At Mid-Cities we end every service with a time of ministry at the front of the sanctuary. Pastors, elders, group leaders, and other mature believers stand at the front and pray for whoever comes forward while others are dismissed. On occasion, we invite people to come forward to pray for specific things – healing, spiritual gifts, reconciliation, etc. This morning we prayed for people to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In general, the baptism of the Spirit is the release of power in the life of a believer for greater intimacy with the Father and for the release and empowerment of spiritual gifts. As I prayed for people to receive a fresh filling of the Spirit this morning, I realized that I was judging what was happening by sight rather than by faith. Paul corrects this human tendency when he says, “We live by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor.5:7).

Many of us fall into the trap of judging what is happening in the spiritual realm by what we see happening in the physical realm. It’s not that the spiritual realm does not manifest in the physical realm because it often does – but not always and maybe less than we think. For instance, how many of us have prayed for healing for two or three minutes (I know… it seemed longer), and when we saw no improvement we walked away believing that God did not answer our prayer. As soon as we had that thought, our faith for healing dissipated.

We judged the effectiveness of our prayer by what we did not see in the natural rather than by the promises of God in the spiritual realm. Interestingly, I have heard ministers with very effective healing ministries say that 50% of the people they pray for are not healed immediately but that the healing manifests 48 to 72 hours later.  Since that is true, we should continue to have faith for healing simply because we have asked according to the promises of God. How often have we quit praying for a healing, a salvation, provision, or a mate simply because we haven’t seen anything in the natural realm that looks like what we imagined God’s answer to our prayer would look like.

Naaman is the classic example. You remember he was the commander of the army of Aram. We are told that he was a great man but he had leprosy.   His Jewish servant girl told him of Elisha and promised that the prophet of her God could heal her master. Naaman took his servants and wealth and departed to meet this prophet and pay him for a word or a prayer of healing. When he arrived at Elisha’s house, Elisha sent his servant out to tell Naaman to go dip in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed. Instead of rushing off to the river, the text tells us, “But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy” (2 Kings 5:11). Finally, his servants convinced him to go dip in the Jordan and after he had done so, his leprosy was totally cured. Because he didn’t see what he expected in the natural realm, he nearly missed what God had provided in the spiritual realm.

As I was praying for people to receive the baptism of the Spirit this morning, I realized I was looking for manifestations of the Spirit – heat, electricity, people going weak in the knees, or spontaneously beginning to speak in tongues. The people I prayed for did not report any of those experiences and yet my faith should declare that they did receive a filling of the Spirit because God promises that he will not withhold his Spirit from those who ask (Lk.11:13). The upgrade will eventually manifest in the natural because the Spirit impacts the natural but, like healing, it may manifest in a process rather than as an immediate event.

One writer, whose name I can’t recall, explained that when a gift of healing is manifested, a process of healing is released that may take hours or days to fully manifest. The gift of miracles is seen when a sick or disabled person receives their healing immediately. If we are not careful, we will quickly loose faith for the process of healing if healing does not manifest as a miracle.

Whether we are praying for healing, salvation, provision, direction, or revival we must maintain faith based on the promises of God rather than clear manifestations of answered prayer in the natural. God is often working in the spiritual realm, marshaling everything needed for the answered prayer and when it is released the answer comes quickly and powerfully, but until that moment it will not be apparent in the natural. So…keep the faith. When we believe God more than we believe our eyes, our eyes will eventually see much more than we ever anticipated. Blessings in Him.