The Power of Sitting

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas.

I haven’t made any posts in a long time. This has been a particular hard year for me. Back in May they discovered my mom had bile duct cancer. My mom had great faith, but in the end she grew tired from the fight, so the Lord took her home for her reward in heaven. After it was over, God told me that he gave my mom the choice to be healed or to go home, and He honored her choice.

It is so easy to question why God didn’t heal my mom because we both had the faith for it, and that has been a struggle as well. There are many things that happened that I still don’t understand. And I know just like us, that there are many people out there who seek miracles but don’t see them. It’s not always caused by lack of faith, and especially with healing it is never because God is opposed to it, because He isn’t opposed to it. That’s why He came and died for us, to remove our sins and to heal our sicknesses (Isaiah 53:5).

I have been looking for answers, and God seems to be leading me in a particular direction although I don’t fully understand it yet. A few weeks ago a special speaker was at my church. He was a man of God who delivered a good word from God which was Spirit filled and beneficial for the entire church body. But during the worship service this man said something in comment which struck me as odd and was definitely not of God. Of course all that proves is that servants of God are not always perfect, and I forgive him for that.

But what this man said which was so off base, actually ties into where God has been leading me. What he said was that “You can’t worship God sitting down.” At first it doesn’t sound so bad, because when you worship you have to be doing something to demonstrate your worship, such as standing, clapping your hands, raising your hands, bowing down, or kneeling, all of which contrast the act of sitting which is pretty much doing nothing.

But the thing is, this idea fails to recognize something very significant and important when it comes to sitting. Jesus’s ministry here on earth officially started by Him sitting down (Luke 4:20), and after He ascended His ministry ended in heaven by Him again sitting down (Hebrews 1:3). You see, with God, sitting down is not a posture of inaction, it is a posture of authority. And we see by the example of the centurion, that understanding authority is the key to having faith so great that even Jesus was amazed by it (Matthew 8:5-13). And let me tell you that in the midst of a battle although you would be wise to be wary of a soldier running towards you on the attack, you had better be even more wary of the commander who is just sitting in the command tent, but while he is sitting he is directing the entire enemy force.

Sitting down actually means something very special to God. It is faith that enables us to sit down and enter into God’s rest even while the battle is raging around us (Hebrews 4:1-10). It is God who lies us down in green pastures, and leads us beside waters that are quiet and not raging, and gives us peace from fear in the valley of the shadow of death, and prepares a table before us even in the very presence of our enemies, and gives us goodness and love all of the days of our lives, and gives us a place to dell in His own house forever (Psalm 23).

I want to learn how to sit down in God’s presence. Don’t you?

Merry Christmas everyone!

James :)