Miracle week: Day 5

 

George Mueller cared for orphans, in Bristol, in the 1800s.  His life was marked by amazing answers to prayer.  As can be seen in the following story.

One morning, all the plates and cups and bowls on the table were empty. There was no food in the larder and no money to buy food. The children were standing, waiting for their morning meal, when Müller said, “Children, you know we must be in time for school.” Then lifting up his hands he prayed, “Dear Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat.”

There was a knock at the door. The baker stood there, and said, “Mr. Müller, I couldn’t sleep last night. Somehow, I felt you didn’t have bread for breakfast, and the Lord wanted me to send you some. So, I got up at 2 a.m. and baked some fresh bread and have brought it.”

Mr. Müller thanked the baker, and no sooner had he left, when there was a second knock at the door. It was the milkman. He announced that his milk cart had broken down right in front of the orphanage, and he would like to give the children his cans of fresh milk so he could empty his wagon and repair it. 

One night, in central Africa, Doctor Helen Roseveare worked hard helping a mother who was giving birth. Despite all her efforts the woman died leaving a tiny pre-mature baby and a two-year old daughter.

The staff had no incubator and so had difficulty keeping the new-born alive. So, one of the student midwives went for the box they had for such babies and the cotton wool the child would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water-bottle. This young woman came back in distress to report that the hot water bottle had burst. It was the last hot-water bottle. All they could do was put the baby as near the fire as they safely could.

The following day Doctor Roseveare went for prayers at the adjoining orphanage. She told the children about the baby. She mentioned that this tiny child could die if it caught a chill. She also told them about the baby’s two-year-old sister.

During the prayer time at that orphanage one of the children, a ten-year old called Ruth, prayed a blunt prayer. ‘Please God send us a hot-water bottle. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, the baby will be dead, so please send it this afternoon, and while you are about it, would you please send a dolly for the little girl so she know that you really love her?’

Helen Roseveare had to say amen but doubted anything would happen. She had been in Africa for four years and no one had yet sent a parcel from home. If someone did send a parcel why would they think of sending a hot-water bottle to the equator? 

Anyway, half-way through the afternoon a message came to Helen that there was a car at her front door of her house. By the time she got there she could see that a large parcel had arrived. She taught that she could not open the parcel alone and sent for the orphanage children. Excitement grew as the removed the string and paper. Helen lifted out coloured jumpers which she gave to the children. Then there were knitted bandages and raisins and sultanas. She cried as she pulled out a brand-new rubber hot water bottle. Ruth was sitting at the front of the children and exclaimed that ‘if God has sent the bottle, he must have sent the dolly too!’ Rummaging down to the bottom of the box she pulled out a small beautifully dressed doll. That parcel had been on its way for five whole months, packed by Roseveare’s former Sunday school class whose teacher had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle, even to the equator.

 

Miracle week: Day 4

Miracles and the gospel

Be careful that in your desire to see God do miracles you do not take your eyes off the gospel. 

Remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).  A heartless rich man ignores the righteous beggar at his gate, and he ends up in hell.  From hell he asks Abraham to send the beggar, called Lazarus, from heaven to his brothers to warn them, so that they will not also end up in hell.  Abraham tells the rich man that, ‘if they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, then will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead’ (31).  Moses and the Prophets was a reference to the Bible as it was at that time.  Abraham is saying that if you reject the word of God, you will not be brought to faith through a miracle.

Sometimes God uses sign and wonders to point people to the gospel.  However, often the gospel is shared without signs and wonders and that is sufficient to bring people to faith.  Signs and wonders can be a supplement with the gospel but never a replacement for the gospel.  If someone is resistant to the gospel, like the rich man’s brothers, then a sign or wonder will not wake them up.  We see this with another Lazarus, in John 11.  Jesus raised this Lazarus from the dead.  But that did not cause all those who witnessed this miracle to put their trust in Jesus.  Some believed, but others went away to plot about how they might kill Jesus (John 11:15-16).  People’s rejection of Jesus is less about a lack of evidence than a hardness of heart.   

Miracle week: Day 3

Should we expect miracles today?

