It’s great to think about, to talk about … having faith. But faith isn’t like a trophy you keep up in a cabinet. It’s something you have to use in the heat of the battle. And for many of us, taking that first step – stepping out in faith – well, that’s hard.

The beginning of another week. So often you know, we get to Monday and we think to ourselves – “Man is the weekend already over? Here I go again. The same old rut. The same old problems. Work hard, get home dog tired. On and on. Why am I doing this?”

Well, this week we’re continuing on looking at the whole subject of faith. I’ve called this series Having Faith that Moves Mountains – because my hunch is that God doesn’t mean for us to be in a rut. He means for us to push the obstacles out of the road, step out into new things, live a life of challenges and excitement.

Now I can hear the old cogs grinding over … “Surely he doesn’t mean my life does he?’ Well actually I do. Someone once accused me or complimented me – I’m still not sure which one it was – she said, “Berni my hunch is that you comfort zone is living outside your comfort zone.”

And my hunch is that she was right. It kind of put things into perspective for me. By definition, it’s uncomfortable outside your comfort zone … but actually, that’s where I want to be. And every now and then it gets me down and I feel like grumbling, but then I remember, it’s out here – outside the comfort zone – that’s the most exciting. That’s where the faith journey is. But stepping out, you know, out there into the unknown – well, stepping out is hard.

The hardest part of any faith journey, is the first step. At least that’s what we think, until we’ve been on the journey for a while and things are going just fine until we discover there’s yet another giant in our way. Or another chasm to leap. Or another mountain to …

There are times when stepping out into the unknown can be incredibly difficult. One of the things that we’re going to explore later in this series is overcoming fear, because fear has the tendency either to immobilise us completely or to lead us into making bad choices, or both.

This week on the program though, we’re going to look at a story, a vignette if you like of God on the faith journey. Last week we saw the incredible faithfulness of God on Abraham’s journey. And today, we’re going to kick off a look, in fact we’re going to take a look together at the power of God to do the unexpected through four lepers. Through these social rejects, God brings the most incredible blessings to His people, right when they were at absolute rock bottom.

And the point of sharing this snapshot in this series Having Faith that Moves Mountains is simply this:

1. To expose the reality of the journey – you know it’s not some walk in the park outside our comfort zone – it’s hard, it’s tough, there’s a gritty reality to it all, and in the middle of all that
2. To expose the great unseen reality – the faithfulness, power and glory of God amidst each journey.

There’s a reason for that. So many of us struggle with the reality of our journey through life. We still harbour this secret belief that it should be easy. At least easier than it is. At least like the other people I know. And when it’s not, we conclude that we simply mustn’t have enough faith. And so in effect, we resign from any aspiration to live out our lives with a faith that moves mountains. To put it simply – we give up!

And the more you look at things, the more you see that particular reality playing itself in the lives of so many would-be-believers.

The journey that we looked at last week – Abraham’s journey – was anything but easy. And this next one, perhaps it’s even the harder still. If we’re going to have faith that moves mountains, then we need to come to grips with the reality of our journey – you with yours, I with mine – and the great unseen reality. God Himself.

Have you ever noticed how some people, they seem to power on with God? Somehow, they seem to go on with God in just an amazing way, and they use the power that God has given them, wonderfully, for God’s glory. But other people, they hear the message, but they just somehow sit in the pews.

I visited a church recently, and as many churches do, they had a whole bunch of banners hanging on the walls. The theme of the banners was celebration. “Celebrate God’s Love.” “Celebrate God’s Mercy.” One of them was “Celebrate God’s Faithfulness.” It struck me when I looked at that banner, that we really only understand, really only come to grips with God’s faithfulness, during the difficult times. It’s a bitter-sweet lesson to learn at the time….but when we look back on that, it’s the most wondrous lesson isn’t it?

In a sense, it’s great to have God around us and to be a part of our lives, and for Him to be our Lord during the good times. But really it’s in the tough times on our journey of faith, when dark storm clouds gather around us, that we truly experience God’s faithfulness for ourselves. And it’s after those times in our lives that we can really celebrate the faithfulness of God.

And strangely, it’s so often during those times, that God uses people in power. You see again, if you or I were God we probably wouldn’t do it that way. We’d probably build people’s lives up and make them strong and then use them in power.

