"God Is Not Surprised..."

It's funny that many times you don't really realize how tired you are until you actually stop. You know, like when it's super late at night, you go into your room, you plop onto the bed and it's lights out. Next thing you know it's morning time... Well, here was my plane ride: I slept, woke up, ate, slept, woke up, prayed and  worshipped, slept, woke up and read (Bible, The Victory Over Darkness & Breaking Intimidation). We had a lay over at the airport in Singapore and I slept some more and read some more. Yea, I didn't realize how much I had been going non-stop back home and it wasn't about to lighten up once we got there...

The words that Pastor Benjamin spoke to our team before we prayed continued to echo in my heart, "God is not surprised..." It reminded me of when Paul was traveling through Asia Minor. There were a number of times when the Holy Spirit hindered him from going to certain places he desired to go and opened doors for him to go in other places he didn't plan to go, but in all cases, God was not surprised. My expectation began to grow... What did God have in store? What was He cooking up there? What doors was He closing and what doors was he opening? How was He going to work out Pastor Sunhee's plane ticket situation?

As I slept, read and prayed... oh yea, and ate (oh how I love food! especially airplane cheese and crackers)... The Lord was confronting areas of my heart, things I didn't realize that were so deeply rooted. I couldn't go into the slums to rescue a young girl who was working in a gambling house if I couldn't see beyond the natural. I couldn't see people delivered from the demonic if I were intimidated by the enemy. I couldn't pray for the sick if I was going to be moved by what I saw... I was confronted with the question, "Are you going to let your mind be renewed, pray through and lay hold of what I have, or are you going to back down and forfeit the authority I have called you to walk in?" God was not surprised by anything that we were going to confront and He wasn't going to let me be either.

So many times God begins to deal with our hearts, surfacing our fears, surfacing places that we are intimidated and surfacing places of doubt. However, rather than run straight into His arms through prayer and the word we run the opposite way. God is never surrpised, not just because He knows all things, but because He is perfected in love! God is love (1 John 4:8). Us not being surprised does not mean that we will not be in surprising situations, but it means that we are rooted in love and faith in God's power to move in each situation.

This would be the foundation of the first steps I would take once we exited the plane to Nias and entered into the slums to rescue Masi... We're so afraid of the unknown, the mysterious, not having control, not knowing the next step, not having the details, but God is not surprised... I looked at my wife and said, "God has absolute power and He loves absolutely." So many people say that 'absolute power corrupts,' but that is because the majority of those who seek it don't have absolute love! God is absolutely in control and He is motivated by absolute love. God has absolute power and He loves absolutely. God is not surprised...