Imagine this with me, if you will...
It’s the middle of the night. In fact, it’s midnight to be exact.
There’s a rapt at your door.
Startled because you weren’t expecting any visitors and perhaps because you were asleep, you answer the door.
You’re greeted by a face you haven’t seen in quite a while, but it’s a welcomed and familiar face nonetheless.
You embrace this person as you invite them into your home.
It doesn’t take you long to notice that this person is wearied and famished from their journey and because you are a good host, you want to set something before this individual so they can replenish their energy.
No sooner you entertain the notion of wanting to feed your guest, your mind quickly reminds you that you don’t have any bread.
But that’s ok… because you have an opinion about how bread should be made and what it should taste like.
Eager to share your infinite knowledge on what goes into baking a delicious loaf of hearty grain goodness, you invite your guest to sit down and listen as you explain in great detail what each ingredient is and how it adds to the mouth watering experience of taking your first bite of fresh baked bread.
On top of that, because you had a sandwich earlier in the day, you can’t help but share your
experience with said sandwich and your thoughts on why certain breads pair better with certain meats and cheeses.
Sounds ridiculous, right? It should.
This particular guest doesn’t want to hear about bread, he wants to eat it!
He doesn’t want an opinion, he wants a full stomach!
He’s not looking for stories about your experience, he wants his own!
Sadly, I believe there are many of us in the church that have settled for our opinions about God and have been gratified by what we think we know rather than by what we can actually produce.
It’s not about having an opinion about bread. It’s about having it.
Either we have it or we don’t.
I don’t want to share my theological stance on miracles, signs, and wonders.
Who cares?!?
What I want is to be able to perform them by the power of the Holy Spirit!
Why?
Because there is a world out there that’s hungry for an encounter with God, not our opinions about Him!
It’s wearied and famished from its searching in all the wrong places for what God can satisfy.
In the parable that Jesus tells in Luke 11, the man who received a visitor at the midnight hour
immediately went to his friend’s house to petition his slumbering pal for three loaves of bread.
He didn’t talk to his guest about bread… he went to get it.
Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 4:20 that the kingdom of heaven isn’t a matter of talk, but of power.
He also said earlier in the same letter that he didn’t come to the Corinthians with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and power (1 Corinthians 2:4).
The world doesn’t want to hear our opinions, guys!
In fact, it’s grown weary watching us bicker and fight over them!
It’s my belief that the world will never again return to the ‘normal’ you once knew.
The church can’t either.
We cannot keep doing it the way we’ve been doing it.
It doesn’t matter how polished the worship is or how good the sermon was.
We need the power of God.
We need to honor, love, cherish, and ask for the person of the Holy Spirit.
We need bread.
The guest’s surprise visit revealed what the man didn’t have.
This pandemic has done the same.
This pandemic has proven to be a divine confrontation and has revealed much.
It has been designed to shake us out of our apathy, to disturb what’s been comfortable, to wake us from our sleep, and to convict us to hunger for more.
Am I saying that God sent it? I honestly cannot say… but even if He did, I still trust in His goodness and I am grateful for what this time has produced in me.
Simply telling stories and not having the ability to produce and share what you’re talking about is a tragedy.
I don’t simply want to tell people about God, I want to show them God… and I need His power to do so.
The promise of the Lord is that we would receive power… (Acts 1:8). Let’s ask, seek, and knock until it’s ours.
- Brian Connolly, Faith Like Birds Ministries
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