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Don’t Miss Your Miracle!

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 4:2

Sometimes I get frustrated with prayer.

I probably shouldn’t say that. But I’m just being honest. After all, we live in a society of instant gratification. So we get wearied when prayers seem to go unanswered. And our enemy fuels that weariness, feeding our flesh with thoughts of futility.

It’s hard to have faith when we lose hope.

I know you’ve been there. I certainly have. Maybe you’re there right now.

What situation in your life have you labeled hopeless? What have you stopped praying for because you didn’t see God move the way you’d hoped? What if you’ve given up right on the threshold of your blessing?

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 4:2

Scripture calls us to pray without ceasing—to continue steadfastly—and to watch for the movement of God with thanksgiving. In other words, never lose hope.

I know. Easier said than done.

Especially when the road is long.

A few months ago, my husband and I met a wonderful Christian couple from Alabama while vacationing. God intersected our paths, and we quickly became friends.

Over the course of the week, we shared our stories and lots of laughter. But I also discovered that a deep pain lurked behind their friendly personalities and bright smiles. One of their daughters had suffered from illness for all of her twelve years.

At birth, because of a hole in her diaphragm, some of her organs weren’t where they should’ve been. Surgery corrected the problem, but it left its mark. Eating remained a constant struggle. Consuming food hurt, so she never wanted to eat. Every meal became a battle. At twelve years old, she weighed only 58 pounds.

Her parents shared stories of God’s faithfulness over the years. Through their hardship, they had been watchful, offering God praise for bringing their daughter through so much.

But they were weary. Twelve years is a long time to watch a loved one suffer. And to experience that suffering yourself as turmoil disrupts your days.

God stirred my heart to pray for our new friends and their daughter. And to rekindle their hope.

We won't believe without hope. Don't let the enemy steal yours. Click To Tweet

After we’d returned home, I was praying for this dear child I’d never met but loved in Jesus’ name. I felt the ache of this family’s twelve years of suffering. And Jesus reminded me of the woman with the issue of blood who had suffered twelve long years. Twelve years of seeking doctors only to worsen. Until one day, Jesus of Nazareth intersected her life and she touched the hem of His garment. Grace poured out from her Savior and healed what doctors could not.

I texted my new friend that April morning to encourage her that I was praying for her, and to share what Jesus had revealed about the woman with the issue of blood. The Spirit stirred my heart that it was time for fresh hope, and I told her I believed Jesus wanted her daughter living free from this burden over food. I would fight the battle with her in prayer.

Just last week I received incredible news from my friend. A new medication has stimulated her daughter’s appetite and she’s eating everything in sight! She has begun to enjoy her food and even tells her parents she’s hungry—something they’d never heard from her before. She’s also gained a few pounds.

Why do we keep praying, beloved? Because God moves through faith. And you never know when God’s perfect timing will intersect your circumstances—and you’ll receive your miracle. Even after 12 long years—or twenty, or thirty.

Which is why our enemy promotes hopelessness. We won’t believe without hope. And we’ll quit praying. So we miss our miracle.

And he [Jesus] told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?  I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Luke 18:1-8

Beloved, your heavenly Father asks you to consider. If an unrighteous judge will give in to a persistent demand, will not the God who loves you move in answer to your perpetual prayers? He has staked His Word that persistent prayer will move Him, which is precisely why our enemy convinces us to lose hope.

To believe God for something when your circumstances consistently tell you something else requires tremendous faith. And faith is the catalyst that releases the grace of God to pour out salvation (Ephesians 2:8).

So Jesus asks you.

When He looks into your seemingly hopeless situation, will He find faith?

 

Enter In

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. Psalm 16:5-6 NIV

Last week we turned our attention to what it means to live by faith. By God’s design, faith isn’t something we merely hold in our hearts. Rather, we express faith as we trust His commands through obedience. Each time we actively trust Him, we move one step further into the blessing He has planned for us. There we will witness the outpouring of His grace.

A delightful inheritance awaits you in Jesus Christ. Ground lies ahead of you that Jesus means for you to claim in His name. And yet many of us are stuck floundering in the desert while the promised blessings available in Jesus lay just beyond the river of life. Perhaps it’s time we dip our toes in and let the current of the Spirit carry us into our Promised Lands.

The Israelites once stood where you now stand, their feet camped on desert ground while their Promised Land of blessing lay ahead of them. God had answered their cries for deliverance from Egypt and led them to the banks of their inheritance. Then Moses chose a representative from each of the twelve tribes to explore the land God had promised them and bring back a report.

They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit.”  Numbers 13:27

Imagine that! They found the land exactly the way God had described it. God had called them to believe by faith, but now they had witnessed it with their eyes. Surely they would run toward their allotted inheritance!

