Do the thing…
Do the thing.
Yesterday at church my husband shared that he had been praying for God to “do the thing!” When he says do the thing he is meaning for a mighty move of God, for God to do what only He can do. In 2020, 4 years ago during our churches 21 days with God (a time every year we dedicate to prayer and fasting), I began to pray that prayer. Here is what I prayed, “God I am so tired of what I am capable of, God come move and do what only you can do.” I have learned so much on my journey with God as He has stripped me of me and shown me glimpses of what only He can do. I say a glimpse because I know God can and does so much more than I have seen so far.
I said the journey has been one of God stripping me. I am finding that the reason for that is while God can and will do what only He can do and He doesn’t need us to do it, He chooses to do lots of the only God work through His people. In fact, that was what Jesus commissioned us to do. Jesus said in John 14:12 that we would do greater things. Those greater things are something I have wanted to see deep down inside of me since the day I became a believer and even before that being raised in the church. For some reason that verse has always stirred something inside of me. The problem is that I lived so many years trying to accomplish that something more in a natural way on my own. So he had to strip me away.
I know this because that is the answer God gave me when I asked Him in 2020 why I was not seeing Him do what only He could do. I asked him why it felt like my faith wasn’t enough even though I knew it had to be at least a mustard seed size faith. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been in the spot where you have felt like the Christian life you are living doesn’t add up to the life you felt was promised in the bible? I am not talking about a pleasant 72 degrees and sunny “perfect” life. I am talking about the life of seeing the sick healed, the dead raised, the lame walk, the captive set free, and the blinded seeing. That life! That was the life I so desperately wanted but was not seeing. Not a good life for myself, but a radical life that I believed the scripture demonstrates we are all supposed to live as disciples of Christ. So if I wanted that life deep down, why didn’t I see it?
There has always been something in me that has longed for and cried out for that life. I had had some moments for sure of seeing the supernatural but I found myself in 2020 sitting in my living room floor having a literal come to Jesus meeting where I poured out my heart and complaints to Him. “God, why don’t I see and live what I believe the bible says should be happening in my life and the life of the church? A life of power, strength and of sound mind. A life that the very same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in me, but I don’t see the evidence of that. All I have seen over the last many years are a few glimpses but mostly me living out a Christian life I am capable and offering to others that same life. It’s a good life but I don’t believe it’s the life you have called your people to. So why?” That is the prayer I prayed or something along those lines. This was the answer God gave me almost as soon as I stopped talking.
“Avery, you are living what is supposed to be a supernatural life in a natural way.” He then began to take me on a journey to strip me away. He began to show me how I had lived my Christian life for a long time in my own strength. How I had relied on my gifts and talents instead of his strength and power. He showed me how so often I had made it about me and not others. He began to ask me to lay all of it at His feet and come sit there until he was ready for me to get up. Now I want to remind you, I am sitting here today 4 years after I began to pray this prayer. 4 years of being in the secret place with God. 4 years of a journey. 4 years and I see that I have barely made it but a small way on the journey that never ends because eternity is my home. So, I literally have the rest of eternity with Jesus. But I do have a life and purpose and assignment to live here on this earth, and so do you. I have found that the life and purpose only comes from the secret place though.
This brings me back to Todd saying yesterday, “God do the thing.” It reminded me of a prayer I prayed in September of 2023, where I said, “God I am so ready for you to do this only God move, I can barely stand it, God the ball is in your court.” I shared with a dear friend and Pastor’s wife who is believing for an only God move as well, that I prayed that prayer. I told her that I am not even sure if it was ok to pray that prayer but I certainly felt like God had finally brought me to the end of me and it was all on Him now. I also finally felt ready. Ready to see Him move. He had healed my heart on the journey over the past years since 2020. He had delivered me of the sin of not trusting him that had been deep and hidden and the roots of it had damaging effects in my intimacy with him, but I was free from it.
I declared I was ready. Little did I know when I put the ball in his court, he still had more to teach me and he always will. I will share more about that at another time because it is not relevant to what God spoke to me this morning and why I am sitting down writing all of this.
Todd said yesterday, “God do thing, we believe you are still doing the thing, so do it here.” So last night I prayed that again but instead of saying the ball is in his court in a frustrating way I whispered, “God do the thing.” I heard him quickly respond back with “you do the thing.” I was at a church service and I didn’t have time to unpack that with God and I felt like he whispered to not worry but to meet with him the next morning in the secret place (that’s today) and we would unpack it.
So, I got up this morning and went into the secret place with him. I began with prayer and just concentrating myself before the Lord. I wrote down in my journal what I felt he said to me the night before…My prayer had been, “God do the thing.” He replied with “you do the things.” I responded with, “I want to only do what I hear and see the father doing, what are the things you want me to do.” Then He spoke to me and said, “start doing the things you hear me say to do.” This is all handwritten in my journal. If you do not journal you really should. I then began to pray over all I had written down.
Part of what I have learned when I feel that I hear God speak to me in my heart something specific is to then pray and ask him to confirm it with scripture. When we ask God to teach us, He will and that typically begins with him pointing us to his word. So, what happened next blew me away. He spoke Matthew 10:8 to me.
Before today I could not have quoted Matthew 10:8 to you. After today it will never leave my recall. I turned to Matthew 10:8. Now remember I had just asked God “what are the things you want me to do that you are saying for me to do what I hear you say…” I turned into the word of God, shined the flashlight from my phone on the red written words of Jesus in Matthew 10:8
“heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons, freely you have received, freely give.”
WOW! Really God, really? Did you really just tell me to turn to this passage?!!!
