It’s evident in today’s Christian culture that we are dumbing down the power of God. We don’t believe that God is still the God of the Bible. That He can do in our time what He did for His followers all those years ago. But God has not changed - we’ve just changed our expectations of Him. In today’s episode of the SALLT Leadership Podcast, host Wes Lane shares stories about the power of God and challenges listeners to expand their thinking about what God is capable of. Listen in and be inspired to believe that all things are possible with God!
Episode 3 Show Notes – The Power of God
“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are
possible.’” - Matthew 19:26
“You do not have because you do not ask God.” – James 4:2
“For I the Lord, do not change.” - Malachi 3:6
“For the eyes of the Lord search to and fro throughout the earth that he might strongly support
those whose hearts are completely his.” - I Chronicles 16:9
“What you think about God is the most important thing about you.” - AW Tozier
How to Train for Reigning:
1. You ask God to help you (James 4:2)
2. You stir the embers of your faith
3. Exercise your faith muscles
4. Immerse yourself in the stories of how God has shown up for others.
● God Smuggler
● George Mueller
5. He will reward you for your faith
Imagine a city in which it was commonplace for every follower of Jesus to believe God for
impossible things.
Well, welcome to another episode of the SALLT Leadership Podcast. The show for leaders who want to live a purposeful life, grow in their faith, and maximize their abilities and influence for the kingdom of God. I'm Wes Lane. For today's episode, we'll be exploring the power of God. And what that means for you as a kingdom leader, as someone who has access to God's strength and God's resources. Now, first of all, let me just say this. I am a fellow traveler, just like you. My credentials if you will, are simply just years on the journey and discovering that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. So I gotta start off with a story. So years ago, this is years ago. I don't even remember how many years ago, 20, 30 years. I don't know. It’s way back! So anyway, I'm at this deal and a pastor from Africa is speaking to this group and it's an incredible story.
In fact, this is why they brought him over. He just had this incredible story in the village he was in. I mean, praying for people, people getting healed right and left. All of this breakout of the miraculous. And so he's back here and he's telling the story and obviously he had not been told that God doesn't do much these days because he's knocking out of the park over there in Africa. And so he has clearly discovered that God has not changed. And when I was listening to him, I was just stunned. And I managed to take that man to lunch. And so of course the question I had on my mind was this. I said, “Well, what happened that launched you suddenly? I mean into just praying for people and all this.”
And he looked at me and he just said this, and his accent was so thick almost I couldn't understand him. He said, “Well I read the first six chapters of Mark and thought, I'd give it a try.” I'm like, oh my, I mean, the chills ran up and down my core. The thought of winging God like that absolutely blew my mind. But that's exactly what he did. He'd not been to seminary. He'd not done all this stuff. He did what the apostles did. I mean, they watched the first six chapters of Mark by watching Jesus and then they wing God, just like he did. And so it really pointed out my puny faith in that era, in that period of what God did these days. And of course, when I just kept seeing this time and time and time and time and time again, I realized I've been hanging with the wrong people.
I started realizing that, my golly, if I keep hanging with friends who tell me, “God doesn't do this. And God doesn't do that.” Well then, I'm gonna be hanging with my friends. That's the culture I live in. But then I started getting introduced to these people who were living in a whole different culture, that wasn't supposed to be happening. And then I start seeing this with my own eyeballs and participating in it. Then I realized, I think I'm going to stop telling God what He doesn't do these days. And I'm just going to say, “You know Lord, I want you to do whatever you want.” And I love that. I mean have you ever felt that you've suffered from a bad case of low expectations? Well, that's just really common.
Do you find yourself confronted by what's before you and have, in fact, had a hard time believing that God is gonna be big enough to handle that something? I mean, remember if we're willing, life with God is a big adventure and we are on a lifelong journey of discovery. Why say if we're willing? Well it's because quite honestly, just not everybody looks at it like that. I mean, let me quickly share two experiences that were life changing for me and set me on a course for discovery. And again, I share this with you because I want to encourage you. I realized how important it is for people to share their experiences because it just starts unlocking the prison cells of this less than experience. Remember we are sent to set the captives free.
