God, aren't you going to do something?

Recently I came to the realization that I cannot simply ask God to do everything for me while I sit back and do nothing. While you might think that is a bit extreme to ask God to do something while we do nothing, it actually isn't that far from the truth. Before I moved to Redding I was under the false assumption that I could not hear from God. There were many times when I asked God whether or not I should do something and I would never hear Him speak to me. What I didn't know at the time was that God can speak through other things than just an audible voice. Since I never heard His audible voice I thought that he never answered my prayers.

In the past several months I have been almost overwhelmed by God's love in how often He speaks to me. No, I don't hear His audible voice as though I am talking to my friends, but I have heard Him tell me hundreds of times that He is wanting to heal people and then as a result people have been healed. Hundreds of times God has given me prophetic words for other people that encouraged them with the things that God has been showing them. Hundreds of times God has given me dreams that confirm things or speak prophetically to me just as Joseph or Daniel in the Bible.

While praying for a friend recently I felt that God was wanting me to pray for them as though I had never prayed for them before. Dozens of times I have prayed for this friend without them being healed. There have been breakthroughs and answered prayers that I am very thankful for, but I felt as though I had gotten to the place of praying for them as a way of sympathizing instead of praying for them to be healed. So I repented to them and began to pray like I meant it. When nothing happened the first time I prayed again. I kept praying until we saw some breakthrough rather than stopping and just asking God to bless them.

Then, a few days later I was praying for another friend who I have also prayed for many times. I invited Holy Spirit to come more, as He was already there. Then it hit me. God was there. Every time I have prayed for this person He has been there. Sometimes His presence has been very thick and yet the person is still not healed. I was asking God to heal the person Himself. However, I realized that I have done that before and that God listens to me. I remembered that it is impossible for nothing to happen when I pray. Then it hit me; God wants me to do something about it!

Mark 4:38-40 says:

Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?"

And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.

And He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?"

The disciples asked the savior of the world, "do you not care that we are perishing?" however we often ask the Healer, "aren't you going to heal this person?" Jesus then essentially told them, "you wouldn't be scared if you had any faith." I think that God is now saying, "you would heal this person if you had faith."

Well hasn't God been healing people when we ask Him to come? Yes. Jesus didn't start His ministry by telling the disciples that they had no faith. He performed miracles. He taught by parables to the crowd and then explained them to the disciples. However Jesus knew that the disciples must be trained to partner with Heaven so that God's will would be done wherever they went. It is the difference between going to get food yourself and asking someone else to do it for you.

When children learn responsibility their parents can trust them with much greater things. However the child who always asks for help and never does anything themselves will never be given responsibility. I am not saying that we are the ones who heal people, but I remind you that Jesus did tell His disciples to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and cleanse lepers. He is preparing us for promotion just as He prepared His disciples before Pentecost. To walk in a higher level of authority we must be willing to take steps of faith beyond what we currently know. God is doing something, it just might not be what we think.