A God of Miracles

By Iola Goulton

I recently read a Facebook comment where the writer said she didn’t believe in miracles.

This stopped me scrolling through Facebook.

How could she not believe in miracles? The New Testament is full of them. She did have a reason, but it wasn’t one I’ve heard of, and it wasn’t what got me thinking.

What got me thinking was: do I believe miracles?

Yes, I do. Lots of miracles.

I believe in everyday miracles.

There is the miracle of birth, of a baby coming into the world. Miracle of germination, of putting a seed in the ground, and it turning into something I can eat. (I will clarify that. My husband put the seed in the ground, and I eat what comes up. I have a black thumb. In case you’re wondering, that’s the polar opposite of a green thumb).

There is the miracle of pollination. Of bees buzzing around collecting pollen from flowers to make their honey, and in that way allowing the flowers and vegetables to produce fruit. Which produces food. Without bees and pollination, humanity would be in big trouble. Isn’t it a miracle that our survival depends on something we often consider a pest?

And there is the miracle of salvation. Gods plan makes no sense to many people. We need a miracle to accept His word is true. Every person who accepts Jesus as saviour is the outward demonstration of an inward miracle.

I believe in small miracles.

There are small miracles, miracles of healing, of finance, of health. These might not always seem like much to the outside observer. Many people will try and explain them away through logic. But they are miracles to the recipients.

I’ll give you an example. I used to work with an evangelist who had a healing ministry. Attending his meetings was eye-opening. He’d pray for hours in preparation, asking God to show him the people who would be at the meeting, and their health problems.

During one of the last meetings he held before Jesus called him home, he prayed for a woman who had a problem sitting without pain. She couldn’t. She was only in her forties, but she couldn’t sit down without it hurting. After he prayed, he asked her to sit on the hard stage.

She did. I could see her apprehension in her face … then the surprise when she sat and it didn’t hurt. She sat down several times, each time harder and harder, until she was practically bouncing up and down on the hard wooden stage. Look on her face was unforgettable. She emailed the following week, saying that was the first time she'd sat without pain in years.

That is, to me, was a miracle, and it was a miracle for that lady as well.

After the evangelist died, a thick book was compiled, of all the testimonies the evangelist had received over the years of the miracles God performed through him. It’s called Miracles in Aotearoa (New Zealand, for those of you who don’t speak Maori).

I believe in big miracles.

These might not be big miracles like Jesus performed. He didn’t turn water into wine. He didn’t raise anyone from the dead. But they were miracles all the same.

But I’ve heard stories of big miracles from people I trust, people who have no reason to lie to me. Their stories encourage me to believe in a God of miracles. As Christians, we believe in things seen and unseen. A God of miracles.

It struck me that if I didn’t believe in miracles, I would be placing limits on God. I would be saying God isn’t omnipotent. And I believe God is omnipotent. To believe anything else is believing in a lesser God.

Do I want a God who can’t perform miracles? No. I want to serve a God who can.

Do I demand that I see those miracles? No. I accept by faith the words of those who have seen them. And I give thanks for the everyday miracles, the small miracles, the big miracles. And for the God of miracles.

After all, we've recently celebrated Christmas, the time when we remember the birth of Jesus our Saviour. If that’s not a miracle, what is?

About Iola Goulton

Iola Goulton is a New Zealand book reviewer, freelance editor, and author, writing contemporary Christian romance with a Kiwi twist. She is a member of the Sisterhood of Unpronounceable Names (Iola is pronounced yo-la, not eye-ola and definitely not Lola).
Iola holds a degree in marketing, has a background in human resource consulting, and currently works as a freelance editor. When she’s not working, Iola is usually reading or writing her next book review. Iola lives in the beautiful Bay of Plenty in New Zealand (not far from Hobbiton) with her husband, two teenagers and one cat. She is currently working on her first novel.

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DEVOTION: Where's the Evidence? ~ by Kathi Macias

“A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit…. Therefore by their fruits you will know them” (Matt. 7:18, 20).

