Experience the Impossible: Simple Ways to Unleash Heaven's Power on Earth (15 page)

God’s ability to use sickness for His glory does not mean He approves of sickness, any more than God’s ability to use sin for His glory means He approves of sin.

A
constant discovery throughout our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ is what love looks like. He always chooses the best for us because that is what love does.

God’s ability to use bad things for His glory has caused some to think that He is the author of those bad things. This belief usually gets swept under that mysterious carpet called God’s sovereignty. While I love and delight in the wonder of our sovereign God, I am grieved at how much in our lives is inconsistent with Jesus’ life, yet gets labeled as God’s mysterious will.

God is sovereign. That is an absolutely beautiful truth, one beyond comprehension. But is it legal to put things that Jesus never tolerated into that category and call it God’s will? May it never be! I certainly want to be careful in this subject. But I also want to be Christlike, which means to be like Jesus. He
did not allow much that we allow. People often read the gospels stories about His miracles for encouragement, but not as an example to follow.

Is God able to use sin? Yes. Absolutely yes. Solomon was David’s son. God loved Solomon and ordained that he be king of Israel. The David/Solomon era was the
golden age
of Israel’s history. Yet Solomon’s mom was Bathsheba. David married her after their adulterous affair that led to the murder of her husband, Uriah. That was sin to the max! Yet our sovereign God was able to take such horrific actions by David and produce one of Israel’s greatest kings. Were David’s adultery and act of murder God’s will? No. God does not violate His own law to accomplish His purposes. But as I like to say, God is able to win with a pair of twos, meaning He can turn any situation into a winning hand. He is God.

Is God able to use sickness? Yes! I have seen it countless times. Families come together to rally around their dying loved one, and reconciliation comes to broken relationships. Often people who are void of any thought of God begin to seek godly counsel. And still others start to pray. It is very beautiful to behold. It all comes from a big God, one full of great love, one who is willing and able to use any situation for His glory and our benefit. But to call sickness His will is to credit Him with the devil’s work.

I quoted this verse earlier, but look again at how it sums up this point so beautifully:

“You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”

Acts 10:38

Jesus is God’s will illustrated. He went about doing good. That good was described as healing and deliverance. He did
those things because God was with Him. The presence of God on a life means certain outcomes are expected. Healing and deliverance are two of those anticipated outcomes. This is what love does.

God is good. The devil is bad. Health and healing are good. Sickness and disease are bad. It’s not complicated.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I give You thanks and praise for Your ability to use anything for Your glory and for our benefit. You amaze me for You are so wonderful. Help me not to become so careless in my thinking that I attribute to You the devil’s work. But also help me never to lose sight of Your hand in less than ideal circumstances.

Confession

God is good, always good. God is also eternally big, and He is able to redeem any situation for His glory. By God’s grace, I will never credit Him with the devil’s work. Instead, I will set my heart to behold God’s redeeming love in the most impossible situations. I will do these things to the glory of God.

Faith brings answers, but enduring faith brings answers with character.

O
ne of the most exciting parts of the life of the believer is seeing prayers answered. And the more impossible the problem, the more memorable and impacting is the answer. Answers to prayer are the wonderful privilege of the follower of Jesus. They are the products of co-laboring with God, an honor that is beyond comprehension.

God answers prayers differently for each person and each occasion. But if we fail to understand how He moves, we can wind up frustrated in the midst of a potentially massive breakthrough. Believers often abort the answer they have prayed for because they are ignorant of how God moves.

I wish we could see how often God answers our prayers the moment we pray—but answers in seed form instead of the full-grown answer we are looking for. We cry out for a major breakthrough, and instead God provides the seed for that breakthrough. We ask for the oak tree; He gives us the acorn. The tree is in the seed. Seeing that truth will change everything about how we pray, and how we steward the moments we have in God. God created seeds, and seeds grow with proper care. It is His way.

Sometimes our greatest need is the
answer
, and sometimes we actually need the
process
that brings the answer. We want sudden intervention; He wants the answer to be safely planted in the life of the yielded believer. His intervention is sustained through the personal development of the one who does the praying. In other words, He wants the answer to have a safe home in the life of a believer who has learned the ways of the King.

