Moses struck a rock and water flowed from it. He lifted up his staff, parted the sea and the ocean floor became dry ground. Elijah called down fire from the sky and it burned up people and earthly things – or in other words, Elijah’s prayer manifested a power that was seen and had effect in this earthly dimension. He didn’t start a fire, he called an already living fire down from an unseen location at the sound of his words.
And Joshua. He looked up and charged the sun, ‘Stand ye still!’ and the heavenly body obeyed.
How by scientific calculation can the earth continue to rotate on its axis and the sun remain still? Did the sun move, for this one day through space at the speed of earth’s rotation? Or did the earth turn vertically on its axis so that for those 24 hours Israel was situated as the North Pole, the sun never having to set? Did the earth indeed stop rotating?
In The Beginning Was The Word, Living Word
Can we even begin to imagine charging the natural world by decree and it obeying our word?
“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3.21-21
When God spoke, creation listened. Whatever He speaks, His creation listens. ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ God spoke once and the decree never ceased, but multiplied exponentially.
“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55.11
What would happen if we took God’s words into our mouth and spoke His words out into this earthly dimension having the faith that Jesus had? Or better yet, Jesus said all we needed was faith the size of a mustard seed and we would see mountains moved.
God’s Word Transforms Our Relationship To The Earth’s Rules
Jesus defied physics. He spoke to weather patterns and changed them instantly, leaving His fishermen friends in awe. ‘Have faith in God,’ He continually told them.
Elisha defied physics in the strangest and weirdest of ways. A worker dropped their axe head into the water and Elisha threw a stick and the axe head floated to the surface. God made the human being out of the earth; Jesus spit in a clump of clay and molded it around the hallow edges of a blind man’s eye socket, told him to go wash with water from the lake and there it was formed, a human eyeball where there was nothing.
We think about Jesus reaching out and touching people. Or people, like the woman with the issue of blood touching Him and being healed. But Peter’s shadow fell on the sick and they were healed. The man’s shadow, a simple scientific understanding of how light shining on an object creates a shadow, but the shadow is now imbued with the power to transform ailing bodies.
“As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.” Acts 5.15-16
What Is Going To Mean The Most To Us?
I ask you Church; what are we missing? What’s missing behind the decree that if I spoke today, nothing would happen? What are we missing on our words? What are we missing in our lives, what do we need for our shadows to fall on a passer-by and they immediately are set free from oppression or chronic sickness?
A different focus? Paul said, ‘Covet earnestly the best gifts.’ I don’t deny his wisdom. But he did go on to say the greatest of all is Love.
Might we be missing the only purpose needed to gain the power of the Spirit of God on our lives? That being Agape love? In one fell swoop, love cradles all that is needed to bring the human being into subjection to the higher order of God and the proper alignment with our neighbors.
What else is needed?
Maybe less time in front of a manmade screen and more time in front of God’s living word, learning ancient secrets, words that hold within them, like seeds, the transformative power of a living Spirit?
God is love the Bible says. How can we possibly become anything without total dedication to it, much less if we are trying to embody the idea of God’s Agape love. There is much to learn and much to put away simultaneously in order to take hold of God’s heart in this manner.
Draw Near to God and He Will Draw Near to You
(James 4.8)
God is hiding from us. Not so that we cannot find Him and lay hold of the power to do all the wonders that have already been manifest in the earth, but instead so that we will seek Him for those wonders.
If someone’s shadow could fall on you and heal you, would you accept that as a good thing? Or would you say, no, let me avoid being healed so easily. Would it not be a good thing then if it was our shadows freeing people?
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free..” Luke 4.18
…..’all these thing I do you also will do, and greater things….’
The Question of Purpose Has to be Asked and Answered
But I have to ask myself, why would we seek Him for these things? There’s no need for our sun to stand still. So what do we need? It goes back to love, no? Maybe I’m not thinking it through properly. But what other aim would not be pure arrogance? Doesn’t love cap ego? If our hearts aren’t focused on people, then what are we doing?
And once we determine that, we have to ask: are we making a Kingdom of Heaven decree to change the world for the better? Or to just amuse ourselves.
‘Call those things that be not as though they were,’ and ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven,’ and ‘..all these things that I have done you also will do, and greater than these will you do because I go to my Father.’
It seems to me that those who worked the greatest of signs and wonders were those God called the most humble and the meekest. So then, what can be done? What should be pursued?