You may have heard of the American school activity – “Show and Tell”? It is an opportunity for each child to bring something interesting into the classroom and then explain what is so interesting about it. There are some amazing stories of kids bringing in pet snakes or dummy grenades which end with the school being evacuated. All rather exciting.

Well, I think that we need more of that sort of thing as Christians. Perhaps without the snakes and grenades.

I read the gospels and think – it sounds like Jesus and his mates had some of the most amazing adventures ever. Feeding the 5000, walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead – wow! If church was like that every week, then I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be struggling for attendance.

I realised a long time ago that I need to reset my expectation levels for faith. Over many years of “normal” Christian life I had set my expectation standards so low – it was normal not seeing or even hearing about the sorts of things that the gospels talk about. I bought into the thought, “that was for then, this was for now”.

Then I started going to healing meetings and travelling around the world to see what the Lord was doing in different places. It turns out that God was still doing what he did all those years ago in the scripture – just not where I was going to church.

I realised that the issue was not God. It was me. I had to reset my expectations. Gospel level activities were to be the new normal.

I can’t say that I am seeing this – yet. But I can say that I have seen people healed of cancers and mental illnesses. Stories that I used to tell about miracles that happened in Africa or South America started being stories from Scotland. Amazing things that happened very occasionally started being reported monthly even weekly.

All of this brings me back to “Show and Tell”. As someone committed to the re-evangelisation of our nation, I am absolutely clear that in a secular, humanist, consumer culture the best way to share faith today is the demonstration of the power of God. We need to see what happened in the gospels happening today.

For that to happen we need to shed our current levels of “spiritual normal” and re-read the gospels – resetting normal to match what Jesus our great example said and did. Only then will we pray with greater faith; only then will we act with greater boldness; only then will we see the spiritually hungry turning up at churches because our “Show and Tell” is truly Biblical in what is seen and done.