On Sunday I preached a message on miracles. Re-read Psalm 77 for a refresher.
1. Miracles can be accompanied by messes and life-altering changes.
The Virgin Mary was engaged to be married. She had mapped out her life, and an angel showed up to tell her that she was going to be pregnant as a result of a Holy Spirit miracle at work in her body and she would give birth to and raise the Messiah. That is a miracle that Mary didn’t sign up for. She didn’t pray to be the mother of the Messiah. The angel had just ruined her wedding. The message had just put a strain on her relationship with her fiance’. She now had a target on her back and a scarlet letter on her chest as the people of the town weren’t going to likely believe that her pregnancy was an immaculate conception. Mary’s plans were now off the table, and she became the servant of the Lord to accomplish the Lord’s agenda in and through His miracle. If you are going to get a miracle from God, you need to be willing not just to be a recipient, but a participant in the plan of God to use that miracle long-term to bring people to Him
2. Miracles are often preceded by questions.
The question of why a loving God would allow anyone to suffer is a common question. The Psalmist asked several questions in Psalm 77 in verses 7-9. If I were to contemporize these verses, the questions might look like this: Has God stopped blessing me? Has He stopped loving me? Is God mad at me? Why is it that we ask these kinds of questions? It is often because in the natural we don’t see God working or we don’t see Him working the way we THINK He should or we don’t see Him working as fast as we think He should. But look at verse 19:19 Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.
It is not for us to see and understand everything God does in order to believe that He is working. If you have a God whose every move you can see and understand, your God is too small! “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Our role in the miracle of God is to trust God even when we have questions and doubts, and our strategy is to draw even closer to Him in times of trouble.
3. Miracles can come through extraordinary and ordinary events.
God can and does touch people instantly and bring healing to their lives. Too many stories are documented in the Bible and too many stories have been documented in my lifetime to know that I know that I know it is so. Those are what I would call extraordinary miracles.
The story of the Psalmist is details how God also used ordinary people to accomplish His miracles. Look again at Psalm 77:20: “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” God was at work in miraculous ways through the ordinary people named Moses and Aaron to lead God’s people out of slavery towards the Land of Promise. They were probably leading 2 million people! Two men leading 2 million people. That is a lot of people and a small amount of leaders. You know the miracle of God was at work to pull that off.
God can put people at the right place at the right time in your life in such a way to lift a load off of you or to bring you answers or to give you encouragement in such a way that it seems miraculous.
Are you in need of and open to a miracle from Heaven? Ask God to make you aware of where He is working today!
Pastor Melissa
