God is not withholding His power because He is distant. He is withholding it as an act of mercy because most of us are not yet ready for it.
Acts chapter 5 opens with a story we like to skip over. Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property, quietly kept a portion of the money for themselves, and then stood before the apostles and claimed they had given everything.
The Holy Spirit revealed the lie to Peter. And both of them died on the spot.
But there was a certain man named Ananias who, with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount. With his wife's consent, he kept the rest. Then Peter said, "Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren't lying to us but to God!" As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died. Everyone who heard about it was terrified. — Acts 5:1-5 (NLT)
That story makes us uncomfortable. It should. Because if you keep reading, you find out that immediately after this, Peter's shadow alone was enough to heal the sick as he walked by. The church was operating in a level of power and purity that most of us say we want. But those two things were not separate. They came together.
Ananias and Sapphira did not die because they failed to give enough. They died because they lied to the Holy Spirit and tried to make themselves look better than they really were.
This is worth slowing down on because there is a lot of bad teaching around this passage. The text is clear. Peter says plainly: the property was yours to sell or not sell. The money was yours to give or keep.
God wanted nothing to do with coercion. He is not in the business of pressuring people out of their money. He wants a cheerful giver. Someone who is choosing to give because they genuinely want to.
"The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren't lying to us but to God!" — Acts 5:4 (NLT)
What got Ananias and Sapphira killed was the lie. People were selling property and giving it all to the church and there was so much generosity happening that nobody in the early church had any unmet needs.
It appears that in the middle of that beautiful movement, the desire to be seen as generous crept in. They were trying to make themselves look better than they really were.
The reason God does not move in the kind of power we saw in Acts 5 today is not because something is wrong with God. It is actually a move of His mercy.
People are so loose with their faith in this generation. If the power of God moved the way it moved in Acts 5 right now, we would have a burial ministry. That is not a criticism.
That is just an honest look at where most of us are. God in His mercy withholds. He holds it back as a protection because He knows if we really got what we were asking for when we were not ready for it, it would not end well.
The early church was in a place of power and purity together. Right after the account of Ananias and Sapphira, this is what was happening in the streets:
The apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon's Colonnade. But no one else dared to join them, even though all the people had high regard for them. Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord — crowds of both men and women. As a result of the apostles' work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter's shadow might fall across some of them as he went by. Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed. — Acts 5:12-16 (NLT)
Jesus put Acts 5 in front of us about Ananias and Sapphira just to make sure we are ready for that kind of power. Are you ready for that much glory? Because when the power of God shows up to that degree, the little things you used to get away with, you cannot get away with anymore.
Preparation for greater glory usually looks like subtraction. God removes the things that would pull you away from what He is doing next.
This gets worked out over years. Sitcoms that had been a daily routine for over a decade. Things that were not big sins, but were distractions that were out of alignment. One by one, the Lord said stop. Not because those things were scandalous, but because He wanted attention elsewhere.
It felt like being pruned down to a twig. And then he comes to prune you again and you are wondering if there is even a branch left. But going from glory to glory works like that. In the next glory, you cannot be doing what you used to do.
And then you go up to the next one and what you were doing there, you cannot do anymore.
If the Lord had brought His power like what is described in Acts 5 back in 2020, before that pruning process had happened, it would not have ended well. God in His mercy withholds until we are ready to hold what we are asking for.
Being loose with your faith is what kept the church from being ready for the power of God, and it is the same thing that keeps us from being ready today.
The phrase came directly out of the Acts 5 account. Ananias and Sapphira's physical deaths, their lives and assignments cut short on this earth, were the result of being loose with their faith.
That is what was said about them. And the same looseness is what Kade identified in this generation. People are so loose with their faith. The fear of the Lord. They need some more.
The early church had great fear. Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened. That fear and that power were present at the same time. You cannot talk about one without the other.
The Holy Spirit is a pro at working through imperfect vessels. Whatever we mess up, He can clean up, and He is willing to do it.
This is not permission to be sloppy. It is freedom from the fear of messing up. When we release a word, when we lay hands on the sick, when we do the things the Bible commands us to do, we walk away with confidence knowing that is exactly what needed to be done.
The word is accurate because we are willing vessels and the Holy Spirit does not mess things up. He even works within our mess ups.
There was a moment at a recent gathering where a word came through tongues and interpretation. Beth, who had not heard any prior conversation with the woman receiving the word, interpreted it with precise detail.
Every specific thing the woman had been seeking direction about was addressed, in order, through a word of the Lord. That kind of accuracy was described as giving a fresh revelation of the fear of the Lord.
Because sometimes you prophesy and you think, I hope I got that right. And that thought is the temptation to be moved by what you see rather than what the Spirit is doing.
The Holy Spirit is a pro at working through imperfect vessels. Are you done making it about you? Can we trust that whatever we mess up, He can clean up?
When the apostles said "we must obey God rather than human authority," they were not being rebellious. They were simply reporting where the highest authority in their lives actually resided.
The apostles got thrown in jail. An angel opened the doors at night and told them to go back to the temple and keep teaching.