Unfortunately they also witnessed something else with their eyes.

But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. Numbers 13:28

Suddenly their adversary seemed bigger than their God.

Fear overshadowed and erased their witness of God’s faithfulness. It didn’t matter that God had once again proven Himself Faithful and True, that He had kept His word and led them to a beautiful land. They quickly forgot that God had vanquished their Egyptian enemies before their eyes. In that moment, they chose to focus instead on the powerful enemy that lay ahead of them. Rather than fight and believe God for victory, they chose to remain in the desert and grumble against God for bringing them there in the first place.

So much for “seeing is believing.”

Dear one, how often do we think that if only we could witness the miracles described in Scripture, we would believe? We’ve convinced ourselves that we would easily trust and follow if we could see the things the Israelites saw. Yet the Israelites saw, and still did not believe.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

True faith comes from being certain even when we cannot see. In reality, if we do not possess the faith when we don’t see, we won’t likely possess it after we do. Just look at the Israelites. Seeing didn’t translate to believing.

But one among the crowd did believe. His lone voice rose to proclaim God’s faithfulness.

Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” Numbers 13:30

Caleb chose to trust that the God who redeemed them was stronger than their adversary. The rest of them argued, claiming they couldn’t win against this much larger enemy. They spread a bad report throughout the camp, and “that night all the people of the community raised their voices and wept aloud” (Numbers 14:1). Their fear led to this conclusion, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt” (verse 4).

Really? After all that they had seen God do an their behalf, they thought their best option was to head back to the slavery they had cried out for deliverance from?

You and I can be quick to accuse Israel when we read their story as history. But we also just as easily behave just like them.

Jesus stretched Himself out on a cross to redeem us, not just from sin’s penalty but also from its power over us, “For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” Romans 6:14

He has promised us victory over sin and the enemy’s power in our lives, but He calls to take up His Word, the Sword of the Spirit, and go to battle to claim it. He guarantees victory, promising that we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

Yet we often see our enemy as too powerful to overcome, so we refuse to go to battle. Instead we choose to grumble at God from the desert, or worse, run back to the slavery from which He rescued us.

What if you and I determined instead to be like Caleb, choosing to believe God’s promises even if no one else around us agrees? The world may tell us there’s no point in fighting, but God’s faithfulness remains sure. If we will trust Him for His promises, even if we have to stand alone, He will prove Himself. He did to Caleb.

Caleb’s faith ushered him into his inheritance. He was one of 600,000 men who left Egypt to journey to the land God promised them. He was one of only 2 that actually entered it and took possession of it. The rest of them died in the desert because of their unbelief.

Dear one, let’s not die in the desert when our Promised Lands stand within reach! 

The God of Miracles

Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.  Habakkuk 3:2

Do you ever think it would be easier to trust God if you lived in the days of parting seas and pillars of cloud and fire? You may rationalize that if you saw walls of water piling up and witnessed God destroying your enemies before your eyes you would never struggle with trusting Him.

That’s what the Israelites thought too. After experiencing His miraculous deliverance from Egypt and witnessing His awesome deeds on their behalf, they stood before Him at Mt. Sinai and proclaimed,

“Everything the LORD has said we will do.”  Exodus 24:3

Well, I believe they at least had good intentions, but intentions aren’t what God was looking for. Let’s join them for a moment on their journey to their Promised Land.

Imagine what it would be like to watch your daily bread fall from the sky and pile up on the surface of the ground. Each day God proved His faithfulness by providing His people with food while they lived in the desert. The Israelites would awaken to a blanket of white glistening beneath the morning dew. God instructed them through Moses to gather just enough to provide for their families for the day.

 “No one is to keep any of it until morning.” Exodus 16:19

You might suppose that seeing God’s power displayed for them again as He fed them with manna from heaven led to their wholehearted obedience, right? One would think so, but . . .

. . .  some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.  Exodus 16:20

So much for the idea of witnessing God’s great deeds helping us trust Him more. No matter what they saw with their eyes, their hearts still rebelled.

God gave another opportunity to trust Him when the Sabbath came. He instructed the people to gather twice what they needed on the sixth day so they would have enough for the Sabbath because no manna would fall that day.

I bet that instruction raised some eyebrows. They had already discovered firsthand that the manna wouldn’t keep overnight, and I imagine they didn’t have much interest in eating stinking maggots. But for those who trusted, God showed His might once again.

So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it.  Exodus 16:24

Imagine that.  Even food will spoil or keep from spoiling in obedience to the Word of the Lord. If only man—the crowning glory of God’s creation—would be that cooperative. He told them,

“Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.”  Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none.” Exodus 16:26-27

And I’ll bet they were surprised.

