Maybe like me you have been disappointed in the church, indicating the four wall type of church. I have been in several church type conference settings where the Spirit of God has been alive and well and moving in an incredibly obvious way, breaking hardened hearts, ushering in a spirit of forgiveness and where healing is taking place physically, emotionally and spiritually. It is so where I want my church back home to be! And when I don’t see God moving in my own environment I do become discouraged!
What a refreshing surprise to get to go to church, help lead the worship which I only do occasionally, and hear a message from Acts 3 where the lame man was healed…the pastor then asks why don’t we see that happen here? And my question exactly, why don’t we? I truly believe that there are several elements at play here but I rather like to think that what was stirred up was the question Jesus asked the paralytic in John 5 and that we could ask ourselves as well, “Do you want to be healed?” Or is it just a faith issue, do we believe that God can do what He has shown He can do in many examples in the Bible or “other” people’s lives? How about “nah, that was for those early church days all that miracle stuff.”
You know, I came to a place where I had to decide if this church stuff was for real. I had to decide that even if the move of God wasn’t happening in my church that it is happening in His people and that I wanted to be one of the ones that it was happening in! I did not want to miss out on a thing when it came to God and the move of His Spirit. So for me it began with humble beginnings of a time of prayer and praise with a very few close friends. I couldn’t make a thing happen on my own but I could let God change my heart and indeed he has undertaken to do just that.
So prayer is one of the keys that is unlocking the closed door to God moving in and amongst His people! People are hungry for more of Him, people are tired of status quo, people are hurting, broken, addicted, living dysfunctionally and miracles? What does that look like those described?
Prayer = an opening for God to move…and indeed, prayer happened one morning in my church when many people came forward and pastor anointed with oil and we all prayed for one another and I am believing that God is moving in the hearts and situations of this body of Christ.
Psalm 133 says it so very sweetly…
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the LORD has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.”
Three precious verses that reveal God’s pleasure when we unite together and instead of fragments of the body we are in sweet fellowship one with another. Let me ask, can you pray for someone and be disgruntled with them? I really don’t think I can! Can you speak life into someone and be disgusted with them? I want to say it is impossible.
God delights when His church comes together to breath life into one another and it is then that He ushers in a healing balm of forgiveness and heals brokenness and many other afflictions that the body today is suffering with. We are a crippled, wounded body of Christ but on this particular morning, a body of Christ sought after God, and prayed for one another! And frankly, I can’t wait to see what God is going to do next!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR7VOKQ0xJY]
