Tag Archives: miracles

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Why Miracles Matter Now and Forever

Podcast: Light on Life Season Eleven Episode Twenty-Two

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Why Miracles Matter Now and Forever

If you’re acquainted at all with the gospels and the works of Jesus, you’ll know that miracles matter. They were prevalent during the three and half years of His ministry. But, what about afterward? Well, in this podcast, we will take a look at what happened post Jesus. That is what happened miracle-wise after Jesus ascended back into heaven both in the early church and in the later as well. Just as in Jesus day some refused to believe despite the work of God so it is today. Voltaire, a product of the period in history known as the Enlightenment, said that if he and one thousand men in Paris saw a miracle before their very eyes he would rather disbelieve his eyes and the eyes of the one thousand than to believe in the miracles.1. You see during the Enlightenment reason rose to the ascendancy. We will talk a little bit about this in this podcast. But just because some refuse to believe that God still does miracles does mean they don’t occur? No, God’s Word is true and eternally remains that way. Miracles matter and they happen even today — in fact, it matters much more today. But no matter what some just won’t believe. A pastor was once talking to an agnostic and was trying to convince him and convert him to Christ. “Speaking of miracles,” the pastor said, “if a man jumped out of a ten-story building and did not die, would that not be a miracle?” “No,” said the agnostic, “it would only be an accident.” “Then what if he jumped out the second time and he didn’t die. Wouldn’t you say that would be a miracle?” “No, that would be a coincidence.” “Then what if the third time? Wouldn’t that be one?” “No, that’s just a habit!” You see to accept miracles is to give God credit. Now what, well you are stuck with the rest of who God is and what He said about you. We’re talking the miraculous today, Why Miracles Matter Now and Forever, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Holy Spirit Encounters with Lost People

 

Miracles matter. We have a big God and because of it, big results should go hand in hand. Click To Tweet
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Why You Should Stand Up for Jesus Even When It’s Controversial

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Forty-Five

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Why You Should Stand Up for Jesus Even When It’s Controversial

Born again children of God must stand up for Jesus. Isn’t that odd to have to say? But in this highly sensitive age, where people get offended over little or nothing, the statement needs to be made. Do we shy away from Jesus when His demands on our lives go against the current of the age? Is it no longer cool to say that sin is sin? An individual writes, “A friend sent me a cartoon showing an old man in a rocking chair. As he rocked, loud squeaks could be heard. After several futile attempts to get rid of the squeaks in the chair, the angry man got his shotgun and shot the chair into splinters. In the final frame of the cartoon, the old man is shown walking away, but the squeaks were still there. They were in his knees. Sometimes the problems that exist in our church may be found within ourselves. Before we destroy everything else, perhaps we need to decide if we are part of the problem.”1 Are we standing up for Jesus or are we the ones with the problem? That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Why Doing the Word of God Is The Ticket to Success

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Why Your Miracle Testimony of God’s Healing Power Is Vital

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Six

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Why Your Miracle Testimony of God's Healing Power Is Vital

Miracle testimonies of God’s power at work in our lives are something we ought to share. If you have a God story, you should not sit down on it unless the Lord instructed you not to tell it. The scripture says that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. At the 1997 Brickyard 400 auto race, NASCAR driver Lake Speed learned firsthand the amazing effect of prayer. His car had been having mechanical problems. Sitting on the track in preparation for a qualifying run, he waited in frustration because his car wouldn’t start. Meanwhile, he prayed. Finally, his crew chief Jeff Buice took out a wrench and hand-cranked the engine Model-A style. The car started, and Lake Speed roared onto the track to post the second-fastest qualifying time of the day. Victor Lee writes in Sports Spectrum: Later, when Speed returned to the pits to get ready for a final practice session, he found his crew tearing out the engine. Shocked, he asked what was going on. “Lake, that engine was blown before you qualified,” Buice said, noting that it had blown during NASCAR pre-race inspection. Lake looked more closely. Oil was everywhere. Buice continued, “I wasn’t going to tell you anything because time had run out. But I was already trying to figure out how I would spend Saturday. Even if it started, I surely didn’t expect it to make a lap and surely not to run good enough to make the race.” Lake’s assessment: “God did a major mechanical miracle. I always pray right before the race. Sitting on that track, when it didn’t start, I prayed, ‘Lord, I don’t know what’s going on here, but if there’s any way, I’d like this thing to start.’ ” Driver Lake Speed went on to finish twelfth in the race, his second-best finish in 1997. You may say this has a perfectly natural explanation, or you may call it a miracle. Still, without question, according to the automobile experts on the scene, this was a remarkable event that followed prayer. Funny but remarkable events and coincidences often follow prayer. Craig Brian Larson, 750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers & Writers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 351–352. I had the same miracle along this line occur, and it resulted in a person giving their heart to Jesus. Why Your Miracle Testimony of God’s Healing Power is Vital, that’s our focus on this week’s Light On Life.

