faith I can assume he has five fingers on his hand.  Those five fingers could have the pattern and print of an evangelist, pastoral shepherd, teacher, prophet, or apostle on them, yet upon closer examination they are all the same for their print is the print of Jesus.

Fingerprints: Unique but United: Another Mystery Of The Gospel!

 A Different Way To Look At A Handshake?

While watching an YouTube video of an old Keith Green concert, I liked Keith’s comment, “What is neat about finger prints is far away they all look alike; you get up close they are all different.”

That is what I like about the five fold in believers of Jesus:  From a distance, each believer looks the same, but when you get up close and personal you find out that they have different passions, different points of view, a creative uniqueness only the Creator himself could have created in them.  Individually there is a difference, a uniqueness, but if broken, if hungry, if willing to listen to the Holy Spirit then be obedient to his revelation, if willing to die to self, and if willing to lay down his life for his brethren through service, there can be a drawing together of the saints in unity to appear to be the same.  All one sees is Jesus!  Wow, to look at a distant, then to look under a microscope all one sees is Jesus: that is the goal of Ephesians 4 for both the individual believer in Jesus Christ as well corporately as the Body of Jesus Christ, the Church!

The Holy Spirit is allowing itself in this age to be fingerprinted.  Every believer has the Holy Spirit with in themselves for the Bible says, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” But each believers fingerprint, although they have the same Holy Spirit, is an unique print by the Creator, Jesus.  Each believer houses “the fullness of Christ”, yet displays only parts of Him at a time: different points of view, different passions, differing gifting, different fruit, different manifestations, etc.  If each different finger print allows itself to serve other fingerprints that look different than their own, reach out to them, and accept them reaching out to yourself through a handshake, you can have unity in the spirit.  Throughout history, a hand shake signified the man’s word:  his word was his bond, sealed through a handshake.  Spiritually, the same it is true for the Word, the Logos Word and the Rhema living Word is still a man of God’s bond, sealed together in a corporate sense through the unity of the Body of Christ.  The Church’s fingerprint is the unity of all the individual fingerprints, all being the fingerprint of Jesus Christ.

New technology also allows identification by putting one's eye up to a scanner which reads the individual pattern that makes up the back of one's eye.  Isn't it amazing that the print of what we see also defines us. Do we see the light of Jesus or just darkness.  Is that light implanted on the back of our spiritual eyes defining who we are in Jesus.  How we "see" Jesus (spiritual sight) and how we feel spiritually (touch) gives us our identity in Him.  As an English teacher I learned point of view is how we see or perceive something.  As believers we see Jesus differently, yet we see him the same.  Our diversity lies in our point of view, our sameness lies in the unity in Christ where he appears the same. We see Jesus differently, our different points of view, yet we see Him the same way, as a Church.  

Diversity is the Church’s strength for every believer’s prints either in their point of view, perception, or feeling in Jesus Christ is unique, yet corporately are the same!  Another mystery of the gospel!  Lets allow that diversity, reaching out for a handshake through service, one to another, and sealing that handshake as the bond of our word, the Word of God, bringing unity to the Body of Christ. 

Yes, the finger print of Ephesians 4 is upon us, embedded in each of us who are believers in Jesus Christ, and also the Church as a whole. If they fingerprint your life, would those fingerprints reveal Jesus?