He moves us from one place to another in our lives. And through our human eyes, those places often look ordinary. Even grungy. Even inappropriate. In a difficult marriage. In the midst of conflict in the workplace. Surely God isn’t in that place with us. Surely we shouldn’t be expecting mountains to move while we’re there.

Now what God should do is clean that mess up and then when everything is fine and I’m feeling fine and dandy, that’s when my faith should be moving mountains.

The book of Psalms in the Old Testament is one that we often think of as the book of praise. It is after all, the Hebrew hymnbook. But would it surprise you to know that there are more Psalms of lament than there are of praise? More songs written by people in those dark and fearful places than on the mountain top of faith?!

And in the Psalms, we often see the phrase ‘from strength to strength.’ In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church, we see ‘from glory to glory.’ The Bible is full of this stuff; it is full of superior, excellent, extra mile, abound, excel, press on, surpass. God does not call us to mediocrity. God does not call us to a place of standing still, because mediocrity begets mediocrity.

God wants us to be all that we can be. To do all that we can do. To put our roots deeper down into Him. To bear more fruit in Him, but sometimes that’s scary. Doesn’t matter who we are. Doesn’t matter whether we’re at the top of the heap, or right at the bottom.

And that’s why we’re going to take a look at four nobodies in the Bible in this Chapter. These men don’t even have a name. They’re lepers and God does something exciting and powerful with them. Not because they had any great expectations of God. Not because they even had any great faith. But simply – because they stepped out on the journey.

All we’re going to do today though is set the scene – what was going on … have a listen …

Some time later King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army; he marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. As the siege continued, famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver.

Now as the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, ‘Help, my lord king!’

He said, ‘No! Let the LORD help you. How can I help you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press?’

But then the king asked her, ‘What is your complaint?’ She answered, ‘This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son; we will eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son and we will eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.’

When the king heard the words of the woman he tore his clothes.

Let me ask you – what sort of siege is going on in your life at the moment? How are you reacting?  Well over these next few days on the program, we’re going to look at how God operates in the middle of the sieges of life – and I know this: when we do, He’s going to shine His faithfulness into our hearts.  And that’s where faith comes from.

When the going starts getting tough in life – you know what we often do – we look to other people for help. Leaders. People more experienced than us. But what if they’ve lost the plot too. Then what?

When we’re confronted by a great big mountain – something that’s blocking our path that we can’t possibly move – we kind of expect God to use someone else to move it. Someone bigger. Someone stronger. But what if He wants to use the likes of you and me? Now there’s a scary thought. 

Have you ever met a Mr or Mrs Super Christian!?? I have. These people have their lives so incredibly together and they seem so strong in their faith – that you go home, look in the mirror and think to yourself, “I, I could never be like that. I’m hopeless. I’m a failure.”

Funny, funny how we look at things through the world’s eyes. Just because on the outside someone appears confident, and they can tell us the good stories of their lives, we assume that they are perfection personified. And we know for sure that we’re not. But if someone has a position or a title or something like that – we think – well, they’re better than me.

Over the last couple of days on the program, we’ve been looking at a time in Israel’s history that is best described as rock bottom. The city of Samaria was under siege by the Aramean army. There was no food. Things were so desperate that, well, mothers were killing and eating their children.

Now God had a plan – and His plan was to bless His people. And you and I… we’d imagine that He’s going to use the king – the king of Israel to bless His people. Or maybe God’s Prophet, Elisha – God’s man on the ground. That’s because we look at it from a human perspective.

But God did neither of those things. He chooses, well not even ordinary people like you and me, because He wanted to make a point. So He chooses the least of the least.

I would like to introduce you now to the four key characters of this story. Let me emphasise that these men aren’t from the Bible ‘A list’. They’re no Abraham or Paul, or Moses or Elijah. They’re so far down the pecking order that they don’t even have names. In fact, they’re lepers. Outcasts. They’re unclean. That’s why they’re sitting at the gate. They were cast out. That’s what it meant. They didn’t get to live with everybody else in safety inside the city walls. The leper colony was on outside the walls, outside the protection of the city.

If there were a social register in Samaria, these men would be so far down the bottom that they wouldn’t even make it on the list, because as far as the people inside the safety of the city were concerned, these men didn’t even belong. They are at the complete opposite end of the social scale to the king.

