We were just finishing dinner tonight when the Pastor’s wife came out of the bedroom. Bethany was speaking to her in the kitchen, and she told her that she wasn’t feeling well. She has high blood pressure, an ongoing problem for her, and it was acting up today, causing her to feel ill. Our team laid hands on her to pray and I began to think about the need to turn to God for healing. In America, high blood pressure would send us to the doctor, and be an easily fixed problem with the advanced medications we have access to. But it isn’t as easily accessible here. Our automatic instinct was to turn to God.
Over the holidays, I was talking to my boyfriend’s sister, Jessica, about the God complex a lot of Americans have. Her example was her iPhone. You can look up anything you want to know or learn. You can call for help in any situation. You can translate anything you want into another language. You can do just about anything. We have the mindset that we have everything we need, what could we possibly need God for?
Don’t get me wrong. I am so thankful for the advances our generation has come by; technology, medicine. God gave us wisdom, knowledge and resources to make these advances. But are we taking advantage of them and using them against God? When our car breaks down, do we say a prayer for a good samaritan to help us before we get out of the car to flag someone down? No, we just call AAA and wait for them to show up. When we have a sore throat do we say a prayer that it will go away by tomorrow? No, we make a doctors appointment to get antibiotics.
Why are we so hesitant to pray for something, but so quick to turn to humans to fix it? Are humans stronger than God? Not even close. So why do we only turn to him when our own resources run out? Do you think he cares more about the person with cancer than he does about the person with strep throat? No. So why do we only pray for the persons with cancer? Because we can’t heal that on our own. But God wants us to turn to him for everything, not just what we think we can’t do alone.
We can do NOTHING alone, but we can do all things through him.
