Tag Archive for miracles

The Creator’s Miracles

from the book, ONE WITH OUR FATHER 

John 2:1-11

Creation shows us how
powerful, wise, and loving God is.
But often we see His magnificent works and
dismiss them as the products of
chance or
natural processes, or
we simply take them for granted.

Jesus came to show us what the Creator God is really like,
face-to-face.
That’s why He performed the Creator’s miracles
up-close and personal,
no stage,
no curtains,
no fancy lighting.
Nothing between Him and us.
He let us stand right in front of Him as, on a small scale,
He did what our Creator does every day:
He turned water into wine.
He produced a lot of food from a very little.
He stilled storms.
He healed diseases.

The Son showed us how marvelous and amazing
our Creator Father really is!

Father, You are high and holy,
transcendent and unseen,
great beyond all imagination.
Yet in Jesus Christ we see You as a
real, touchable, walking, smiling, speaking human being.
How amazing You are!
How can we help but love You and want to be like You!

Listen and sing:
Hymn: See the Father Walk among Us
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Miracles?

Some find Jesus’ miracles hard to believe. To them, the Gospel accounts sound like fantasy or myth, or at least superstitious exaggeration.

But look at the incredible natural wonders all around you. Our world overflows with miracles we would never believe if we didn’t see them for ourselves, or if scientists didn’t assure us they were so. Couldn’t the Being who created all this also easily do the miracles of Jesus?

Jesus turned six large jars of water into wine (John 2:1-11). But the Creator does that on the vine every day.

Jesus healed many people sick with various illnesses and conditions. But that’s a small thing to the Creator. He designed each of our bodies to continually heal themselves. Right now your body is healing and restoring itself in thousands of ways without you even being conscious of it.

Jesus calmed a raging storm on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 8:23-27). But picture our globe from the Creator’s point of view, with storms stirring and subsiding constantly around the world. To calm one storm is nothing for Him.

Perhaps the hardest miracle for us to accept is raising the dead. Jesus raised a widow’s only son (Luke 7:11-16), a twelve-year-old girl (Luke 8:41-56), and His friend Lazarus after he had been dead four days (John 11:1-45). Finally Jesus himself was raised from the dead.

All myths?

The Creator brought human life into being from the “dust of the earth”, that is, from the natural elements found on this planet. Now that’s a miracle! Could not such a One also resuscitate life whenever He chooses?

Look at a garden on a bitter day in winter. If we knew nothing of seasons, would we ever believe that same garden just a few weeks later, in the full bloom of spring?

Look at what rain can do to a desert that seems utterly barren. It is transformed to a garden of life – life unimagined just hours before.

Tiny seeds, seemingly dry and hardened, will blossom to life when conditions are right. In Japan, a single seed was excavated from an ancient settlement about two thousand years old. The seed was planted, watered, and brought to life. Further, it apparently proved to be a type of magnolia thought to be extinct for a thousand years.

Look around. Is it logical to believe that the One who created all this could not have done what Jesus did? Is it logical to impose human limitations on a Being who can speak a universe out of nothing?

The more we learn of our world, the more we recognize in Jesus the same power, the same astonishing wisdom, the same tender, intimate love.

That is what amazes me most about Jesus’ miracles – not what He did, but how He did it. He didn’t heal as we might expect a “god” to heal. He didn’t heal from a distance. He wasn’t detached or “professional” or condescending. He was moved with compassion. He gave of himself in deep love. He healed face-to-face, not just with absolute power but with a personal touch and a gentle word.

He loves us. The God of all the universe loves us. That is the miracle.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: One by One
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

See Your Heavenly Father

Jesus said to His disciples: 

“Who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
(Matthew 16:15-16, NASB)

We can learn so much about our Heavenly Father through creation. We look into the night sky and glimpse His immensity. We taste His power in the storm. The days and nights and seasons remind us of His faithfulness.

But knowing about Him is not the same as knowing Him personally. Colossians 1:15 points us in the right direction when it says:

Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

Jesus came and made the eternal, holy Father seeable and touchable. He was part of a family as human as yours and mine. He experienced daily life in a body, just like we do. He faced our temptations, felt our pain, endured our fatigue and hunger, and died as we die.

Yet in this human being we saw our Father, pure and at full strength, live and in person, not some watered-down imitation. We heard His timeless wisdom and saw it lived out. We witnessed the miracles of the Creator, but now up-close and personal. No stage, no curtains, no fancy lighting. Nothing between Him and us. He let us stand right in front of Him as, on a small scale, He did what our Creator does every day:
He turned water into wine.
He produced a lot of food from a very little.
He stilled storms.
He healed diseases.

In Jesus, we were gripped by God’s unconquerable love, reaching out to forgive us even as we tortured and murdered Him.

Our God is awe-inspiring and holy, all-powerful and all-wise, unbound by matter and time, infinitely above us in every way. Yet He is also with us. God has come to us. He is one of us. We can be as comfortable with Him as a child sleeping close to her mother.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: See the Father Walk Among Us
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics