The God that is revealed in the Bible is NOT a magician! I say that emphatically because it seems that many church people think that God is! Let me show you what I’m talking about! As we look in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, every since the creation of man, whenever God wanted to do something in the earth, God used men to do it (I am using the term “men” to denote species, not gender). It is God’s modus operandi to involved human agents to perform God’s will upon the earth. When it was time to liberate the Children of Israel from Egyptian slavery, God used Moses to lead them out. When it was time for the Children of Israel to inherit the Promised Land, God used Joshua to lead them in! When the people needed deliverance, direction or to hear a word from the Lord, God used judges, prophets, prophetesses, preachers, shepherds, farmers, fishermen, and common everyday people to do it! Whatever God wanted done on earth in the biblical text, God did it through human agency!
So why is it that many Christians today think that whatever God wants done on the earth, God is going to magically do it Himself? In the Black Church (my neck of the woods), I can’t count the number of prayers I have heard and still hear in which the petitioners ask the Lord to “Go by the hospital and see Brother __________ and Sister _________.” Sunday after Sunday, the Lord is summoned to “Go behind the prison walls” and to “Visit the widows and orphans!” Can you imagine what would happened if the Lord actually answered those prayers? If the Lord actually went by the hospital to “see” the sick and the sick were able to “see” the Lord when he came to see them, they would die from fright!
No! The God of the Bible is not some “Cosmic Bellhop” waiting for orders to come and go at our beck and call! God WILL NOT do what God has given for us to do! God is spirit, but we live in a material world. Therefore, in order for God to operate in the material world, the Spirit of God influences the spirits of those who have material bodies designed to operate in the material world! God does not go by the hospital to see anyone, but God does influence and empower human beings to go in his name! Those who have submitted to the will of God are God’s hands, feet, and mouth! In fact, the primary reason for the creation of humanity was for humanity to be the visible and practical representation and agency of the invisible spiritual God upon the earth!
If God is going to do anything in your house, God is going to do it through you! If God is going to do anything in your neighborhood, in your community, in your town, in your city, in your country, in your world, God is going to do it through you and people like you! Therefore, if God seems to be inactive, it is because God has chosen to limit God’s self to a certain extent to the actions or in-actions of human beings! All that is needed for God’s will to be done is for the people of God to get up off of their “blessed assurances” and do the will of God! All that is needed for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven is for the people of God to quit believing in magic and start believing in and start working with the God who does His will on earth through them!