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The Path To A Miracle

    

     As you begin to read this, you need to know that this is not an a+b=c plan.  While sometimes I wish that God would move that way, I feel like it would take away the mystery and turn God into our vending machine.  That is not what we should want, nor is it what He wants.  God is in this for a long term relationship.  The question my friend is, "What are you in for?"

     If you are in for relationship, understand that it is God who reached out first to you.  We call this reaching out 'prevenient grace'.  He does this because we can not grasp Him without it because we are totally depraved, unable to connect with God.

     So God reaches out, and as He does He supplies all that is needed for us to reach back.  We call that moment conversion.  It is when we come to the conclusion, "I am a sinner and I need a savior.  Jesus is the savior that I need."   This is the beginning of relationship, but certainly not the last time that God reaches out for you and I.
 You will find God reaching out in your day to day.  You will find Him reaching out when things re simple and easy, yet will find Him stretching further when things are difficult.  God is doing all that He can.  The question my friend is, "what are you doing?"

     In Acts 3 we see the story of Peter and John going to pray.  They are going in part to reach back to a God who already had reached out to them.  I am reminded what my former pastor Gary Beck once said, "Prayer is my act of declaring dependency upon God."  That is simply what these men were doing.  They were engaged in the daily relationship of give and take with God.

     While on the way they saw a need present itself in a way that they had never grasped before.  While I am sure that they had seen this man before, they had never felt the leading the make a difference in His life.   That moment of uncertainty when God asked them to do something extraordinary could have been met with skepticism, but it wasn't.  When God reached out - Peter and John reached back - and the miracle began.

Yet the miracle could have thwarted by the will of the lame man.  He would have also received the moment with skepticism, trusting in his knowledge that his legs had never worked, or distrusting these 'miracle men' as hucksters wanting something in return.  He didn't, when Peter reached out the man reached back, and God gave him the miracle he longed for.

    Not the end of the plan though.  It was interesting to see the response of the man involved.  When he was healed he didn't stand say thank you and quietly walk away.  The Bible records him as "walking and leaping and praising God".   It makes me think of all the things that God does even on a daily basis.  Am I thankful enough to declare in front of others?  Will I reach back to God for the things He has done for me?

   I titled this devotional a pathway to a miracle.  While I am not certain this is 100% foolproof, I am certain it seems to be a pattern which is effective in Scripture.   It looks as if we reach back to a God who has reached out to us, without fear...without skepticism, that God will meet us at our most intimate need.  It may not come as we think it should, when we think it should, but the miracle will come as we stay in relationship, reaching back to a God who reaches out to us and then praising Him for the victories we receive.


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