3. Call It Like It Isn't

I’m paying a lot of careful attention to what Jesus did and said in the gospels and the book of Revelation because he’s the ideal model, wouldn’t you say?  I’m interested in the details surrounding the way his disciples learned from him and copied him and grew in faith and effectiveness.  My heart is all about increasing the effectiveness of this beautiful church, his bride. To see her become the devastating overcomer of the ruler of this world that our Father intends her to be.  I hope you want to be that, too, and if so: please hang with me.

I’ll say this thirty thousand times over the course of my writing: Jesus came saying, “I’m showing you the Father,” so we’d recognize our Father and, very importantly, recognize what’s not our Father.

He’s the guaranteed safe Way to find God because he shows us an exact demonstration of the character and behavior of our Father in heaven.  He adamantly and continually repeats this.  In John 12:44, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me, and whoever sees me sees him who sent me”; in John 14:8, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” and you can find like a hundred more examples.  Jesus is always pointing to the Father.

He does this so we won’t get tricked and find some other god while we’re fumbling to get back to heaven where we came from.  Colossians 1: He is the image of the invisible God; in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

So Jesus is demonstrating (or copying) his Father and then telling us, “do it like me.”  And we can trust him because his Father testified to his words by giving him authority to change the natural and spiritual things - again, what we call “miracles”.

Jesus gave that authority to his disciples.

Then we inherited that same authority when he resurrected the Christ on the cross.

In light of his example, let’s talk about prayer and “not prayer”.  Starting high-level with Luke 9:1, “And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal.”  Then Luke 10:1, “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.”

It’s in Matthew 10 that we learn that they were told to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons; the stuff we’ve talked about.

Then after that, there’s Luke 11.

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

This is where, if I were standing in front of you, I would look over each shoulder and imagine a record scratch and ask, “Wait, what? ~Now~ they’re asking Jesus to teach them how to pray? Then what exactly were they doing when they were out there raising the dead and casting out demons??”

It wasn’t praying… so…

I’d call it “exercising dominion”.

They were authoritatively declaring what is to be rather than what seemed to be in front of them.  Just like Jesus had been doing; just like our Father has been doing from the beginning.  “Let there be light,” right?  Romans 4:17, where God “calls the things which are not as though they are.”  This is what Jesus was demonstrating, and what his disciples learned to do by following his example, and where we’re headed.

So check it out, I’m gonna be sarcastic but know that I love you and I’m not calling anyone “wrong” – but things can be good, and then they can be excellent, and we should probably test things to figure out how to hit the latter.

Show me one single spot in the Bible where Jesus is praying for healing the way we hear so many do it:  “Oh Lord, if it’s in your will, you know how this person loves you, and just how nice they’ve been to all the people in church, and her knee is hurting and if it’s your timing, please, maybe would you just send the Holy Spirit to heal it; but if it’s not your time or your will that’s okay, we know she’ll still praise your name and…” blahdee, blahdee… throw “maybe” and “if” in there a few more times, clarify the details of the situation to God a little more, and preface every thought with “just” like a beggar would ask for scraps.

Nah, man, he said, “Stretch out your hand.”  “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”  “Be opened.”  “Come out of him.”  “Lazarus, come out.”  He rebuked storms, not "asked his dad to stop them." He called things which are not as though they are.  He would command heaven and earth to do what he told them to, and it would happen.

And you can bet all your money that was how the disciples approached it when he sent them to all those cities and places.  The book of Acts is loaded with it. Not ‘til after they get back from “get up and walk” and “come out of him” do they see Jesus going up mountains alone to have long conversations with his Father and start thinking, “Now, the way he talks to God; that’d be cool to know about! Let’s ask him how he does that.”

And he teaches them:

“First give glory to your Father.  Revere Him.  Ask Him to show you what’s going on in heaven, His Kingdom, and ask Him to show you how to align the earth with that.”

Prayer is having a conversation with our Father and building our relationship with him.  Lots of listening.  In fact, his lesson on “what prayer is” begins with Matthew 6:7 – before he even gets into the part about what to say, he teaches what not to do: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words."

So that's what Jesus taught them when they asked. Regarding the work of the kingdom that came before prayer... Maybe let’s stop begging God to do something he told us to do ourselves.

(yep, this is for us, we already have the dominion. thank you, resurrection and ascension.)

Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t petition God in prayer. Alone or with others, having conversation with God is of the utmost importance and creates an ideal environment in which to hear him.  Without it, you're gonna go around saying what you think instead of what's on His mind, and you'll end up frustrated and defeated.

I’m just saying we want to learn the right things to do at the right times.  Ambassador time is not the same as conversation time or petition time.

Speaking of time, I always appreciate your time, your most valuable resource.  Thank you for spending some with me.

Garrison