Focus: God Of Miracles

Text: Lk.5:17

"And it came to pass on A CERTAIN DAY, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and THE POWER OF THE LORD WAS PRESENT TO HEAL THEM."

Walter Hooper, editor of C. S. Lewis' Reading for Meditation and Reflection, offers us some of Lewis' thoughts: "Do not attempt to water Christianity down. There must be no pretense that you can have it with the supernatural left out. So far as I can see Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated." There's no real Christianity without the supernatural or the miraculous.

 The author of Hebrews describes the Lord Jesus Christ as "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Heb.13:8). Who or what Christ was yesterday, He is still today, and will be forever. He is changeless and limitless. He has not run out of energy and never will.

On a certain day as He was teaching the people, it became evident that the power of God was present, creating an atmosphere for healing. The currency of supernatural power flowed in the meeting. God's power remains a present reality.

There are two groups of people in the Gospels: those lack faith in the miraculous and those who are over-concentrated on the miraculous. He says of the first, "You faithless and perverse generation…" (Lk.9:41), and of the last, He says, "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign…" (Mt.16:4). In the modern world the two schools of thought are described as cessationism and sensationalism. The fact is that by believing that miracle days are over we strip God of "contemporaneity, limits him to the past, and makes hope unnecessary," and by being too preoccupied with the miraculous we prioritize "what God can do over who God is. Sensationalism reduces God to a means by which an end is achieved. 

God is certainly more than a big miracle machine, but the truth remains that He is a miracle worker, and miracle days are still here with us.

God is being God when He works miracles in our lives. The miraculous reveals to us the God-ness of God. The glory of God is manifested in the miraculous. John tells us that in turning water into wine Christ "revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him."

The church cannot be the church without the miraculous. The power of the Lord is still present today to heal, deliver and transform. We serve the miracle-working God.

He is the God of mystery, majesty, might, and miracle, and as another has said, "If God were small enough for us to understand, He would not be big enough to worship." 

Listen, child of God, Paul wrote by divine inspiration and authority when he said that God "who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine." The Message Bible says, "God can do anything, you know - far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams. He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us" (Eph.3:20). He is the God of miracles. He is capable of diverse miracles - of salvation, of transformation, of healing, of supernatural supply, and much more. Believe God's word and obey His commands! Faith is the hand that takes what God gives.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter