A thought by Mark Batterson from his
book, Double Blessing (p. 114). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle
Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
Mark explains, “The technical term is nephelococcygia, in case you care. If you have a dream that is
gathering dust, you need to seed the clouds with a step of faith. The last two
words of Mark’s gospel are ‘signs following.’ (Mark 16:20, KJV) We wish they
were ‘signs preceding,’ right? It would be so much easier! We also wish the Lord’s Prayer said, ‘Give
us this year our yearly bread.’ Why? Because then we wouldn’t have to
trust God on a daily basis! God loves us too much to short-circuit our daily
dependence on Him with too much of anything.”
Mark goes on, “I have no doubt that
God is preparing good works in advance. (Ephesians 2:10) But more often than
not, we’ve got to take a step of faith in the direction of that good work. It
would have been much easier for the disciples to stay in the comfortable
confines of Jerusalem, right? But they obeyed the Great Commission, which
called them to step out in faith and preach the Resurrection everywhere they
went. The net result? Signs followed.
“Wouldn’t it be so much easier if God
would pave the way with signs preceding? Rather than confirming the
proclamation of the gospel after the fact? According to human logic, it would
be. But that would rob us of the opportunity to participate in the miracle by
exercising our faith, wouldn’t it? Sure, God does many miracles in advance. But
more often than not, we have to seed the clouds just like the first-century
disciples did.
“The counterintuitive command God
gives Joshua before the parting of the Jordan River is a great example of ‘Go,
set, ready’:
Joshua 3:8, “Tell the priests who carry
the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go
and stand in the river.’ ”
Mark then says, “We want God to part
the river before we step into it. Why? So our shoes don’t get wet. We want God
to go first so it doesn’t require any faith. But this is where so many of us
get stuck spiritually. We’re waiting for God to part the waters, while God is
waiting for us to step into the river! Seeding the clouds is taking a step of
faith and getting your feet wet, but let me back up one step.”
Mark says, “Prayer is the way we write
history before it happens. It’s the difference between letting
things happen and making things happen. It’s the difference between us fighting for God and God
fighting for us!”
It all starts with prayer, doesn’t
it?
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