God does what only he can do, but often times does it through his people. Right there in red letters God spoke to me what he wants me to do. The crazy thing is, go back and look in my journal, for months I have been praying God I want to see the sick healed, the lame walk, the blind see that deaf talk and the captive set free. That prayer is literally what I had prayed when I said God I am ready and “God, the ball is in your court,” I am ready, I am ready to see it it. I had prayed that I was ready to see all of those things for months.
Now, he is telling me to go do the things. I said earlier that God can and does all of the only God things all on his own if he wants, but often times he chooses to have us participate here on this earth to see his kingdom come. Right there in red, in his own words, the word of God, the very bible, the HOLY SPIRIT whispered the location of the verse, I turn and these are the things he said for me to go do. I asked a specific question and HE ANSWERED. So funny, as I am typing these very words my husband has music blaring and the words of the song…”I sought the Lord and he heard and he answered.” I want you to know that it is true, what the bible says, if we seek Him with our whole hearts, we will find him. If we ask, he will answer us. He wants to answer us. He wants us to participate.
Now I have one more part to this story. Just a few weeks ago I was on a walk with God and I was praying that prayer again of God I am ready. I began to describe to God out loud what I felt on the inside of me. I told him that I felt like a pregnant woman at the very end of her pregnancy. A woman carrying a child is carrying a literal supernatural act of God. God placed a miracle on the inside of her. His hands wove that baby together. He put purpose on the inside of that baby. He did it all. Every life is planned and formed by the hand and will of God. Read Psalms 139 if you don’t believe me. Even the day that the baby will come into the world is decided by God. So, I am walking feeling and remembering what it felt like to know something was coming. Something that would change my life. Something special and miraculous. Something that I could not make come any faster or slower than God wanted. Trust me, I tried with my second baby to get him here on my time and it did not work, that can be something else I write about another time, but God was even using that time in this moment to remind me that when it’s an only God thing it’s on His timing as well.
So, I am walking with God knowing that God is about to bring into my world the things that he has been growing and stirring and knitting together inside of me. The discomfort of being full of something that you have no control over making come forth is so special and so frustrating all at the same time. Every woman who has carried a child knows what I am talking about. While we know that life will change, we have no real clue how exactly it will change because every birth and every child is unique and different, we just know a massive change is coming because of what God is growing inside of us. I think the same is true of the supernatural life God stirs in us.
So I was walking, feeling the due date of what God has been stirring in me was any day, any time. Just walking around expectant of when and what, and frustrated that it hasn’t happened yet. He gently reminded me to not grow weary or tired of waiting and walking. Isaiah 40:31 tells us, those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength and run and not grow weary, walk and not be faint. Here I was walking with God allowing him to renew my strength. Asking him to bring forth these things that he put inside of me to see done.
Here I sit today, and I feel as if he told me, it’s time to push. Now, here is the deal, I know the whole birth illustration is so cliché in the Christian world, but man, this is the only thing I can relate it to when it comes to waiting on an only God thing. It also was not until this morning that it dawned on me that in bringing an only God miraculous child into the world, it requires the participation of the mother to birth it. It requires her to do what he created her to do. Bring forth life. So I digress back to Matthew 10:8. Jesus said go and do these things. Today God spoke to me. “It’s time Avery, go do the things you have asked me to do.” I whole heartedly know that it is not me doing the thing, but God doing it through the power of the Holy Spirit in me. The very same power that raised Christ from the dead is in me, and if I would live like that spirit is in me, be still and patient and give a spiritual ear to listen to what the Spirit in me wants to do through me, then act. If I, or we would do that. Live the way the disciples lived…doing what I just described, then I think I (and we) the church would see the sick healed, the lepers cleansed, the dead raised, demons cast out, the lame walk, the blind see, and greater things!
Ya’ll, this life of a disciple is meant to be supernatural! The deal is you have to allow God the space in your life to remove the ways you are living in the natural (by the way I have found this is an everyday process of the rest of your life, but he who began the work is faithful to complete it) so that he can do the supernatural through you.
I am ready. I do not know what today holds, but what I do know is that I will tune my ear to hear the Spirit of God in me to tell me today what He wants to do through me. I know the things he will do include what is listed in Matthew 10:8. I know this because I have been praying for those things. I have been praying for those things because the Spirit prayed those things through me. It is an abiding prayer. An abiding prayer is when you abide in Christ and he abides in you and through Christ abiding in you begin asking what he already said he would do. (that is a tongue twister for sure, go back and read it slower) This is where we get another scripture that always stood out and stirred me…John 15:7 “if you abide in me and My words abide in you, you will ask anything you desire and it shall be done for you.” WHAT? I have asked for a lot of things I have desired in my life and most of them have not happened. What does this passage really mean?
I believe it means when we abide in Christ our desires are not for God to give us a boat, no, they are to see the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf talk, and the captive free. God’s spirit begins to pray in you what He wants to do. This is why asking anything in the name of Jesus is done. When we ask anything in the name of Jesus, my interpretation of that means is that we allow Jesus to ask what Jesus wants to ask and do through us. I pray a lot, but I know the difference when the Holy Spirit is interceding abiding prayers through me. Those are the prayers I see answered and only God gets the blame for. Those are the prayers I want to pray more. Those are the prayers I believe I will begin to see be answered more and more starting today. And, ultimately it is so that the world will know that there is a God. If we read the next verse, John 15:8 “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so that you will be my disciples.”
We are called to be the disciples of Jesus. The disciples of Jesus lived supernatural lives. We are called to do that also. This is how his kingdom comes here on this earth. The disciples of Christ have to go do the things. This disciple is ready, this disciple is going to do the thing. I encourage you to embark on the same journey.