Where is your hand, God? I don’t understand.
I want to be different than what I have seen growing up. I want to believe the Bible. Not just with head knowledge- that doesn’t do any good. What’s the point of believing something if you don’t believe it for your own life? I will not just say, “Nothing is impossible for God,” without contending for the impossible. I won’t say, “God is love,” and not expect to be captivated by him. I won’t say, “I believe that Jesus rose from the dead,” and not expect to see the power of his resurrection. This is how we prove we have faith that our God is the God of Israel and God Almighty and he did everything that was recorded about him in the Bible, if we expect him to do it again in our lives. I haven’t seen the waters part yet. I haven’t seen the dead raised. But I don’t base my faith on personal experience. That would be dumb. I am just one person.
I think Zechariah had the same problem many of us do today. God has been silent for 400 years. 400 YEARS! I bet he and the other priests just assumed that God was done talking to people and doing extreme miracles. Yes, he believed the accounts that he read about angels of the Lord appearing to people, and Sarah having a baby in her old age. But it just didn’t happen anymore. He had never heard of it happening to anyone in his lifetime. If someone were to claim these things, they would be crazy! But then he went into the temple one day, and there appeared an angel of the Lord! The angel told him his wife would have a baby even in her old age. But Zechariah didn’t believe the word that was given to him. So my question is what is faith? Is it simply believing in your head that something happened? Belief becomes faith when it is acted upon.
I don’t want to let the devil remind me of past failures. “Remember that time you prayed for a sick person and nothing happened?” My faith should not be based on experience. I want to believe the Bible. Jesus said that it is pointless to hear his words if we don’t do them. It is like building your house on the sand. I want to do the words I read. I read a lot of words of Jesus that I don’t see happening in western Christianity. “When you give a feast, don’t invite the upper class, but invite the poor, the blind, and the lame.” When was the last time you saw someone do that? “When someone steals something from you, don’t demand it back, but give that person even more of what he took.” How great the influence would be if we actually did that!
And just like the hard-to-do commands, I want to act upon the hard-to-believe commands. “Keep asking and you will receive. Keep seeking and you will find. Keep knocking and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7. But Jesus I asked you for breakthrough, and I didn’t get it! “Keep asking and you will receive.” But Jesus I wanted to walk in love and I kept failing! “Keep seeking and you will find.” But Jesus I was trying to walk in the supernatural, and all I felt was really really natural. “Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” OK.
Or how about “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do because I am going to the Father.” John 14:12. If this verse is true, then not only will we see paralyzed people get up and walk, food multiply, people walk on water, and dead people come back to life, but we will see greater things than these! Even greater than water turning into top-notch wine!
Apparently Jesus knew we would have a hard time believing these commands and putting them into practice. He told us “Ask and you will receive” like 500 times (ok that’s exaggerating), and added a bunch of “truly, truly” to the beginning. He must have known that 2000 years later, people would rise up and say, “It doesn’t mean what it says. It means we will receive only when we happen to ask according to God’s sovereign plan.” Yes! How exciting! I’m really motivated to pray now! NO! It means what it says, that’s why he said it so many times.
So here is my question. Why doesn’t my experience match up with this whenever I act in faith? I don’t understand. I went to visit a friend last week because she had a high ankle sprain and was in a lot of pain. The week before as I prayed, I heard the word “sprained leg.” That is so random- I have never heard of a sprained leg- so when I heard about how my friend sprained her ankle from heel to knee, I knew that this was God. I went to her dorm and shared about how Jesus loves her and wants to heal her. I prayed for her. I commanded the pain to leave in the name of Jesus. The pain didn’t leave. I don’t know why.
I’ve also witnessed a lot of tragedies the past year. When each of these crises would come up, I would spend much time on my knees interceding with groans and weeping, and much time interceding with others. The doomful prediction of the circumstances came about anyway. This is serious. This is not just, “Oh boo hoo I didn’t get my breakthrough.” This is people’s lives. This is people’s families. This is indescribable pain. Why Jesus?
