Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
Doing all the things that Jesus did is not only possible but preferable!
What if you take the risk to pray and something does happen? Lives everywhere, including your own, are changed for eternity! That is worth the risk of faith.
We don’t need to feel anointed with a special dispensation from God to pray for someone. We discern and obey, and at the point of risk, God meets us and the person with his surprises.
“Sometimes I put you in situations you can’t escape; you either trust me to move, or it falls flat. It’s not about you; it’s about me and someone I love. All I ask is that you be willing to take your best shot and trust me to lead.”
A listening spirit can go where the Master, living within us, is going. An attentive spirit can see what the Father is doing and join him.
It is also good for us to talk about a theology of suffering, of bearing up under the weight of an unhealed illness, so that the whole story of how God works is told.
Jesus was not a show-off—he was a show-up-and-obey kind of leader.
To be about all the things that Jesus was and is about is to be about reconciling people to God and one another.
Jesus saw a crowd, but he also saw the individual vulnerability in each person’s eyes.
When the wind of God’s Spirit blows and we sense God moving in a situation, we go with that wind, partnering with what the Father is already doing in someone’s life.