<\/p>\n
Miracles are mysterious events. They\u00a0happen in unexpected ways, at unexpected times, and, sometimes, to unexpected people. Yet we know from the Bible that certain conditions are conducive to miracles taking place. For instance, a faith-filled heart paves the way for the woman with the issue of blood to be miraculously healed when she touches the fringe of Jesus\u2019 garment. Jesus tells her,\u00a0\u2018Beloved daughter, your faith in Me released your healing. You may go with My peace.\u2019\u00a0<\/em>(Luke 8:48 TPT).<\/p>\n When Jesus is rejected in His hometown of Nazareth, on the other hand, His miracle-working power is obstructed. The crowd mutters,\u00a0\u2018\u201cIs this not the carpenter,\u00a0the son of Mary, and the brother of\u00a0James and Joses and\u00a0Judas and Simon? Are His sisters not here with us?\u201d<\/em> And they were [deeply] offended by Him [and their disapproval blinded them to the fact that He was anointed by God as the Messiah].\u2019\u00a0(Mark 6:3 AMP). Consequently, Jesus is unable to perform any great miracles there, except to heal a few sick people, and we read:\u00a0\u2018He was amazed at the depth of their unbelief!\u2019<\/em>\u00a0(Mark 6:6 TPT).<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to look at a few things that pave the way for the miraculous, in the context of some miracle stories that happen in the Bible.<\/p>\n 1. Mercy, kindness and grace pave the way for a miracle of salvation.<\/strong><\/p>\n In the story of Zaccheus (see Luke 19:1\u201310), Jesus Himself models for us how to treat others if we\u2019d like to see their lives transformed by saving grace. Jesus is travelling through Jericho, when He comes across the wealthy chief tax collector for the region, a man named Zaccheus, who has climbed a tree beside the road to get a glimpse of Jesus over the heads of the crowd. To everyone\u2019s surprise, Jesus stops and looks up at Zaccheus. Imagine the moment. Jesus knows full well that Zaccheus has grown rich from cheating people. Knowing Zaccheus is a crook, the crowd is probably hoping Jesus will expose the corrupt tax collector and give him what he deserves. Maybe Zaccheus is panicking and thinking, \u2018I\u2019ve been caught out in front of everyone, and I have nowhere to hide!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n To the crowd\u2019s disappointment, however, Jesus is not there to point an accusing finger or to tell Zaccheus how bad he is. What happens next is a picture of Jesus walking in His purpose, as it is set out in John 3:17 (TPT):\u00a0\u2018God did not send His Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Saviour and rescue it!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n What we witness is Jesus paving the way for redemption by showing Zaccheus mercy, kindness and grace. Jesus invites Zaccheus to come down from the tree and does him the honour of stopping off at his house to spend some time with him. Zaccheus is thrilled, the crowd not so much.\u00a0\u2018Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, \u201cWhat business does He have getting cosy with this crook?\u201d\u2019<\/em>\u00a0(Luke 19:7 MSG).<\/p>\n What Jesus has done is countercultural. As a result, He loses the approval of the crowd yet wins Zaccheus. Standing in front of the Lord, Zaccheus repents.\u00a0\u2018Half of all I own I will give to the poor,\u2019<\/em>\u00a0he tells Jesus (in Luke 19:8 TPT).\u00a0\u2018And Lord, if I have cheated anyone, I promise to pay them back four times as much as I stole.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0This complete turnaround is a miracle. Jesus responds,\u00a0\u2018Salvation has come to this home today.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0(Luke 19:9 NLT).<\/p>\n 2. Building and praying pave the way for miracles of deliverance, provision, and hope restored.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Anyone going through a disrupting and turbulent time can glean some wisdom from the prophet Jeremiah, who lived through the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile yet came through these devastating chapters of Hebrew history with his faith still intact.<\/p>\n Jeremiah pens an extraordinary letter from Jerusalem to the captives in Babylon.\u00a0\u2018This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:\u00a0\u201cBuild houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.\u201d<\/em> (Jeremiah 29:4\u20137 NIV).