The mother spoke up, ”God has told me my boy is not going to die. He is going to walk out of this hospital completely healed!”
Three months earlier, her teenage boy went in for a ruptured appendix. Unfortunately, the rupture had taken it’s toll, causing the boy to slip into a coma. For three months the mother watched as her son’s body shriveled up, only kept alive, it seemed, by the tubes and hose of the 1960’s medical machines. Three months into the coma, the doctor approached the mom at her boy’s bedside and said that they were going to wait another 24 hours and then let nature take it’s course by disconnecting him from the machines. This is when her words revealed her faith. But at the mother’s faith in her God, the doctor simply responded with, “Don’t jump at straws, I don’t believe in God.” And walked away.
The mother didn’t jump at straws, she put her faith to work and began contacting all the churches in town. The denomination didn’t matter, what matter was the call to God’s people for prayer. God’s people were asked to pray at noon that Sunday when the life support machines would be turned off. So they did.
At the hospital, three minutes after 12 noon, a nurse screamed in the comatose boy’s room. His eyes were open and he smiled at her. Hospital personal rushed the room, and began asking questions of the boy, who thought it was the day after the surgery, not knowing it had actually been three months.
After the initial shock, it took eight weeks for the boy to leave the hospital. Not in a pine box as the doctor expected, or a even a wheel chair, but on his own two feet. Later on the mother asked the doctor if he believed in God now, to which the doctor replied, “I believe.”
That is the story of a miracle that happened over a half century ago to one of our congregants that is sitting in church today. I asked for his permission to share his story, because it shows that God is at work in healing today. That God’s miraculous work is not done, but continues as he sees fit.
This brings us to where we’re at in our second week of our “No One Talks About It” series. Where in the first week we began with Marty Sampson’s, an ex worship leader and song writer for the Hillsong church, announcement that he was losing his faith. In his statement, he brought up several reasons that he was moving away from Christianity. The first one that we tackled last week was that preachers fall and no one talks about it.
Sampson puts forth that in the Christian community we don’t talk about the many preachers that fall to temptation. But we were able to show this to be untrue; with the bigger the preacher’s name recognition, the larger the scale of the talk. With the talk even reaching national headlines with people like Jimmy Swaggart.
But what we also talked about is how the temptations of pastors and preachers are not any different than what is common for everyone else. We looked at 1st Corinthians 10, where Paul makes this point. So a preacher falling is common, does get talked about, and can happen to each of us if we are not on our guard. Temptation is ready to get any of us, and Scripture would rather us seek to be on guard against it, than to stand in judgement when someone falls to it.
This brings us to Sampson’s second, “No one is talking about it statement”, which is miracles. Sampson says, “How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it.”
First, right out of the gate Sampson admits that miracles do happen, he just believes that there isn’t many, but he concedes that there are some. So we wouldn’t have to prove that miracles do happen. We don’t need to go into a great amount of detail about the documented miracles that happen across the world every day. Just being able to share the story from one of our congregants is enough to reinforce Sampson’s confession of there being at least some miracles.
But because Sampson does believe that miracles happen often, my first question to him would be, wouldn’t any amount of miracles be amazing in and of themselves? If we saw one miracle in our life, wouldn’t that be a wonderful experience and be enough? How many miracles would we need to experience, so that we would believe the God of the Bible is true? In Sampson’s statement here, it’s almost like he’s that mouse who wanted a cookie, and then wanted some milk, and then wanted more and more.
The reality is, brushing aside the miracles that we have for more, shows a sign of greediness on our part. And can show that we’ve created a standard by which evidence is measured by the amount we deem enough.
I was listening to a debate between a Christian apologist named William Lane Craig and an atheist who’s name I cannot remember for the life of me. In the debate, Craig asked a simple question, “What is the evidence that you would need to believe that God exists.” The atheist replied with a joke about what God could do, but after the joke he answered the question simply, “There isn’t.”
In that moment of honesty, the atheist communicated a standard by which we tend to judge God’s actions. And that standard is whatever we decide it is. Does it matter the arguments that are presented? No. Does it matter, the miracles that are done. No. What matters is I get to decide when God has reached my standard, but just like we see in politics, the goal post keeps getting moved.
And this isn’t anything new. If you have your Bibles open with me to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, where we’ll jump down to verse 29. In this passage of Scripture, Jesus is confronted by the religious leaders of his day to provide a miracle. Let’s pick up this interaction in Luke 11, verse 29.
29 As the crowds increased, Jesus said, “This is a wicked generation. It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. 30 For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. 31 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom; and now something greater than Solomon is here. 32 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now something greater than Jonah is here.
Up until this point in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus had performed four exorcisms, four specific bodily healings with mention of several unnamed healings, he fed 5,000 people on five loaves of bread and two fish with left overs, and preformed two resurrections. Yet, though these miracles had been happening, the religious leaders wanted Jesus to preform for them, as if he was a monkey for their amusement.
Jesus responds with telling them they will see the sign of Jonah. This sign is referencing Jonah’s three days in the belly of a great fish and then spit up on the shore, whereas Jesus would be three days in the grave and then resurrected.
These religious leaders had heard of Jesus’ miracles, but wanted him to meet their expectations; what they didn’t realize, is that the greatest miracle of all time was about to happen. But how many of them believed afterward? I don’t know. But what I do know is that later on in the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a story of a rich man and the poor Lazarus.
The story goes, that both the rich man and Lazarus died and went into the afterlife. The rich man went to the place of despair, whereas Lazarus went to the place of joy called Abraham’s bosom. In between the two places was a chasm, where the two groups could talk. The rich man yelled out for Abraham to send word back to the rich man’s brothers, so that they would not end up as he was. Listen to what Jesus says Abraham tells the rich man.
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. (Luke 16:29-31)’”
This was Jesus’ point, it’s not about experiencing miracles, it’s about a desire to follow him. The religious leaders wanted a miracle, and Jesus gave them his resurrection. But they wouldn’t believe, because to those who want to set the standard, no miracle or evidence will be good enough, not even a resurrection from the dead.
So, why don’t we see miracles happen today? We do. We have seen them in our own church, backs being healed, marriages being restored, families reunited, cancer being cured, and more. But because they don’t meet a personal standard of what we want from God, people will dismiss them. But the reality is, God doesn’t work to meet our standard, rather he puts forth the evidence that is needed, and let’s us choose to believe or to deny.
This is why we must not harder our hearts against what God is doing. We must never fall into the trap of setting the bar in which God must reach. Instead we must analyze what he has given us, and be open to where he is leading.
To those that want miracles, none will ever be enough, but to those who want God, he will satisfy and provide more miracles than we can imagine. Because we will begin to see the miracles that happen all around us everyday.
My challenge for you this week is simple: Go to God and ask “Am I trying to make you reach my standards, or am I seeking you for you?”
If we’re seeking God to meet our standards, we’re never going to be satisfied in our relationship with him. But if we seek God and allow him to show us who he is, then we’ll experience him in ways we could never imagine.
Marty Sampson has lost this focus, wanting God to meet his standard of miracles, rather than seeking God for who he is. Let us take this as a warning to not fall into this trap, so that we may be God’s people who experience his miraculous work in our lives. Amen.
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