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#S3-018: How God Reacquired Adam’s Stolen Authority [Podcast]

[Tweet “Today I’m healed all because of Jesus. It doesn’t cost to obey God. It pays.”]

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Do People Need Miracles to Believe Jesus Is Real

Encore Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Five

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Do People Nedd Miracles to Believe Jesus Is Real?

Here’s the question that we will look at in today’s Light on Life podcast. Do people need miracles to believe Jesus is real? The fact that people believe that Jesus does miracles is decidedly true. The percentage of adults who mostly agree or completely agree with the statement, “Even today, miracles are performed by the power of God,” sits at 82%, according to a Princeton Religion Research Center’s PRRC Emerging Trends survey.1

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Jesus Heals A Blind Man: Why You Can Have Hope

[Tweet “God is — He just plain is a miracle-working God.”]

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What Is Your Part Versus God’s Part in Getting Miracles from Heaven

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Four

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What Is Your Part Versus God's Part in Getting Miracles from Heaven

Today, we are taking a look at miracles from heaven. With that in mind, consider the following miracle story. ‘In the U.S. Navy, the Seabees have a saying: “The difficult, we do immediately. The impossible takes a little time.” Author Jamie Buckingham shares this story from the missionary adventures of JAARS (Jungle Aviation and Radio Service—the flying arm for Wycliffe Bible Translators). We pick up his story about a pilot who was fighting to keep his plane from a fatal crash:

Never for an instant did Ralph believe they could live through the pending crash … He could feel his wife’s warm hand on the back of his clammy knuckles where he gripped the stick. “We do our best; God does the rest.” It was the motto of JAARS Jungle Aviation and Radio Service. During all the time of the emergency, he had not called upon God. Why had he waited? Why had he not cried out at ten thousand feet? Now, with death only seconds away, he gulped the words. “Father, if You still have work for my passengers and me, please bring on the engine.” It was a sensible prayer. He could have prayed for a giant hand to rise out of the jungle and cushion his fall. He could have asked for ten thousand angels to bear him up on down wings. But like Moses at the Red Sea, he was content for God to work in natural ways—not by sending a strong east wind to blowback the sea—but by bringing the engine back to life. He had a thought – the carburetor heat! It was used primarily to prevent ice from forming in the carburetor. But, there were no known instances of icing at this altitude. The carburetor heat! Again he tried to dismiss the thought, to spit it out of his mind. But it pounded against the inside of his temples. It rang in his head. And his hand was obedient. He reached down and jerked the carburetor heat handle and, at the same time, pulled back on the stick. The jungle had arrived. The only thing to do was flatten his glide just at the treetops, lose as much speed as possible, and settle into the foliage. Certainly forever. Suddenly there was a mighty roar upfront. The big prop, which had been slowly windmilling in the streaming air, roared to life as if they had never quit. The thousand horses were up and running again, straining at the traces and trying to pull the sinking old Duck out of the jaws of death with all of their might. Ralph’s Canadian dignity, shaken to the soles of his soggy socks, finally broke. It came forth like the sound of a shipwrecked sailor thrown at last upon a sandy beach.

From the very inner part of his soul, an utterance of thanksgiving came forth. “Praise the Lord!” he said with deep reverence and, then, repeated it. “Praise the Lord!” Leadership Ministries Worldwide, Practical Illustrations: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians (Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide, 2001), 96–97. Miracles happen all of the time. We have a part to play, and God has a part. Can you identify the parts of this eventful story? That’s what we will do in this week’s podcast – identify and assess the parts. What Is Your Part Versus God’s Part in Getting Miracles from Heaven? That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Powerful Can’t Miss Lessons on the Rod of God

[Tweet “That’s the first lesson in receiving miracles from heaven? Confidence in God is necessary.”].