Now there were four leprous men outside the city gate, who said to one another, ‘Why should we sit here until we die? If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; but if we sit here, we shall also die. Therefore, let us desert to the Aramean camp; if they spare our lives, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.’ (2 Kings 7:3,4)

It turns out that these four nobodies asked the very best question they could ask: Why should we sit here until we die?

There they are at the gate. They look back over their shoulders. That’s not an option – everybody’s starving in there. Go there and we’re going to die. They look down at their feet. That’s not an option either – what are they going to do. Stay here – right here at the gate and starve here? They look out towards their enemies. They shudder. But you know something? It’s the only option with any hope of success, however slim that hope may appear from where they sat:

So the arose at twilight to go to the Aramean camp; but when they came to the edge of the Aramean camp, there was no one there at all. (2 Kings 7:5)

Imagine, it is twilight. The sun’s just gone down. The first of the stars are just starting to come out, and you and I are two of those four lepers sitting at the gate. We’ve thought it through. It’s logical. Our hunger tells us so. We know that if we sit here much longer, we’re going to dies. So we get up, and we start that long walk to the Aramean camp.

How do we feel? Do we feel jubilant? Do we feel excited? I do not think so. I think we’re sick in the stomach. We’ve weighed up our chances and they’re slim at best. Five percent, ten percent at best? Every fibre of our beings wants to stay put. To preserve our lives for just a few more hours. Maybe a few more days. As our feet sandals crunch in the dirt, we look up at the stars starting to appear and in our heart of hearts, we know that this will be our last twilight.

It is such a long walk that walk. A kilometre. Two? Three? Out to the Aramean camp across the open ground. Across “no-man’s land” But then, then we arrive at the Aramean camp and something strange is going on. Have a listen (2 Kings 7:5-8):

So they arose at twilight to go to the Aramean camp; but when they came to the edge of the Aramean camp, there was no one there at all. For the Lord had caused the Aramean army to hear the sound of chariots, and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, ‘The king of Israel has hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to fight against us.’ So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys leaving the camp just as it was, and fled for their lives.

When these leprous men had come to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent, ate and drank, carried off silver, gold, and clothing, and went and hid them. Then they came back, entered another tent, carried off things from it, and went and hid them.

Where is everyone? I stick my head in this tent. It’s full of stuff – but there’s no one there. You stick your head in the next tent. Same thing. What’s going on? We wander around the tents, in absolute disbelief.

The one thing these lepers hadn’t banked on was God. Surely God wouldn’t be in that hopeless place with them. Surely God wouldn’t help them – lepers after all – against a mighty army. If God would help anyone, it would be the king. He was after all God’s anointed. He’s the one that God would help.

As Dr Barry Chant, one of my lecturers at Bible College put it – when we step out, God steps in. In fact, as catchy and as memorable as that is, it’s not quite correct, because what these lepers discovered when they stepped out, was that God had already stepped in. God had gone before them and driven the mighty army out.

And what happened was exactly according to the Word of God through the Prophet Elisha. It was unbelievable! So eventually, after they’ve played in Aladdin’s cave for a while they go back and tell everyone. At first, the king and the people won’t believe them. They send out scouts to confirm that these, these, these lepers after all are telling them. And then, finally the nation figures out that God showed up. Get it. Not through the king, but through four lepers. The king thought it was a trap. But eventually, well, have listen:

So the messengers returned, and told the king. The people went out, and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a measure of choice meal was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the LORD. (2 Kings 7:9-16)

Exactly as the Prophet Elisha had predicted the day before. I love this part of the story. God’s just done an amazing miracle. And it’s discovered by four lepers who decided to step out of the misery and gloom and hopelessness, not out of some great altruistic sense of faith. But because they had to. They stepped and they walked into God’s miracle. They bumped into God’s miracle and they were blessed. But the one man who wasn’t blessed was the captain of the king’s guard. Have a listen to what it says:

Now the king had appointed the captain on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate; the people trampled him to death in the gate, just as the man of God had said when the king came down to him. For when the man of God had said to the king, ‘Two measures of barley shall be sold for a shekel, and a measure of choice meal for a shekel, about this time tomorrow in the gate of Samaria,’ the captain had answered the man of God, ‘Even if the LORD were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?’ And he had answered, ‘You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat from it.’ It did indeed happen to him; the people trampled him to death in the gate. (2 Kings 7:17-20)

God did an amazing miracle that day. Not through the king, not through the prophet but through four hapless lepers.

