Thursday, November 13, 2008

No One Gets To Walk On Water Unless They Get Out of The Boat.

5:25 PM by Christi Bowman

I woke up a little sad today. I had a conversation with a friend, the night before, and she found something that I had done, out of obedience to the LORD, to be "icky." I left the conversation asking "How could that be?" How could something feel so right to me and feel so "icky" to my friend?

That same question loomed over me as I woke up today, and a sadness settled deep inside my heart as I prepared the kids to start their day. I left the kids, at the table, eating breakfast, to ask God for direction. As I walked into my room to grab my Bible I heard Ephesians being whispered into my spiritual ears. I would like to think I am getting a little better at hearing and accepting direction from the LORD these days so I picked up my Bible and I began to read.

I liked Ephesians 3:16-20, and I would recommend to everyone to go back and read the whole chapter, if not the whole book, but for lengths' sake I am only going to look deeply at verse 20:

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.

I did a word study on this verse and came up with this:

GOD MAY do what is SUPERIOR to what we know of to be EXCESSIVE, BEYOND what we ask or think, according to the MIRACULOUS power that is ACTIVE WITHIN US.

I prayed for a miracle over a man who was in a coma, and I prayed for a long time, and as I prayed I rubbed his feet, his hands, and his forehead. I told him to wake up. I told him that this was NOT God's will and that we could fight this together. Although God did not seem to miraculously provide that evening, I was not wrong to exercise the power that is within us, the church. The Bible says God MAY, but it also says "without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please Him." I went home, battle weary, from the hospital, and said to my husband,

"I did not have enough faith for the room."

I am new at holding onto this type of faith, and although my faith is growing it is no where near perfected. He gave the power to US, His church, and if we could all dare to believe, we could do a whole lot more collectively than as individuals.

God says he MAY do what is superior to what we know of as excessive beyond what we ask or think according to the miraculous power that is ACTIVE IN US. He also says that without faith it is impossible to please Him, and that BY faith Christ will dwell in our hearts that we may be able to comprehend the love of Christ which PASSETH knowledge that we might be filled with all the fullness of God.

I can't think of a miracle performed in the Bible that didn't have a human being (including Jesus) calling it down. He uses US...He places HIS miraculous power within US, and He grows our faith so that we have the faith to use it. If we never exercise this faith we will never experience the power that we have and we will never "grow up into Him who is the Head, that is Christ." (Eph 4:15.) We must have faith and believe in what we cannot see even when what is seen, with our physical eyes, seems to contradict it. We must be obedient in the little things, even if our friends find our obedience to be "icky", so that He knows we will be faithful in the bigger things that He wants to give us.

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