Miracles

What exactly is a miracle?  If you’re a Bible believing Christian, that’s probably not a question you’ve asked.  If you’re a skeptic, you’ve probably wouldn’t even waste much time pondering that question and dismiss it with a remark about ignorant people.  Yet miracles are part of the universal human experience.  There is no culture on Earth that doesn’t believe in miracles of some kind.

Tim Stafford is a senior writer for Christianity Today and has spent twenty-something years traveling the world and hearing accounts of miracles, which are the topic of his new book aptly titled: Miracles.

He admits that as a reformed Presbyterian, he didn’t have much faith in miracles and mostly leaned toward the position that God had gotten out of using people in His miracle working business after He finished his epic memoirs aka the Bible. (My words not his.)

But when a young man that he knew from his Presbyterian church, who had been bound to a wheelchair, went to a healing service at a more charismatic church and walked away from it pushing his wheelchair in front of him, Mr. Stafford decided to start digging a little deeper.

He found two things: there’s a lot of hyped-up, exaggerated miracles that people just want to believe but probably aren’t even close to true, but there are also real documented miracles happening all over the world.  He gives one example of watching Muslims come to Christ in Mozambique because a deaf man is healed in His name.

What is the thing that separates the real from the hype?  Well, the real are much rarer, usually important to an individual and those who know him/her, they’re life-changing for everyone involved, and most importantly God uses these “signs” as just that--signs that point to Him.

I have to say that I loved this book.

I’ve seen miracles first hand.  When my son was born, my wife went blind from complications because her blood started to clot and hemorrhage and damaged the tissue in her eyes, as well as other organs throughout her body.  It wasn’t certain whether she would live or die, but according to the doctors and the counselors that visited during that time, if she made it, her sight would be impaired for life.

I remember making videos of our son for her with the dim hope that God would heal her someday, and I wanted her to be able to see her son’s face when he was born. I also remember writing about healing during this time in the post Healing and God’s Heart.

People all around the world were praying for her recovery, and our boy was a month and half old when his mom was stable enough to come home from the hospital.  I can’t point to a specific moment when she got her sight back, but the next time we went to the doctor, she had 20/20 vision.

This is one of those examples Stafford would point to as hard to verify.  The medical records show that she was blind and got her sight back, but they chalk it up to the body healing itself.  They can’t explain how it healed itself, but it did.  It happens all the time.  Of course, that’s a skeptic’s response.  I don’t know how it happened, but it wasn’t a miracle because miracles don’t happen.

On the other hand, I’ve heard lots of people in the more charismatic side of things claim healing, but then a week later, they’re suffering again.  Were they healed or not? I’d say, no, and I think Stafford would too.

However, I think his summation is a good one.  If someone tells you they’ve been healed, hope that they have been and praise God.  Rejoice with those who rejoice.  If someone needs healing, pray that they will be, and mourn with those who mourn.  But don’t get so focused on signs and wonders that you forget whom the signs point to. 

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You Were Born For This

Bruce Wilkinson, the author of the bestselling book The Prayer of Jabez, presents a follow up to that book all about miracles. 

When the publisher sent me the book and I first read the description, I braced myself for a super-charismatic-fire-from-heaven how-to book all about how to make God do crazy miraculous things in your life just by knowing the right spiritual buttons to push.  But I was pleasantly surprised, and somewhat relieved, to find that this is not what Wilkinson is encouraging in You Were Born For This.

In fact, the kinds of miracles Wilkinson talks about are rarely those signs-and-wonders spectacles that charismatics and conservatives get all worked up about one way or the other, though there are a few examples of healings.  Rather the book focuses on those amazing God-incidences (coincidences that God orchestrates).  Like when you’re in your hour of desperation because you can’t pay the bills this month, and a stranger shows up out of nowhere and hands you the exact amount you needed.  You’re left praising God and wondering about the mystery of it all.

I have certainly had a few of those experiences. 

What Wilkinson says in the book is that any one of us can be that stranger.  We can deliver a miracle to someone’s life if we’re just willing to be used by God and learn to listen to the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  You could be the one to hand a stranger money, you could be the one to offer encouragement when hope seems lost, you could be the one that introduces them to the love of Jesus Christ, etc.

Honestly, I was looking for things to dislike about this book.  I don’t like step-by-step guides to God and obeying God.  It’s all too self-helpish.  But this book doesn’t have one thing in it about seeking miracles to help yourself.  If you were to follow the directions exactly as he writes them, the worst you could do is be used by God to help someone in need.  I gave it a go while reading the book, and God did some amazing things.

Needless to say, I will be living differently after reading You Were Born For This.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to hear Jesus tell them, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matthew 25:35-36)

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I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.  All opinions are my own.

What if the Landing Gear Doesn't Drop?

