Miracle walkers

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with miracles. The truth is, they happen every day. I believe that God wants us to open our eyes to them — because he’s throwing them down on our heads like raindrops in a hurricane, and we just totally miss them.

Part of the reason we miss them is because we never believed for them in the first place. The past few months have been crazy busy for me (as evidenced by the lack of writing here — sorry). But it’s also been a time of deep swirling movement in my heart — like God sent a little mini KitchenAid mixer into my insides to stir up a dust storm of extra faith in there.

I call it a dust storm because it’s not necessarily clean, and it sure ain’t pretty. But it’s starting to manifest miracles, and I can trace it back to a day I decided to trust in faith and made a major change — back around the time Superstorm Sandy was rolling into town.

But before I tell you that story, I have to tell you — it’s not just me walking knee deep in miracles. They’re all around me. One friend who is out of work makes a heart decision to trust God, and BAM! All of a sudden, there’s an interview.

Another friend — a creative sort — makes the decision to actively pursue his creative discipline. After months of obediently honoring his God-given gift, he suddenly gets a random text message — someone offering to pay the very large amount of money it would take to produce his artistic vision.

A couple I know and care about who has been working diligently for the Kingdom, helping folks in recovery, came under huge attack. Seriously — it can only be described as demonic (and totally ridiculous). Everything they’d built over the years with their foundation was threatened, and they were on the verge of losing all three transitional homes they’d started, which would leave the people living in them homeless. They did lose one home, but they operated with prayer and faith, and behaved in a Godly manner at all times (which, they admit, was not always easy). Not only did the state do an about-face on their intent to close them down, but they received a call out of nowhere that a man had bought a house — and wanted to donate it to them.

I mean, come ON!

I’m reading a book called Switch On Your Brain, which talks about how thoughts are really actual physical things — when you think a thought, an actual protein is created in your brain which goes on to create pathways and more grey matter, blah blah blah. The point is your thoughts have a physical component — something that wasn’t there before you thought it is suddenly there when you do.

In the beginning was the Word…

Hhhmmmmm. So this morning I was reading Matthew’s Gospel, and there is a series of stories about miracles that happen in chapter 9. There were a few things that I noticed.

First, the Bible is ridiculously understated, and sometimes this takes away from the humanity of it all, the blood and snot and tears of it all. It takes the awe out of the awesome, if you will. Take, for example, Matthew 9:18-19. A local official comes to Jesus and displays incredible faith — a certain expectation that Jesus can, oh, raise his dead daughter to life. He gets all of a sentence or two:

A local official appeared, bowed politely, and said, “My daughter has just now died. If you come and touch her, she will live.”

The way this is written, you’d think he was asking Jesus to remove a poppy seed from his daughter’s teeth, not raise her from the dead.

I have a feeling this episode wasn’t quite as reserved as this. I have a feeling that this man’s faith was born of a passionate grief, and my guess is that he was red and puffy with tears, his nose was running with snot, and while he may have been reserved in his bow, I think it was more about throwing himself at the feet of Jesus. I mean, those are some pretty high expectations, don’t you think? High expectations birthed from a sense of desperation, an I don’t give a crap what anybody thinks, I’m going balls to the wall on this one, kind of faith. I don’t want much, I just want you to do this little favor of resurrecting my little girl.

Because parents in Biblical times loved their kids with just as much love as we have for ours. We tend to forget that in these stories we know so well. We forget that these were real people, and real people are hot messes, and hot messes require miracles, and sometimes the first miracle has to happen in the heart proteins. Sometimes the first miracle has to happen in the place inside us where we decide, Yeah, balls to the wall my Jesus can do this.

(Note to the easily offended, please go look up the real meaning of “balls to the wall” before you go all ballistic. Ha! See what I did there?)

I noticed something else: Miracles don’t discriminate. The thing I totally love about Jesus, the thing that just gets me every time, is Jesus had an attitude. Yeah, I said it. He didn’t cowtow to any of the religious hoo-ha of the day. He had no tolerance for it. It makes me picture him all tattooed up, maybe with a Harley. He made miracles for the people who grabbed his heart. He said it specifically:

Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables  (Matthew 10:8).

Touch the untouchables.

Sigh. Don’t you just freaking love him?

Understand this — to touch the untouchables would have been to break the law of the religious. But he didn’t bring the miracles to the religious, the ones the author of Hebrews would later call “privileged insiders”. No. He gave ’em to regular old Joe Schmoes like you and like me.

But the big thing I noticed? Every miracle was preceded by an act of faith.

We believe, God moves. We think positive, God makes miracle proteins. We reach out a finger of faith, God turns to look at us; we come get him because we believe he can do amazing things, and God gets up. He comes with us. Whether we believe in the God who created us to create proteins or not, those proteins happen. It’s simply universal law. But now imagine what the God of the universe can do with your little batch of protein, and get excited.

Let’s go see our reserved official again. He threw himself at the feet of Jesus, and what was Jesus’ response? He got up. He went with him. Jesus is willing. Always, always willing. On the way to the man’s house, a woman reached out the hand of faith to touch him. She thought, if I can just put a finger on his robe, I’ll get well.” Her faith didn’t require a big to-do, some praying in tongues and fire and lightening. All it required, as far as she was concernced, was to reach out a little finger and barely touch his robe, and that would be enough for a miracle.

And she was right.

Jesus went on to the man’s home, raised his girl from the dead, then headed back to his place. On the way, two blind men started following him, crying out for mercy (Matthew 927-31). But when he got home, they didn’t hang out on the sidewalk, maybe with signs saying, “Hey Jesus, please make us see.” Nope. They followed him into his house.

They were relentless in their pursuit of their miracle.

And when he turned to them and said, Do you really believe I can do this?, they said, YES! And Jesus said, Become what you believe.

Become what you believe.

That’s some powerful stuff right there. Right there is maybe the secret to the universe. Turns out, The Secret isn’t so secret after all, and doesn’t require any snazzy marketing. It’s been there in the scriptures all along, and Jesus said it first.

So let’s come back around to Superstorm Sandy. I was a Sales Director with Mary Kay at the time, and let’s get one thing clear: I loved being a Director, and I loved Mary Kay. But after the storm, I couldn’t bring myself to make booking calls. Something was changing in me, God was frisking my spirit and was finding all sorts of gunk — he was emptying my soul-pockets.

And he was speaking. Boy was he speaking. Without going into too much detail, his message culminated in Romans 15:14-16 (MSG) which I took as a fairly clear directive that I was to be entering into some sort of Kingdom work. What, I had no idea.

Fast forward two years, a lot of work, and boatloads of uncertaintly later, and here I find myself in a completely different situation. I’m a life and business coach, my non-profit is a thing now, and I’m writing this blog, bouncing ideas around for a book. And I’m a miracle walker. Seriously. I knee-deep in the things, like manna from heaven. It’s gotten to the point where even the miracles are bigger than my resources can handle, and I’ll need another miracle to manage the miracle.

And I look around, and see it everywhere. God got up. My friend needed an interview — God got up. My friend needed an artistic patron — God got up. My friend needed protection and a house — God got up. When we say, Jesus, I trust you. Jesus, YES. Jesus, if you come, my daughter will live…The bills will get paid…The miracle will happen…the blind will see…

When we allow the  miracle to first happen in our heart, the heart miracle, the tiny-little-protein miracles, that’s when the big miracles happen. We become what we believe.

And God gets up.