God’s Messin’
Canal District, it is my prayer that God starts messin’ with you. Anytime there was a major move or change in the church, it started with people praying. Most of the time, God pricked or lead people into a place of prayer. God did what He had to do to get their attention to pray. God messed with Abraham, Isaac and Jocab. He messaged with Moses, David, Joshua, Elijah and Daniel. Before Jesus began His ministry, He was driven into the wilderness to pray and fast.
God messed with the apostles. We see what happened in the book of Acts. Before the church started going, people were prayer. When the Day of Pentecost came and thereafter, the church prayed until the house shook; people were raised from the dead, healed, and the church spread throughout the “world”.
When we look at any major movement later in church history, we see that people were praying up a storm. Some of these folks were Methodist or in the Methodist church when they accepted Christ. I think about Phoebe Palmer a Methodist evangelist in the 1800s. I think about William Seymour and a woman named Kathryn Kuhlman. Naturally, I will not leave out our founder, John Wesley. We know he was a gifted administrator, but our founder was a man of prayer. We see and know that he wrestled with his faith for a while, but the time came when his faith and relationship with God were resolved.
Truthfully, I have always loved this about Wesley. He struggled, wrestled and continued to struggle because God was messin with him. As I think about where we are as a denomination, I think God is messin. I think He is stirring many of us up to pray. I believe God is calling us to a place in prayer that will require fervency. James tells us, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much. (James 5:16b) I think He is messin’ with us until we get up out of our beds and seek His face. I think God is messin with us to fast and stand on His word in a way that is “a matter of fact.”
God woke Jacob up. In Gen we find these words:
24Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. 25Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. 26And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.”
But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”
27So He said to him, “What is your name?”
He said, “Jacob.”
28And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Gen 32:24-28
I think God is messin’ with us to stand and having done all to stand. I think God is messin with us to pray without ceasing as Paul says in 1 Thess. I think God is messin with us so that another move will happen. Actually, we NEED another move of the Holy Spirit. We need God to blow a breathe of fresh “air” into us! GOD MESS WITH US! STIR US UP!
Servants of the Most High God, go ahead and let God mess with you. Go ahead and call on the name of the Lord. Go ahead and seek the face of God like never before. Go ahead and let God take you deeper into prayer.
For some, it will be praying alone. For others it may mean getting with a prayer partner of two or three. For all of us, it will be corporate prayer.
The battle the UMC is in right now is very much so spiritual. All I know is that when it comes to dealing with the enemy, God’s mathematics is not like ours. For us, 1+1= 2 or 2+2=4. With God, 1 can put a 1,000 to flight and 2 can put 10,000. Imagine with me, if a few of us got together and prayed. How many enemies would be put to flight? How many neighborhoods and churches would be changed. I’m just say, God’s messin with us, and He is inviting you and me to come closer to Him by prayer. I know God wants to do something. He’s a messin’ with us!
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