Surprised by Miracles

Introduction

In my previous book, I told the story of how our church and I discovered the Holy Spirit. We were not looking for more of the Holy Spirit but God surprised us and taught us the meaning of what Jesus told His disciples: John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5).

In this book, I share how God taught us more. We were not looking for miracles but God surprised us with them and then nudged us into using miracles in mission work.

Miracles from God are amazing but they are also challenging to people who are not familiar with them. I wondered, Why did miracles not occur earlier in my ministry? Are they not just a big distraction? I was confused for a while and had to study my Bible again. Miraculous signs were featured in the ministry of Jesus and the early Church. But how were they used and what was their outcome? What was their purpose?

In this book, I share our journey of discovery and I encourage you, the reader, to be surprised together with us. The Bible is true. In the past, I might not have known much about miracles but God is still doing them today and wants us to welcome them.

Chapter 1

The Jesus Tent

In 2012, I knew that God wanted us to do more mission work. Our evangelist had called me in January and said that he could not come back from holidays. He was exhausted mentally, physically, and spiritually.

This meant that the programs which he led could not continue because, as a former bikie¹ he knew how to reach out to the people on the streets. I did not and there was no one else who could step into his shoes.

What were we to do? I was busier than ever with my coworker dropping out with exhaustion but, surely, there had to be some new mission initiative in our congregation.

With a Demonstration of the Spirit’s Power

In the past, we had run Alpha courses, a popular resource from London, with great success. Doing so had renewed many of our own members but, looking at the videos again, I was unsure whether this was the program for now. I tried to delegate discernment to someone else and asked one of our members, the father of a young family, to watch the videos and then pray about leading new Alpha courses at Living Grace, our church.

He did what I asked of him but came back with a no. He did not feel led to do the program and I was not surprised. This was not what we were meant to do in 2012. But what was the alternative?

None of the available resources excited me. Finally, I prayed: God, what do You want us to do? What is a mission initiative that fits us and comes out of who we are and what You have been doing with us over the past few years?

For some reason, I was drawn back to the key Scripture passage that had been important to me in the ten years leading up to that moment:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.…My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power (1 Corinthians 2:2,4-5).

A decade earlier, these Bible verses helped me accept a phenomenon that was confusing and surprising at the time. When a visiting pastor prayed for our church members, many of them fell to the floor. Where was this in the Bible? I had questions but relaxed when, rather quickly, God made me stumble across First Corinthians 2 and I took a closer look at verses 1 through 5.

This was a favorite passage for Lutherans like me because it magnified the cross of Jesus. But to my embarrassment, I discovered that I never knew what it said about a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. Preaching was not to happen with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

Without digging deeper into the meaning of these Bible verses, I accepted them as answering my qualms about people falling down under the Spirit’s power in prayer. These kinds of happenings were OK because the Bible upheld power demonstrations of the Spirit.

For years, I combined the passage from First Corinthians 2 with a second passage from the same author, the apostle Paul:

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ (Romans 15:18-19).

Other verses mentioned Paul and summarized demonstrations of the Spirit:

So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders (Acts 14:3).

The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them (Acts 15:12).

The passages from First Corinthians 2 and Romans 15 were constantly before me but only in 2012 did it dawn on me that they could possibly be the answer to my problem of finding a new mission initiative.

In both Bible passages, the apostle Paul summarized his mission work and described his method. I never understood this before but, in the opening verses of First Corinthians 2, Paul looked back at his church-planting work in Corinth. In the verses from Romans 15 he looked back at his entire mission career as recorded in the Bible. He spelled out precisely how he did mission work! Reading all of the verses again, I wondered whether mission work could still happen in the same way:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.…My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power (1 Corinthians 2:2,4-5).

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ (Romans 15:18-19).

I knew no other pastor who would or could summarize his ministry like Paul. As far as I knew, no local Christians proclaimed Jesus by reaching out with signs and wonders, which are demonstrations of the Spirit’s power.² However, I trusted the Bible and Paul’s report and began to wonder: Can we possibly reach the people in our city by preaching a simple message about Jesus and Him crucified, and then expect God to back up the preaching with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power?

It was risky. What if nothing happened? After years of preaching, I felt reasonably confident about the process of public speaking, and sermon notes on the lectern gave me a feeling of safety. But signs and wonders were absolutely beyond my control. I could invite people and announce that God would back up the preaching with miracles; but contrary to every other aspect of the service, I knew that I had no fall-back options in the event He did not come through. If the Spirit was not on the preaching, I could still go through my notes. If the Spirit was not on the worship, we could still sing the songs. But it would be impossible to do miracles in our own strength.

What were we to do? We had experienced healings before and outpourings of joy which manifested in holy laughter. We had seen God move in various ways but it happened mainly in church conferences among Christians, not among unbelievers. I could never predict what would happen or when.

Stepping out was an uncomfortable proposition. According to First Corinthians 2:1-5, an unbeliever would need to see a miracle during or after the preaching, in demonstration of the Spirit’s power. But I did not have a miracle on demand to offer.

Or did I? As I was deliberating and trying to find courage, I suddenly remembered that we did have one miracle that seemed very reliable.

On the last Sunday of 2009, I preached on the glory of God and spontaneously announced to the congregation that His glory had come to our church community. I reminded them of what had happened three months earlier when I preached on healing for six consecutive nights in another church: after one of those nights, two of our older church members had gold flakes on their faces.

