Ephesians 4:14 - "Awake, you who sleep. Arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light".
I Thessalonians 5:6-8 - "Therefore, let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation."
This is the day to give away what God has so freely given to us. Now even as some read these words, there is a churning in the stomachs. "I can't be a witness or anything like that!" Believe you me, I fully understand that statement. Been there, bought the T-shirt and saw the movie.' But what if the reason we have such thoughts of inadequacy is because no one ever showed us or told us how too?
This is part of the reason I am going through "Doing The Stuff: 101" teaching. I want to explain the heart of God and the way Jesus reached out to others. You see, in my opinion what the church has done is to boil down the ministry of Christ into method's and formula's. In other words, if you A then B will happen and the result will be C. Well it doesn't work that way.
It's like John Wimber use to say..."To use a formula or method to pray by is like fishing with minnows. Fish don't always bite minnows, but we keep fishing with them because we like using them." Would it not make more sense to find out what the fish are biting on? So what do you do? Ask the fish? No! You go to someone who is more knowledgeable about what the fish will bite on. This is why we need to learn to hear God when we have a divine appointment with someone. By "divine" I mean that God set it us....we may have run into someone at the grocery store, or downtown, maybe the individual called and needed prayer. No matter which, the first thing I want to do is ask God to show me what's going on in this person's life. Then I listen. I pay attention to every thought that floats through my mind, and no matter how silly it may seem to me, that silly thought could be the very one that God is giving you to open the door to this person being healed, or saved, or just to have an encounter with God.
My thought has always been, "When you go into a dark room, what is the first thing you do? You turn the lights on." Same with meeting someone, I "turn the lights on". I am listening for God to speak and show me what I need to know in order to pray for this person. Like I said, "Just because we like to pray certain prayers, maybe even prayers we have memorized, that doesn't mean that it is what that person needs.
I am going to stop with this and let you chew on it. To see if God is speaking to you about your next step. I will be live-streaming this Saturday night (May 12th) @ 7 p.m. on the ReCovery Church Facebook page. Bring your Bible, a pen and a note pad as come together to take a look at "Doing The Stuff".
God on you....
Michael B.
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