April 11
Just a Coincidence
Ac 16:30 And brought them out, and said,
Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
When
they found her she was dead. She had died next to the dry bed of a little
stream where she often came to get a drink. It had been a long hot dry summer,
and now Bessie their milk cow was dead. Farmers were in danger of losing their crops
unless there was some rain, and soon. The little farming community was
suffering with no relief in sight.
Finally they decided to join together at their
country church and have an old fashioned prayer meeting. They would pray for
rain. But unfortunately they were like many people today and only one saintly
old woman had brought an umbrella.
Today in our fast paced high tech culture we
seldom depend on God for a miracle. So we often miss the miracles that God sends our way. But that was not the case in
the 16th chapter of Acts. Paul and Silas had driven a demon out of a
girl. The owners of the girl hauled Paul and Silas to the magistrates and
complained about their teaching.
Ac 16:19 And when her masters saw that the hope of
their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas,
and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers,
The authorities beat them and threw them in jail.
Ac 16:23 And when they had laid many stripes
upon them, they cast them
into prison,
charging the jailor to keep them safely:
So the jailor put them into the innermost part
of the prison and for good measure locked their feet in stocks.
We are familiar with this story. They were
singing at midnight, loud enough for the other prisoners to hear them, an
earthquake shook all the doors to the cells open and loosened everyone’s
restraints. The earthquake woke the jailor who saw the doors were opened and
would have killed himself but Paul hollered “don’t hurt yourself, we are all
here.” And when the jailor came in and saw they were still there he then asked "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
Afterwards the jailor cleaned their wounds and
took them to his house for a meal. He had witnessed a miracle and recognized it
was from God.
I once heard an evangelist tell the story of
three generations. Gramma and Grampa were God fearing, Bible reading dedicated
Christians. They had experienced several miracles in their lives and God was a
very real part of their lives.
They took their children to church and taught
them Bible stories and impressed on them the need to be faithful Christians.
They told their children all about the miracles God had used to supply their
needs.
When the children were grown and married they
attended church like they had been raised. But they didn’t see any miracles in
their lives. They were what you might call lukewarm Christians. They attended church and did religious things like they had been taught, but it was all for appearance sake.
When they had kids they struggled to make their
kids go to church. the kids heard the stories about the miracles God had performed
for their grandparents. But they didn’t see any miracles in their home when
they were growing up. As the became young adults they still did not see any
miracles. What they saw was their parents going through the motions of
Christianity and decided it was all phony religious stuff and they weren’t
interested in pretending to be religious. They became rebellious toward church related
rules and practices. They had seen no miracles and had grown up in a house
without miracles.
The purpose of that story is to emphasize the
need for every generation to have their own miracles. When the jailor
experienced a miracle it changed his whole life and the life of his family.
But what about today? Does God still perform
miracles? I can tell you from personal experience that God is still in the
miracle business. There have been at least 3 very specific events in my life
which were the results of God opening doors that were closed to me. No, it was
not a coincidence or good luck that something happened. In one instance I had
tried every way I knew for years to do something. When I told God I had given
up, within a couple months the doors were opened and what I had wanted fell on
me with little effort on my part.
Another time when my wife and I were in college
and money was tight, God arranged events so the college had to violate their
own rules and give us both a scholarship. We knew the college rules and had not
even considered what God provided for us. There are others, many others, but
those were “big” miracles for us.
The meditation for today is to pause and think
of the miracles God has given you. No, not just coincidences that happened but
miracles that cannot be explained any other way than to realize they were from
your heavenly Father. If you cannot think of a single time when God did
something for you it is either because you weren’t paying attention, and missed
what He had done for you, or perhaps you never had any miracles in your life.
Either way you have some spiritual needs you might want to work on.
May we all be attentive to what God is doing in
our lives, recognize it is from Him, and respond according to His perfect will,
as instructed in Romans 12:1-2.
Just imagine how powerful our witness and our
churches would be if we all recognized the God given miracles in our lives. May
it be so with both you and me.
Heb 11:6 But
without faith it is impossible
to please him:for he that cometh
to God
must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
