You Were Made for a Miracle

When Jesus called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

(Luke 9:1-2)

Can you remember when the call to follow Jesus became personal? A personal God calling comes in many different ways and at different life stages. For many, the calling is progressive, over a period of time or through a series of events. For the young teenager Mary, God's calling came through the messenger Gabriel (Luke 1:26-38). Maybe you are one of those who first began to personalize the call of Jesus through contagious messengers of God in your teen years. Jesus' call in my own life occurred sometime between age seventeen and eighteen.

God's calling came to Joseph in a dream (Matthew 1:18-24). Our dreams are sometimes referred to as the "thin space" between the spiritual and physical. Haven't you ever had an important idea or answer to a question you've been pondering for a while that comes to you in the middle of the night? The nocturnal revelation is so important that you get out of bed and write it down so you won't forget the inspired thought by morning.

Saul, who would later become the apostle Paul, found his calling in the disruptive form of a blinding light. A disruptive crisis event will often awaken the longing for spiritual guidance and intervention. Because of crisis, church basements and fellowship halls become spaces for Twelve-Step groups and divorce recovery groups, as well as for financial planning groups that help people overcome the overwhelming burden of debt. Many of these folk would never have darkened the doors of a church building without experiencing a crisis and the overwhelming need for a power greater than themselves.

People in crisis not only feel a need for a greater power; they seek it in the company of others. Note that in our scripture, Jesus called the original Twelve "together." As we journey together in supportive community, we find in Jesus the power and authority to drive out our personal demons and to heal our diseases.

Life-Altering Questions

When the call of Jesus becomes personal, God is no longer just a nominal religious tradition or philosophical idea. This life-defining moment marks the GPS course for the rest of your life. By no means do you have all the answers, but you do begin to ask life-altering questions. Saul asked, "Who are you, Lord?" when he was blinded on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:5). Saul wasn't the first to have asked this question or the first person who was uncertain about Jesus' identity. In Luke 9:7-9, after hearing news about Jesus' ministry, Herod is described as "perplexed because some were saying that John had been raised from the dead, others that Elijah had appeared, and still others that one of the prophets of long ago had come back to life." Herod then said, in essence, "I beheaded John the Baptist myself. This can't be him. Who is this guy?"

My own conversion happened through a perfect storm — failing grades in high school, members of the band I was playing in arrested for illegal drug possession, and the looming possibility of being drafted for the Vietnam War. For the first time, I began to read the Bible that I had been given in third grade. And I am convinced that it was by divine guidance that I started with the four Gospels. Jesus seemed to jump right off of the pages. He was not the meek and mild, white and tamed, watered-down messiah that has been portrayed by many traditionalists in the Western church. Jesus was neither a conservative literalist who believed in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, nor a liberal progressive who denied the reality of the miraculous through supernatural intervention. I asked, along with Saul, "Who are you, Lord?"

Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea from AD 26 to 36, was confronted with a life-altering point of decision when Jesus was brought to him by the Jewish authorities: "What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" (Matthew 27:22).

These questions, asked by Paul, Herod, and Pilate, are the most important questions we can ask in our lifetime. Don't make Pilate's mistake of trying to remain neutral about Jesus or make Jesus a problem for others to solve. Pilate listened to the voices of the crowd who called for Jesus' crucifixion rather than to the heart voice of his own conscience.

Jesus himself, in Luke 9:20, asked those following him this all-important question: "Who do you say I am?" Only Peter was quick to respond, "God's Messiah." Oftentimes people aren't prepared to respond quite so promptly as Peter did. That's to be expected. For many of us, conversion into a new life in Christ is an over-time process, not an instantaneous or spontaneous reaction.

How have you answered these questions? Or maybe a better way to ask is how are you still answering the question of Jesus' call to follow? The answers can only be discovered in the act of following and not before. Don't wait for definitive answers to these ultimate questions. Commit to being all in, follow Jesus fully, and begin to discover the answers in life's miraculous outcomes!

The Miracle of Transformation

Have you noticed that it was the nonreligious, ordinary, socially unacceptable, and religiously incorrect types whom Jesus chose to lead his movement? His twelve disciples alone are proof enough. Peter was an impulsive laborer in the fishing industry; Simon was a zealot, a first-century version of today's alt-right movement; and Matthew collected taxes for the hated Roman occupiers. I never lose the awe and wonder that Jesus chose someone like me, who finished his junior year in high school with four Fs and a D-, to be a pastor. Or, that Jesus called someone to write books who had never read one! (Well, that may be a slight exaggeration.) Jesus was always calling ordinary women and men who would become, through the Spirit's work of transformation, extraordinary!

At this moment, you may feel no sense of the extraordinary in your life, much less the miraculous. You might be stuck in a job you hate or even be unemployed. Perhaps you are dealing with the pain of loss through divorce, sickness, or the death of a loved one. Take heart! Jesus' last journey to Jerusalem reminds us that true transformation and new life come through pain and even death: "Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24). The truly miraculous is experienced as we dare to journey with Jesus in the sacrificial way of the cross. "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it" (Luke 9:23-24). In this process of transformation, we die to self-interest and self-reliance and discover our true identity and life purpose in Christ.

Jesus gave his followers new names to represent...