Often we are praying for the right things, but if the answers were given all at once they would actually destroy our lives. For that reason, enduring faith is important to God.

When we learn the art of focused, unending prayer, our hearts are strengthened in the same way that isometrics develop our muscles. Character becomes the
muscle
that is developed during the time of waiting for an answer while persisting in focused prayer. Waiting that is sure of the answer is what develops character in the life of the disciple of Jesus.

Answers to prayer are great. Answers to prayer that come with growing character are even greater. God is always looking at the big picture. The fact that we are in His picture should amaze us all.

Prayer

Father, help me to steward well the moments You give me. I do not want to miss the seed of an answer You provide for me—or miss seeing it develop into the thing my heart cries for. I want strength of heart to be formed in me, all for Your glory.

Confession

I was designed to get answers to prayer. I accept the fact that answers come in different forms. Acorns grow into oak trees, and I embrace the opportunity to see small answers develop into the full-blown answers I long for. I was created for this purpose: that God might be glorified.

Living in regret will become your biggest regret.

E
very moment I spend in regret robs me of time to have an impact on the present and sow into my future. Getting us to live in regret is a clear trick of the devil, as it lessens our effectiveness in the now. Ultimately, he uses this trick to get us to question indirectly the true effect of the blood of Jesus and to remove us from ever seeing the full impact of our faith.

Regret is sneaky. Most of the time it exists because of our desire to live a life that is fully pleasing to the Lord. It feeds off the conscience. That is how it has permission to remain. The conscience is a wonderful gift from God, but its usefulness comes from being under the influence of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit never removes our pasts from under the blood of Jesus for reexamination.

I doubt that there is a person living who could not think of many things he wishes he had handled differently. My list is long. The more I ponder those things, the more I give place to a cloud that positions itself over my head, distorting my emotions and thoughts. Hope is infected by an atmosphere of regret. Imagine yourself standing downwind from a campfire.
Your clothing and hair would smell like smoke, long after you had left the campfire. In the same way, regret is the smoke that saturates all we put our hands to do. Regret leaves a stench that only repentance can remove. We must learn to recognize it as an enemy and fight it accordingly.

Regret robs us of hope. It disqualifies us, in the sense that we become dislodged. Picture an arm that is dislocated, out of joint. It is still alive, and very much a part of the body, but it has little function. Movement is severely restricted by terrible pain. Regret is similar. The memories of past issues bring great pain to the person who has lost sight of the transformational work of the blood of Jesus. I have watched people lose hope by their focus on the past, even though they had repented and confessed their sins. It seemed as though they were living in regret, hoping to convince themselves that they were truly sorry for sin.

When this happens, regret propels us into the task of trying to earn forgiveness. You cannot earn a gift; otherwise, it has become a wage. Forgiveness is a wonderful gift from God. And that gift positions us for the incredible promise regarding the things we would love to change: “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

God is able to use the worst circumstance of our lives for His glory. This is something that I cannot comprehend, but know it is true. He is the master craftsman, able to take what we might consider rubbish and turn it into a masterpiece. This is the glorious work of a perfectly loving Father who has purposed to do these things for each of us.

Prayer

Dear heavenly Father, I need Your constant help to look at my life the way You do. I cannot afford to look at my past in a way that displeases You or causes me to become ineffective in the life You have
assigned for me. Please give me Your ability to look even at failures with great confidence in Your commitment to make those things work for Your glory and my benefit. I trust You for these things and give You praise!

Confession

God has forgiven me; therefore, I forgive myself. I will not accuse someone He is not accusing, even if I am that someone. My forgiveness is for His glory. Regret will no longer be a part of my life. I will not give away my future to the enemy of my soul, who wants to tie me to my past. I have been set free. And I will live in Jesus’ freedom for the glory of God.

It is not possible to achieve true greatness in the Kingdom without valuing the greatness of another.

