I was challenged this morning…. I had the opportunity to hear the heart of a young musician named Benny from India, who above all things shouldn’t be alive, but also, shouldn’t be able to play the guitar….and yet he does. God has given him amazing influence as a missionary to muslim countries particularly, but seemingly everywhere, as he has now been to over 60 countries and 7 continents…including antarctica!
I was challenged in two ways. You see I have this tendency, the same tendency many young, impetuous, entrepreneurial types have, I leap before I look…I act fast, make critical decisions without fear, but I often do so before ever uttering one word in prayer, or stopping long enough to listen to what God might say in light of what I think is the right way to go. This is a problem in more ways than I can list in one blog post, but one I openly confess, and am dealing with…even now…even through Benny’s challenge.
The second way it challenged me was in how I viewed people listed in the bible. As much as I hate to say it, even after several years of following Jesus, there is a tendency to make those in the bible heroic in some way…as though they are superior in some way to the “average” Christ follower today. To some degree this is healthy, especially looking at the lives of those listed in Hebrews 11, but, it is unhealthy when it begins to limit what we believe God will do in and through us because we will never be “that great.” What is most ridiculous about that thinking is that most of these people were jacked up in some way…form Noah the drunk to Peter the load mouth, arrogant denier, and if not severely jacked up, nothing more than ordinary…yet God worked amazingly through their lives, and often amazingly through their prayers to Him.
Benny shared this verse in the midst of sharing his story, James 5:17 “17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.”
One translation says that Elijah was just an ordinary man…like us…ORDINARY, and yet, because he prayed earnestly, God did things that defied reason…I have yet to pray and see it stop raining, but I have seen God do things beyond reason, and those moments were catalyzed by earnest prayer, not my greatest ingenuity, or ability, but praying that God would do the unbelievable.
What I am not saying is that if you pray you will always see what you wanted to see happen, and that it will be unbelievable. That is a popular television preacher mode of thinking, but it is not biblical. What I am saying is that if we lead with earnest prayer, as ordinary people, that God will, in His sovereign will, do the extraordinary, even if that extraordinary is opening our eyes to the beauty of a relationship with Him, and life of constant communication with Him.
We are ordinary, He is extraordinary, and yet we have access to seek Him for the unbelieveable…for those things beyond reason. Lead with prayer, know the character of God, and see how amazing He is….
