When Jesus spoke to the disciples, time and again they scratched their heads and exchanged baffled glances. They misunderstood, asked repeated questions, made false assumptions. It took the resurrection and the indwelling Spirit of God to reveal what we now consider basic Christian truths. 

Ponder then the humility of Jesus when early in his public ministry he empowers seventy-two eager but largely clueless disciples to go ahead to towns he himself intended to visit. Their task? ​“Cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ​‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (Luke 10:9). 

Catch that: cure and proclaim. How are hearts prepared for Jesus? Through tangible (and sometimes miraculous) demonstrations of God’s goodness.

In an interview featured last week, Dallas Willard commented:

I noticed that I spent a lot of my time trying to get people to come and hear me, and other ministers did the same. But when I looked at Jesus his problem was getting away from people! So I said there has to be something different here. So I found what every scholar will tell you, that Jesus’ message was the kingdom of God. He proclaimed it, he manifested it, and he taught it. When he sent out his disciples, he didn’t send them out to teach (that’s the hard part), but to proclaim and manifest (the easy part!). It was very powerful.

Perhaps, like me, you’re a researcher — someone who likes to have all the facts before trying something out. That way, the thinking goes, the chances of success are higher (and chances of humiliation lower). But often as knowledge grows so does hesitation—just one more article, one more book, one more podcast, then I’ll be ready.

Agnes Sanford encourages us as Jesus did his disciples: go for it. Perform prayer experiments, she says, with a child-like attitude. Vineyard founder John Wimber had a similar attitude and approached healing with a teachable heart, as Richard Foster notes in his intro to Wimber’s classic book on healing. 

As I write this, a conviction grows within me to take more risks with God. Father, give us the courage to hesitate less and experiment more.