I
still cannot get over the picture of the King of kings putting a towel over His arm to wash His disciples’ feet. It is an absolutely stunning example of humility. Humility is Kingdom; pride is at the root of everything evil. But the pursuit of greatness is not necessarily evil. In fact, it seems that those who spent time with Jesus had latent desires awakened in them regarding their own significance. As a result Jesus never rebuked His disciples for their desire for greatness. He simply redefined it by pointing to a child.

Look again at one of my favorite verses on this topic: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time” (1 Peter 5:6). The phrase
under the
hand
could be a frightening picture to someone raised in an abusive home. But when we realize that we are putting ourselves under the hand of a perfect, loving Father, we see what a privileged opportunity we have. This hand is a hand of covering and protection.

The
humility
part of the equation is fine for most of us. At least, the concept is acceptable, even though at times it is hard to do. What is difficult for us to handle is God’s response to our humility: “that He may exalt you.” What do we do with that? Many of us squirm or say things to undermine the honor given to us. Yet if we do not know how to receive honor correctly, we will have no crown to throw at His feet.

But an even greater challenge comes when honor is given to someone else. Many believers fail to understand God’s process and try to undermine that promotion, exposing it as illegitimate. Some cultures call this the “tall poppy syndrome.” If one poppy is taller than the others, that poppy is the one you cut down. This is a tragic and regular occurrence in some church cultures, under the name of humility, of course. This is in direct opposition to love. The Bible says humble
yourselves
, not make sure everyone around you stays humble.

I despise self-promotion. It aborts the divine opportunity for God’s promotion and replaces it with its counterfeit. The believer spoils his or her own moment in God in an effort to be credited, recognized or honored. It is sad. Yet if I am not careful, I will allow my dislike of self-promotion to ruin my opportunity to recognize God’s promotion of another, celebrating the one He celebrates. We never want to be found critiquing the one He is honoring.

The bottom line is that we are quick to endorse a theology of humility, but not one of blessing, nor of greatness. Perhaps we recognize the notion that “the greater position one has in life, the more spiritual that person is” is, in fact, a lie. But reaction to error usually creates another error. As a result, the Church is much more comfortable with poverty as a sign of spirituality than wealth. Neither is true.

The problem is not that someone receives a blessing; the problem is that we are skewed in our ability to maintain humility while God promotes and exalts, and then we project our struggles onto the lives of the people we watch get promoted around us.
Consider the meaning of this word
exalt
: “to lift up or to make great.” Here is one of the definitions given to us from one of great reference works (Thayer Greek Lexicon) used in studying New Testament language of the word
exalt
: “to raise to the very summit of opulence and prosperity.” That is about as far away from our understanding of the Gospel message as can be. Yet it is biblically sound and true. Sometimes the Bible’s statements are so magnificent that we tend to think God must be talking about when we get to heaven. But that would be a very poor interpretation of this verse. It is speaking of now. Love has no problem believing this because it thrives on seeing others blessed by God.

I realize that the Internet does not always accurately reveal what is happening in the Church, but it can provide a glimpse. Let me illustrate something that I have noticed for the last several years. When God promotes people in unusually obvious ways, many in the Body take it upon themselves to warn of these dangerous
tall poppies
. If, for example, a believer writes a good book that sells a few thousand copies, there is no problem. People will usually leave that author alone. But let it sell millions of copies, and countless people create websites and YouTube videos to announce that the book is heresy. Jealousy is a cruel taskmaster. It distorts reality and robs us of an opportunity to join with God in celebrating one of His own. Those are priceless opportunities that we must embrace and steward well.

When God blesses us, we need to maintain and increase the measure of humility that got us to that place. Blessing does not position us to build our own kingdoms. It simply increases our responsibility to use His favor for the sake of others. It is how this Kingdom grows in impact and influence.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I need Your constant help on this so that I do not undermine Your work in people’s lives. It amazes me that You
would want to honor anyone. But I celebrate that. Help me to be free from the suspicion that ruins so many good people’s lives, and help me to see whom You are exalting. I want to bless whom and what You are blessing. My heart’s desire is for You to be highly exalted through all of this.

Confession

I will celebrate the one God celebrates without the need to point out his or her weaknesses or faults. I will bless what He is blessing and use the favor given to me for the benefit of others. God has made His grace available to me that I might succeed at this, all for His glory.