Their Next Depends On Your Now
I believe God has us deeply connected with one another. I am not suggesting through our shared bloodlines in the natural, but instead the bloodline of faith. Even if I am unaware of what you are experiencing, my faith can impact your navigation and subsequent victory. That is one lesson that I pray that we never forget as we continue to emerge from this global pandemic. Our hearts went out in the very beginning as we watched folx in China and Italy and France - and then it hit the United States with fury and we began to understand yet again, that our stature or funds or access had little to do with a virus that could care not. We interceded for those we didn't know, even those we didn't like or had knowledge that they didn't like us. Perhaps this wasn't new, but doggone did God have a finite way of reminding us that we are keeper's of one another. Simply put, their now depends on your next!"
In Mark 2:1-5, we find friends with faith.
"A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
This is an example of the paralyzed man's next being dependent upon what his friends did in that immediate moment. We live in a society that values individuality and celebrates the perceived solo effort; but nothing happens in isolation. The saints are praying and believing God day and night, across the globe. When we are led to pray, fast, intercede, worship and praise, we are sending an SOS for others who in those moments may not know what they need, or how to articulate it, or too weary to care. I've been there. I'm grateful for those who called out my situation before the Father and were obedient to the unction, even if it interrupted their plans for their "now."
We get so caught up in the need to know the particulars. Here's a hint: We don't. In fact, it's often best we don't because if we had even a sprinkle of knowledge, we might get tricked into believing ourselves as opposed to God. It's best when we lift up broad themes, "sickness, deliverance, breakthrough, healing, peace, clarity, hope, sustainability, obedience, fortitude, while pleading the Blood of Jesus, and allow our cries unto the Almighty One to do what needs to be done. We are responsible for witnessing and warring. That is our strategy, but the ultimate Victor is God.
The enemy may trick you as he's done with me to believe that just because I cry out for someone else, doesn't mean that the practice is being reciprocated. Certainly it might not from "that person," but you cannot convince me that there isn't someone, somewhere who is believing God for that which concerns me, even in the most remote part of the world. That is the household of faith in Galatians 6:10. As the year 2021 comes to a close, let us not forget that even when we don't feel it or see it, someone's actions are figuratively cutting a hole in the roof of our trouble, in the roof of our circumstance to bring it and us to the feet of the Sovereign One. And may we move through each moment deliberately, understanding and agreeing that someone else's next depends upon our now.