Dan Sullivan

The Lord likes to show off
no He doesn’t
The Lord answers our prayers
no He doesn’t
The Lord is obvious and speaks loud and clear
no He doesn’t.

I just read one of my favorite events in the Bible. Eliljah takes on the priests of Baal and God shows Himself to be the true living and listening and awake god.

But then Elijah runs off and hides at Mt. Horeb and there is some interesting stuff. On Mt. Carmel Elijah prayed and God answered instantly and fire consumed the offering. Then he told Ahab “Get home, there is the sound of rain” and he began to pray for rain. SEVEN TIMES his servant went looking for clouds before he saw rain. Then Elijah tells Ahab again, “get home, here comes a storm.” it’s like Ahab hadn’t gone anywhere. Surely there would have been a lot to hand around Mr. Carmel for. Four hundred priests of Baal had been chopping themselves up all day before being dragged off and slaughtered in a nearby valley. Thousands of people of Israel were there so they would take a long long time to clear out and head home. So finally Ahab gets his second warning to leave.

But then God does all the opposite things, and it’s a good thing He does. Elijah, the same guy that prayed for no rain then the sacrifice then rain, and got all of his prayers answered, prays to God that he would be able to die. God doesn’t answer his prayer. Then Elijah goes and hides in a cave, and an earthquake, and a fire, and a mighty wind all come crashing through the mountains in a tremendous display of power, much like the fire God sent and the storm He was bringing, but God wasn’t in those mighty displays. He was in the whispering breeze after them. So now He isn’t loud and clear, and He isn’t answering prayers, and He isn’t making mighty and earthshaking displays of His power!

I was talking to a guy last week about God, and I said that I didn’t want to be crude, but we must really stop thinking about God like a logical computer that we feed commands to and He does them. Often times people pray and it isn’t answered and they think that they just didn’t pray right, or that something in their life is wrong, so God doesn’t want to answer them, or something. What unconfessed sin do you have? Think up some so you can confess it and then God will answer your prayers…etc. Elijah didn’t have any unconfessed sin; God just didn’t want to answer his prayer and kill him. Actually, are you ready for this, I think I want to throw out the word prayer all together. Prayer has a connotation of special words and secret insights, but whenever you see Jesus talk to the Father, He just talks. And He talks in the SAME WAY that He talks to the disciples.

So in my crude description, I said that making requests to God is really a lot more like getting your wife to have ‘married time’ with you. There is no formula. She doesn’t have a keypad on the back of her head that you type a code into to turn her on like the carwash at the gas station. Usually it doesn’t have that much to do with you EARNING her love. If it did, then every guy would love to take out the trash, mow the grass, vacuum the carpet, and fold the laundry. Your wife’s love and response to your love aren’t based on your works, but on HER LOVE. It’s unpredictable, it’s difficult, it’s easy, it’s ALIVE. That’s how life is with God. If ‘married time’ happened every time I went through the right list of tasks, taking out the trash, mowing the grass, folding the laundry, etc. then it wouldn’t be out of love. It wouldn’t be a gift to me and it wouldn’t be grace from my wife. It would be an obligatory task that I bought from her with my deeds. In short, it would be death and it would lead to the death of our marriage.

God is similar in so many ways. When we think we can say the right things and type in the right code and do the right works and He’ll have to do what we ask, we make Him the servant and ourselves the Sovereign. When we think He didn’t answer our prayers because we didn’t ask Him right we are telling Him that if we ask right He MUST answer. It’s not so easy, and sometimes it’s downright frustrating, but when He answers, there is real love and real life involved, and it’s greater than anything we could imagine.

“Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.
However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.
David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”"
(Rom 4:4-8 NIV)

King Asa was really cool for a long time. He saught the Lord and the Lord was found by him and all of his people and they had a huge time of revival and everything. He even tore down his GRANDMOTHER’S idols and removed her from her post as “queen mother”.

but in the end, he used his wealth to manipulate some nations to his favor, and it says that when his feet became diseased (it doesn’t say why they were diseased, just that they became that way) he:

“In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians.”
(2Chr 16:12 NIV)

I remember somebody, it was Ken at church, saying that in the Bible there is a very very small percentage of people that finished well. The whole time I was reading about Asa this morning I was thinking about naming a child after him, then I got to the end. Man.

May we never change our ways, once we turn to the Lord and seek Him and even find Him!

“King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth.

The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart.”

(1Kings 10:23-24 NIV)

It’s hard to read 1 Kings 10 and 11. chapter 10 talks all about Solomon’s riches, his gold, his jewels, his horses, etc. and here and there it mentions his wisdom. The Queen of Sheba came and questioned him about all different things and was stunned by his WISDOM and his RICHES. And then all of a sudden, at the end of chapter 10, it talks about Solomon going astray. He began to worship foreign gods that God specifically told him not to go after. His riches and his wives’ religions became a greater priority than his wisdom or the Source of his wisdom. What’s funny about that, is that makes me say he was no more wise than anyone else I see in the world today. If he didn’t have the wisdom to avoid falling into sin, then how wise was he-And of what value is wisdom if it won’t keep you from sinning against God?

“Better a poor man whose walk is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse.”

(Prov 19:1 NIV)

“Better a poor man whose walk is blameless than a rich man whose ways are perverse.”

(Prov 28:6 NIV)

“Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take warning.”

(Eccl 4:13 NIV)

When all of these people were coming to Solomon, he should have been showing off his God, and not his wisdom or riches. He should have been drawing people to the Living God, and not the dead idol of wealth or power.

Once I worked at a church that was cutting edge in terms of multi-media and video/lighting stuff during the church service. People would come from far and wide to meet with me and my boss and we would give them tours and talk about this system or that system that we used. It was neat and I think we helped a lot of people out and saved them some money from over-paid consultants that would have sold them too much fancy stuff. 

“Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.”

(Rom 16:19 NIV)

Someday I hope that people hear about what we’re doing. I hope that God moves so much in our work that people hear about our busy God and they come to see, and I hope that when they come, they aren’t impressed so much with our building, or our technology, or our methods or glossy programs, but that they are impressed by our God, and that is all that we show them.

I know a lot of my friends from overseas were always impressed with my Apple computer, or my digital camera, or the things I could do in photoshop. That is all fine, I guess, but I want my pleasing merciful Jesus to shine through more than my slick computer. I want them to see that I am what happens when God remakes a man, not what happens when a man is born in America and gets a bunch of stuff. May God burn off our chaff, and make us into pure representations of who He is, so that people may not be confused and so that whenever they come to us, they move on from us to Him.