Maybe I’ll know why some day. Either way, it doesn’t change how I’m going to live. If I cry out for the kingdom my whole life and never see it, I will not stop crying out for it until I’m dead. I prefer to live that way than to live without any hope. I will not just accept things. Even if I see 100 people die from cancer, the next time I see someone suffering from cancer, I will believe for a miracle. Even when I see the same strongholds pin down my family over and over again, I will cry out for transformation in my family over and over and over again! Can you imagine if Hannah had given up hope and stopped praying for a son? There would be no Samuel! Can you imagine if the Jerusalem church had just accepted that Peter was going to die in prison just like James? There would be no great jailbreak by the angel of the Lord! If I don’t seek the impossible, I’ll never know what could have been.
Even when I say to myself in frustration, “I am never going to step out in faith again,” as soon as I see the face of Jesus, I change my mind. Whenever I look on the glory of Jesus and worship him, I CANNOT HELP but believe he will do remarkable things!
So where is your hand, God? I’m not sure. But I’ll be ok as long as I can see your face.
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3 comments:
So awesome to watch you journey Lauren! I'm right there with you on this stuff. I'm often reminded by the Lord (when asking why certain prayers weren't answered, and accidentally focusing on those=) about the MANY prayers that were answered. It's so easy to focus on the ones that "didn't work out" how we thought/wanted them too...I felt a bit convicted, then realized that it's actually a good thing...you see, when answered prayers become the norm in our lives, it's completely natural to wonder when some don't get answered! =) (hopefully we can praise Christ in the midst of it all) I think you've had a lot of rad prayers answered in your life...it's become normal for you...it's good and natural to wonder why some don't get answered...and EVEN BETTER that your attitude is to keep rockin' no matter what! ("Not budging"=) can't wait to be with you guys soon!
Lauren,
This is so awesome. This is one of the best blog posts I've read this year.
I'm so encouraged by your pragmatism, perseverance and boldness.
Keep pressing in, keep praying, I've found that it was those times where I didn't experience "victory", it was those hard times that I learned the most about God. God is the god of miracles, signs and wonders. But I've learned that he's also a lot more.
Check out this excerpt from Heidi Baker
Life principles: It's about love, not victory
There is a tendency for people to want to read only about the glory stories that come out of this revival that Jesus is leading, but there are gutsy stories, too. Unless you have the wider perspective of life here, then you will have a lopsided understanding of what God is doing. Often He teaches us through suffering about His glory-presence.
Once we had a meeting where we were praying for four of our kids who were really sick. They had measles and malaria, and in the end, two of them died. It happened just before we were due to go away for our annual staff retreat. That year we had a visiting speaker who had come to minister to our 160 staff. Bear in mind that the children who had died were our babies, our precious children. I was not at all impressed, then, when the speaker told us, "You all just need to laugh more!" I thought to myself, I don't think the Lord is laughing at the moment. In fact, I wanted to say, "I think your head is a little tilted, my friend!" But I had to make a choice. Was I going to get angry with this person and strangle them or was I going to bless them? I ended up blessing the person of course, but it shook my world.
The very next Monday, I found myself lying face down on a grass mat with the mother of one of the little girls who had died. I lay down with this woman and wept with her, holding her in my arms. It was then that God said to me, Heidi, it's about love. It's not always about victory. Our whole life cannot be about victory and glory--but it must be about love. Love is patient and kind and long-suffering. God's love is the kind of love that is extravagant, bottomless, ceaseless and endless. That's what you need when you are on the floor, holding a grieving mother.
We all need a download of holy love that so motivates us, it doesn't matter what people do to us--we just love them regardless. If people offend you, like I was offended, you love them. If people spit in your face, you love them. If people falsely arrest you, you love them. When they put you in jail, you love them. When they beat you you love them. We won over the garbage dump by love.
People hear our story and say "Wow! What a powerful missionary story." yes, we have thousands of churches; the blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the crippled walk, the dead get up. All these things happen over and again. But we also get beat up. Literally. Not with harsh words. We are literally beaten.
Wow. Thank you so much for that story David. I'm going to share that with my roommates. We are all going through a lot. Wow praise God.
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