I continue my seeking of faith which moves me into God's orbit of the miraculous.
Why am I so insistent to move into this orbit? Because God by His very nature is miraculous, to us, and from our perspective. His miraculousness from His perspective of course, would be "natural" in our terms.
Jesus' life, death, resurrection, ascension, and incarnation through His believers is another miraculous series of events. Just reading the book of Acts would very strongly suggest that the miraculous had already become "natural" for true and authentic believers of the early church, that it may also seem like a given to them.
Unfortunately, and sadly for us, the given in our "Christian" experience is the natural, from our perspective, and not God's!
So I long to experience the naturalness of God's supernatural!
And from the Scriptural testimony, faith is an absolutely crucial and essential ingredient in the mix required for a miraculous life-style.
How else are we going to "proclaim, or herald" the gospel in any meaningful manner to unbelievers?
In the book of Acts, we come across passages again and again, of how non-believers from various stations of life, were confounded, and astonished at the gospel, which astonishment and confoundment were clearly a result of the signs and wonders which accompanied the gospel proclamation.
So how come in contemporary circles, the miraculous is truly a miracle? When being miraculous was so natural for the early church? Are we so far removed from the essentialities of faith of the early church that we are currently impotent, and content with such impotence?
Control freaks that we are by nature ( fallen at that! ), we seem very contented with not wanting God to have His way in our ways of church. It seems that we DARE not have God move in any other way than accepted, traditionalistist ways. No wonder the disciples cried out, "It's a ghost!", when Jesus appeared walking on water! As if they had been in amnesia all this while from the glorious deliverance via the Red Sea exodus event.
In my quest for faith for the miraculous, I cannot shake the correlations between the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the dynamics of the Word, speaking, confessing, meditating upon the word, guided by His Spirit, and the organ of hearing by the word, of the word, which then causes faith to come.
Joshua 1:8 quickly comes to memory. It appears that God was showing Joshua that in face of the mighty challenges he was going to encounter in taking the COI into their inheritance, the Word, and Obedience to the WORd, through the organ of hearing your voice proclaim, speak, pray, confess, meditate upon the WORD, would be Joshua's only guarantee for success in God's exploits.
Jesus reaffirms such a mind-set and practice in John's gospel, chapters 14 and 15. Only those who "abide in the Word", and have the "Word abiding in them" accomplish the Father's will in achieving "much fruit"!
So what are the "mechanics" of faith?
The scenarios are varied, and situations wide. However, the principles remain remarkably consistent:
1. In a crisis, we CRY and GO to GOD
2. In our struggle with GOD, we HEAR His WORD for us, in the context of our CRY and STRUGGLE.
3. We OBEY His WORD in our specific context.
4. This OBEDIENCE is largely DOING what His WORD says must be DONE - Persistence. Or sometimes, waiting ( Heb 11 latter part ), for the promise to be fulfilled - Perseverance.
Sounds and comes across simple enough. So perhaps the reason why we don't experience the miraculous is due to our lives being so predictably mundane and without any crises requiring God's miraculous intervention?
Seriously now, do we really need God to help us in our lives? We seem to have it all together. Everything seems to be going according to plan, except that people are still dying and going to hell, believers are back-sliding, and it hardly seems to make a difference anymore between a Christian and non-Christian in the marketplace.
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