We’ve been talking about Miracles, Signs, and Wonders. We started this series a couple of weeks ago by saying that miracles, signs, and wonders can be public or private. Sometimes we are looking so intently for a public display of miracles, signs, and wonders that we miss the quiet but supernatural private moves of God in an individual’s life. Show More
The private miracle is that you have been born-again. The Holy Spirit of God lives in you to “help” you live the Christian life. The private sign is that you have been changed and will continue to change by exhibiting the “Fruit of the Holy Spirit. The Fruit of the Holy Spirit is Love, demonstrated by joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These attributes are a sign to the world that you are living for Christ.
Now let’s take a look at “wonders”. The dictionary defines wonder as, “a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable”.
That’s a powerful and true statement. How many of us have settled for what the world has to offer only to find it wanting or disappointing? However, wonder in the greatness of God and you’ll see the world in a different light.
John Piper, Pastor
and Author said, “If you don’t see the greatness of God, then all the things that money can buy become very exciting.
If you can’t see the sun you will be impressed with a street light.
If you’ve never felt thunder and lightning, you’ll be impressed with fireworks.
And if you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God you’ll fall in love with a world of shadows and short-lived pleasures”.
On a personal level, you are a wonder because you decided to believe in a God whom you cannot see. You have made a decision to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). That is what faith is, believing in that which you cannot see with your physical eyes. However, once you put your faith in God, through Jesus Christ, you receive spiritual eyes, ears and mind to comprehend spiritual things (1 Cor 2:9-12). Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen”. Faith operates on hope, which is not the same as wishing. This hope is based on what God has said in His Word, the Bible. That is why it is so important to embrace the Bible as God’s revealed will. The second part of Hebrews 11:1 is “The evidence of things not seen”, and this of course means the spiritual realm. It’s real but you can’t see it in the natural.
So, faith is believing what your spiritual eyes, ears, and mind reveal to you and then doing it. This is essentially what it means to hear from God! God is spirit (John 4:23-24) and He is looking for people to worship and fellowship with Him in spirit and truth.
In other words, faith means to accept as true what the Bible teaches and to live by those truths. It is living by those truths that are the hallmark of a true Christian. You see many people know what the truth is but refuse to live by those truths. They lack faith. Head knowledge is not the same as heart or spiritual knowledge. It is the Spirit of God that makes a person a Christian and it is the Spirit of God that guides a believer and keeps him safe.
Hebrews 11:6, says that it is impossible to please God without faith and that God rewards faith. The kind of faith person that God rewards is the person who believes God is God and will seek Him for direction.
You see, Faith needs some basis of belief. You just can’t have faith for the sake of faith or faith in faith! Someone once said, “that it is impossible to have faith unless the will of God is known”. Once you know God’s will for a situation or circumstance then you know how to act or respond. Your confidence is in God because you know God cannot lie, and what He says… He will do (Hebrews 6:18, Isaiah 55:11).
The basis of all faith in God comes from the scriptures, the Bible. You see the Bible is the compass by which we learn what God is like and what He will bless, and what He will not bless. Now, I know there are many who refuse to read, study, and meditate on the Bible for all kinds of reasons. These are the ones who say they never hear from God. Denying the grace and power of the Bible to reveal God’s purpose for your life is to settle for being a very weak Christian. Like Mark Twain said, “Denial ain’t a river in Egypt”!
What makes you a “wonder” to those all around you is your faith, that you believe God is, and He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. You know that it is not logic or intellectual prowess that God is looking for. He is looking for child-like faith. a child may ask a “parent, why is the sky blue”? When the parent answers, “because God made it that way”, very often the child responds, “Oh, ok”. You see the child trusts the parent, in the same way, you must learn to trust Your Father in Heaven (Matthew 19:14). Your trust or faith in God is what makes you a wonder of God!
Let me close with Romans 1:16-17, “For in it (the Gospel) the righteousness (right decisions before God) of God, from faith to faith; as it, ‘The just (Justified by Christ or found innocent) shall live by faith’”. Those that live by faith are wondrous to God and
