God Is Bigger Than Methods

Just about the time we think we have God figured out He will break out of our box and do it another way!   About a decade ago I was suffering from a heart condition that Doctors had said only bypass surgery would make better.  I struggled in faith doing all I knew to do to get healed.  Then, in time, I gave up on faith for my healing.  Of course, when you are a preacher who prays and believes for healing you can’t tell anyone that! Finally I went to Emory University hospital in Atlanta for one more heart catheterization.  Before I went I had preached in two different churches that week and two separate ladies spoke over me in prayer that I would not have surgery.   I smiled and thanked them but deep within I knew that I would have surgery.  I was so reconciled to having surgery that the night before I left for Atlanta I shaved my chest!  I had learned that the worst part of being hospitalized for a man was suffering with the tape on your chest!

Before the heart cath was performed my heart surgeon had said that according to the previous tests it appeared to him that I would need two or maybe three bypasses.  They prepped me to go straight from the lab to the operating room if bypass surgery was necessary. I remember the procedure and the apparent perplexity in the Doctors when they finally came and told me, “Your new results don’t match your old video film of your old test results.”  I was actually, I’m sorry to say, stunned!  I asked Teresa, “what does this mean?!”  She said, “it means that God has healed you!”  Wow!  God had healed me and I did nothing right according to my faith methods.  God had just healed me because it was in His plan to do so.

About a week later I was in a restaurant back home.  I walked by an old preacher who is now in heaven.  He asked about my heart visit to Emory.  I told him what had happened, and how I was amazed that God had done it outside of my faith sphere.  He said something that I will never forget.  His words were piercing and yet challenging to my doctrine.  He said, ”GOD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR FAITH!

Today you may be struggling with “trying to get fixed” in some way.  Maybe like the woman with the issue of blood, you have tried it all.  May I suggest that you quit struggling to get healed and simply lift your eyes to Jesus and his never ending, never judging mercy.  Just look to Him in your simplest and what may seem your weakest way and see how He responds to your childlike faith.