Extraordinary God

“Stretch out your hand." Luke 6:10

All of us have a withered something we can stretch out to the Lord. It can be chronic illness, a talent we haven't used, a dream we've allowed to die, a relationship destroyed by unforgiveness...

The good news is Jesus is asking us to stretch it out to Him, for healing, restoration, to make it whole again. We shouldn't lose hope. There's always hope. I remember praying for healing for my mother in this old magnificent church many many years ago. This message stubbornly lodged in my heart: Healing always comes. 

The thing is, and you may have heard this before, but it’s not about us. It’s about God and His plan and purpose for us. God has given us gifts and talents we should use to build His kingdom, if we want to hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” from His lips one day. Perhaps the dream was something God planted in our heart, and we’ve given it up because it was way too big for us. We thought, “I can’t do this!” But God can! God can do the impossible! 

I was listening to John Bevere, a best selling author, share how he barely passed his English class, and how it took him 4 hours to write two pages. In the summer of 1991, he heard God tell him to write a book. He didn’t, because he thought God had him mistaken with someone else. But ten months after, two women from two different states approached him with the same message: that if he didn’t write the book God had given him, God would give it to someone else. John would have to give an accounting one day for what he did with the gift God gave him. So John wrote the book. Now John Bevere has written more than twenty books translated into more than 120 languages. Then he had an app developed, the MessengerX to make digital resources available to pastors and Christian leaders around the world for free. He also has a weekly television program, The Messenger, which broadcasts in 214 nations. 

What gifts and talents, what dreams, has God given us? Even if it is ‘withered’, even if we are sick and with so many limitations, let us stretch it out to the Lord for revitalizing, restoring and healing. We have an extraordinary God and as His children, we have “extraordinary” written all over our future!