BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Because, for the most part, we’ve thought and acted too naturally. Instead of being aware of God’s kingdom, expecting it to manifest in our lives in miraculous ways, we’ve kept our expectations reasonable. Even in our prayers, we’ve tended to just ask God to do what we think could logically happen under the circumstances. We’ve reasoned things out and thought, Well, I see how God could do this, but I don’t see how He could do anything more. It would be impossible. Impossible? “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26)! He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we can ask, think, dream, hope for or desire. We just haven’t been giving Him much opportunity. We’ve limited Him by trying to figure things out with our heads instead of simply believing His Word with our hearts. And that’s cost us, just as in Jesus’ ministry it cost the Pharisees and doctors of the law. Have you ever read about them in Luke 5? They were in Jesus’ house the day He healed the man with palsy who was lowered down through the roof. They witnessed that great miracle, heard Jesus teach, yet even though “the power of the Lord was present to heal them” (verse 17) not one of them got healed! Why? They were too busy being “Pharisees and doctors of the law” to give God any place to work in them. They were too busy being experts and trying to figure out whether Jesus was being religiously correct to simply receive from Him by faith. When Jesus told the man with palsy he was forgiven of his sins, instead of rejoicing and believing what Jesus said, “the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” (verse 21). Beware of the Experts Can I just warn you about something? If you want heaven to break through in your life, you have to watch out for the experts! You have to beware of people who have a lot of religious information and yet they doubt and dispute God’s Word. You’re not going to find the power of God moving among such people! You’ll find His power moving among people like the palsied man and his friends. They simply believed and acted on the good news they’d heard about Jesus. They cast reasoning aside and decided they were going to get a miracle from Him even if they had to rip the roof off His house to do it. What happened as a result? Jesus saw their faith and responded. He forgave the sick man of his sins, and said to the Pharisees and doctors of the law: “What reason ye in your hearts? Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house. And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God” (verses 22-25). That palsied man was not an expert! He was the kind of person we see a lot of times in Healing School at our conventions. They’re just sick and need healing. They don’t come to argue about doctrine. They don’t care if we pray in tongues or whatever, if we can get their bodies healed, that’s all that matters to them. I remember one man some years ago, for instance, came to Healing School and he’d never been in a Pentecostal-type meeting before. He came up in the healing line, and before I could lay hands on him and pray he laid down on the floor. “What are you doing?” asked the usher. “Well,” he said, looking down the line at the people who’d fallen under the power of God, “I thought this is what you had to do to get healed.” I think that’s the kind of humble attitude the palsied man had in Luke 5. He didn’t mind looking undignified. He just believed and did what Jesus told him to do. 30 : BVOV

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