Why Does God Keep Using a Certain Healing Minister So Mightily When His Personal Life Is So Messed Up?
Romans 11:29:
For the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.
Why does God use anybody? It isn’t on the basis of merit. The whole idea of grace is that you receive things from God without any merit of your own. God only uses imperfect people because there are no perfect people on the earth. As the verse above shows, God does not take away the gifts or the calling from anyone (including you) because of personal imperfections. That should encourage you, because God will not take away what He’s given to you if you happen to mess up. Even if you really, really mess up.
That doesn’t mean that we live with a “who cares if I mess up because God can use me anyway” mentality. We should always do our best to please God. However, God does not distribute certain anointings or ministry callings on the basis of who are the best Christians. An anointed minister did not earn his anointing by doing lots of good works. You cannot earn the anointing; you can only flow in it. God decides who is called to what, and many verses talk about someone being called from his mother’s womb. In other words, the calling was given before the person had a chance to sin or not sin. So the calling could not have been a merit badge given later to reward good behavior. Ephesians 2:10 shows us that the good works God has for you were all planned out beforehand. They are not rewards for being the best Christian around.
How good do you think you have to be before you are qualified to do miracles in the name of Jesus? Not very good, according to Jesus, who said that many would do great miracles and cast out demons in His name and yet be unsaved workers of iniquity (Matthew 7:21-23)! If a rank sinner who believes in the power of the name of Jesus could do a miracle, why can’t you, and why can’t the healing minister you’re thinking of?
Maybe you’re confused by this because you heard that a message (based on Galatians 5:6) that if you do not walk in love, your faith will not work. But that isn’t true in the light of 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. You can have no love and be a “nothing” as far as God is concerned and still operate in mountain-moving faith! (However, that is expressly not the will of God, whose greatest commandments are to love Him and love others as you love yourself! Walking in faith without love reduces you to a modern-day Pharisee who gets some parts of the Word right, but misses the most important parts.) Judas Iscariot did signs and wonders as part of the twelve original apostles while filching from the till and not caring about the poor, neither of which demonstrated any kind of love walk. The other original apostles did signs and wonders while fighting over who would be the greatest, trying to keep small children away from Jesus, and even wanting to call down fire to burn up a city full of Samaritans. Those were not manifestations of love either. How much love would the many “workers of iniquity” mentioned above have, who did “many wonderful works” in the name of Jesus? So love CANNOT BE a prerequisite to walking in faith, even big faith! Jesus said that whosoever speaks to a mountain and believes in his heart that his words will come to pass, he will have whatever he says. God wants you to walk in love and walk in faith, but they can operate independently. Very loving people can die for lack of faith, and very faith-filled people can lose their marriages and ministries for lack of love.
Having said that, if you drive people away by being an obnoxious idiot, it will be hard to minister in faith to anyone. There certainly could be times when not walking in love will cost you a blessing no matter how much faith you have. I will share one such case with you from my early years running a computer programming business. I had installed a point-of-sale/inventory system at a store in southern Massachusetts, and the computer in the back room was not working properly. The owner told me, “You have 45 minutes to fix this problem or you and your system are both out of here!” With the clock ticking, I went to the back room, got out my tools and took apart the computer. Just then, a young man who looked to be at most 20 years old walked back there, despite the sign that only staff people were allowed there. He seemed curious about what I was doing. He pointed to a card in a certain slot and asked what it did. I wanted to tell him off, but I remembered that I should walk in love, so I told him, “That is a floppy disk drive controller that funnels information from the PC to and from the floppy drive.” I went back to work. But he seemed to want to continue to get a free computer lesson. “What’s THAT?” he asked, as he pointed to a chip. I was even more upset and wanted to really say or thing or two, but I remembered to walk in love. I said, “That is an Intel 8080 microprocessor [that dates this story, doesn’t it!] – it’s the brain in the computer that does the calculations and runs the programs.” I went back to looking for the problem in vain. Then the young man suddenly pointed at one prong on one chip on one bank of chips on one card out of several cards and asked, “What’s THAT?” I looked at the end of his finger, and stunned, I said, “THAT is the problem! Thank you, you just solved it!” That one prong on that one chip was bent ever so slightly so that it wasn’t quite seated in the board. I took the chip out and put it back in properly, closed up the computer, fired it up, and the problem was solved with time to spare! I told the store owner that the “kid” who came into the back room who wasn’t even allowed back there according to the sign had shown me the problem, but she interrupted me and asked, “What kid?” I said, “You know, that young man who went back in that room.” She said, “I watch this store very carefully and we haven’t had anyone in here by that description all day.” I was extra glad that I had walked in love at that point! Can you imagine finding out in heaven that you missed your miracle because you would not walk in love and you told off an angel that you were entertaining unawares whom God sent to show you the solution to your seemingly impossible problem?