It’s nice to talk about having faith – but it’s much harder to actually put it into practice. To use our faith in the heat of the battle. Why does God allow battles? Why should we have to use faith? Why does He do things this way?

Over these last few days on the program, we’ve been taking a look at a story – well, not so much about our faith, but about God’s faithfulness. It’s the story of one of Israel’s very darkest hours. They were under siege in Samaria, people were starving, the king had lost the plot and mothers were cannibalising their children.

The king enquires of God’s prophet Elisha, the prophet tells him everything within 24 hours will be just fine. In just 24 hours says Elisha there’s going to be more than enough food to go around.

Ever been in a siege in your life? Ever picked up the Bible and read some powerful, inspiring, impossible passage:

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain be lifted up and thrown into the sea, and if you do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you have said will come to pass, it will be done for you.

Great. That’s just great Jesus. Great quote. But, in my circumstances, in my life, in the middle of my desperate siege and impossible circumstances, I just can’t believe that. I’d like to I just can’t. And everything that’s human and rational about us makes it really much easier not to believe than to believe. And so today, today I just want to draw the story of this siege together – because as we chew it over and swallow it – I believe that God is going to feed us. I believe that God is going to build up our faith – because you and I, we have some mountains that need to be moved, don’t we??

Now, let’s just stop and think about it for a minute. Israel is under siege. The king loses the plot. The people lose the plot. God speaks through His prophet and says it’s going to be OK tomorrow, this time. These people who profess to believe in God show not a single ounce of faith. None. Zip. Nada.

You may at this point be asking yourself, ‘What’s this particular story have to do with faith?’

The king had lost hope. Mothers were eating their children. The lepers – the four lowly outcasts who were the only ones to step out into the unknown – even they acted out of necessity instead of faith.

They sat at the gate to this city under siege and asked themselves the question, ‘Why should we stay here and die? We can’t go back in there – they’re all dying in there. We can’t stay here. The only option is to see if we can convince the Aramean army to spare us.’ So off they go only to discover that God has already done this mighty miracle and the Aramean camp, lies empty and ready to be plundered.

When they told the king he still didn’t believe. And the captain of the guard was trampled to death because of his unbelief. You can read about this in 2 Kings Chapters 6 and 7. It’s a really confronting historical account of an absolute lack of faith.

That’s it in a nutshell. And yet still God blessed Israel. Not one ounce of faith, and still the blessing flowed.

How can this be a story of faith? What’s it doing in a series of radio programs that I’ve called ‘Having Faith that Moves Mountains?’ It has nothing to do with faith.

They’re all good questions. And my answer to them is this. It is precisely because not a single mustard seed of faith is to be found in this story that I’ve included it. Not one person showed any faith. Not one … except the Prophet. Elisha. The man who stood his ground and spoke the Word of God to a king who was ready to kill him. The one man who trusted in God.

Did Elisha have any idea how this impossible Word from God was to be fulfilled? We’re not told, but even if he did, what a mighty amount of faith it would have taken to believe. This particular prophecy to the king didn’t give Elisha a whole bunch of wriggle room did it? It was very specific – with a twenty-four hour fuse on it. And if God didn’t show up, it was going to blow up in Elisha’s face.

Yet none of the others in this story showed any faith. And here’s why I’ve included it in this series of programs about faith. Because it demonstrates very clearly that God doesn’t depend on us to do His will. He isn’t sitting around waiting in heaven, scratching His head, wringing His hands, sweating on you and me to deliver. He’s not sitting there looking at me thinking, “Oh no! Oh no! Berni’s going to blow it again!! What am I going to do? How am I going to solve this dilemma without Berni?” Well, we may laugh – but don’t we start getting this crazy notion that God’s eternal plan for the cosmos hinges on the strength of our faith? Well. Get this – let it sink into your heart: This story is about the faithfulness of God, not the faith of men.

This story tells us about a God who is worthy of our faith. It tells us that what God says and what God does are one and the same thing, however impossible things may seem God has a plan and He tells us about that plan through His Word. Read any story about any character whom you would choose to name in the Bible – even a story about four hapless lepers with no names – and you will discover a faithful God in that story.

