A reader of this blog inquired about my frequent references to Sam Storms. Sometimes an individual or ministry resonates greatly with me. Both the person of Sam Storms and his ministry – Enjoying God – are encouragements to my soul. What makes Sam so unique is that by his own admission, he is a mix of theology and practice that haven’t traditionally gone together too well in the past. As he puts it, he is a Charasmatic Calvinist. He has even written a book on the subject entitled Convergence: Spiritual Journeys of a Charismatic Calvinist. I have read parts of the book but have listened to the seminar he did on the same topic at Bethlehem Baptist several times. I greatly appreciate his irenic and biblical disposition when it comes to speaking to the divergent camps.
As Sam mentions on his website:
One doesn’t often hear of someone defending the centrality of Scripture and the sovereignty of God, on the one hand, and the importance of the spiritual gift of prophecy and the affections of the heart, on the other. Sam unashamedly embraces both and demonstrates from Scripture and his own spiritual journey how their convergence is essential for Christian living today.
Over the past several years, I have moved from being a cessassionist to believing that the gifts are still for today and that it is not at all wrong to want to be biblical and fulfill the desire of Paul who states in I Corinthians 14.1:
Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. (ESV)
I can’t say that the Holy Spirit has permitted me to speak in tongues, prophesy, or even know something about someone that had been concealed. But I have been around enough Christians to know that these kinds of things are still happening today. I do believe that a God supernaturally involved in the lives of believers and using supernatural gifts (even the “extraordinary” ones) to accomplish His purposes in His people is the biblical model and find it tragic that many believers have come to the conclusion that God simply can’t and won’t work that way in the life of the church today.
I am a firm believer in the sufficiency of Scripture as well as its inerrancy and inspiration but believe that there is a misunderstanding amongst some believers when they say that because the Scriptures are sufficient that God will never speak and communicate with His people through immediate means. At the root, I think this diminishes the kind of relationship we can have with God. I also think it weakens the biblical expressions where the soul is said to experience God.
I talked about this in a previous post. Of all the people who should believe in the ongoing expression of all the gifts, I believe theologically and biblically it ought to be Calvinists. This is in part because the keystone doctrine of the sovereignty of God and the fact that all that happens and transpires in this world is due to His providential hand moving mightily through the Spirit to accomplish His purposes.
In Sam Storms, I have found a guide, a mentor to help me better understand the convergence of Word and Spirit. (I could mention other individuals as well). I find him to be very balanced, extremely biblical, and he works very diligently not only to embrace sound doctrine but to reveal how sound doctrine informs sound practice. I’m not saying that Dr. Storms is infallible, just that of all the people I read or listen to, he consistently makes much of God while distilling the truth whether one side or the other agrees entirely.
My own spiritual journey is just that… a long trip in which God has brought people and circumstances into my life to challenge me, rebuke me, remind me that His purposes are greater than my own. I even have found that like Jacob, I have been wrestling with God, and He has graciously set my hip out of joint so that He could get me to stop struggling and rest in Him. I am over 40 years old now. I want to increasingly find that my life is a movement from independence to dependence on Jesus… that I am growing more and more to understand what it means to serve a Sovereign God… that in my every day life I am expecting God to show up and use me as He sees fit… that even though I am not where I thought I would be at 40 (nor doing what I thought I would be doing) that I can be o.k. with that because God has worked to get me to this point…
So, I appreciate Sam Storms because he seems to care more about what God thinks of him rather than what others think of him. I’m sure he has his days where he’d rather not relive them – but overall, I think he lives in light of the fact that a relationship with God is irresistibly pleasurable and because of that Sam is “
devoted to the pleasure of reveling in Him and all He has done.”
May Sam’s pleasure in the Lord increase greatly!
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