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The World is Full of Miracles

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Why Do We Overlook Them?

John the Baptist was put in prison by Herod for sharing the message of Jesus. John had spent his whole life declaring the message of the coming Messiah. As he was trapped there in prison, he may have been having second thoughts about this. Had he got this wrong? Was Jesus really the Messiah?

While he was in prison, John sent two of his disciples to Jesus to find out. When they went to Jesus, they found Him curing people who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirts. Also, he was giving sight to many who were blind. (Luke 7:21)

They asked Jesus, “Are You the one who’s coming, or should we look for someone else?” (Luke 7:20)

He answered them, “Go back, and tell John what you have seen and heard:

Blind people see again, lame people are walking, those with skin diseases are made clean, deaf people hear again, dead people are brought back to life, and poor people hear the Good News.” (Luke 7:18-23)

Jesus was telling these disciples and John the things they had been taught. These things had been predicted in Isaiah.  

Last week we looked at Isaiah telling us about the Messiah in chapter 9. Between chapter 9 and chapter 34, Isaiah is telling the people of the harsh judgement to come. That’s a lot of chapters about what the people can expect because of how they have been living.

In chapter 34, Isaiah switches it up.

He goes back to the message of hope for restoration.

He tells the people that God is coming. Deserts will become green. The Lord will display His glory. He is coming to strengthen those who have tired hands and encourage those who have weak knees. He will say to those with fearful hearts,

“Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.”

And when He comes, this is what it will look like:

“He will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf. The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy! Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the wasteland. The parched ground will become a pool, and springs of water will satisfy the thirsty land. Marsh grass and reeds and rushes will flourish where desert jackals once lived.” (Isaiah 35:1-10)

These miracles that Isaiah predicted happened.

We’ve heard of these miracles that Jesus did. The Bible is full of examples of Jesus performing miracles.

Miracles just happened in the Bible though…right? Wrong.

The world around us is full of miracles. It’s nothing but miracles.

Miracles don’t have to be some miraculous healing (not that they can’t be). Doctors, nurses and medicine are miracles. Technology that allows us to communicate virtually with people around the world is a miracle. The fact that the sun comes up right on schedule every morning, as it has for thousands of years, is a miracle.

I think Albert Einstein summarized it will when he said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

The world is a miracle full of miracles. We just need to open our eyes and see them.

What’s Really Happening When Jesus Turned the Water into Wine?

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It’s About So Much More Than Just the Wine

Most of us are familiar with the start of Jesus’ ministry in John 2:1-11, when He turned the water into wine. Jesus and His mom were at a wedding where they ran out of wine. Jesus’ mom tells Him that, “They have no more wine.”

Jesus asks her why she’s telling Him this, “It’s not yet time for me to begin my work.” Mary tells the servants, “Do what he tells you.”

She knew who He was and what he could do. She had faith. She believed!

At that point Jesus told the servants to fill six large jars with water…so they did. Then He told them to take some of the water to the man in charge of the feast. The man tasted it and was amazed that the best had been saved for the last.

This was the first of Jesus’ miracles and it caused His followers to believe.

The servants had some amazing faith to take these jars to the host of the feast. They knew the wine was gone. They had just poured water in the jars. They took it anyway. We know how it turned out…best wine ever.

When God speaks to people, He’s asking them to do something bigger, something that will stretch them.

Every day we are faced with situations like the one at the wedding. We’ve miscalculated and ran out of something before we were finished. We have to decide what to do.

We need to start with believing that God can do anything and then ask Him. We need to trust that when He tells us to do something…we can do it.

God is abundance…not scarcity.

Too often we approach empty jars from a scarcity mentality and stop there. If we will have faith and ask, God will fill our jars until they run over.

It’s up to us to believe, ask and act.

There Are Two Ways to Look at Things

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I Choose to Believe in Miracles

 

 

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein


We have become spoiled and forget to be grateful for the miracles that surround us every day. We can be grateful or not, this is a choice. Being grateful requires an intentional decision.


Gratitude is how we show love. Being grateful and acting upon that gratefulness can be as simple as a spoken thank you or as big as how we live our lives every day.


Gratitude is a perspective. It’s how we see things. We can see only the negative or we can see the positive. It sounds cliché but it’s real and it makes a difference on how you treat life and how life treats you.


