Partnering With the Holy Spirit to Receive Extraordinarily MoreSample

Uncommon Answers Don’t Have To Be Rare

In Acts 10:34, Peter explained to the Gentiles that God is no respecter of persons. The word respecter here means “the act of showing favor to one on account of rank, family, wealth, or partiality arising from any cause.” This means that no matter what family you come from, how much money you have, or any other reason or partiality you could think of (“arising from any cause”), God shows no favoritism. What He does for one person, He longs to do for all. Miracles should not pertain only to the outliers.

Uncommon answers aren’t uncommon because God wants them to be. They are uncommon because people have decided they will be. One reason uncommon answers are rare is because of a lack of asking. How many things have we failed to ask God to do because we assume it’s too hard or impossible? God wants us to pray audacious prayers that sound outlandish to many people. We need to pray boldly, reminding ourselves that nothing and no one is bigger than God.

When Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist of the nineteenth century, delivered an address at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in New York, he said, “When I was a slave, I tried praying for three years. I prayed that God would emancipate me, but it was not till I prayed with my legs that I was emancipated."

Uncommon answers to prayer are not exclusively a result of what we do; some miracles come during a time of utter helplessness. But what we do cannot be entirely separated from uncommon answers. James 2:17 says, “Faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.”

Are you ready to put legs on your prayers?