Mensa Otabil - Pursue God's Counsel (10/27/2025)
Welcome to day number nine of our 40 days of power. May the Lord be our strength. May the Lord be our wisdom. May the Lord be our guide. May the Lord order our steps in the way that we should go. As you know, this week we are looking broadly at the subject of guidance. Guidance is important as we seek the Lord in prayer and in fasting, so we’re going to look at pursuing God’s counsel.
Acts chapter 9, verse 17: «And Ananias went his way and entered the house; and laying his hands on him, he said, 'Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.'»
You know, one of the challenges we all face when we’re seeking to obey God is that God’s instruction, God’s direction, and what God wants us to do may contradict everything we know or the way we see life. Sometimes God tells you to do something that is the opposite of how you normally do it, and that’s what is happening to Ananias at this time. At this time, the Apostle Paul, who is called Saul, is persecuting Christians and taking letters to persecute Christians in Damascus. Then he has an experience that changes his life, but nobody knows his life has changed. So, God speaks to one of the disciples of Jesus in Damascus, saying, «Hey, there is a man called Saul, and he needs your help. So go and pray for him.» That’s what God said to Ananias in a dream. Ananias responds, " God, I don’t want to have anything to do with that man because he’s a horrible guy. He’s persecuting us; he hates You, and he hates us. I’m not going to go to him.»
So what do you do when God says you should pray for somebody you hate, or when God tells you to do something nice for someone you don’t like? God is directing you in a way that is not your preferred way. Many times, the conflicts we have in life are not so much that God is not speaking to us; He is. The problem is that we don’t want to go that way, and we don’t want to do what God wants us to do, and that’s Ananias’s problem. But he’s a disciple of Jesus, and when your Master says to go do something, even if you don’t want to do it, you have to obey your Master.
So, Ananias obeys God’s commandment and decides to go and look for Saul and pray for him. He went his way, entered the house where Saul was living, and laid his hands on him to pray for him. But the thing that really amazes and inspires me about this encounter between Ananias and Saul is how he addressed him. He called him «Brother Saul.» This is somebody who is supposed to be his enemy, but Ananias had heard from God; Jesus had spoken to him, saying, «I have chosen him. He’s mine.» So contrary to Ananias’s fears and anxieties, he speaks as a Christian to a Christian, addressing Saul as «Brother Saul.» He lays hands on him, and Saul recovers his sight. What a joy for God to use us in unusual ways to touch people and see the results, the fruit of obedience to God, manifested. Of course, for Ananias, the healing of Saul confirmed to him that what he had heard earlier was truly from God.
It’s possible during this time of prayer and fasting that God may ask you to do something that you naturally wouldn’t want to do. Maybe He’ll tell you to forgive someone you don’t want to forgive or to pray for someone you don’t want to pray for. If you want to pray, you want to pray against them. But God can lead you in a way that is not your natural way to go. Let’s be like Ananias and obey Christ to see the fullness of the glory that He sheds on our way when we choose His way above ours.
Let us pray. Say with me: «Heavenly Father, Your ways are perfect. I choose to follow Your counsel in all that I do. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.»