Putting aside for a moment, all the miracles that God does
for every single one of us every day- The way our bodies work, the rising of
the Sun, the fine balance of the entire universe to ensure that our planet can
sustain us….. When was the last time you
actually allowed Jesus to do
something amazing with your life?
Taking into account the first part of the above paragraph,
that question might sound a bit strange but actually, God didn’t put us on this
planet to simply survive, getting up each day, breathing, eating,
sleeping. God didn’t just put us on this
planet to enjoy gravity or the fact that we are able to breathe. God put us on this planet to help him out and
through the power of His Son, Jesus, change the lives of the people around us,
sharing the love of Jesus and playing our part in changing the way that the world
is for His Glory.
There is an excellent quote from Steven Furtick, Pastor of
Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina that reads,
‘Most believers are content with simply surviving the world. God didn’t put us here to survive the world, He raised you up to change the world through the power of the movement of His church.’
So I ask again, when was the last time you allowed Jesus to do something amazing
with your life?
It strikes me, that as I read through the different miracles
that Jesus performed while he was physically on the earth, most of them were
made possible because there was someone willing to ‘allow’ the miracle to
happen, or someone that asked for the miracle to happen.
If you look at the first miracle of Jesus in John 2- Water
into Wine at the wedding in Cana. First
of all, in verse 3, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” This was His mother asking for the miracle to
happen. Verse 7 then goes on to say ‘Jesus
said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the
brim.’ There you see the willingness to ‘allow’
a miracle to happen. Of course they
would not have been aware of what was about to happen, as in many situations we
are not, but it was the willingness of the servants to follow the instruction
of Jesus which allowed the miracle to happen.
Moving through into John 4- Jesus heals an Official’s
Son. Jesus was back in Cana and a royal
official’s son ‘lay sick’. ‘When this
man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and
begged him to come and heal his son….’
Again, the question was asked and the miracle happened.
The man with leprosy in Luke 5, ‘When he saw Jesus, he fell
with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can
make me clean.”’ He could have kept
quiet couldn’t he, not approached Jesus, sat quietly in the corner hoping that
a miracle would happen without him actually having to do anything. Does that sound familiar perhaps?
The next part of Luke 5- The healing of the paralysed
man. In this story, you see the friends
of the paralysed man willing to do whatever it took to put their friend in
front of Jesus, thinking outside the box, having to do something that perhaps
had never been done before. In the story
Jesus says to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Assume for a moment that you were paralysed
and someone told you to just ‘get up’.
You would hesitate at least wouldn’t you? The passage specifically uses
the word ‘immediately’. ‘He stood up in
front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God.’
A willingness right there in that moment to follow the instruction given by Jesus, with no hesitation, resulting in a miracle which changed his life and I would imagine the lives of the people round him too.
The man with the withered hand in Matthew 12 was told by
Jesus to “Stretch out your hand.” One of
the more simpler instructions and acts of faith perhaps, but still a
demonstration of someone willing to obey Jesus and allow something amazing to
happen in their life.
We all know the story of the Feeding of the 5,000 from
Matthew 14. The disciples, no questions
asked, brought the five loaves and fishes to Jesus and then, after He had
blessed them, they just started handing the food out. They could have objected, they could have
questioned, they could have refused, but they didn’t.
They may not have been able to see what was going to happen, what miracle was going to be performed, but they obeyed, they responded to Jesus and a miracle happened!
Later on in the same chapter, the walking on the water. “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me
to come to you on the water.” Jesus said
“come” and Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water!
I could go on, we have only just scratched the surface really, but one of the messages that I believe God is teaching us throughout these events in the Bible is that we must be willing to allow miracles to happen in our lives.
We must be willing to ask for miracles to happen and then we must be willing to act, in whatever way God instructs us to.
We cannot sit back and wait for
miracles to happen, we cannot sit back and expect them to happen. Jesus can and will perform miracles, He will
do amazing things in your life and with your life but we need to have that
obedience and willingness which is demonstrated all throughout the Bible to
allow these things to happen.
To go back to the earlier quote from Steven Furtick, are you
content with simply surviving the world, sitting back, waiting and hoping that
things might happen. Or are you willing
to step out in faith, are you willing to ask for amazing things to happen in your
life and with your life and are you willing, through the power of Jesus, to
take whatever steps necessary to allow amazing things to happen to you and
around you.
The potential of what Jesus can do with you is huge, uncomprehend-able perhaps, but we must be willing to take that step, in obedience, and walk closer to Jesus, doing and saying the things that He is asking us to do.