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How God Did Healing Miracles Through the Early Church Fathers

Podcast: Light on Life Season Eight Episode Thirty-Four

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How God Did Healing Miracles Through the Early Church Fathers

We see healing miracles in the Bible, a book that spans 4000 years of recorded history. From the very first book of the Bible where God healed Abimelech in response to Abraham’s prayer in Genesis 20:17 all the way through to the leaves of healing from the Tree of Life in Revelation 22: 2, we see God’s desire for man to be ‘every bit whole.’ Yet some say it’s all in the past that the age of miracles has ceased. That God waited until the last apostle’s death and then removed His miracle hand from the earth because now we have His Word. Or, at least that’s the theory of it. This ideology has a name. It is called cessationism. Cessationists believe that when the Old Testament canon closed at Malachi, the gifts had ceased for the next 400 years until John the Baptist. Similarly, when the New Testament canon closed, the gifts ceased.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessationism] Well, if God doesn’t do miracles anymore, then that’s bad news. But, I’m here to tell you today that the good news is, the bad news was wrong. How God Did Healing Miracles Through the Early Church Fathers, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Do People Need Miracles to Believe Jesus Is Real

[Tweet “How can people say that healing is no more when we have historical records from the Church Fathers?”]

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Do People Need Miracles to Believe Jesus Is Real

Podcast: Light on Life Season Seven Episode Fifty

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Do People Need Miracles to Believe Jesus Is Real?

Here’s the question that we are going to look at in today’s Light on Life Podcast. Do people need miracles to believe in Jesus? The fact that people really believe that Jesus does miracles is decidedly true. The percentage of adults who mostly agree or completely agree with the statement, “Even today, miracles are performed by the power of God” sits at 82%, according to a Princeton Religion Research Center’s PRRC Emerging Trends survey.1

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Jesus Heals A Blind Man: Why You Can Have Hope

[Tweet “God is — He just plain is a miracle-working God.”]

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Super Powerful Exodus Lessons from Moses Rod

Podcast: Light on Life Season 7 Episode 22

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Super Powerful Exodus Lessons from the Rod of God

There are some super powerful ‘Rod of Moses’ lessons we can learn from watching God deliver Israel in what is commonly known as the Exodus. The Lord used the staff of Moses and Aaron to bring devastating plagues, ten of them, in fact, to a nation that had used and abused His people. This is not the last time that plagues visited the planet.

Between AD 250–262, a pestilence raged all over the Roman Empire, from Egypt to the Hebrides. In some Italian cities, up to four-fifths of the population were wiped out. Men died like flies. Gibbons says that statisticians of the succeeding age estimated that one-half of the human race perished in twelve years! In the 6th century, the bubonic plague spread to Europe as part of a recurring cycle in the entire Roman world for 50 years. The Venerable Bede mentions four distinct waves between 664–683.

Another most terrible plague was the Black Death of 1347–48. It was estimated that one-fourth of Europe’s population died, about 25 million. Even as late as 1918, an influenza epidemic killed in four weeks more than twice as many as the warring armies had destroyed in four years.1

Now, some think that all destructive plagues like the ones we just listed are acts of God. But, not necessarily. There is another possibility. Where the Exodus is concerned, we know for sure that those ten plagues of Egypt were the judgment of God upon that nation. That’s a Bible fact. But, these other disasters were not the work of God, but the work of an enemy opposed to God. The devil, the thief, the murderer, the destroyer, brings destruction against man because of his hatred for him. And then, he turns around and blames God for it. These Exodus happenings though, are of a different sort. And there are some valuable lessons we can learn, and we started to look at some of those lessons in a previous podcast. We looked at the first of these ten plagues and their link to the Rod of God. We’re going to continue to look at the Lord’s movings and manifestation as we continue to look at super powerful Exodus lessons via the rod of God, via Moses Rod — all in this week’s Light on Life.

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Why Doing the Word of God Is The Ticket to Success

[Tweet “Miracles and God’s holy written Word belong together.”]

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Powerful Can’t Miss Lessons on the Rod of God

Podcast: Light on Life Season 7 Episode 20

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Super Powerful Exodus Lessons from the Rod of God

There are some super powerful ‘Rod of God’ lessons we can learn from watching God deliver Israel in what is commonly known as the Exodus. The Lord used the staff of Moses and Aaron, an ordinary stick, to bring devastating plagues, ten of them in fact, to a nation that had used and abused His people. God can and does harness the ordinary to do the extraordinary.

The University of California at Berkley agreed to coordinate an international effort to locate extraterrestrial life. To accomplish this impossible task, Berkley asked home computer users around the world to contact them over the Internet and download a program called SETI@home. The SETI software makes a connection over the Internet to a computer in California and downloads a “work unit”—that is, a set of measurements from a particular part of the sky. The work unit is not large, but it takes the computer a while to crunch the numbers. When the work is done, the computer makes another Internet call to Berkeley, uploads its results, and downloads a new work unit. What today’s largest supercomputer could never do alone, over a million ordinary home computers can easily do.

Sometimes the best way to accomplish the impossible is to harness the help of the ordinary. That is precisely how the church works best. No one can do it alone, but if we each do what we can, the unattainable becomes attainable, and the church can be all that God intended it to be.1 Now, that’s a different kind of illustration — I don’t know about the whole extraterrestrial life piece. One minister asked the Lord about ‘is there life on other planets?’ and the Lord responded ‘Yes there is life on other planets, I am out here.’ The point of this illustration is that God can and does, at times, harness the ordinary to do the extraordinary. Powerful Can’t-Miss Lessons on the Rod of God, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Demonstrating the Glory of God

[Tweet “God got a hold of Moses’ stick. He turned into a lightning rod for the miraculous.”]

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Why You Should Stand Up for Jesus Even When It’s Controversial

Podcast: Light on Life Season 7 Episode 3

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Why You Should Stand Up for Jesus Even When It’s Controversial

Born again children of God must stand up for Jesus. Isn’t that odd to have to say? But in this highly sensitive age, where people get offended over little or nothing, the statement needs to be made. Do we shy away from Jesus when His demands on our lives go against the current of the age? Is it no longer cool to say that sin is sin? An individual writes, “A friend sent me a cartoon showing an old man in a rocking chair. As he rocked, loud squeaks could be heard. After several futile attempts to get rid of the squeaks in the chair, the angry man got his shotgun and shot the chair into splinters. In the final frame of the cartoon, the old man is shown walking away, but the squeaks were still there. They were in his knees. Sometimes the problems that exist in our church may be found within ourselves. Before we destroy everything else, perhaps we need to decide if we are part of the problem.”1 Are we standing up for Jesus or are we the ones with the problem? That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Why Doing the Word of God Is The Ticket to Success

[Tweet “Controversy is needed for change. But, where do you draw the line?”]

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The Value of Humility and Consecration in the Miracles of God

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The Value of Humility and Consecration in the Miracles of God

Becoming a disciple of Jesus means becoming a committed follower. It is a learning position as Matthew 11:29 states. There is so much to learn and know about the Lord. One area where we need to go to school is the miracles of God. Yes, it’s a school, and the Holy Spirit is the teacher. Jesus said, ‘The works that I do, you will also do and greater works than these shall you do because I go unto the Father’ — John 14:12. As an aspiring disciple, it is necessary to learn about the miracles of God.

R.W. Schambach [Video]

[Tweet “You cannot find the miracles of God, and His anointing’s at the local five and dime.”]

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Why This First Jesus Miracle Matters

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 2

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Why This First Miracle of Jesus Matters

Jesus miracles matter, especially His first one. Every Jesus miracle matters. Here is a modern day one. In Kissimmee, Florida, a tornado lifted Jonathan Waldick, only 18 months old, from his bed. It carried him 50 feet. It injected him into a five-foot-high clump of debris that corkscrewed itself into the splintered trunk of an oak tree. And there, after a frantic, 30-minute search, Jonathan was found, only one foot visible but wiggling with life. There he was found, still cocooned in his Perfect Sleeper mattress, still resting on his purple striped sheet. Relatives and friends call Jonathan Waldick “The Miracle Baby.” They call the event “The Miracle at 1400 Fair Oaks.” One woman, Janice Gassert said, “I think God has something planned for this boy. I believe there’s a special plan.”

A few feet away, old phonograph records sat atop the wreckage, left there by the wind. It was a recording by the Raker Evangelistic Party, a gospel group. The first song on the album was called, “Oh Lord, You’ve Been So Good To Me.”1 God does all kinds of miracles, and in today’s Light on Life Podcast, we continue to look at some of them like the very first of Jesus miracles in the Gospel of John. We are going to take a look at the turning or water into wine and why it matters.

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Conscience and the Inward Witness: A Look at the Spirit Led Life

[Tweet “Jesus refused to do something for the sake of the doing. He waited until it was His hour.”]