By Bryon Taylor Sr.
October 9, 2008
We have all prayed for God to move on our behalf. When we’re sick we pray for healing, when we need a job or finances, we ask for God’s help. That’s what He told us to do right? Sometimes we seek for the move of God for others, like when our children are sick or lost and in need of Salvation, or if a family member gets a diagnosis of a terminal disease or some other catastrophe. We can do this with confidence because God has promised to honor those requests in His Word.
It has been said before yet bears repeating, that “If God said it, it is so”. We don’t have to whine, grovel, coerce or manipulate God to answer our prayers and petitions. All we need do is to believe that He is righteous and honorable, willing and able to fulfill the promises He has made and are right there, forever written down for our access in the Bible.
The Holy Bible is a legal and binding covenant or contract between God and man, written by God through men, for the comfort and security of man. He didn’t have to have His Word in writing in order to be held accountable because He alone is Holy and righteous. He “is not a man, that He should lie”. His Covenant Word is in writing as a memorial for us to know from generation to generation what the Will of God is. There are some of us (far too few) who pray for the move of God over cities, regions, nations and governments.
We pray for deliverance, revival and the Salvation of the lost. There are even some who volunteer to be used by God to see these prayers fulfilled. To have the courage not only to pray for someone we don’t even know but to ask God to use us, to take our lives and use them for His purpose.
There is an interesting law that God has chosen to set in place revealed in:
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.”
Well now that seems to take the majority of us off the hook doesn’t it? I mean we’re not all prophets… are we?
I’d like to challenge your mind set on that very question. I submit to you that the very act of prayer, with faith believing God’s Word is much less a prayer of petition then a prayer of prophecy.
Notice the verse in Amos doesn't say that the Lord will do nothing until the prophets tell him what is needed. In fact it is saying exactly the opposite, that it is the Lord who reveals the secret. His Holy Spirit speaks His Will into our hearts and prompts us how and what to pray. This suggest to me that prayer is, sometimes at least, not so much “battering down the gates of heaven” as it is coming into agreement with God’s will. In other words, to pray as the Lord leads rather than what we think.
This is an awesome concept if you give some time to think about it. Our prayers seem fruitless and impotent because we pray from our mind, we pray what we think the problem is and/or what we think the answer is. We pray telling God what we think the best strategy is, or we are desperately seeking strategy, or deliverance, or any of a variety of petitions. This is a corruption of the plan of God for men to pray. The enemy has confused the minds of many, including highly respected theologians and teachers that we must convince God to Move. Simply put, the Move of God is not getting God to comply or agree to our petitions, it is us coming into agreement with His Will over any given situation.
That’s why He told Amos; I will do nothing unless I reveal it to my servants the prophets.
Do you know that there are no “great” and “small” things to the Lord? It is just as easy for God to move a mountain, as it is to move a grain of sand. It takes no more effort for God to heal AIDS or Cancer than it does to heal the flu or an aching back. He can, with equal ease of effort, provide 50 dollars to pay a water bill as feed millions of people every day for 40 years. God is not challenged by the magnitude of a need, but we tend to be. We see a child who is hungry and we pray for his needs to be met, even participate in helping meet those needs by giving some food and clothing, but most of us get overwhelmed when we see thousands upon thousands of needy children.\
We think things like “there are too many, how can God use me to help so many”. I submit to you that God never told you to be the answer to your own prayers, even when you are able. Yes, step out and help people with the resources God has put at your disposal, but know that it is not, nor ever has it been, your ability to help that brings the answer to those prayers. It is the loving, tender mercies of our heavenly Father that answers those needs.
God may or may not use the blessings He provides to you directly to fulfill a particular need. We are not limited to what God has given us; in fact we are not limited at all. It is God’s unlimited resources that He provides from; whether it is the portion He gave you stewardship over or not. The concern for us then should never be, “how can God accomplish this” but always “how does God want me to pray”. If we can get that straight in our minds, it open up our hearts to hear God better so that we can agree with Him in everything we pray.
There are many examples of the move of God recorded in the Bible. Some come to mind that do not at first seem to have required the cooperation of man for God to move:
1 Adam and Eve did not pray for forgiveness for God to provide the animal skins for them to wear, thereby covering their sin with blood.
2 Abraham did not know who God was, much less pray when God called him.
3 Moses spent 40 years in the heathen environment of Egypt, then another 40 herding sheep in the wilderness when God spoke to him from the Burning Bush.
These are all examples for us to ponder. We can see that it was God who “revealed the secret” and instructed each of these people how to come into agreement with His Will. They did not discern the need but responded to whatever God told them to do. We should take these examples to heart.
I think of the case of Moses and God’s plan to deliver Israel from the captivity of Egypt. The people cried out for deliverance because of the oppression they suffered, but the answer doesn’t seem to be as much a response to their cries as it was a part of the sequence of God’s plan of redemption for His people.
We read in Exodus 3:7 “And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; 8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.”
God said that He heard their cry but that was only a part of the equation. He starts with “I see”; God could see their affliction but guess what, He didn’t have to wait for it to occur for Him to see it. Remember that God “sees” everything in time at once. For us time travelers, this is a difficult concept to grasp. Pastor David Hanes astutely noted that God is at the end of time, drawing us up through time toward Him. Therefore it would be proper to say that He “sees” all events at once. He does not wait for the event to happen to see it. It is equally improper to think of God “having seen” in the past tense; He “sees” everything, everywhere and everywhen.
Proof of this is given us throughout Scripture. I chose this event out of many because it seemed to be such a familiar record to most of us. The plight of Israel’s captivity in Egypt was the topic of conversation between Abraham and God over 400 years before it occurred in man’s perspective of time. Gen. 15:1214 “And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.” This is confirmed by Moses after the event, as recorded in: Ex. 12:4041 “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.
And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.” God did not require the “cries of Israel” to discover their plight. He can see it because He sees it all at once. Even from our perspective, we can’t say “He saw an event before it happened” but that He sees it before, during
and after the stream of time carries us through.
Isn’t that awesome? Even though we might only have a glimpse of understanding God’s position outside of time, we can take comfort that He is, and sees every aspect of every event completely and that He has it all integrated into His perfect plan.
Summation:
God moves. He has chosen to include His children in every part of His plan, sometimes revealing His plan, like He did by telling Abraham of Israel’s captivity. Sometimes revealing little more than His desire for us to trust Him and obey His directions, like He did by telling Moses to go tell Pharaoh to “let my people go”. In either case, God did not continue to supply information until the listener had complete understanding of what God was planning, only enough to allow them to come into agreement with Him. God does not depend on the cooperation of man, He allows it; He does not require information or action from man to fulfill His plan, He offers the opportunity for partnership.
A great picture of this can be visualized by thinking of a father carrying an armload of firewood and allowing His toddler son to carry a few sticks of kindling. The father does not require the child’s assistance but rather offers the opportunity to help as a gift of love, an opportunity to share in what the father is doing. God’s Will is to work together in loving camaraderie and not codependence. God just loves to be active in our lives and for us to be active in His!
All that we need do to see a “Move of God” is to be in agreement with Him, working with Him, as He “reveals the secrets” to us as to our part to fulfill His purpose. I am challenged to no longer ask God to move but to ask Him how to move with Him. I hope you are too.
If you feel that God is speaking to you today in this message. If you are like me and have desired to see a move of God, I want to invite you to come forward and we will pray for our heavenly Father to show us how we can move with Him to bring His kingdom into this world. Let’s choose this day to no longer only be petitioners in the court, but prophets declaring the Word of God.
