What If? - February 24, 2019

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Mark 1:40-45 In our story today, the leper, a man with some sort of skin disease, comes to Jesus to be healed. He’s humble and unsure about Jesus and his receptiveness. The man fell on his knees and said, “If it’s your will.” He didn’t know what Jesus would do. “IF it’s your will.” But he followed with “you CAN make me clean.” He didn’t know what Jesus would do, but he believed in what he could do. And Jesus cleansed the man. Simple as that.
We’re good right? Miracles and healings….we’re all on board? No doubts. No questions? Right….You may be alright, but I have to confess, I struggle. I struggle for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I was raised in a church where we didn’t talk about miracles. Ok, maybe they did, but as a child it wasn’t anything noteworthy that stuck in my memory bank.

So, in my mind, we didn’t talk about miracles. Which means miracles weren’t normal in my mind. So when people did talk about miracles…it felt fake, or fluffy, or imagined. Anyone feel my struggle?
I’m the type that would hear a story like this from the scriptures and think it stood alone, and that as a loner, it could be diminished, if not disregarded. But then I look through the scriptures and see it’s not the only story. There are other miracles…lots of them actually, and when you line them all up, they’re hard to ignore. Take a look:

The leper
Centurion's servant
Peter's mother in law
many at Peter's mother in law's house
Stilled the storm
Freed the Gerasene demoniac
Paralytic
Jairus' daughter
Bleeding woman
2 blind men
the man who was mute
Man with a withered hand
Feeding the 5000
Walked on water
All the sick in Gennesaret
The Syrophonecian woman's daughter
The lame, maimed, blind, mute and others in the mountains near Galilee
The boy with a demon
The man born blind
Deaf man
Feeding the 4000
The widow's son at Nain
the woman who was crippled for 18 years
the man with dropsy
10 lepers

That’s a lot of miracles. And they’re hard to ignore when you look at them like that. But it wasn’t a long list of scripture stories that changed my mind.

Something happened, though I’m not sure quite what or when. There isn’t one moment that changed my mind. It was a gradual change. I started to hear stories of people who had been healed…often including science and medicine and doctors, but against all odds…against what was reasonable…and I started to think….that’s a miracle. Some people might thank medicine. Others thank God. I thanked both. God working through medicine and science. And just because God had helpers didn’t mean it wasn’t a miracle. At least for me.
And then there were more things. More moments. More incidents. More inexplicable, irrational, unexplainable things that seemed to happen. More miracles.
And then things got weird…or at least charismatic. My aunt and uncle, who were normal people in my mind, got involved with a healing prayer movement. They went to trainings and traveled the world praying with the sick and seeing God do miracles of healing. It still felt far fetched, but not impossible. After all I knew they were rational educated people. I couldn’t dismiss them out of hand.
And then my spiritual mentor…the charismatic one…Greg, he started sharing more about his ministry with healing prayer. And more miracles started to seem possible.
So then, back nearly 10 years ago, I invited all of them to come to my church to teach and preach on prayer. We did workshops on healing prayer and prayed in worship…specifically for people’s hurts and illnesses….open to the possibilities of miracles, and we saw God do powerful things…from the relief of deep immobilizing grief and depression, to stopping someone’s ever watering eyes, to allowing a man who was told he would be blind in 6 months to maintain some sight for more than 6 years. Some gradual miracles and some instant. A multitude of hurts and petitions and a myriad of ways God responded.
And I came to believe more whole heartedly for myself. Now that doesn’t negate my doubts. And it doesn’t resolve the prayers that seemingly go unanswered, or the miracles we really want that never manifest. I don’t have an answer for all of those. But my frustration at God’s lack of answers can no longer dispel my faith in the possibility of what God could do. I don’t know what God will do, but I have a deep belief in what God can do. So I keep praying.
Despite all of that, or maybe because of it, the most powerful words related to miracles haven’t come from the pulpit or the preacher, they come from the testimonies of others…real life people who see God at work in real miraculous ways. So today, instead of just listening to me, I invite you to listen to the miracle stories of two real life people who saw God work in real life tangible miraculous ways.

Dianne’s testimony. (video)

Mark’s testimony. (video)

I don’t know what God will do—for any of us, or for any of those we pray for. But I do believe in what God can do. And the unanswered prayers are certainly the hardest to make sense of, the ones that complicate our faith and often our ability to trust God’s goodness and care. And yet, I have seen God do great things—inexplicable things…unimaginable things…and so I keep praying. And I pray that you will too.