God has done some amazing things in my life, and I've learned alot of lessons about relying on Him for everything, not putting value on Earthly possesions, giving everything to Him, being a steward of His stuff, the list goes on and on. The lesson He taught me this weekend extends far beyond anything I could have imagined having to learn, yet it was by far the easiest.

Brandon and I went to Detroit for a Computers and Writing conference this weekend, which went fairly well. We got to sit in a giant conference room in over-stuffed chairs and talk about all the nonsensical rhetorical theory that supports the technical writing we're building our careers and education around. It was a pretty laid back experience, and the down-time we had in our dorm rooms gave me a lot of opportunity to spend in prayer and devotion. I actually received some direct answers to some questions in my life I had been asking and was feeling pretty peaceful about everything in general.

We had ended up booking a roundtrip flight from Chicago to Detroit in order to save some driving time. After the conference, which ended two hours earlier than we expected, we got a ride back to the airport. We gathered our meager belongings and headed toward the terminal expecting to wait four hours for our flight. We were walking into the airport, and Brandon turns to me and says, "you should ask if we can get on an earlier flight." I responded, "I can ask, but it may cost extra." We arrived at the counter and the ticket guy takes one look at our agenda and says, "do you guys want an earlier flight?" We looked at each other, then back at him, and nodded.

Now, usually when strange coincidences like this start to occur, I get really excited because I've come to recognize the handiwork of God when I see it, but this time, I let my guard down and just thought, "Well, that was convenient." We got on the plane immediately and found that the nice ticket agent had given us the emergency exit seats, which for two 6 foot + guys is amazing because of all the extra leg room, and really the only price you have to pay is helping people exit the plane if you crash. Very convenient, yet again.

We took off, and everything went fine, until we reached Chicago. The captain announced that we were beginning our descent, the stewardesses all rushed to their foldout chairs, and a loud crunching noise issued from the floor below us. Brandon and I looked at each other and both said, "that didn't sound good", and the plane that had been dropping rapidly toward the runway, sped up and rose back into the sky.

The pilot made the following announcement: "Sorry, ladies and gentleman, our panel indicates that one of the landing gear doors didn't lock back into place correctly, so we decided to review the emergency regulations for that situation, and it doesn't look like it should be a problem, so we're just going to circle Chicago, and we'll go ahead and land in about ten minutes."

We heard some more grinding below us and wondered why the pilot was retracting a malfunctioning landing gear back into the plane. We circled Chicago and came back around for another landing attempt. This time the crunching was proceeded by a high pitch whine, and Brandon said, "The landing gear didn't go down at all this time." Sure enough, we rose back into the sky, and the pilot announced an affirmation.

I thought the thing that probably crossed everyone's mind at this point, "we're going to crash". I've watched the news enough to know that landing a plane without the landing gears usually results in great big rolling balls of fire.

The woman sitting behind us leaned forward and asked if we understood how to operate the emergency exits.

We assured her we did.

She laughed nervously and pointed to her two-year old grandson who was sitting peacefully next to her daughter-in-law, a miracle in-and-of-itself. "That's my grandson; he'll need you two to be his heroes."

We smiled and nodded encouragingly.

To make a long story short, the pilots managed to lower the gear automatically, and we landed amidst an armada of emergency vehicles and federal agents. We were towed into the gates, and our fellow passengers broke out into audible rejoicing.

The point of the story isn't God's hand in delivering us safely to the ground--I have no doubt he intended that the whole time--the point of the story is that for the first time in my Christian walk I understood what Fanny Crosby was singing about in 1873 when she wrote, "Blessèd assurance, Jesus is mine! / O what a foretaste of glory divine! / Heir of salvation, purchase of God, / Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood" or what John was writing about in 1 John 5:11-14: "And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may KNOW that you have eternal life" (emphasis mine). In my BC days, I had a few brushes with death, and there was always a knawing fear, but this time as my life hung precariously in the balance of a malfunctioning airplane's questionable landing, I had no fear whatsoever. I knew that no matter what, the situation was in God's hands. If this was the moment He choose to call me home, Hallelujah! If He intended me to live and carry on with the work He's called me to, Hallelujah! If He intended me to crash and burn and live a life maimed, broken, and scarred, Hallelujah! I was so content with whatever outcome He had in mind, that I very nearly dozed off during the crisis.

As I look back on the experience, I can't help but thank God that He gave me the opportunity to build my faith in this way and share it. It really isn't about living in His protection, though that's amazing and important; it's about living in assurance that I'm never out of His will as long as I don't choose to be. If my focus is Him, then everything that happens to me will glorify Him, and that's the only position to be in that will make every event, even death or physical harm, peaceful and joyous.

To God be the praise and the glory forever,
Amen