I don't believe that God still does miracles because I believe he never stopped doing miracles. I just don't believe there has ever been another group like the original group - the Apostles Jesus appointed in the New Testament and anointed to do the kinds of signs and wonders they did that kick started the Church. If you're being honest, you know that's true. The Holy Spirit inspired them to write the Scriptures - no one's doing that today. Or they shouldn't be.
And it's okay; it's not like we don't have the same Spirit. We do. I believe in miracles. I mean, my faith, my entire world view is based on a dead man walking out of a grave.
"So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." ( Ephesians 2:18-22 )
Jesus is the cornerstone - the stone that every other stone is aligned off of. The apostles and prophets are the foundation, and a foundation is only laid once - at the beginning. ( This blows the NAR's rhetoric out of the water. ) We are stones being placed upon that foundation, and together we are God's building. Where are we now? Only God knows, maybe the third floor, maybe the attic. ( 1 Corinthians 3:9, 1 Peter 2:4-8 )
I think it's like the grand opening they used to have at new stores when I was growing up. There'd be a banner out front of all of the construction work announcing when the grand opening day would be and then everyone would show up because the store would give out free food and prizes and shopping sprees.
After opening day, it was business as usual.
The first century church was a lot like that with all of the signs and wonders and the big day of Pentecost with the smaller ones that followed when God poured out his Holy Spirit on all flesh. ( Acts 2 and really the entire book of Acts )
I know lots of Christians want to think that we can do everything that the first Apostles did, but we aren't anointed for that plus 2,000 years of church history shows us that miracles were still done, but on a smaller scale it appears, in smaller ways, but just as powerful, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, and a heart to understand.
First and foremost, all believers are "Spirit-filled" believers, and the miracle that took place in our heart at the moment of salvation should overwhelm us every day of our lives. This grace should never stop amazing us.
It seems like it does though in a lot of the American Church. "More, Lord!" we often hear in worship services, but do we understand what we already have? Do we understand the significance of it? Of what has been done to us by God's grace through the faith that he gives, meaning it's a gift, in Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit while we were sinners, no less?
Acts 2:43 tells us "many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles."
The apostles.
And yet they were not healing people on demand. They didn't have faith-healing ministries evoking people's emotions through music and their annoying showmanship, parading sick people around the crowds who clearly weren't healed while passing around KFC buckets to collect "seed-faith" offerings from the vulnerable and exploited.
When dear saint Dorcas dies in Acts 9, her friends are so grieved. They wash her body as was customary and laid her in an upper room. Do they raise her from the dead? No, if they could have they would have. But instead they hear Peter is in town, not conducting healing revivals, but he's about to share the Gospel with some Gentiles, and so they call for him because God is doing signs and wonders through Christ's appointed apostles. They know this.
Peter raises Dorcas from the dead, and her story points to our story: resurrection from the dead one day.
Have we lost sight of that? That while we're so concerned about physical healing being a part of the atonement and having what some call a "full gospel" that we've lost sight of the true gospel and better things we've been blessed with in the heavenly places? A resurrected body! One day our bodies will be made new and greatly improved and spring up out of the grave into everlasting life. ( Ephesians 1:3 )
"Then Jesus told his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.'" ( Matthew 16:24 )
"Deny?"
"Take up his cross?"
Jesus washed his disciples feet and told them to do likewise. ( John 13 ) Jesus emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant, not a snake oil salesman. ( Philippians 2:7 ) No, he did not give up his deity. He laid down his life of his own accord as God.
"All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word." ( Isaiah 66:2 )When we live our lives in the "business as usual" mind set what happens in our faithfulness is that we begin to see the hand of God working in our lives in the ordinary and humble, but much over-looked details of where the Holy Spirit is truly working. He always meets us there.
Just this week in a small group setting I listened as the Farmer gave his testimony of the many miracles we've seen at Heritage Home in Indonesia in order to keep it running smoothly each month since he founded it back in 2012. A farmer who simply got on an airplane after working though a few details, one being open-heart surgery, without any fanfare, flies to Indonesia and quietly saves fourteen children's lives by securing a house and an unbelievable commitment from daughter Lisda.
I think of faithful pastors who aren't in slick suits, but in sweaty shirts with their sleeves rolled up serving their sheep as the Great Shepherd does, and then studying for hours to preach to them, hours that nobody sees.
"Of whom the world is not worthy."
And my dear friend Joyce who keeps her grandchildren while their parents work. I love this so much. She pours her life into them having a godly influence on those babies who are going to inherit a mixed-up, crazy world. She's helping prepare them. This may not be glamorous work to some, but this is "serving the Lord with gladness" and what it means to be a Christian and follow Jesus. ( Psalm 100:2 )
I want to have that kind of influence on my grandchildren and on the next generation. That's huge. In fact, I happen to know that children's ministries at many churches are looking for some of these faithful saints to step in and help in one of the most important areas of life. Talk about seeing the Holy Spirit work.
I'm so blessed to see it in the eyes of my granddaughter Margot every time I sing her to sleep with a hymn. It's so precious when she sings with me as young as she is.
These are just a few examples of being faithful with what's in front of us each day.
I've found that when we stop looking for "signs and wonders," we find them.
Not in what the world calls spectacular, but in what God calls spectacular.
It grieves my heart all of the "supernatural," fake ministries that are leading people to believe in a god of their own making and not the real, true beautiful Jesus and the powerful Holy Spirit who lives in each of us believers and works mightily through our everyday lives.
As the Farmer was sharing about the goodness of God this week, he said that if he was a strong, healthy man without a heart condition out on the mission field, well, "Where's the glory in that?" But because God chooses to work through our weaknesses, he gets all of the glory.
"Indeed we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." ( 2 Corinthians 1:9 )
Because God doesn't always choose to heal in this life. The mortality rate among Christians is the same as unbelievers, 100%. God has a greater purpose in mind:
Our resurrection from the dead.
And that, my friends, is a sign and wonder worth living and dying for.
To God be the glory.
Soli Deo Gloria
💜
Happy Weekend!
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| Another Archive Photo: Misha with a little lamb. |
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