Here's an interesting one I like to share and make a lesson point with....
My wife and I spend a week on the beach every year. I love to body surf, but one year it had been flat and mushy and no good at all for days. Finally, I did go in just to say I had gotten wet. But I just tread water there, bobbing like a cork, everyone else around me bobbing like corks, waiting for something to happen.
I got to thinking, 'gee Lord, I hate to be self-serving but it would be nice to have some waves’. But time goes by and the corks keep bobbing. So again at some point I muse, Jesus, if it'd be in Your grace, could we have some waves..? But of course time passes and the corks keep bobbing.
My head is getting burnt, the rest of me is waterlogged, I'm thinking gee God if I can just have one wave so I don't have to swim back to shore... And these words come to me, in my spirit - "what do you keep asking Me for? You know better than that. I said what I do you will do and more - You have My authority to call the waves up". So I laugh, and think You're absolutely right; then I faced out to sea and said "in Jesus' Name, how about some waves". A minute goes by, 2, and here they come. The best set of the week. Wave after wave after wave after wave... I caught several good rides, then when I stopped to catch my breath I saw that lots of people were getting lots of good rides. Kids that had been standing around in the equivalent of a kiddie pool were now chasing each other thru the surf, and there was a whole different Spirit in the water.
I laughed and said "Amen Lord, thank You for all of these". A kid next to me says "what's that mister?" "I think God decided we needed to be having more fun out here." "Yeah, the waves are really energetic now!" Amen kid, I laughed, they sure are. It went on just long enough to wear everyone out, then it went back to flat and mushy for pretty much the rest of the week.
So how do we test this one? There was a word of knowledge, followed by an act of faith in Jesus’ Name, bringing about the working of a miracle – culminating in God’s power being confirmed to a boy who recognized that something was going on.
Now, yes it may look like I pestered God into doing something, ‘waving the magic wand’ as some have called it. But what I shared is what was in my mind's eye. The question is, what was God seeing? Perhaps God saw this kid on the beach who needed a demonstration of His power, and me bobbing in the water willing to take part in something, and he put the two together. Maybe what I interpreted as 'wave the wand' was really the Holy Spirit saying, hey I need you to do something for me. Why me? Because I was probably the only one out there with the b@##$ - I mean faith - enough to actually face the sea and say in Jesus’ Name so be it.
I sought the Lord.
I received a word to act.
In faith I faced the sea and in Jesus Name told it to arise.
The waves arose.
That the waves had arisen was verified by a total stranger.
The power and thus the glory of God was spoken between the two of us.