No wonder anger kindled within God’s heart toward His covenant people. He chose them to be His own and bear His Name. He selected them out of all the nations of the earth to walk with Him and follow Him to a place of blessing He had prepared just for them.  He performed miracles in their midst. Yet over and over, even when they saw His mighty power poured out on their behalf, they refused to trust. They didn’t obey, and no matter what God did, it was never enough.

“But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”   Numbers 11:6

You see, God’s people had a heart condition. No matter how many times they saw His arm of power move, they still grumbled. They still disobeyed, refusing to trust Him, and insisted on their own way. Dear one, even with all that they saw Him do, they continued to lose the battle against the pull of sin within their hearts.

But God knew they would struggle. So He had a plan in place before Creation itself sprang forth from His mouth. He would perform the miracle of miracles. He would offer His Son on a cross and provide a way for mankind to exchange his wayward nature for that of God’s.

We will spend the next few weeks exploring the miraculous together through Scripture. Psalm 77:14 rings as true today as it did when the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea on dry ground,

You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples.

My heart echoes Habakkuk’s cry in our opening Scripture. God stands ready to reveal His mighty deeds in our days. But we just might miss the miracles if we keep our gaze fixed on our outward circumstances. You see, the cross shifted the focus of God’s wonders from the external to the internal. Now, He works the greatest wonder of all; He’s changing the human heart.

You are the miracle He seeks to reveal now, dear one.  Will you allow Him to display His power in you? 

Out on the Water

"Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. Matthew 14:29

I love Peter. He wasn’t one who played it safe, except, of course, for that fateful night when he heard the rooster crow. 

With the exception of denying our Lord at His arrest, Peter is probably most known for his brief trek upon the surface of the water. He alone held the privilege of experiencing that miracle. But then again, no one else got out of the boat.

Peter’s stroll on the lake has ignited many faith-filled believers into action over the centuries. Citing his example, eager disciples leap from their safe circumstances and plunge into the water to trust God for their miracle just like Peter did. Sometimes they get it. Sometimes they don’t.

Have you ever taken a leap of faith that didn’t result in the outcome you expected? Has it left you doubting God’s faithfulness?

We often miss a vital part of Peter’s story, an action he took that we commonly overlook. Before Peter took one step out on that water, he asked Jesus to command him to.

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” Matthew 14:28

Jesus responded with one word, “Come,” signaling to Peter that his journey upon the water was within His will.

Peter didn’t just leap in faith hoping Christ would catch him. He first sought the Lord’s permission. Then he stepped out in faith in direct obedience to Jesus’ command.

We would be wise to follow Peter’s example. Many times, we just jump out on the water without ever bothering to ask God if He’d like us to. Instead of witnessing God’s miraculous provision, we end up in over our heads.

God’s promises flow into our lives when we position ourselves within His will. We express true faith when we walk in obedience to His direction, not when we author our own plans and assume He’ll join us in them.

Do you recall Jesus words from John 10:27?

"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me."

Peter knew Jesus would meet him on the water because He gave him His consent to proceed. Supernatural power flows at the Word of the Lord, not just because we desire it to. We must seek our Lord’s direction and follow Him into His will if we want to experience His power.

Perhaps that raises an unsettling question for you. If you have sought God’s will and stepped out in faith but didn’t get the outcome you expected, does that mean your actions were not within His will?

Consider Jesus’ words to the disciples of John the Baptist in Matthew 11:6,

“Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

Jesus’ words came in response to a question John posed from a prison cell, “Are you the one who was to come or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3)

These are surprising words considering John was the one who announced Jesus to be the Messiah.

. . . John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29

I guess prison walls have a way of obstructing our view. He had been so certain God had spoken (John 1:32-34) and had freely yielded himself to His service, yet he found himself in circumstances he couldn’t explain. They didn’t make sense if Jesus was really all He claimed to be, and so his certainty faded to doubt. And Jesus responded,

Blessed is the one who does not fall away when I don’t act in the way he expects.

When you have sought God’s will and stepped out full of faith in obedience to His call, you needn’t fear. Even if, for a time, things don’t look like you expected them to, He is still exactly who He claims to be. One day, all will be revealed. Until then, your job is to trust. And according to Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:6, that trust will find its way to a blessing.

Don’t allow fear to keep you watching from the sidelines. Choose to live like Peter. Seek the Lord’s direction and step out of the boat in obedience to His call. But if the outcome of your faith falls short of your expectations, heed Jesus’ words and don’t fall away. Eventually, your faith will result in blessing.