Acts 14.9 9 As this man was listening to Paul speak, Paul
looked straight at him and saw that he believed God could heal him. (NCV)
Perhaps the man was just engaged in listening; perhaps he
nodded his head and gave some indication that he heard and understood; whatever
the case, Paul looked straight at him and
saw that he believed God could heal him. And God did.
Miracles are unexplainable movements of God within our
midst. Miracles come in all shapes and sizes. Miracles seem to be expressions
of God which are used to help those who don’t believe, to believe. The man in
Acts 14 needed God to come to his aid; he just didn’t know it until someone
(Paul) told him about the healing power of God, and the man was healed because
he simply believed. God did for the man what no one else could do: heal him of
a condition that was beyond the power of man to perform.
Interestingly, what was a miracle to some was counted as
magic by others. Some accepted the miracle, not as God’s power but as
superstition and the narrative goes that the crowds thought Paul and Barnabas
were Hermes and Zeus (respectively). Not everyone is ready to accredit God with
miraculous powers – some are content to consider miracles with superstition and
accept them as magic. Man is a such weird creature… The man believed, the crowd
couldn’t.
When our oldest child, Marshall, was alive, we asked God
repeatedly to heal him from a birth defect and make him well. And God ultimately
did: we know Marshall is in heaven with Jesus today. But in this life God never
miraculously “healed” Marshall; Marshall lived to his death in a very pathetic
way. In retrospect, death was more of a miracle for Marshall than a healing
would have ever been. The reality is that God was with Marshall (and my wife
and I) through all those years of his life. And God provided wonderfully for us
and that young man over and over.
The man in Acts 14 became a circus sideshow. Sometimes that
is the downside of miracles; the crowd misunderstands what has happened. I’m
glad our Marshall never became a sideshow. We must remember that when
representing God and something happens that we don’t understand, there are
those who really don’t understand and won’t accept it. The end of the story in
Acts 14 is that Paul is stoned and left for dead by a vicious crowd that thought
he tried to hoodwink them; people at a sideshow don’t want to know the truth;
God is too much for them.
Two weeks ago at our church, twenty people accepted
Christ as their Savior. What a MIRACLE! People who were dead in their
trespasses and sins, received new life by confessing their need for the Savior.
Wow! There is no greater miracle than when the living dead see life for the
first time and become the living Living. That friends, is a miracle of God not
a circus sideshow. We, as children of God, need to yearn for those miracles
because the gift of life in Christ the Lord is really what life is all about,
despite the miracles of the lame being enabled to walk…
Father, use me to be part of the real miracle of bringing
those You’ve called, to life in Christ; and to live in Him, by Him, and through
Him for all eternity. That is the miracle and I pray to be used by You for
that! Amen.
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