Hidden miracles

 If I were to ask any of you to recall a miracle which God had performed in the past, I am reasonably sure that many of you would recount the parting of the Red Sea during Israel’s exodus; or the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace described in Daniel; or any of the epic narratives written about in the Old Testament - and these breath-taking events are most certainly evidence of God’s miracle-working power at work!

There are what I call ‘hidden’ miracles also to be found in Scripture, those happenings that we sometimes might overlook when we read the Bible. We find one such event in Daniel:

Dan 1:12 & 15

Prove your servants, I beseech you, for ten days and let us be given a vegetable diet and water to drink.

And at the end of ten days it was seen that they were looking better and had taken on more flesh than all the youths who ate of the king’s rich dainties.

Many translations use the words “fatter in flesh” to describe how Daniel and his friends looked after the ten days. Eating only vegetables, grains and beans and drinking only water to me looks like a prescribed diet that surely should have had the opposite effect on them, letting them lose weight rather than gaining weight as a result. Is this not a miracle worked by God? He knew that they needed to have a good appearance to win the steward of the eunuchs over. This was a reward from Him because they had kept His commands, even when under pressure to give in to the pagan king’s instructions. 

Another event that might be overlooked is found in John 6, probably because of the two famous miracles that preceded it. Jesus had just finished feeding the 5000 people, multiplying the five loaves and two small fish to do so, and had also walked on the stormy, wind-blown sea towards the terrified disciples’ boat:

John 6:21

Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

Jesus translated that boat, supernaturally transported it miles across the sea! The Amplified explains that the disciples had slowly been making their way towards that land, the stormy waves obviously greatly hindering their progress. I am sure that Jesus saw that they were exhausted by this effort and spared them having to row any further!

Points to ponder:

Search for and celebrate the ‘hidden’ miracles in your life – that parking space that appeared when you desperately needed it; that mystery deposit in your bank account which was the exact amount you had to have at that stage; that perfect connection with just the right person at just the right time to further your business…. and give God all the glory!

He still does miracles

Born again

 

1 Peter 1:23

For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.

Nicodemus, a very educated member of the Jewish ruling council in the time of Jesus, asked the question:  But how can I, an old man, return to my mother’s womb and be born again? His problem was that he used his intellect, his natural thinking abilities, to try and reason out spiritual truths. A trap we all too often tend to fall in when we are faced with matters we do not understand – we quickly run to YouTube and search for videos by self-proclaimed ‘experts’ on the subject!

But Paul tells us that spiritual things cannot be understood by someone who does not have the Spirit:

1 Cor 2:14

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

Being born again is one of those concepts that only Spirit-filled believers can understand. It happens when God imparts eternal life to the person who believes in the name of Jesus Christ, who then becomes a child of God, whose sins are forgiven and who then has a living relationship with God through the Spirit Who from then on dwells within them. According to Paul in 2 Cor 5:17, such a person is now a new creation. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God – as described in John 1:12-13. Born ‘from above’ as the Jewish-Greek word anôthen (used for ‘again’) more commonly refers to.

What does all this mean on a Monday morning? Well, firstly we must understand that we ourselves cannot contribute to this process to be born again – it is a work of the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural action, without which we remain spiritually lifeless.

 Here are a few ways to help me discern whether I am truly reborn and have started walking along the road which more and more leads to me giving my whole being over to the working of the Spirit in my life:  Am I impacted by the words I read in the Bible, in other words, do they change my life? Is God Himself, and not just His gifts, now my heart’s desire? Is Jesus progressively revealed in my life in all His splendour and beauty, so that I delight in His goodness and obey Him joyfully? Is spiritual fruit visibly growing in my life – for example, has a love for my brothers and sisters in Christ increased dramatically within my heart?

Points to ponder:

If you have not done so yet, choose and follow Jesus as Christ, the Son of God, and accept His gift of life today.  Has He become the treasure in the field for which you would sell everything?

Born again

The Blood

 

Hebrews 13:20

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant….

We read here that, using the blood of Jesus, the Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead.  The combination of His blood with the Spirit produced the power necessary to resurrect Jesus, changing His mortal body into an immortal one, and infusing His blood with a life that could never die again!

This everlasting life in His blood became ours when we chose Him as the Lord and Master of our lives, guaranteeing our resurrection from death unto life eternal.

Not only powerful everlasting life, but also the Light of God is to be found in the blood of Jesus:

John 1:3-5

….in Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Darkness is the absence of light.  This is the territory of our enemy, the Devil.  But even a very weak little light (like a flickering candle) will dispel the darkness, it does not matter how bright the light is, darkness must flee before it.

This Light in His blood became ours also, the moment we chose Him as our Saviour. 

Knowing about the life and the Light in His blood, however, is not the same as actively engaging with these in our day-to-day living experience.  Jesus gave us a crucial key to unlock the promises He left to us as His inheritance: 

Acts 2:42-43

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.  Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

We must “drink His blood” by using Communion often, as a prophetic act to remind us of the power and life and Light in the Blood that is at our disposal through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Points to Ponder:

Take Communion thoughtfully and meditate on how you are spiritually applying His blood to the lintels of your heart (as in ancient Egypt), meaning you cannot be touched by everlasting death.  Experience how the Blood invades your spirit and soul, filling up your whole body, cell by cell.  Know that the Light within you is transforming you into a fearsome adversary against the Devil!

The Blood

Break with the Old, live in the New

 

Exodus 13:7

Unleavened bread shall be eaten during those seven days. Nothing leavened may be found among you, nor shall leaven be found anywhere within your borders.

Nowadays, when you want to bake bread, a quick trip to the supermarket is all that is needed to buy the packet of concentrated yeast necessary to ferment the dough so that it will rise before baking.

But in ancient Israel, the process was much more involved.  To start the baking cycle, the wheat or barley had to be ground into flour first, and then mixed with water and left exposed to the air for about a week to ferment.

To speed up the fermentation for later baking, a tiny piece of the previous batch would then be kept in a cool place.  This already fermented piece of dough would be mixed into the fresh batch and ferment the whole new batch of dough in just one day. This piece of fermented dough was called leaven, which is what Paul was referring to in 1Corinthians 5:6

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough?

Why would God, when He gave the instructions to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, emphasize it so prominently by repeating the instructions thereof many times, even stipulating that no leaven was to be found throughout the whole land - not just in their houses - and spelling out that the consequence of ignoring these instructions was that you would be cut off from Israel, a very severe punishment?

It was to point out that the prophetic significance of this feast lies in the complete break that had to be made between the religious observances of the Old, and the freedom of the Spirit in the New Covenant. The Old cannot be carried over into the New. Consider the ancient baking process of the Israelites - for a whole year, every new bread that was baked had a piece of the previous baked breads in them, in the form of the piece of leaven that was kept aside each time to be used for fermentation of the new bread dough. But now God wanted them to break completely with the old leaven, not allowing even the tiniest speck of it to survive, and start a new leaven. Break with the Old, live in the New.

The New Covenant has done away with the dead works and self-effort of the Old Covenant. 

The New Covenant cements the fact that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17)

Points to Ponder:

2 Cor 3:6 “He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life.”

Spirit lead me