miracles
M - iracles come from God only
I – ntended to bring Him glory
R - estoring the faith in God’s people
A - nointing all through each disciple
C - ausing various healings to take place
L - oosing captives from bondages
E - nding curses no matter the phase
S - aving souls of different ages
C -…
the dead man
Thomas Lynch is an acclaimed poet and nonfiction writer who has won the American Book Award. He’s also an undertaker. In The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, Lynch shares stories from his decades of helping families say goodbye to their loved ones. The opening line of the book definitely catches your attention: “Every year I bury a couple hundred…
there you are!
"There are two kinds of people,” said advice columnist Abigail Van Buren. “Those who walk into a room and say, ‘There you are!’ and those who say, ‘Here I am!’” The one Person who could have rightly declared, “Here I am,” seemed oddly reluctant to promote Himself. Jesus was much more interested in others. At His first miracle, He admonished…
be His miracle
Hi guys, sharing this picture today because I went for a talk and was really moved.
I went for a talk during Overseas Christian Fellowship(OCF) today. :) The topic, presented by a man named Ron, was miracles. He mentioned that when God works a miracle, it doesn’t necessarily mean that something great has to happen in a snap. For instance,…
big toe lack of belief
A co-worker was having a conversation with her son about spiritual things. Striving to express his present lack of both belief and commitment to Jesus, the young man said, “God isn’t in my life right now; He’s just in my big toe.”
Have you ever felt that way? Has doubt or lack of commitment left you with a serious dearth…
imperfect prayer studies
A 1988 study by Dr. Randolph Byrd found coronary care patients were 11 percent more likely to recover when they had received the prayers of others. A 2006 study led by Dr. Herbert Benson suggested there was no improvement for patients at all. A more recent study (September 2010) by Candy Gunther Brown at Indiana University reported significantly positive results…
what do you see?
You can look at a window and see its glass and frame or you can look through a window and see the mountain vista it’s there to reveal. Today’s passage is a little like that. A superficial reading will miss the beauty of all that we’re meant to understand.
On first glance we see just another healing story about Jesus—albeit…
divine-human partnership
A farmer’s crop is a provision from God (Deuteronomy 16:15), yet the farmer is required to harvest it. Each child born is a gift from God (Psalm 127:3), yet no pregnancy takes place without a man and woman’s union. Israel’s wars were won by God (Deuteronomy 20:4; Joshua 10:42), but Israel was still called to fight. In work, procreation, and…
get the party started
Pastor Robert Brearley says, “Weddings are accidents waiting to happen.” I tend to agree. At one wedding where I officiated, some of the decorations in the sanctuary (which had just finished being renovated the night before—making this the first public event) caught fire, ultimately sending one of the wedding cakes up in flames. More than a few times, we’ve seen…
Christ comes incognito
The board game Articulate challenges players to help their teammates guess the object, action, or location they’re describing without saying it outright. You can’t give the first letter of the word or say what it rhymes with, and on “all play” rounds you have to work fast as your description may help another team win.
The way to win Articulate is to…
small and large
How big is the kingdom of God? Jesus said it begins small, like a mustard seed or a pinch of yeast, and it grows until it permeates “every part of the dough” (13:21). It’s large enough for birds to nest in. But it’s not so big that it overlooks details. Just as our immense sun illumines every corner of Earth,…
how soon we forget
The New Testament records the day Jesus fed 4,000- plus people with only seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. That’s some serious sushi! For 3 days, droves of people brought their sick and crippled to the Savior for healing (Matthew 15:29-31). When they ran out of food, Jesus pulled His disciples aside and pointed out the situation.…
enough for me
Author Peter Rollins offers a jolting retelling of Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000. Rollins recounts how the swarming crowds thwarted Jesus’ efforts to find solitude in a boat. As the crowds poured into this remote location, it became obvious that they needed food. The disciples could only scrounge up five loaves of bread and a few fish, Jesus miraculously multiplied…
renewed hope
David Blancarte, a paraplegic, used a wheelchair for 20 years. It’s likely he had lost hope of ever walking again. But that changed recently. Blancarte was bitten by a poisonous brown recluse spider. He was sent to the emergency room where a nurse tested a muscle spasm in his paralyzed legs with an electric current. Five days later the former…
between touches
During the time scholars refer to as His “year of opposition,” Jesus and His disciples traveled through the village of Bethsaida. By then, His reputation as a healer had spread throughout the region of Galilee.
Some of the local villagers approached Jesus and begged Him to heal one of their friends who was blind (Mark 8:22). Jesus graciously led the…
