A man has an appointment downtown, and he’s running late. When he gets there, he realizes that the building he’s going to doesn’t have a parking garage, and he’s going to have to park on the street. So he’s circling and circling the block looking for a space, and he says Please Lord, find me a parking space. And someone starts their car and pulls out right ahead and opens the space up for him. And he says “That’s okay, Lord, I found one on my own.”
It’s funny, but it’s not.
Recently, I had an experience that brought this joke to mind.
There are horses that mean more to you than others. Usually for me, it‘s a horse that has required a lot of care giving. We had a filly like that. There were three interesting things about this filly. First, she was really fast. Second, she was really hard headed. If she decided she wasn’t doing something, she wasn’t doing it, and there was no coaxing or beating or whatever you could think of that was going to change her mind, and third, she was afraid of everything. Particularly anything that made noise.
And her reaction was explosive. It wasn’t standing and trembling. It was jumping sideways and taking everything off the outside wall.
So she took a lot of handholding, a lot of care giving, and after just a couple of months, I loved her very much.
She went to the track and she worked, and she worked very well, and she cooled out just fine. But then a few hours later, she was limping majorly. What my boss called three legged lame. The vet came, and they came to the conclusion that she most likely had a slab fracture.
My boss said, Go to Chapel, Beth.
I waited until the barn was quiet, and I went in the stall with her, and I laid my hand on her knee, and I prayed. I was pretty emotional so I’m not sure exactly what I said. I know I started off rather timid.
I’m in this by myself Lord, so You need to give me a little extra help. I pray for healing for Sunny’s leg, I pray that her bones are strong and that they remain strong. And then I got a little braver, and I said I pray healing on this horse, in the Name of Jesus Christ, by the authority He has given us, and I call this horse healed, by His stripes we are healed. And I thought that might be a bit much, so I said She’s just a horse, but she’s important to my heart, and I concluded with something about the Name of Jesus, and the Power of Jesus, Amen.
I went on and finished working, and I was thinking about it. I was not raised to believe in this kind of thing. In fact, the exact opposite. In my house, faith healing and laying on of hands was actively laughed at. That was for ignorant people. But I’ve seen it happen too many times now.
But I was worried that I hadn’t done it correctly. And I thought if her leg is broken, it’s already broken, the time to pray for it was before she went out. And then I looked at her, and I thought No, God, if she’s broken, You just fix it, just reach out there and pinch that bone back together, and I knew that that was true. Not necessarily that He had healed her, but that that is how it would work.
The next day, she walked out of the stall just fine.
Now when I said something to my boss about praying for her, she blew it off. As far as she was concerned, the bone had never been broken. But I don’t believe that. I believe that horse was healed.
It’s easier to not believe. It’s easier to play the cynic card, to stay in your comfort zone, to not open yourself to the possibility that what God is offering you is bigger than you had imagined.
It’s easy to say ignorant people believe in laying on of hands. It’s hard to accept that Jesus imparted to us the power that He did. It’s easy to point to a prayer that you believe went unanswered and say God doesn’t really answer prayer. It’s hard to put yourself out there for ridicule.
What God has given us, if we chose to accept it, is so large, almost incomprehensible, it feels almost dangerous to accept it. Could it possibly be true?
If you let go of your fears, of your self doubt, of your hang ups, if you let yourself, the wonders of the Lord are yours.
Live decent lives among unbelievers. Then, although they ridicule you as if you were doing wrong while they are watching you do good things, they will praise God on the day He comes to help you. 1 Peter 2:12 [God's Word]
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