Now faith brings our hopes into reality and becomes the foundation needed to acquire the things we long for. It is all the evidence required to prove what is still unseen. (Hebrews 11:1 TPT)
God expects #faith that compels action. I’m not talking faith versus works…I’m talking about faith that is too strong not to respond in some way to what we believe about Him.
Jesus requires the man with the withered hand to stretch it out as best he can toward Him. God’s word for Naaman is to dip seven times in the muddiest water hole around. The disciples are ordered to sit the 5000+ down for a meal that hasn’t yet materialized–and it’s either going to make them heroes or the biggest fools on the planet.
There are many “bring them to Me” moments recorded in the Bible. Everything from five loaves and two fishes to a weighty test of whether Abraham will be willing climb a mountain to offer his son to God. When the Lord is getting ready to do something whopping stupendous big, He asks a token of that person’s faith–and that something might seem embarrassing, ostentatious, risky, perplexing, seemingly nonsensical, or impossible to rationalize. But consider: isn’t faith at times any/all of the above?
I saw where Theresa Hanshaw posted a challenge today for believers to get their passports in anticipation of trips to the mission field. It’s another bring-them-to-Me window of opportunity. It’s a way of saying, “I don’t just flirt with the idea of God doing extraordinary things for me; I prepare for it.”
People of real faith don’t just pray for rain, they set out their buckets and barrels. Hungry seekers don’t just wish for a visitation from God; they clear all the junk out of their guest room, fluff the pillows, and keep checking to see if He’s on the doorstep yet. They start coming up with names for the baby. They stick their toes into the Red Sea before it parts. They don’t calculate their odds of winning, consult the Doppler radar for probability of precipitation, or fact-check at Snopes to ascertain whether that sort of miracle has ever really happened before.
Put walking shoes on your prayers today. And don’t pray lazy, boring, 95% off markdown rack prayers that apologize for expecting too much of a tired, frail, depleted, resourceless Savior—request the impossible kind of stuff a person would ask only if he or she really believes in a great big wonderful God. Not that any of it is actually a challenge to Him, of course…but our prayers are often so lackadaisical and faithless that they don’t even get the attention of our angels (who are left undispatched, like Maytag repairmen)—much less inspire the Creator of the Universe.
Ask big…then go get your passport. 😉
Father, we live in a day when, even with all our technology and endless information and gadgetry, our imagination for dreaming big things seems diminished. It doesn’t even occur to us to bind and loose, to call things that be not as though they were, to see wrongs and deficiencies and make them right. Forgive us for our anemic, lazy, “template” requests that require little to no faith. Forgive us for giving You so little chance to show us just how powerful and capable You really are!
We ask You to awaken the dreamer in each of us today. File away the callouses from our hardened, indifferent hearts so that we may have a heightened awareness of situations around us which warrant change. Make us those agents of change! Your Word tells us that we have not because we ask not…and we are not asking because we are instead ignoring or just accepting. O God, realign our priorities. Make us hungrier than ever for Your Word; for as we read Your great exploits from Genesis to Revelation, it renews our understanding all over again just how mighty and capable You are to do the seemingly impossible. We ask that You will reveal to us extravagant requests to make…make us aware of what never before occurred to us to ask. You are the Creator who created us in Your image, with creativity in our DNA. Awaken that creativity which causes us to partner with You in the miraculous.
From this day forward, make us divinely dissatisfied to coast through our lives, doing just enough to get by. Give us BIG vision. Share Your heart with us about what YOU see needing changed and then help us to get on board with You. We stretch out “withered” hands to You that have withered from inaction and we say, “Wake up every sleeping part of us that could otherwise be doing Your work.” Help us build “crazy faith” so that we will imagine, dream, and invite You to go above and beyond our wildest requests. Nothing is too hard for You…so take us on the ride of a lifetime as You erase the “im” from impossible. In Jesus’ name we pray, and in faith we ask for more from a Father with an unlimited supply.
(Adapted from my Facebook status 7/31/17)
CALL THOSE THINGS 