Cooperating With God

     There are things we can do to cooperate with the will of God in our lives and there are things we can do that hinder His will.

One day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing.
Luke 5:17 (NASB)

Luke records an event in Jesus ministry when large crowds had been following him because of the healing he was doing. On this particular day he was teaching inside a house full of people. The Bible especially notes that there were pharisees there, that the power of God was there to heal the sick and that one particular person, who was lame and had to be lowered down through the roof, was healed.

We could safely assume that there were many sick people in the crowd, because the Bible says crowds were gathering to him so they could be healed. However, in this instance it appears that only one person got healed.

It’s interesting to note that Jesus was teaching. This gives us a picture of how Jesus ministered, at least in this instance, when ‘the power of God was there to heal’ - he taught.

It may come as a surprise, but there doesn't appear to have been a great deal of fuss, no smoke and no-one being particularly ‘prophetic’. Instead, the ‘power of God was there to heal’ and Jesus was teaching.

To often we presume that God is going to move one way and don’t value how God has chosen to move. We can ‘get out of God’s way’ by letting go of some of our religious preconceptions and allow God to move as His Spirit chooses to move.

In this instance, and there are others as well, Jesus moved in the Holy Spirit by teaching. Clearly, for the power of God to be manifest in people’s lives Jesus thought he needed to address some beliefs that they had. So the appropriate ministry was to teach.

To cooperate with God we must be sensitive to what God is doing. Let’s seek the spiritual and not necessarily the ‘spectacular’.