Order II

 Even those who believe that calling the church elders, having them pray, and anointing them with oil will bring about healing reserve it for when they are physically sick. As mentioned, we’ve gotten it into our heads that we can tell God what He can and cannot do, that we can somehow dictate terms and determine the measure of God’s ability. We pick and choose the extent of God’s power, even though He declares Himself to be all-powerful, and for some reason I have yet to ferret out, we try to convince others that God is impotent, too.

When you tell certain people you’re praying for healing or something specific, you can see them trying to keep from rolling their eyes, and as though speaking to a retired boxer who’s taken one too many hits to the head, they slowly tell you God doesn’t do that anymore, enunciating their words as though that will get the point across better.

Sorry, Bubba, God’s retired; He doesn’t do that anymore. Well, yeah, He did do all of those things, but you know, only at the start, just to build a brand or something, but once it got off the ground, He just stopped. I understand how someone would conclude that He still does those things, given that Jesus said the Holy Spirit would be with us and in us until the end of time, but that’s just because you didn’t go to seminary. They can explain it better. It has something to do with cessation or something, but yeah, no, God doesn’t do that anymore.

God can do today what He did yesterday and tomorrow what He did today. When Joshua asked God to stop the sun, God didn’t arch His eyebrows and tongue-lash him for being so ostentatious in his request. God didn’t tell Joshua he asked for too much or that his request was beyond His ability to fulfill. It honors God when we ask for things outside man’s ability. It shows Him what we think of Him and how we perceive Him. A big God can do big things; a small God does small things. It depends on how you see Him and the level of faith you possess in His ability to do all things.

He spoke the universe into being, created all that you see, made man from the dust of the earth, and remains unchanging from age to age. That’s the God we serve. That is the God who is worthy of honor, worship, and praise.

Man’s unwillingness to increase his faith has forced him to attempt to decrease and shrink the tremendous power of the God he purports to serve. We had to justify it somehow. We couldn’t acknowledge our own shortcomings, we couldn’t acknowledge our own duplicity, we couldn’t acknowledge our halfhearted commitment, and our lack of hunger for more of Him, so we laid the blame at His feet. God’s not doing it anymore because He can’t, and that’s that. I mean, if He could, wouldn’t He do it through us? We are, after all, tech-savvy and upwardly mobile. We know how to employ diplomacy to avoid confrontation with the darkness; we are progressive and inclusive, and all the things the world tells us we need to be to draw people to the house of God.

And that’s the rub of it. When the wolf tells the sheep how it should act in order to make itself more attractive to the wolf, you know that whatever advice the wolf gives is not in the sheep’s best interest. Somehow, we find it perfectly acceptable for those of the world to tell those of the church what they should believe, accept, validate, and embrace, and every one of those things is contrary to the Word of God. How’s that going to play out, I wonder?

We’re trying our hardest to do all the things the world insists we should be doing and none of the things God says we must be doing. For God to move, for His power and presence to be a constant in our lives, He doesn’t tell us we need to have Hillsong on replay throughout the day, make allowances for evil, coddle sin, or justify lukewarmness. God tells us we must have faith—true, abiding, active faith.

Throughout the Word, we are told we must build up our most holy faith, stretch it, increase it daily, and see the God we serve as He is, not as men have made Him out to be. We’ve created an image of a lovesick puppy in our minds who will do anything, including turning a blind eye to our duplicity and sin just for the hope of coming to visit once in a great while and scratching him behind the ear, then transposed it upon the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, insisting it is what He has become. We tell ourselves God has changed, even though He declares He is unchanging and that He will make allowances for this generation when He hasn’t for any other.

But we’re special! Everyone, from our grade school teacher to our pastor to the evangelist on television every Sunday, tells us that incessantly. We’ve come to believe the lie that God will make an exception just for us, that we’re a unique case, and that God really needs us on His team, so He’ll overlook the lack of commitment and the absence of holiness.

James tells us that a specific prayer, the prayer of faith, will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. It doesn’t have to be eloquent, verbose, long-winded, or overly dramatic, but it has to be imbued with faith. That’s the key, but we’d rather tell people the key doesn’t exist than encourage them to find it.

Calling for the elders of the church ought not to be reserved only when we suffer in the flesh or are physically sick but also when we are weak in the spirit, whether unable to forgive, full of bitterness we just can’t shake, or experiencing any other issue that would stunt our spiritual growth or be detrimental to our spiritual man.

God prioritizes your spiritual health over your physical health, and His priority should be our priority as well. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That is the priority, the focus, and the purpose. When we focus on the kingdom, all else will be added to us, for Jesus said it would.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.