In the fourth century the great church leader, Augustine, disparaged the idea of God healing in his day.  However, he came to change his mind, and he wrote, ‘it is only two years since we began keeping records here in Hippo and already, at the time of writing, we have seen over seventy attested miracles’  (in ‘The City of God’).

In the 1500s the greater reformer, Martin Luther, had not believed that miracles were for his day.  Then his friend, Philip Melanchthon, became seriously ill.  As Luther visited Melanchthon, he was prompted to write on his friend’s wall the words of Psalm 118:17: ‘I shall not die but shall live and tell the deeds of the Lord.’ Immediately Melanchthon began to show visible signs of recovery, and Luther believed this was a miracle.

In the book of Acts, we see miracles, but is our experience to be like that of Acts? 

There is a sense in which the book of Acts is unique.  We might read Acts and think that miracles always happen.  But in Acts we are focused in on the ministry of the apostles, and in Acts we have events which took place over thirty years condensed down to twenty-eight chapters. 

There was a special relationship between miracles and the apostles (Acts 2:43).  Signs, wonders and miracles were among the marks of an apostle (2 Corinthians 12:12).  In Acts 9, the people of Joppa could not raise Tabitha from the dead, but they sent for the apostle Peter who was in nearby Lydda, who came and raised her (Acts 9:32-43).  Acts is not necessarily describing the everyday experience of everyday Christians.     

Even in New Testament times miracles did not always happen.  It was an unhealed illness that led Paul to go to the uplands of Galatia (4:13).  Paul tells Timothy to take some wine for his stomach (1 Timothy 5:23).   Paul leaves his companion Trophimus behind in Miletus because Trophimus was ill (2 Timothy 4:20). 

However, writing to ordinary church members at Corinth, Paul talks of people being given the gifts of healing (1 Corinthians 12:9) and of an ability to perform miraculous powers (1 Corinthians 12:10).  James tells the church that if someone is sick, they should call the elders of the church to come and pray with them with the expectation that they will be healed (James 5:14).  It is not only apostles that perform miracles.  Indeed, Paul seems to see the miraculous as being a part of the church to the end of the age (1 Corinthians 13:10).  

How often should we expect the miraculous to occur?  Well, some of that will be related to our faith and expectation that God can and does do miracles today.  However, if a miracle we are praying for does not happen, that does not necessarily imply that we lacked faith.  In fact, miracles do not necessary mean that a person or church is spiritual.  Don’t assume that a church or a person experiencing miracles is more spiritual than any other church or person.  There will be those who say to Jesus, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name and in your name drive out demons, and in your name preform many miracles?’  Yet Jesus will say, ‘I never knew you’ (Matthew 7:22-23).  We should give God the freedom to acts as he chooses.  We should delight in his ordinary and his spectacular blessings.  We should be open to miracles, but not demand them (Matthew 16:4).

It is worth noting that when the church is moving into a new area, miracles seem to occur with greater frequency.  John Stott wrote, ‘especially on the frontier of missions when a power encounter may need to be necessary to demonstrate the lordship of Christ miracles have been and are been reported.’  Could it be that as the church in the west continues to be surrounded by a hostile secularism that God will seek to halt this rot by demonstrating his miraculous power?

Miracle week: Day 2

 

Francis Schaeffer was one of the most respected evangelicals of the twentieth century.  His wife, Edith, recounts the following event that took place early in his ministry.

Francis and his young family faced a crisis.  They needed temporary accommodation during a time of transition, but they had very little money.  One day, while Francis was praying about this, he said to God, ‘where can we live, Lord?  Please show us!’  Immediately, in response to his prayer he heard an audible voice.  It wasn’t simply a voice in his mind, it was if another person had spoken.  The voice simply said, ‘Uncle Harrison’s house.’

The thing is Uncle Harrison had never given the Schaeffer’s anything.  It seemed very unlikely that he would offer his house to them to live in.  Yet, because the voice had been so startling and direct, Francis felt that he had better obey it, and so he asked his uncle.

He wrote to his uncle, asking him what he intended to do with his house the next year.  To his astonishment, Uncle Harrison replied that he planned to live with his brother for the next year and would like the Schaffer’s to live at his house, free of charge.