The whole point of this story is this: that when God speaks, you and I can take Him at His Word. We never, ever have to worry about that. He doesn’t depart from His Word. He is the one Person who always delivers on His promises. He always does what He says.

So, we can open our Bibles and believe that what it says about who God is, and what His plans are and who I am in Christ and how He’s calling me to respond – We can believe that He means those things for me and for you ant that He will never, ever fail me.

If we’re going to talk about faith then let us not begin to conceive of faith as some inanimate object. It’s not just faith that moves mountains. It’s faith in the God with the power and the desire to move our mountains that moves mountains.

Let me ask you something. Who benefited from the miracle in this story? The lepers did. They showed no apparent faith, but they did step out. They walked into the miracle. Kind of stumbled in on it rather than believing for it.

The king did. He was a hopeless leader whichever way you look at him. He was going to shoot the messenger but he didn’t. He neither heeded the Word of God, nor believed it. He didn’t even believe when he was told of what had happened. And yet the king benefited from the miracle.

Elisha too benefited from the miracle. Not specifically. Not in any special way. But only because he was part of Israel in the city of Samaria that once was under siege and starving but now had an abundance of everything.

The whole of Israel benefited from the miracle. But the one man who didn’t was the captain of the guard. Because he defied God. He hurled his unbelief in God’s face. This was the man who stood before the Prophet and said, in effect – God, there is no way that you can do this. This was the one sin that God did not allow to go unpunished that day. The captain saw it, but he never ate of it. He never participated in the fruit of God’s blessing.

Seems to me that the thing that we learn through this story is this: that even in the most dire of circumstances, amidst the most impossible of people, God remains the God of blessing. Our failure will not bring God undone. His plans don’t depend on us. They won’t be thwarted by us. And sometimes all we need do is to step out and walk into them. Can I ask you this? When these lepers had no faith and they were blessed, the Israelites had no faith and they were blessed, how much more then will we see the blessings of God when we hear God’s Word and believe Him?

Let me ask you? What is the one thing that somehow you can’t quite seem to believe God for? The miracle? The breakthrough? What if instead of imagining somehow that it all depends on your faith, you just abandoned it to God? What if instead of staying here in this place and dying, you just head off across “no-man’s land” like those lepers? Well? What if?

Faith without works is dead. I wish I could tell you otherwise. I wish I could tell you that you don’t have to put your faith into action – because, well, life’s easy, so you just don’t need to. But it ain’t and you do! 

Well over the course of this week, if you’ve been able to join us, we’ve been looking at a dark hour in Israel’s history. A time when their capital city was under siege. People were starving. Women were cannibalising their children. The king, who was supposed to provide leadership, had completely lost the plot.

And even though God spoke His blessing into this dire siege through His prophet Elijah; even though God promised to His people – people who, by the way, profess to believe in this God, people who went through all the religious rituals, all the motions; even though God promised blessing to these people in their siege, none of them listened. None of them believed. None of them could make sense of those dire circumstances on the one hand and the powerful word of God, which promised blessing, on the other.

Deliverance. Not just a bit of blessing, an inconceivable amount of blessing. Not some itsy-bitsy thing but a massive mighty thing. And we can be hard on those people until we realise that, well, in these sieges of our lives, to be perfectly honest, we spend much more of our time focusing on the problems of life than the power of God.

We’ve talked about that this week but today, today I want to share some of my personal journey with you. Because you should never think that just because some guy happens to be talking about this stuff on the radio, he somehow has it all sorted out. That somehow he’s exempt from the trials that stretch his faith. Because, let me tell you, he definitely isn’t.

Faith, by definition, is something we need to have when we need something that we can’t do for ourselves or provide for ourselves. Some breakthrough. Some provision. Some healing. Some thing. And inevitably there’s an urgency or a risk associated with this thing.

The ultimate example is being saved – eternal life. Now, I don’t know what you believe but me, I believe that there is a heaven and there is a hell and that you and I, in fact, all of us have fallen so far short of the mark of perfection required by God to be in His favour to get into heaven. The only solution is Jesus. Whoever believes in Him has eternal life.

Faith. When we receive God’s forgiveness by faith we’re forgiven. By believing. By basing our life on the promise that God forgives us through Jesus and that He paid the price for us on the cross.