You can't set anybody free if you can't get free yourself. And so think about this. In fact, I encourage you to look around, to start listening for the stories of other people. Sometimes you just gotta ask God to help you. You know James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask God.” So ask Him! Matthew 19:26, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” And then Malachi 3:6, “For I the Lord, do not change.” And AW Tozer said this, and boy hang your hat on this one too. This is a big thing to think about, “What you think about God is the most important thing about you.”
“What you think about God is the most important thing about you.” Why? Because it will determine what you're willing to do and how you're able to go up against problems. So my first experience with George Mueller, I've not shared at all about him other than to say this. So George Mueller, very quickly, was a 20 something year old kid in the early 19th century. And he's bugged about something. The burden on his heart is quite simply this, people just don't believe God these days. Does that sound familiar? It's like 1836 and he's making this comment. And so people don't believe God. And so he decided I'm just gonna prove God. And the way I'm gonna do that is I'm going to raise orphans. I'm gonna build orphanages and I'm gonna do all these things.
And I'm not gonna ask anybody for one dime and didn't. So throughout the 60 years of his life, he built five orphanages, fed, clothed, and housed thousands of children in an era that that was not fashionable quite honestly, but that's another story, and supported ministries around the world. You know, at the time of this he kept meticulous records because he never asked anyone for money. His staff was never allowed to ask anyone for money. The only thing they would do was send out an annual report to say, here's the money we got, here's how we spend it. But what he never said, what he never told anybody was, “This is what we need.” There were no get togethers like, “Hey brother, can I get together and have a chat with you about the ministry?” There was nothing like that.
And yet over 60 years of his life, and this is so well documented, it gave goosebumps to my lawyerly-ness wanting to show me the evidence. Over his 60 plus years of life, God provided over 200 million dollars, 200 million dollars. So, and yet at times he said this, “If it's not been 500, it's been a thousand times that we haven't known where the next shilling is coming from.” This was in England. God trained him, put him through a weight room and taught him that He will always be faithful. So the second thing that blew my mind, which was really life changing was God showed up in my personal marketplace. And my marketplace 25 plus years ago was a courtroom. It was a murder trial. And in fact, the murder trial surrounded a missing 12 year old girl when she had been found in South Oklahoma, I'm sorry she had never been found.
When her blood pool was found in a part of South Oklahoma City. And there was just a blood pool maybe five or six inches wide. It was not enough for a cup of blood. It wasn't enough for a fatal amount. There were no other blood drips. There was nothing, it was as if this child was in a Star Trek episode and had been beamed up to the ship because there was no evidence. In fact, there wasn't a stitch of clothing that was even missing. It was a complete mystery about what had happened. But in the end, it was such a hard case because there were Crystal sightings at Frontier City, the local amusement park, there were other places in which they'd say, “Well, we saw Crystal here and we saw Crystal there.” But we knew she was dead.
We could tell she was, there were circumstances around this, and I don't have time to go into it. It's a fascinating story. But there were circumstances around it that we knew she was dead. We also knew that it was her stepfather that had killed her and had hidden the body. So I filed charges. And so that became one of the most stressful periods of my life. In fact, you couldn't go anywhere in this city. Well, let's put it this way. You couldn't go to a gas pump and put gas in your car in that era without seeing her picture and a phone number to call if you see her. It was everywhere. The stress from that was incredible. It was the first time my wife and I started praying together.
It was the first time I started reading the Psalms. I realized that the Psalm were cries to God from David, a man desperate for Him and needing His help, and I needed His help. And so I started crying out to God. I would pray the Psalms, “Find a just cause. Oh God attend unto to my cry. You despise bloodthirsty and wicked men.” All of this sort of stuff. Here's the thing that dropped my jaw, Lori and I were the only two, knowing that we were praying like that this wasn't like a club or anything. It was just her and I on the floor, on our face, in our bedroom, crying out to God. Nobody knew we were doing that. Lori goes to a Bible study to a place that she didn't know anybody, except that the person that brings her. She shows up, the woman who she doesn't know who's leading it comes up to her and says this, “Lori, the matter about which you and your husband have been praying is a just cause.”
