Acts of Faith

Ah yes....acts of faith. We perform so many in our everyday lives. Simple acts. We have faith that when we get up in the morning and hit certain switches that lights will come on, coffee will start brewing and the computer will come alive with access to the cyber-universe. This is the faith of electronics.

We have faith that when we step on the floor from our beds that our two relatively small feet will hold us up, our inner ears will allow us to balance, and we will walk around all day, hearts beating and lungs expanding and brains commanding. This is the faith of our bodies...our wondrous human body.

We have faith that when the people we know and love tell us news or speak of events or weave a story, that their words are real and truthful and meaningful. This is the faith of our relationships.

The car will start, the chicken will be cooked through, my dogs will greet me with tremendous enthusiasm, people will be on time, a tomato plant will bear fruit, petunias bloom in the full sunlight. We all have a certain degree of faith that this things will be true...they will happen.

We have so much faith that we use in ever day life, it really is incredible. The trouble is, we don't view these acts as faith, only as things that we expect, things we take for granted, things that have occurred so often and so repetitively that we KNOW they will happen again.....like the sunrise and the sunset.

So what does it feel like when faith fails us? When the car does not start...when people lie, when the coffee machine is broken....when the chicken is raw in the middle? We are angry, disappointed, disgusted, and at the very least, inconvenienced. So what does it fell like when your spiritual faith fails you??? Absolute confusion? Devastation? Betrayal???

I learned a great lesson all these acts of faith and failures over a very long trip I just made to Orlando Fla. and back. Nothing that went on down there was as I had hoped, as I expected.
The trip was slow and scary.....I drove through and sat through the worst storms I had ever seen...trapping me and my dog in the car for two extra hours. The travel trailer I was staying in
was crammed with so much new stuff (the owner likes stuff) that I could hardly move around in it. It als did not have any of the food she had told me she had brought. We couldn't seem to get ready on time any of the show days. The satellite dish didn't work...no TV. I lost my toothbrush, I lost at the show every single day to a dog who had flown in from Ohio and another from Canada. My show friend had so many people visiting all day long that there was never any time to rest. She also had not kept my pretty little show girl (dog) in the condition I had expected and had been told. By Sunday, I hurt all over and had a ten-hour drive in front of me, with the "check engine" light on, by the way, and was so disgusted, disappointed and inconvenienced....I cannot even tell you. Electronic failures, communication failures, body failures. I'd had 'em all.

But the worst failure I had was a failure of faith. For, while I was in Orlando, I just had to....had to drive to Lakeland, only 60 short minutes away...to the Florida Revival that had started 80 days before and had grown into an Outpouring, a truly remarkable, spiritual gathering of the Lord and His people......so large it had gone to TV broadcasting and had been moved to seven different venues until it was in an airplane hanger, seating 8-10,000 people per night.
Unbelievable....powerful...supernatural stuff. I drove there, alone, praying for discernment,
wanting it to be REAL, ultimately wanting it to be for ME...hoping that my act of going, my act of faith might somehow be rewarded. I had heard the Florida Revival is truly a sight to behold. People are being healed, people are being raised from the dead, God is performing miracles and wonders...I wanted to see it...I wanted to feel it....I wanted it to be my time for the ultimate miracle.

I got there early...waited in line with people from Illinois, New Jersey, New York. There were people from Switzerland, Denmark, and more African countries than I could recognize. The place was electric! We found our seats and the worship music started and people were just swept up in the spirit and the presence and the fire. Everyone was crying out to God, singing, clapping, praising. The sick and crippled and blind were there all around me, waiting....waiting for Todd Bentley to speak, waiting for God's hand.....acting on faith that this was also their time.
For two hours we sang and praised and cheered and sang.......and I felt absolutely nothing. It was like my heart had shut its door. I was not at all moved. At a revival where I had been expected to have been knocked on the floor by the presence of God, I had to double-check to see if He was even in the house. And just before the speaking was to begin.....just before "the good stuff" should have started, I got up, and walked out and drove back Orlando feeling utterly defeated...having what I felt was a huge failure of faith. I saw no miracles, felt very little...I could not understand it.

The rest of my time in Orlando seemed shrouded in a cloud of disappointment. After having a ten-hour drive to mull it over and if you read back in this post as to what I had prayed for on the way to that hanger in Lakeland Fla........what I had PRAYED for, not what I had expected or and hoped for....but what I had prayed for was discernment. The ability to know what is right and true and real for me...discernment. What I thought was a failure of faith was actually God answering my prayer. Despite all that was going on around me at the revival,
it was not the place for me. It was not my time for the ultimate healing experience. I was not supposed to be there. I so wanted it to be......but it was not to be. I prayed to know the difference and I knew. It was not real for me, not going to be a miracle for me.

So my friends, I really pray that all those who were there got what they were going for. I pray that if that Revival is truly the next Great Revival that I will get another chance to go and
feel that it is the real deal. But it was not the time...not this time. Of all the acts of faith that had failed on my trip to Orlando, the big failure turned out to be an answered prayer. I just had to see that amidst all the other let-downs. You just never know.....I have my coffee beside me, this computer works, my body feels good, and I have been divinely educated. My new act of faith is to never doubt the lesson from Orlando...never second guess walking out the door......never forget that God is beside me with all the answers, even when the answer was the last thing I expected to hear.

As a post script to all this, when I opened my devotional to today's date, it was titled "Make Your Miracle Happen." Ah yes.....acts of faith....more so, faith in action. With or without the Florida Revival, I have just as much claim to a miracle as anyone and I will always be His and I have to act on faith....always....even when it means walking out the door.

"and he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be whole...." Mark 5:34