When faith comes - A Testimony

I’m writing this article as a footnote on last weeks one on faith. So here goes –

At a Pioneer (network of churches) event in 1999, a whole load of us youth (I was 15 at the time), randomly went into a café that was on site. No one was in the café, so we started to spontaneously pray for one another. Some hours had gone by and there was an idea to pray for people who needed healing. At the time I had a lot of back pains, one of the reasons was because one leg was slightly shorter than the other, which was pushing into my back (notice that I said “was”).

A friend of mine sat me down with my legs stretching out and you could see that my right leg was slightly shorter than my left leg. He began to pray for me and I kept my eyes open and saw my right leg grow to the same length of my left leg and there was no pain in my back.

The next day Pete Greig asked me to speak about what happened at a seminar he was doing, to which I came forward and spoke. After I finished speaking about my healing, Pete collected the mic from me and I thought in my head “ok that’s it, cool”. But no, Pete said to everyone at the meeting that if anyone has the same problem that I (me) had then go to a section of the room and for me to pray for them. This threw me right off; really shocked and surprised. Anyway I went with it and it turned out that there were 7 people who had the same problem. I can remember thinking, “Lord please help me to help these people, I can’t do this, so you better do something. (lol)”.

So I sat each one on a chair one at a time, got them to stretch their legs out where you could see that they had one leg shorter than the other. I prayed for each person and all 7 of them were healed with their legs growing in line with each other and having no pain in their back. I was completely blown away by this.

I can honestly say that even though I was a bit nervous and said to God “I can’t do this but I know you can” I felt a burden being lifted from me and was now not scared of what people would think of me if no one got healed at all. I also recognized that it was God who gave me the faith that He would heal these people as He healed me the night before. It wasn’t down to me if they would get healed or not, it was down to God. Pete had obviously heard from God not only that there were people who needed healing, but also that I should pray for them (at least I hope he heard from God and wasn’t just a joke, lol). And because of that he responded to God by saying what he said and I had responded through the faith that God had given me.

So here’s the application - It is God who gives us the faith and we do not need to disqualify ourselves from giving him the opportunity to work through us.

Does God respond to faith?

I think it’s fair to say that in most western churches it is preached that God does miracles when we have a lot of faith. And if God doesn’t then it is because we didn’t have enough faith (to put it in simple terms). This disturbs me quite a bit because we’ve now made God into a vending machine. No matter how much I press the button for the Galaxy chocolate bar which costs 50p, it’s not going to come out because I have only put 40p in i.e. I’ve not put enough money in. 

So this tells us that God responds to faith. But could it possibly be that faith responds to God!! I’m not saying that having faith doesn’t help, but having faith has to involve some kind’ve element of doubt in the first place.

 

Jesus said to the people in the temple “destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in 3 days”. Now let me tell you something, not many people who heard Jesus say this (if any) believed it. But regardless of their lack of belief, he did it anyway. Yes Jesus was not talking about the physical temple, but even though they didn’t understand what Jesus was really getting at, He still died for them and more importantly was resurrected when no one believed he would do so. 

 

There are loads of stories of Jesus healing people who didn’t even know who he was, let alone have faith in Him healing them. 2 Timothy 2 verse 13 tells us “if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself”. God is simply Love.

I do believe that some have more of a spiritual maturity than others, but this is more to do with being able to hear from God and responding to Him (believing him), not the other way round. Romans 10 verse 17 – “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

 

So here’s my point - We can become too doctrinal on why we do or don’t see miracles happen, but the simple truth is that we come to the assurance that it is His faith that we live on not necessarily our own, and definitely not faith in ourselves.

Revelation over information

I come across a lot of people who can quote scripture back to front and know all the historical knowledge there is to know about the days of when the Bible was written. But the unfortunate thing I have found about some of these people is that I don’t get a sense of genuine love or feel for the Holy Spirit in anything they say. I reckon that your average person is not going to care too much about information although it is important. What they may want to know is does what you say have a reflection on your life? If we’re not careful we can be a bit too clever for our own good and miss the point of what it’s all about which is Gods love and grace.

Sometimes our brain/intellect can actually hold us back from seeing His amazing wonders and what He has already done for us!

 

Nicodemus struggled with this same problem with his first coffee, cake and chat with Jesus in John 3. Nicodemus was a teacher of Israel but (at this point) was not a man of the Spirit so then is confused and asks Jesus “How can these things be?” Jesus answers him by saying, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” Jesus later on has a joke with good old Nico by saying “mate these are simple earthly basic fundamental things I am talking to you about, you’re not ready yet for the heavenly things. 

 

I love the story when Jesus asks Peter who he thinks that He is. When Peter responds by saying that he sees Jesus as the Christ, Jesus’ response is to say to Peter “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you”, dare I (me) say the Bible alone didn’t show you this i.e. it was the Spirit that was able to open up Peters eyes to see for himself.

I’m not knocking studying the Bible etc. But God wants us to have a relationship with him. A lot of times we can fall into the trap of using the Bible or a pastor as almost like a mutual friend between us and God. You might first meet your partner through a mutual friend but at some point in order to really get to know each other you have to go on a date with just the two of you. (The pastor is probably the last person you want there).