This may not appear that pressing right now for some people but one day, one day there will be a day of reckoning. A day, when you and I, are held to account. And that day could come much sooner than we imagine.

Faith in Jesus gives us eternal life. That’s, without doubt, the ultimate example. There are others and truth be known, it’s the others that many people struggle with. The things we need in our lives right now. The real estate transaction. A job promotion. A healing of a relationship. Peace in the war that’s going on around us. See, the stuff that’s going on now compared to eternal life, in a sense it’s less important but because it’s here and now and so immediate, it seems so much bigger and so much more pressing.

We travel through difficult places in life. You do and so do I. I want to share with you what’s happened in my life over these last few years. The biggest thing that I’ve had to believe for, in my life, has been funding for the ministry that God’s got me involved in, in Christianityworks. This ministry where we produce these radio programs. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some pitch for money or anything like that. I’m just going to share with you the gritty reality of how this whole ‘faith’ thing is played out in my life. And can I tell you? Some days it’s been hard. I mean, let’s get real here.

Four years ago I took over the role as Chief Executive Officer of this ministry Christianityworks. You’ve probably heard me tell this story before. What we do is we produce radio programs. Just like the one that you’re listening to right now. But back then we weren’t producing any radio programs – none. We had almost no money left in the kitty.

And yet I had this powerful call in my heart to produce fresh new programs. Three different ones. The weekly half hour program, Christianityworks. This daily program that you’re listening to now, A Different Perspective. And some short 60 second spots called Just A Minute.

And so off we went and from the very first step It was nuts. It was crazy. If this were a business and I put together a business plan and went to a venture capitalist and said, ‘I’ve got this great idea, let’s do it.’ They would have laughed me out of the room.

But God, He does things differently. He has this plan to reach people with the gospel, the good news of His Son. So instead of getting some experienced, eminent, reputable preacher to head up this ministry, He grabs some guy like me from the Information Technology industry and says, “Here Berni, you do it.”

And it hasn’t been easy. Some days the fire of His calling burned brightly in my heart and other days, you realise you’re walking on water and you panic and you start to sink. And almost every day has been a serious faith walk. I mean, where do you get the money from to do that with just a handful of people supporting the ministry four years ago?

This is real. This is the way it is and I have to tell you, I think, to this day, if I didn’t spend some time each morning alone with Jesus, praying and reading His word, I’d have gone nuts. I couldn’t have coped with the pressure. There are bills to pay. There are staff to pay. There is a recording studio. There’s printing. Everyone seems to have their hands out to be paid.

Now I felt like that little boy with a few fish and a few loaves of bread who had to feed 5,000. See now, people go “wow”. 900 radio stations take your programs. Millions of people listen. But they don’t see what was involved.

The truth is this. I wouldn’t swap what I’ve been through because it’s grown me and so many people have come on board now and they’re helping financially but it’s still a challenge. Just this morning I was reading the familiar story of Lazarus. You know, the friend of Jesus who died and He brought him back to life. And I noticed how differently Jesus works to the way that perhaps you or I would like Him to work:

A certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary’s the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped His feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was ill so the sisters sent a message to Jesus. ‘Lord, Lazarus is ill.’ But when Jesus heard (here’s what He said) ‘This illness does not lead to death rather it is for God’s glory so that the Son may be glorified.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was.

And you know what happened? Lazarus died. And then Jesus went and healed him and raised him from the dead and God got all the glory. You see, this is so different to the way you or I would do it. Jesus hangs back. He delays because He wants them to see His glory. He wants them to experience a major miracle. The more dire the circumstances the bigger the miracle.

And that’s how I’ve felt over these last few years. Man, so often people say, ‘haven’t you guys done amazingly well?’ Can I tell you? I just laugh, seriously. Don’t you get it? People can’t do what’s happened in this ministry. From zero radio stations to 900 taking our program. From an audience of zero to millions each week. This is a major miracle. Only God can pull that off.

And that, that’s what I have to keep reminding myself each time we sit down and say, ‘Well Lord, what’s next? You’ve called us into this country or that … How are we going to fund that?’ And each time, my God shows up. Each time my God is faithful. And I have to tell you, my mustard seed of faith, well, I guess by now it’s just sprouted the odd little green shoot.