Back to the main theme here. It’s all too easy to slip back under the Law and think that God can only use you if you walk in love to a certain degree, and the degree (according to the devil) will always exceed your current degree of walking in love. So you could end up convinced that you are disqualified to do anything at all when in fact you’re not.
In fact, the very asking of the question indicates that the questioner doesn’t understand his own righteousness in Christ, let alone anyone else’s. Here is the awful downward staircase you will get on if you believe that God should not use a certain minister because of his moral failures:
“That minister should not be able to flow in signs and wonders because of his moral failures.”
“Therefore, God decides who can flow in signs and wonders based on personal merit.”
“Therefore, in order for God to use me, I must always stay ‘good enough’ for His use.”
“Because I just did something I shouldn’t have done, I have forfeited the right for God to use me.”
“There is no sense thinking that God could use wretched little me; I know I’m not good enough because I sin way too much.”
I remember a long time ago fuming to God about how some ministers who lived horribly carnal lives had done prodigious signs and wonders. I’ve met several such people in person. (Thank God, they are the exception to the rule!) They flowed in God’s power as I never have, and yet they were horrific examples of character that you’d never want anyone to imitate. The truth was, you could barely stand being around them when they weren’t preaching under the anointing. I didn’t think it was fair that they were being used the way they were when I was being so careful to please God in every area of my life and doing my best to walk in love. But He rebuked me! He had to remind me that His giftings are based on grace instead of personal merit, and that I should be glad, not mad, about His use of these imperfect vessels. I should instead have been rejoicing that if He could use those people, He could use me, too, and use anyone else who is available to the Holy Spirit. I could rejoice that His calling isn’t fragile. I can’t cancel my calling if I do something wrong.
This does not mean that sin won’t cost you eventually. If you don’t walk in love, the pastors who invited you will decide never to have you back. If you commit adultery, man will never forgive you or stop reproaching you (Proverbs 6:32-33). Your ministry will never be what it could have been if you had stayed faithful. Some pastors will never invite you again even if you’ve repented and some people will never finance your ministry again. God forgave David, but trouble never left David’s household after his adultery with Bathsheba. David paid a terrible price for the rest of his life even though God continued to use him. Sin is forgiven under the New Covenant, but it still carries a price tag in this life because MEN won’t always forgive you the way that God did.
But when you adopt the attitude, “God shouldn’t use that fellow,” you’re now setting yourself up as a judge even though your track record isn’t perfect either. Becoming judgmental will poison your walk with God. If you condemn others, others will condemn you, and you won’t like reaping what you’re sowing. Worse yet, if you run around in the flesh “touching God’s anointed” by publicly ridiculing the minister, you could reap a harvest of corruption. Galatians 6:1 shows us that spiritual people attempt to restore those who have fallen. Unspiritual people usually try to shoot the wounded, so to speak. They try to lift themselves up by putting down others, but they only succeed in pulling themselves down as well. There was an all-too-well-known case of a famous minister who publicly exposed and humiliated a famous fellow minister, and the exposer ended up being publicly exposed and humiliated himself as he reaped what he had sown.
Those passing judgment have a habit of setting the bar a little lower than where they are. For example, a person who refuses to obey civil authorities’ speed limits could justify himself by saying, “Well, at least I don’t gossip as some people do at my church.” A church person who does gossip could justify himself by saying, “At least I’m not involved in the lustful filth of pornography as some people in this church are, like Brother Guttereyes over there,” while a person who actually is involved in the lustful filth of pornography could say, “At least my sin is private; it’s not like I’m not an axe murderer.”
I’ll close this discussion with the words of James, which should speak for themselves: “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.” – James 2:12-13