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Gary Best will be speaking at a conference based on his book, Naturally Supernatural, at Friends Langley Vineyard October 22 – 24. The following is an excerpt from the book.
IT IS one thing to rise in faith for a single occasion, but quite another to
remain faithful for a lifetime.
When we encounter God’s kingdom, it is easy to be motivated. When the disciples and the crowds saw
Jesus’ miraculous works, it was easy to believe that the end was immanent. Similarly,
when our prayers are working and we are seeing healings, deliverance and
miracles, we are euphoric.
Yet that euphoria is inevitably tempered over time by another kingdom reality,
the already/not yet (the delay of the kingdom). This was the ‘mystery’ or ‘secret’ of the kingdom that Jesus shared with his closest disciples.
What Jesus brought was certainly God’s kingdom, yet it would not come in complete fulfillment. It would be rejected;
it would even suffer violence, resulting in Jesus’ death. The present evil age would continue to exist alongside it.
Delayed judgement
The disciples did not fully understand that the delay of full judgment was
necessary for the time of invitation and mercy God wanted to accomplish through
Jesus’ suffering, so that many more could be welcomed into friendship with him. They
lived and died in the reality of a mixture of two ages.
Paul experienced times of tremendous success, yet he also had times of great
despair. This can be very confusing, and severely tests the depth of our
commitment.
My greatest crisis of commitment did not come in the early days of learning to
pray for the sick; at that stage I was quite patient, expecting that it might
take some time to ‘learn the ropes.’ My most difficult times took place later, after witnessing some very powerful
interventions of God.
I had seen him heal blindness, deafness, cancer and many other serious illnesses
through my prayers. Yet I became increasingly frustrated and discouraged,
almost to the point of wanting to quit entirely. How could that be?
The pain of what didn’t happen through my prayers overwhelmed me. I saw people healed of cancer; but
at the same time, some of my best friends died despite my best prayers.
I experienced the gift of mountain-moving faith to stop the miscarriage of our
daughter. Yet many years later, I agonized in prayer over that same daughter, reaching for that faith to no
avail as she lost her beautiful baby boy at a similar stage of pregnancy.
Now I found myself in the worst place of all: My heart would engage, but I
couldn’t guarantee a result. Even worse than the fact that only some would be healed
was the acknowledgement that I couldn’t choose which ones it would be. I found anger toward God building up in me.
Incomplete intervention
According to my perspective, he seemed to choose to release his grace to all the
wrong people. At other times, God would intervene unmistakably but
incompletely. I struggled to see his goodness in those situations.
He spoke prophetically to dear friends of mine about a son who would be given to
them at a specific time, who would help his father in his work. When the time
came, their son was born – with serious mental handicaps that would make him dependent on them for the
rest of their lives.
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Recently, in our home church, a woman shared a powerful encounter she had
approximately nine years ago. At the time she was far from God – other than Sunday school experience as a little girl, she was completely
unchurched, having embraced the hippie lifestyle.
The crisis that precipitated this encounter was the birth of her first child, a
girl who was premature and, as a result, had suffered massive brain
hemorrhaging. Because she was not expected to live more than a few hours, the
mother decided to spend that time in the intensive care nursery with her dying
child, holding her hand until she passed on.
In that distraught place, she cried out to the Jesus she remembered from Sunday
school. “I really need you right now,” she cried, pouring out her heart and repenting of all the bad decisions she had
made in her life. At one point, she felt a hand on her shoulder. When she
turned to look, it was a real hand connected to a figure completely bathed in
an overpowering white light. Somehow she knew it was Jesus!
She experienced a power that came into her from Jesus and went through her into
her dying child. Immediately, all her vital signs became normal. By the next
morning, her child was breathing on her own and was removed from life-support.
The doctors still believed she would die within a few days.
Nine years later, she is still very much alive – a testimony to the amazing intervention of God. Nine years later, she is also
significantly challenged, mentally and physically.
Evil vs hope
How could God come with such power and save her from certain death, yet leave
her in need of constant care? This is the mystery of the kingdom: It has come – and it is yet to come. We have tasted the powers of the coming age, yet we are still touched
by the destructive evil of this one. We are also called to hope and faith in
the midst of this tension.
Until Jesus returns to bring into fulfillment the reign of God in this world,
our lives will always be marked by the conflict between good and evil. This is
a real conflict, with real casualties and setbacks – the cost of delayed judgment.
Yet there is also great reward, as mercy triumphs over judgment. We catch
glimpses of true life and freedom that fix our eyes and sustain us in our
journey, in this ‘time between the times.’
Gary Best is the national director of Vineyard Churches Canada. Naturally Supernatural is available at naturallysupernatural.ca.
October 2009
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