Gratitude is a choice. We can choose to be grateful or not but being grateful is a much better way to approach life. We have been given so much. Shouldn’t we be thankful for all that we have?


A young man was driven to college in an old car by his dad. Several of the students saw the car and began to tease the young man. The young man looked at them and said, “That old car is the reason I’m Here”. He went on to explain that his father decided to save money for his college education rather than spending it on a new car.


This son was grateful for his father’s love and the choice he made. This changed his perspective. If this son could be grateful for what his father did for him, shouldn’t we be exponentially more grateful to our Heavenly Father for all the miracles He’s given us.

 

There Are Miracles Waiting at The Edge of Our Faith

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That Faith Only Needs to Be as Big as a Mustard Seed

 

We really don’t believe in miracles, we say that we do, but not really. Our faith is almost nonexistent. We sell ourselves and God short. It’s no wonder that we live lives of mediocrity.


Even the apostles, who had witnessed Jesus perform miracles doubted. He told them, “If your faith were the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Dig yourself up and plant yourself in the sea.,” and it would obey you.” Luke 17:5-6 I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a mustard seed, but they’re tiny.


Faith requires action.


Imagine yourself at a circus watching all the amazing trapeze artists and high wire acts. After the tight rope walker goes across the high wire the ring master asks the crowd if they would like to see him ride a bicycle across. Everyone applauds and says yes. Next the ring master asks if they would like to see him go across with someone riding on his shoulders. The applause and screams are louder than before. Then the ringmaster asks…who will volunteer to be that person? The crowd instantly is quiet. Oh, ye of little faith.


We’ve been put here for a purpose. To live out that purpose to its fullest requires faith and action.


Faith starts with forgiveness.


Anger stops the flow of miracles. Forgiveness releases them. We think holding back forgiveness is punishment to those who have wronged us…it isn’t, forgiveness benefits the forgiver as much as the forgiven. It clears the blockage and opens a clear path for miracles to flow through.


Faith is all about believing.


We only need to believe a mustard seed amount for miracles to happen. It’s sad how many people don’t even have this much faith. God will never expect us to do more than we can. The problem is that we don’t believe. There are examples of amazing things all around us if we will just look. The more we believe in God and ourselves the bigger the miracles will be.


Faith concludes with serving.


Serving is the result of putting our faith into action. Our specific purpose is to serve God and others using our gifts and talents. Serving others is not demeaning, it is the fulfillment of our purpose. Small acts of service ripple through out time and space ending in huge miracles.


We are made in God’s image but live in a fallen world. It is hard to see through the haze of the fallen world to the miracles that happen. In the story of the mulberry tree above, it says, if you have faith, it will obey you…it doesn’t say anything about seeing it.


We witness miracles every day that were started by someone else’s faith and action.

 

Keep Your Eyes Open, You Will See Miracles Galore

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There are miracles happening all around us every day, some small and some huge. Just consider this amazing thing we call life. The complexity of a Swiss watch that we take for granted. The problem is that we become complacent about these things and forget where these miracles comes from. We were after all, made in His image, Genesis 1:27. If you will just “Keep Your Eyes Open, You Will See Miracles Galore”.

Jesus performs his first miracle in John 2:1-11 when He turns the water into wine. The speed that this process happened is what made it unusual. We think for something to be a miracle it has to be outside the natural order of things. In the book Miracles by C.S. Lewis it says that every miracle Jesus preformed was in sync with God’s natural order, it was just quicker. The problem with miracles is that we expect them to be instantaneous. God has given us this wonderful world full of miracles, we just need to keep our eyes open and we will see miracles galore .

An eight year old boy who rescued two friends from a coal mine was being interviewed by Johnny Carson. It was apparent that the young man was a Christian. Carson asked the boy what he was learning in Sunday School. He said last week our lesson was about when Jesus went to a wedding and turned water into wine. This got a laugh from the audience. Then Johnny asked him what he learned from the lesson. The boy squirmed for a while and then with a smile answered, “If you’re going to have a wedding, make sure you invite Jesus!” We need to invite Jesus into every part of our lives.

Miracles are evidence of God’s presence. We just need to take the blinders off and be more observant.

“Keep Your Eyes Open, You Will See Miracles Galore”