God Intervenes

God Intervenes

Modern US Christians live with different expectations than many of the Christians around the world.  As a result, the average US Christian doesn’t expect God to intervene miraculously in their lives. Often we US Christians expect God to guide us through our own thought processes to achieve something that we say “God guided me” but in reality we are happy to take credit for.  “After all. God used my mind, my hands, my work, to accomplish this task!”  A lot of “my”s in that statement.

 I have been guilty of that periodically. I grew up in a family capable of doing much, and who had a strong work ethic. So, when there was a problem we would put our minds and our hands and backs to it, and bring about a solution. It is easy to fall into the trap of “God helps those who helps themselves” and not recognize that God IS the solution, not the Helper of those who work out their own solution. Basically, we are saying that God comes along and examines our proposed solution and “stamps His approval” as if He is saying, “Good idea. I never thought of that!”  Yes, we all do love to help God out.

But sometimes God allows situations to appear in our lives that, for some reason or another, we can provide no solution. That’s when God steps in and reminds us that HE is the One who provides for ALL needs. 

A few years ago our small country church had our sanctuary air-conditioner quit. Now, the problem was not the need for more coolant, or for a hole in a line to be fixed, or some simple problem to be fixed. The compressor in this main air-conditioner locked up, metal locked to metal. The only way to fix it was to remove the unit and replace it. That required more money than our church could come up with. Oh, we could have stopped sending our committed amount of money to our missionaries, stopped investing in the lives of children we gathered to our doors, and stopped other ministry expenditures to create a financial solution for the air-conditioner problem, but we knew that was not the answer. So we waited.

I must admit that I kept hoping God would provide me with the extra money to solve the problem, but He never did. And as I saw our very warm spring and the potential for a hot summer approaching, I was wrestling in prayer for the need. Finally one night during that period, God wouldn’t let me go to sleep until He and I talked this over. I came to see that I needed to turn lose of the air-conditioner and surrender to His solution for the problem. When I finally did release it into His hands, I fell instantly to sleep.

Then came Sunday morning. I had asked our associate pastor to preach our Easter morning message, his first time to preach the Resurrection truth, the heart of the Gospel. God had indeed spoken to him and the Holy Spirit was clearly evident in our service. As I was listening to the truth of the Resurrection from his fresh perspective, I noticed that the sanctuary was cool and comfortable. My senses became tuned to the sanctuary environment and I realized the air-conditioning was running.  I tried to look around at our congregation, without attracting attention, and saw that everyone was comfortable and not noticing the unusualness of that comfort. How do you stay quiet when you just witnessed a miracle, but God held my tongue.

At the end of the service, after I had made some closing comments, I stepped over to the air-system control on the wall, to see what the settings were, and saw clearly that the air-conditioning unit was running. Now, I had been gone for a week, so I asked if anyone had completed any repairs to the unit. No one had, and I checked to make sure that no one had appeared on the property to work on the unit. As far as mankind was concerned, the air unit had remained untouched. But it had been touched. It had been touched by God. In Biblical Language, it was a miracle.

There are those who will not accept that answer, even among Christians. But God does work miracles, outside of the hands of man. When serving on short-term missions in places like Iraq, I have seen little boys with eyes severely crossed, and very bad eyesight, have their eyes straightened while we watched, and the children not need the thick glasses anymore.  I have seen people so sick they could not eat or drink, and had to be carried into our presence, very near death’s door, stand up strong, after they yielded to the pray of faith for them, and sit at a table and eat for the first time in weeks. Miracles which were immediately from God’s hand, without man’s hands doing anything.

The problem for many of Christians in the US is that we expect God to do things through our hands, capable like we are, and thus never leave room for God to carry out His solutions for life’s problems. So we act out a solution of our own making, and it often fails. As I again was reminded, we must turn lose of the need and release it into the hands of the ONE who has the only fail-safe solution. What blessings are then poured out upon us when we do!  

“Father, pry my solutionless fingers off my need, and take that need, and do with it as you will. Amen”   To God be the Glory, great things He has done!!!