But an angel of the Lord came at night, opened the gates of the jail, and brought them out. Then he told them, "Go to the Temple and give the people this message of life!" — Acts 5:19-20 (NLT)
So they did. They walked right back into the space where the Sadducees had authority and started preaching again. That kind of boldness only comes from the Holy Spirit. They got flogged on the way out. And they left rejoicing.
The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. And every day, in the Temple and from house to house, they continued to teach and preach this message: "Jesus is the Messiah." — Acts 5:41-42 (NLT)
We should not be surprised if things like that happen as we step into the fullness of what God wants for us. We should be unbothered if we get arrested, knowing that God will send an angel to get us out.
We should use the opportunity to write to people and encourage them. That is what the Apostle Paul did.
The untroubled life is not a life without trouble. It is a life where trouble is around you but there is no trouble in you.
Some people think if they could just get enough faith they would not have any trouble in their life. But that is not the promise. The promise is there will be trouble around you but there will not be any trouble in you. You know you are walking your life of faith when trouble is around you but you are not troubled.
When you are in jail but you are not troubled. When you are getting flogged but you are not troubled. You are actually rejoicing because you have a joy unspeakable. In a situation where you should not be joyful, you are joyful.
It is an untroubled life not because of the absence of trouble but because you have not permitted the trouble to come inside of you. When you live that life and you get a diagnosis of sickness, since you do not let the trouble come in, it does not last for long because all your mind is on is the healing power of Jesus.
You hear what they say but Jesus's words are louder: by His stripes I was healed. So this must be temporary.
It also looks like not letting tomorrow bleed into today. Jesus was direct about this:
"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today." — Matthew 6:34 (NLT)
And the instruction that goes with it:
"Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need." — Matthew 6:33 (NLT)
When a challenge shows up, the assignment is clear. Seek first the kingdom. He already promised He would add everything else. Oral Roberts was once in the prayer tower going through the weight of thousands of prayer requests and he was burdened by all of it.
After a while the Holy Spirit simply said, "Pray easy. I'm the one doing the work." This is not your battle. The battle belongs to the Lord. At ease. When you are at ease, that is when you can hear. That is when you can see. That is when you can do what the Father tells you to do.
Why did God kill Ananias and Sapphira but not people today who do similar things? The reason we do not see this happen today is actually a move of God's mercy. People are so loose with their faith in this generation that if His power came and moved the way it did in Acts 5, we would have a burial ministry. God holds it back as a protection because He knows if we really got what we were asking for when we were not ready for it, it would not end well.
Did Ananias and Sapphira go to heaven or hell? The Bible does not say, so all we can do is wonder. The text calls them believers, and salvation is according to faith in Christ alone. The most reasonable reading is that their physical lives were cut short on this earth and their assignment was cut short on this earth because they were loose with their faith. We may get to heaven and find out otherwise, but that is not something Scripture settles for us.
Does God require you to give all your money to the church? No. Peter told Ananias directly that the property was his to sell or not sell, and even after selling it, the money was his to give away or not give away. God is not going to coerce it out of your hands. He wants a cheerful giver, someone who is choosing to give on purpose because they want to give. If you are not there yet, get yourself into a cheerful place first. All the coercion that goes on in the church is not from God. That is people who are afraid they will not have enough to pay the bills.
Is it always God's will to heal? Yes. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus never denied healing to anyone. The scriptures say Jesus came to reveal the will of the Father, so we do not have to wonder what His will is regarding healing because Jesus revealed it. Anybody who would receive by faith was healed of all kinds of ailments. When people point to Paul's thorn in the flesh as evidence that sickness is sometimes God's will, the passage itself actually names the thorn as a messenger of Satan, not a sickness. And when people point to Moses's stutter, the scriptures also say that when Israel left Egypt there were no feeble among them, so God apparently did not consider that a problem.
How do you know when a prophetic word is actually from God? It is a knowing that you have on the inside. It comes from your spirit. People want external verification, and if a prophecy is not fulfilled within a week or two they call you a false prophet. But Old Testament prophets prophesied hundreds of years in advance. Noah built a boat for 120 years before the rain came. You will always have people trying to sow unbelief into you, so we have to become skilled at rejecting unbelief.
What does it mean to only do what you see the Father doing? It means the Father gives you vision of what to do before you do it. Jesus was seeing the Father lay hands on the sick before He did it. Jesus was seeing demons cast out before He cast them out. God gave Him foresight. Practically it looks like being at an antique shop, seeing a vision of sending a photo of an oil lamp to someone, sending it, and finding out they had been talking about needing that exact lamp just days before. He will show you things before they happen to put you at ease. Being led by the Spirit is that normal.
How do you live without being overwhelmed by everything on your schedule? Matthew 6:34 says not to get your thoughts involved in tomorrow. The word worry means do not even go there. You have enough in you for today. The moment you pull tomorrow into today you start to get overwhelmed and worn out and you stop enjoying what is right in front of you. It is not about moving things off your schedule. It is about keeping your thoughts in today. He knows your capacity.
