How to Perform Miracles
Sermon by Bob Benchoff 10/11/01
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Many Christians believe Christ's teaching that if you receive a righteous man in the name of a righteous man, you receive a righteous man's reward.
The kingdom of heaven dwells within the believer of Christ. Likewise the power of the Holy Spirit mingles with human spirit for good.
The Holy Spirit is with the living God almighty. This is the God of good and the God of action; not just idle words.
Many people believe there are divine healers, they just don't think they are one themselves. They think their body can heal a small wound, but they don't think they can heal someone else's large affliction instantly, miraculously.
So are such people accepting healing power in the name of healing power? Yes.
According to their ability as they understand it, they can heal to that self-imposed limit.
Let's not only overcome that obstacle, let's define and quantify it's features to help remind us that: yes we or I [I = God + you] did perform a healing miracle, and yes I did accomplish that goal enabling me to build on that accomplishment for the greater glory of God through Jesus Christ.
First, let me give you a crutch for you to use briefly and then after experiencing how it works, you can discard the crutch.
Why give you a crutch? Imagine you are in a dark cathedral. At the opposite wall is a tiny light. You slowly approach the light, but cannot tell how much farther away it is since you have no other points of reference.
This reference crutch or goal is for the purpose of reinforcing your belief in miracles in this world full of miracles. If you tell a small child that when you turn a key the big heavy car goes, that child accepts that miracle, regardless of any imperfect explanation of electricity, gasoline, combustion, and other that you might offer. Your explanations are simply more miracles.
Performing a miracle requires faith. Just as the child had faith the car would go.
Performing a miracle also requires firm, constant, unquestioning, reliance on Christ.
Without getting into semantics, if you hold a spoon, you know it is a spoon. You know it was a spoon yesterday, and you know it will be a spoon tomorrow.
This is not just to the best of your knowledge. Actually you had nothing to do with it. It will be a spoon tomorrow regardless of you.
Do you believe Christ is there (in you) for you?
Christ created you, so you could be a healer, and much more. These gifts are freely provided because Christ is good. Regardless of whether you accept miracle healings, miracle healings exist. You just have to use them.
It is important to understand that if a car doesn't go when you turn the key, be thankful and praise God. Perhaps it's because you need to rely on other people more, or you need to know more about cars, or because the mechanic's child needs new shoes.
If some problem is beyond your control (if that's possible), rest assured it is in God's hands.
Do all that you can with what God has given you to fix the problem, before forgiving it into God's hands.
Let's say there is a colony of creatures. We don't want to harm them, but God has placed humans over other creatures, so if those lower non-human creatures offend humans, they can be cut-off, if needful.
Let's say the colony infested the back of your hand, causing an inflamation.
You tried scrubbing the bump with fingernails and water to no avail.
So you try again, only this time (as should have been the case all along), you pray for a miracle of healing while scrubbing.
Do not think that God didn't hear or wasn't able to understand. Our God is a God of action and already did the good thing before you asked, and even while you aksed.
Now you look to see if the bump is gone. Wrong. You've just proven you lost your faith (in part). You made a decision to act contrary to the Holy Spirit.
If you have faith in God, you don't need to make folly of God's good work. You can ask God questions, but don't question God's authority. That's impolite to say the least.
But you should rather preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ's name, among all nations, starting from Jerusalem for it is the city of the great King.
To look at your good and wholesome hand is OK, but to look to see if God did his job defiles oneself.
Don't make things worse. Lay on hands and pray, sharing your good gifts with others.
Set aside those crutches and know that you accomplished those good works. Set a good example by building on those good works for the greater glory of God.
You did not need the crutch of this sermon in order to continue toward the light that is God. But I hope this sermon did cause you some comfort and improve your success if you have not already reached this goal and passed this threshold.
If you have already accomplished greater gifts, thank you for glorifying God.
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Click here for a related sermon on progressive improvements, becoming new creatures.