Getting To Know Jesus, #6 - Miracles Series

Getting to Know Jesus Series, #6 – Miracles March 7, 2010

John 2:1-11 (New International Version)

1On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, 2and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."

4"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come."

5His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

6Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.[a]

7Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim.

8Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet."

They did so, 9and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."

11This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

Miracles; if I ask you today, ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ what would your answer be? You could ask me to clarify; do I mean the miracles in the bible, or miracles that happen today. Do miracles still happen today? What IS a miracle anyway? Then if I asked, ‘have you ever seen a miracle?’ what would you say to that?

My answer would be YES, I believe, YES, miracles still happen and YES, I’ve seen miracles of many kinds. A few examples:

When I was in YWAM in Texas, I was driving from one part of the ranch to another in order to pickup Stephanie from her job duty at the director’s home. It was raining heavily, this was a thunderstorm. On the way there, I witnessed several bolts of lightning strike the ground, straight from the clouds to the ground. On approaching the house, a lightning bolt came down right over that house, but just above the roofline, the bolt split and struck on either side of the house, with no damage to anything. Was that a miracle?

Later that year, as our team was heading to Central America, we got lost in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, with no idea on how to get where we were headed. We stopped on the side of the road, and several leaders were pouring over maps while everyone was praying. Seemingly from nowhere, a pickup truck pulled up beside us, there were several men, dressed in clean white clothes smiling and sitting in the bed of the truck along the rails. We asked if they new where we were and how to get to our destination. They did, and offered to lead us to the road we needed to be on. So in the middle of the night, we followed these guys for several miles until they all stopped and pointed to a turnoff that we should take…then they drove off into the night. Was that a miracle?

In one of the evening services we held in a small adobe building in Belize, we as a team offered to pray for anyone who would like to come forward. One woman limped to the front on crutches. Her kneecap had been torn from its proper place and had dropped down way out of place, and she was in much pain. A young man form our group prayed for God to heal her, and as he placed his hand on her broken kneecap, it moved back into place under his hand, and she walked out of that room perfectly healed. Was that a miracle?

A miracle could be defined as an amazing event… ‘It’ll be a miracle if the church service starts and ends on time today.’ Or perhaps ‘If the Canucks ever win the Stanley Cup, THAT would be a miracle!’

A miracle could also be defined as a marvellous example of skill or craftsmanship. The automobile of today is a miracle of modern engineering, but it’ll take a real miracle to make them last more than 5 years without breaking down…

Miracles have been called times when God intervenes in our world, or in our lives; changing things that would not normally occur. That, I believe is close, but not quite there. You see, I believe that God is not here one moment, and gone the next. I don’t think He pops in and out of planet earth to check on us every now and then between commercials in heaven. I do not think that God shows up in our lives, for our convenience or His, to do something extraordinary, in order that we might believe He exists.