This was an amazing miracle which we had not seen before. The same miracle occurred again at one of our morning services some time later. We also had a manifestation of the glory cloud in one of our prayer meetings (see 2 Chron. 5:14; Luke 9:34).

I was happy sharing these testimonies, glorifying God, and announcing that the glory of God had come to Living Grace. After I finished, I—also spontaneously—asked the congregation to come forward and check their skin, especially their hands, under the bright lights of the preaching platform, thinking that maybe they also had gold sparkles on their skin.

Every single person who came forward to check did indeed find gold sparkles on them. Whether the sparkles were made of real gold, I do not know; but they were golden in color and they were from God. On occasion now, they have different colors (mostly silvery) and sometimes the whole skin area can take on a golden or silvery sheen.

God granted us this miracle as a church. Ever since that Sunday, these miraculous gold sparkles (which most of the time look like fine body glitter) have always been in our church meetings and also at home. The miracle does not always manifest on every person, but it is always on some people. Moreover, it has always come when I’ve prayed for it in other places, away from home. Many a time, the gold dust appears at the mere mention of the miracle.

Thus, when I struggled to have the courage to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified with demonstrations of the Spirit’s power (by the power of signs and wonders), I remembered the miracle of gold sparkles and reflected on its abiding and reliable nature. Maybe this could be our stopgap miracle if nothing else happened after the preaching. After two and a half years of enjoying this manifestation among ourselves, maybe we could do something daring and use it in mission work.

I was not exactly full of faith but I knew the theory. In the Bible, signs and wonders led people to repentance and confirmed the salvation message (see Heb. 2:3-4).³ At our own church, we already had a few people who had become Christians because of the gold dust.

Finally, I was decided and suggested Saturday meetings with the title Encounter the Supernatural. The idea was to have one meeting before a free dinner and finish with another meeting after dinner. The word supernatural was not common among us but (so we reasoned), it had traction among the general public.

We had two such Saturdays with reasonable outcomes. Both times, approximately one hundred people attended. Most of them were Christians but we also had some unbelievers and a few converts. On both occasions, God came through with demonstrations of His power that confirmed the preaching. There were healings, gold dust, holy laughter, and a tangible sense of His presence.

A Mandate

After making a start with the Encounter the Supernatural meetings on Saturdays, another pastor from the Gold Coast approached me and asked whether I would be interested in doing a tent outreach. The tent would be available free of charge. Blinded by the bargain, I said yes immediately. I had never run tent meetings before or even been in one which invited people to experience God in supernatural signs and wonders. The Saturday meetings happened in our church building, which felt safe to me, but the tent would be in a public space, the central park in our city. What were we getting into? I thought maybe I was too hasty in giving this a go.

At the end of March, I approached the Toowoomba Regional Council with a request to book Queens Park, our most central park, for a few days in October. However, I could not get anyone to look at the application and give me some sort of preliminary approval.

After a few weeks without a response from the council, I paused and reconsidered what was happening. Maybe God was not opening the door. Even though we thought we had heard from Him and were excited about stepping out, I backed off and our leadership agreed to walk away from the project.

Finally, two months later, I received a notice that someone from the council was going to view the application the next day. After an additional two and a half weeks, I received a park approval letter. By this time, however, I was no longer excited. The letter came too late. No emotions stirred in me.

On July 10, 2012, we had a board meeting. I had prepared Genesis 18:1-21 as the opening devotion. It is the story of God visiting Abraham and Sarah and renewing His promise of a son and heir. At the time of the story, Abraham and Sarah were old and past childbearing age and seemed to have made peace with their barrenness. Sarah laughed at the suggestion (prophetic word) that she would have a baby at her age. According to her, it was too late, but that was OK with her. The pain had subsided. The grieving was done. There was acceptance of not being with child and she laughed freely (as did Abraham previously). Yet, God was now confirming the old promise of a son and resurrecting their hope.

At our leadership meeting, I also wanted to make the point that the long time of waiting for an heir and countless descendants had prepared Abraham for his future role. He was promised that through his offspring all nations on Earth would be blessed (see Gen. 12:3). After years of living with this promise, it was clear that Abraham had indeed become a father of nations. Something had formed in him that made him intercede even for the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (see Gen. 18:16-33).

As we began our meeting, I asked one of our members, Vicki Meagher, to read the opening verses of Genesis 18, but she could not get past the first verse and the clause he [Abraham] was sitting at the entrance to his tent. Whenever she came to these words, the Holy Spirit would overpower her so that she could not continue reading.

What was going on?

We had our meeting and at the end of it—as an item of information rather than discussion—I told the board that the park approval had come but was no longer relevant. Even so, Vicki said that she had heard the word tent throughout the meeting. She did not understand what significance this should have but, together, we began to connect the dots: God was bringing the tent outreach back on the agenda.

Vicki had been overcome by the Spirit when she attempted to read that the tent was the place where God met with Abraham. Maybe the tent was also where God wanted to meet with us. The Bible study was about Abraham and Sarah receiving back an old promise of God, and it seemed as if God made us share their experience. When we walked away from our hopes in what we thought was God’s promise and dealt with our grief (like Abraham and Sarah did), God renewed His commitment and gave us back the tent. It may have