<\/p>\n Build and pray are God\u2019s directions to His people when they\u2019re going through a crushing time of upheaval, displacement, and loss. It would have been easy for the exiled Israelites to give up, abandon their faith, uproot themselves from their faith community, lose all hope, and fall in with Babylonian culture. But God\u2019s will for them is to keep on sowing good seed \u2013 to build, to cultivate the ground, to multiply, to move their lives forwards, to seek peace (not stir up trouble), and to pray for their environment.<\/p>\n These are the actions that pave the way for the miraculous promises in Jeremiah 29:11 (AMP) to be fulfilled:\u00a0\u2018\u201cFor I know the plans\u00a0and\u00a0thoughts that I have for you,\u201d says the Lord, \u201cplans for peace\u00a0and\u00a0well-being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.\u201d\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n God\u2019s will for us is that we keep on building and praying, too. Miracles happen while we faithfully get on with what God has called us to do, despite all that\u2019s going on around us, or everything that\u2019s coming against us. The truth is God is still at work, and He knows what He\u2019s doing.\u00a0\u2018I have it all planned out,\u2019<\/em>\u00a0God says (in Jeremiah 29:11 MSG),\u00a0\u2018plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0Our part is to not get tired of doing what is good (see Galatians 6:9). God encourages us to keep sowing good seed, so we may reap the harvest of blessing He has for us, if we will not give up.<\/p>\n 3. Remaining faithful to God through the hard times paves the way for miracles of restoration.<\/strong><\/p>\n Remaining faithful to God through the worst of times is Job\u2019s superpower.\u00a0Job is a righteous, integrous man who is our prime example of bad things happening to a good person.\u00a0Job loses everything \u2013 his family, his fortune, his health \u2013 yet he neither sins nor blames God for any of it. His wife tells him:\u00a0\u2018Still holding on to your precious integrity, are you? Curse God and be done with it!\u2019<\/em>\u00a0However, Job replies:\u00a0\u2018We take the good days from God\u2014why not also the bad days?\u2019<\/em>\u00a0(See Job 2:9\u201310 MSG.)<\/p>\n At the same time, Job doesn\u2019t accept his suffering passively. He asks the age-old questions of \u2018Why?\u2019<\/em> and \u2018Why me?\u2019<\/em> What sets Job apart is that he takes his questions to God and wrestles with the Lord about everything that\u2019s happened to him.<\/p>\n Job\u2019s friends visit him and tell him what\u2019s wrong with him. According to their analysis of the situation, Job is suffering because he has sinned. Their quick-fix solution is that Job repents of his sin to make the suffering stop. Essentially, they prop themselves up by tearing Job down. Yet their answers and explanations are based on false assumptions. They don\u2019t have the whole picture and they misrepresent the Lord.<\/p>\n To his credit, Job isn\u2019t swayed by the negative voices that are coming at him from all sides. Job\u2019s life is built on God, and when everything else is stripped away, Job\u2019s faith passes the test and he keeps trusting the Lord. As a result, Job is vindicated and God restores his fortunes, giving him twice as much as he had before. (See Job 42:10.)<\/p>\n Job\u2019s faithful endurance paves the way for miracles of restoration in every area of his life. I love what it says in James 5:10\u201311 (MSG):\u00a0\u2018Take the old prophets as your mentors. They put up with anything, went through everything, and never once quit, all the time honouring God. What a gift life is to those who stay the course! You\u2019ve heard, of course, of Job\u2019s staying power, and you know how God brought it all together for him at the end. That\u2019s because God cares, cares right down to the last detail.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n I encourage all of us, let\u2019s be merciful, gracious and kind in our treatment of others, remembering that our purpose as followers of Jesus is to create pathways for people to come to Him. Let\u2019s keep building and praying, as God instructs His people to do during some of the toughest times in their history. Let\u2019s remain faithful to God no matter what happens. And we will see miracles.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Miracles are mysterious events. They\u00a0happen in unexpected ways, at unexpected times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,15421,15414,8],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n