I needed coffee. There’s a 7-11 across the street from our fire station that blesses us with free coffee when we are on duty. Perfect. So I filled up my mug with hot go-go juice and headed back to the station.
About the same time I was crossing the street I noticed a man and a woman walking in my direction. I assumed they were heading home, as there homes on the same street our station is on, and I didn’t pay them much attention initially. But then I did.
I noticed the man had a white cane he constantly held out in front of him and that the woman with him was holding onto him. In fact, she was leading him. The man was blind.
Now the way I approach ministering to people is on a case-by-case basis. In each unique situation I wait to hear direction from God before acting. I do my best to hear and then respond. And most times when I’m just not sure I error on the side of praying.
As soon as I noticed the man was the blind the thought flashed through my mind, I should pray for him. As soon as that thought hit me some others started in. That’s not God saying you should pray. You can’t pray for a blind guy out here on the street. It’s too big. The only reason you think you should pray is because he’s blind and you saw him. God’s not leading you to do this. It’s just coming from you and your desire to see a blind person healed. Besides, he wouldn’t be healed anyway.
Now I wouldn’t say that all of this swirling in my head is unusual. It seems like most of the time God leads me to minister to someone in some way, the voice of our adversary gets a little louder. So I try my best to ignore him and focus on what God is saying. But sometimes it’s just plain hard to hear clear direction from God. It’s especially hard when I start agreeing with the enemy in some ways. Oh yeah praying for a blind guy is a really big deal. Yeah I do want to see a blind guy healed so this might just be pride. Yeah he’s going to think I’m nuts if I ask him if I can pray for him.
This situation with the blind guy was one in which I was just not sure. It felt like a toss up. Like I said, normally I just pray in those situations and this time…I passed. I put my head down, crossed the street, walked into the station and immediately knew I had missed an opportunity.
I felt like I got punched in the stomach. I hate missing opportunities like that (yeah it’s happened before). I hate the associated guilt and shame that comes with knowing God was leading me to minister and not doing it. God wanted to minister to that man in some way. Whether it was physical healing, emotional or both, it was important. It’s always important regardless of how the love of God is manifested.
But here’s the critical thing to understand. That guilt and shame, it’s not coming from God. While I think that God is sometimes disappointed in our actions I don’t believe He’s standing there with arms crossed waiting to tell us how wrong we were and yelling at/punishing us for it (that’s a model of correction many of us grew up with).
In fact I think God is standing there with His arms wide open waiting to love us in the midst of our failures. His words to us are something like, “Hey I love you. Yeah you missed it this time but if you let Me I’ll teach you how you missed it so you can grow from this experience and next time it can be different.”
God doesn’t disqualify us from ministry when we fail to respond. He doesn’t kick us to the curb. We do that to ourselves by believing the lies of our adversary in the midst of our failures. We do it to ourselves when we believe God handles correction in the same way many of us grew up experiencing.
But God is love and love is patient and love is kind. It keeps no record of past wrongs! Isn’t that awesome! So we confess that we missed it and our slate is clean. We forgive ourselves and move on into the next opportunity God has for us…and He will have another opportunity for us.
So be encouraged even in the midst of your failures. God still loves you more than you can ever imagine and looks forward to the next opportunity He has to work through you.
Blessings,
Jesse and Kara Birkey
Sid Roth on Life Resurrected
“This next, greatest, and perhaps last move of God’s Spirit before His return will use nobodies to operate in a level of miracles that the world has never seen! This book will supernaturally release your faith to do the same works as Jesus and even greater.” -Sid Roth,
Host, It’s Supernatural!”
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