How will we respond to crisis?

I read an article last night that was talking about cancer as being a third wave disease from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. What would happen if the 40,000 workers who were exposed to the toxins at ground zero came down with a cancer type that has no treatment? I can tell you what I would do, I would organize a team to go to New York City to see every last one of them healed!

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast almost two years ago, a team from Bethel went to minister to the evacuees that were living in the Astrodome in Houston, TX. God showed up in amazing ways as people were healed of things that had kept them in bed or in wheelchairs and God even healed a man who walked by the team as they were praying for someone else!

Not that I can't ever experience a normal life, but I believe we are already living in a crisis situation where many are dying without knowing Jesus. I have had the tendency to live my life as normal amidst the brokenness of the people surrounding me. Each day is an opportunity to save someone from their own crisis situation - there is no need to wait for a national disaster to jump into action.

The people that we see during our normal activities could be drowning inside and desperately in need of a touch from God. However, without the covering of a crisis, it is easy to dismiss their demise as one of a million problems that can't all be fixed by one person. It doesn't have to be one person, but unfortunately in the church today the majority of the EHRs (Emergency Healing Revivalists) are just a handful of people (and I am NOT one of them yet). They are the few that produce the vast majority of the testimonies. The saying that 20% of the people get 80% of the work done may be true, or the percentage could be even more lopsided in the scarcity of the revivalists that harvest most of the crop.

Revival comes when God moves, but it also requires radical obedience by His people. When Peter was threatened to never talk about Jesus again in Acts 4, his response was to ask God for more boldness. He didn't back down, but asked for God to do more of what had just gotten them in trouble (healing the sick!). Lord, grant your servants boldness to take risks when we face disasters on a personal level in our daily lives!