Our Hearts Reveal Our Choices

There are times in my 4AM devotions that I sit silently with my eyes closed just to experience how it would be if I were blind. It is a very humbling thought. Of all the senses whose absence is debilitating, none parallels the sight. I have, occasionally, seen blind people traveling alone on the train, with nothing but a stick to move about. It always makes me praise the Creator for endowing such people with resilience many common folk do not have. Perhaps, I would like to believe, if the Lord would grant me my plea of focusing only on him as I move along in life, he would graciously take from me my sight.

Glen Thomas was among the five missionary friends who left all and everything to be able to travel the length and breadth of England on foot just to preach the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were to spend three years sleeping under a tent by the side of the road while they preached. On some occasions, in churches, benches, and deserted buildings. They would spend three weeks in a particular town to preach, praying for the Lord to work among the people, until the hearers were converted and a church would be born by the time they needed to move on. Glen had no other issue with the ministry other than he was blind. Not that it mattered anyhow, because what Glen lacked in his senses, God filled up with power in prayer. He excelled in prayer, and with this God's hand to heal people he prayed for was mightily upon him.

Glen was the type of person they would find already on his knees agonizing in prayer when his brethren woke up early in the morning. When they went about their ministry for the whole day, and came back late in the afternoon, he would still be on his knees pleading with God. People with all types of sickness whom he prayed for, the blind, the lame, the depressed, the broken, the ill, all were healed. It was also at the height of the ministry that somebody asked Glen, “The Lord has been good to everybody you have prayed for, except you. Why have you not asked God to heal you?”

This realization made Glen think. And so in his prayers and fasting he humbly sought the Lord for healing for himself, but while he spent hours on end on his knees he received no answer. “Why can't I be healed Lord?”, he asked. Finally, at the end of three days the Lord replied, “Son, Thomas. I can heal you in a moment if you really desire so. My only concern is that once I give you what you ask you will grow cold and distracted like most do, and in so doing draw away from me. So choose you now: I will give you your sight this very moment, but you risk losing your intimacy with me? Or remain as you are now, continuing to rely alone on my presence?”

Glen chose to remain blind, and he was so up to the time of his death. But he grew all the more in power and in prayer. His ministering to the Lord became the backbone of the brethren in their preaching; leaving many churches in the wake of their journey, many of which are still standing up to this present day.

Today, I see churches and even some preachers boasting of something they do not have. Anyone, given enough oratory skill and public experience, can stand on a corner and roar like a bull with memorized verses, and it won't mean much to the LORD. Nothing matters as much as our hearts' disposition before this great and terrible God who holds everything together, to whom no spirit can boast. God is interested in making me for himself, not me for my ministry. Whatever work that manifests on the outside should only be the overflow of His work in me on the inside. I want Him. Not peace, not joy, not blessing but Him. My goal is Him.

Man's heart will always ask for blessing, more numbers of this and more strength for that; which has a tendency to puff up the pride of the individual, oftentimes without him recognizing it. People who boast about their ministry, which has actually become their idol, rely only on the arm of the flesh for results; one sure mark to distinguish this is that they ask people for help. They will of course attribute such to the Lord's blessing, but this only shows how shallow their intimacy with the Lord is, this very God who reveals the secrets of kings in their hidden chambers, who knows before we even have a word on our tongues. They may have times for bible reading, but they do not know prayer.

One may argue, “Well, you're really just being too narrow-minded here, there is nothing wrong with asking help from people.” Maybe there isn't for the carnal man, but for a child of the King who practically owns all things, nothing can be more dishonoring than to ask help from the creature rather than from the creator. My statement comes from my experience derived from the ministry of George Mueller, who resolved early on in his walk with God never to ask anything of man, but his petitions were to be directed to God alone in prayer. God sends help through any which way or whoever He deems fit for his use, demonstrating that God is real, and so is His mind and care for His children and their needs as well. As a result, Mr. Mueller was used mightily by God to care for more than 3,000 orphans' daily for years even beyond his own, asking directly from God, without asking any help from any man at any time. There are times that God even moved on his servant's behalf to redirect the weather, as He did the Sea of Galilee, impromptu. Can you imagine taking care of your family for years without working? “Yes, piece of cake”, you say? How about 3,000 children then? Knowing God only comes about through much time spent with him in intimate prayer. Prayer is the hardest labor there is.

The child of the King, the true child, will ask for the heart of the Lord; of which is brokenness for the Lord's glorious name and his own sins, stillness, worship, minstering unto the Lord. It is the submissive child's fulfillment to ask for the Lord's kingdom and will, to live the whole week in the presence of God in heaven, and to occasionally come back to earth to preach whenever the Lord sends him.