This prayer proved to be a turning point in the Schaffer’s lives, and later Edith would say that the clarity of that voice helped them through one of their most difficult years.

What are miracles?

In the Bible we are given three different terms for miracles: ‘signs’ (pointing to a deeper truth), ‘wonders’ (causing people to be amazed at what God has done) and ‘miracles/mighty works’ (where God works in an unusual and powerful way).  Tim Chester defines a miracle as, ‘amazing acts of power, through which God reveals his power and rescues his people.’

But is there a danger in focusing on miracles?

Yes, there can be.  For example, we can be so obsessed with the unusual acts of God that we forget the more ordinary, but equally amazing, acts of God. 

I have read credible accounts of people being raised from the dead.  That is spectacular.  But it is no more amazing than when God brings a person to new life in Christ.  The apostle Paul tells us that before we have a living relationship with God through Jesus, we are spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1).  It is a wonderful act of mercy when God raises the physically dead to life.  In fact, given that God created the whole universe, we shouldn’t be all that surprised.  The apostle Paul asked King Agrippa, ‘why should anyone consider it incredible that God raises the dead?’ (Acts 26:8).  But those who are raised from physical death to physical life will physically die again.  Whereas being born again means that we live, even though we physically die (John 11:25).  Let’s rejoice with the angels at the mighty work of God bringing sinful people like us to repentance (Luke 15:7).

So often God answers our prayers in ways that simply don’t stand out.  God may choose to heal through the hand of a surgeon.  But that does not mean that he is any less merciful or powerful than if he had healed without the hand of the surgeon.  In Psalm 136, the psalmist speaks of the God, ‘whose love endures for ever’.  This God does great wonders (verse 4a), including the wonder of creation (verse 5-9).  This God preformed wonders as he delivered his people from slavery in Egypt and gave them the Promised Land (verses 10-24).  But this God also does a wonder in ‘giving food to every creature’ (verse 25a), therefore we are to give thanks to the God of heaven (verse 26a).  Don’t forget to see the gracious hand of God in all his spectacular and seemingly ordinary ways!

I think that those Christians who spend all their time talking about miracles, can have the same problem as those Christians who are sceptical of any claim of God’s miraculous activity—their God is too small!  We need to see God in all his everyday acts, and also not doubt God when he acts in very unusual ways.

Miracle week: Day 1

Stephen Lungu is a respected Zimbabwean Bible teacher.  In his book, ‘Out of the Black Shadows’, he tells the story of how he met his wife.

Stephen was praying one day when he had what might be called a ‘waking vision’.  In that vision he saw a girl in a loose-fitting blue dress, who was holding a Bible, that was upside down and at Acts 26.  Acts 26 was a passage that God had used in a significant way in Stephen’s life.  He had this vision two more times over the next two years.

A couple of years later, someone suggested to Stephen that he might like to meet a particular girl by the name of Rachel.  I think this person thought that they might make a nice couple.

On one occasion, Stephen was giving a talk in another part of Zimbabwe.  After his talk he got in a conversation with a young man.  As they were talking, he noticed a girl, like the girl in his vision, wearing a loose-fitting blue dress, that happened to be holding a Bible, upside down at Acts 26.

A day or two later, Stephen decided to call at the house of the young man that he had been talking to.  When he arrived a houseboy informed Stephen that the young man was out.  But into the room walked a girl.  It was the girl who had been in the blue dress.  She was the young man’s sister.  Her name was Rachel.  The very same Rachel that another friend said Stephen should meet.  Today, they are married.

Charles Spurgeon was a great Baptist preacher in London in the late eighteen-hundreds.  On a number of occasions God would give him insights into situations.  For example, one time, when Spurgeon was speaking to a number of thousands of people in the Exeter Hall in London, he stopped and looked down at a young man and said, ‘young man, the gloves you are wearing are not your own, you stole them from your employer.’  After the service, the young man asked to speak to him.  He confessed, ‘it is the first time I have robbed from my employer, and I won’t do it again.  You won’t expose me sir, will you?  It would kill my mother if she thought that I had become a thief.’