Now folks, that almost makes me weepy here, even to remember that. That was impossible to happen. I realized that God heard my cry and was telling me, “You’re right on, keep going.” And I saw God show up, I've written about this. I'm not gonna go into it. We just don't have time. But I saw God show up in miraculous ways in a jury trial, in a murder trial, and do things that I know we would not have been able to pull off. And I learned a lesson from that, that God is in my marketplace. So whether you're a homemaker, whether you're a business person, whether you're a school teacher or whatever you do, whether you mow lawns, whatever you do, you have got to realize that the living God has sent you to that.
And that He is there with you. A supernatural God is bringing all of Him into that moment. And He will be everything you need to be successful. And by the way, we won that. We won that jury trial, much to the shock in the courthouse, because here's what you gotta remember. If you limit the expectations of the power of God, you will never be disappointed. Let me repeat that. Let me be really clear on that. If you limit what you think God will do, well of course, you'll never be disappointed because you'll never have any expectations. Because faith is spelled R I S K, risk. You've got to get out of the boat. Life with God is sometimes, well not sometimes it is all the time, just taking the next step into the mist.
You are walking in faith and He is all about showing Himself faithful. What you think about God is the most important thing about you. And He loves our audacity. I would rather have a reputation for believing God for too much than too little. Think about that. You should too. We should be His audacious kids. When He sees us He ought to get a twinkle in His eye because we dare to believe Him. And let me tell you something in a world like today, we need to be like that. Well, so if you're thinking, “What do I do with all that?” Or maybe you're thinking, “Well, if this is true, how do I get unstuck from my stinking thinking?” Well, here's some action steps.
First of all, you gotta do this. You gotta ask God to help you. You gotta just ask Him. Or even if you're struggling a little bit, I heard someone say this, “Just tell Him you're willing to be willing.” Just give Him a green light, give Him an opening. I say that because He's just not gonna make you go someplace with Him. Stir the embers of your faith. This is a really important thing. I can't underscore this enough, how important stirring the embers of your faith is. Romans 12:3 says, God has given each of us, some measure of faith. Think about this. If you're a follower of Jesus that required a leap of faith right there. So you have a measure of faith.
So stir that up, consider those as embers. You know Paul in the book of Timothy, he told Timothy, stir the embers of the gifting that you have been given. These are things you blow on, these embers. And so you're not starting with zero. Step out, start immersing yourself in the stories of other people. One time we read God Smuggler by Brother Andrew in our staff, or we read the story of George Mueller. We read these stories contemporaneous or before, of these lives of men and women who are experiencing what is the normal life with God, which is a supernatural life. Life with God is not natural. It is beyond that. It is supernatural. If you, if you wanna get all jammed up about that, then fine go get jammed up.
But I'm just telling you. God is not like you and me. He is beyond that, but we're made in His image and He loves us with a fury and He loves it when we put Him on display and He will not go on display if we are not willing. So He will reward you. He is the faithful one who does that. So what's the point of all that? I mean, look at it this way, where the Bible says if you will endure, you will yet reign with Him, with Jesus. So think about it this way. You're training for reigning. Someday, there will be a point in time in which you and I will actually be reigning with God. So just look at this time right now, this is all training for reigning. And so you can do this in fact, keep this in mind. I Chronicles 16:9, I love this, “For the eyes of the Lord search to and fro throughout the earth that He might strongly support those whose hearts are completely His.” He is in this with you, and He is the willing one. So imagine a city in which it was commonplace for every follower of Jesus to believe God for impossible things.
Wow. Wow. So as always, I want to end our time together by reminding you of this and folks, this is what calls you from the heard. You have been designed built by a living God, sent into this moment of history, to the community to which you live as part of God's overarching strategy to redeem and restore the earth to Himself. Your life is purposeful. It matters. And God has a vested interest in seeing you accomplish your life mission successfully. You can do this rise up. I'll see you next time.