I know I’ve mentioned this saying before, but I was thinking of it this morning and decided it bears repeating. It is actually a question, and it goes something like this: If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

In some places in the world, Christians face this challenge on a very real basis, sometimes every day; to date, we in America don’t, but that could change, my friends. And if it did, how would we fare? Would we proudly and courageously hold up our Christian books and awards and musical recordings to prove we are successful believers, or would we hide them under the proverbial bushel in an effort to save our cowardly but temporal lives? More importantly, if those books and awards and recordings were burned in a bonfire, what would we then show as proof that we are indeed Christians?

The scripture tells us that our “fruit” will affirm or deny our true standing with God. Though our books and awards and recordings may reflect the faith out of which they were produced, the lasting fruit of our relationship with Jesus is proved in the fire—when our human frailties are put to the test and we choose to cling to God…or not. 

None of us has the strength or power to come through the fire unscathed, anymore than Meshach, Shadrach, or Abed-Nego could have made it through the king’s fire without even the smell of fire clinging to them (see Daniel 3:1-30). It was the Fourth Man, the One “like the Son of God,” whose presence in that fire enabled them to make it through. No one, not even the king, questioned their faith after that.

That’s where lasting fruit is produced, dear ones—not in the easy or comfortable places, but in the fires of life, where we learn to walk in complete dependence on the Fourth Man, the One who is truly the Son of God, who walks through the fire with us and even carries when necessary. But the decision to walk with Him in the fire is often made in the easy and comfortable places of life. If we are blessed to be in one of those places today, may we make that decision to walk with Him—whether in the easy place or in the fires—and to know that He alone will bring us through with lasting fruit that will prove us to be Christians.

Kathi Macias is a multi-award winning writer who has authored nearly 40 books and ghostwritten several others. A former newspaper columnist and string reporter, Kathi has taught creative and business writing in various venues and has been a guest on many radio and television programs. 

Kathi is a popular speaker at churches, women’s clubs and retreats, and writers’ conferences. She won the 2008 Member of the Year award from AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association) and was the 2011 Author of the Year from BooksandAuthors.net. Kathi “Easy Writer” Macias lives in Homeland, CA, with her husband.

A Conversation Across the Water

Donna: My guest today is Claire Dunn from England, a friend I made through the Association of Christian Writers. Congratulations, Claire, on publishing your first novel. Tell us about yourself.

Claire: With a degree in history and a career in specialist education, writing a novel is not so divergent a choice of occupation as it might at first seem. My all-abiding love of history, language and learning came together in my debut novel: Mortal Fire – The Secret of the Journal - the first of a series of romantic thrillers with a twist published by Monarch Books in the UK in May, 2012, and in August in the United States.

Mortal Fire grew out of a desire to weave the sort of story that kept me enthralled – multi-layered, dark, with an evolving tale that packs a punch, but it might never have been written if the predictions of my headmaster at primary school had proved correct. Struggling to learn to read and write, school represented a hurdle to be overcome. I nonetheless loved literature, and it wasn’t until I left school that dyslexia was diagnosed.

Refusing to be daunted, I went on to study history at university. On graduation, and building on my own educational experiences, I established a school for children with dyslexia, autism, and communication difficulties, which I still run.    

Now I divide my time running my school in Kent and writing in the south west of England, a life I can only describe as living between the here-and-now and the never-never.

Donna: And I’ll bet you’re never bored, Claire. Can you share some of your story without giving too much away, of course?

Claire: Mortal Fire follows Emma D’Eresby – a 29 year-old, independent and self-contained professor of history – who leaves her Cambridge college for a post in an exclusive university in Maine, USA. It is meant to be the culmination of her obsession with a curious journal – the diary of a long dead Englishman - a portion of which was left to her by her grandfather; instead the legacy leads her to a head-on collision with history and a secret that should never have been uncovered. But, most diverting and disconcerting of all, is Emma's growing attraction to the strikingly handsome Dr. Matthew Lynes, whose kind but deliberately distant demeanour puzzles her. And the mystery surrounding Matthew only deepens when Emma discovers a link between him and the journal. What is Matthew trying to hide?

Donna: That sounds gripping, indeed. Congratulations on being endorsed by Colin Dexter (Inspector Morse) and Fay Sampson (The Hunted Hare)). Those are two of my favourite authors. Now, tell us how you came to write Mortal Fire.

Claire: Hanging on my bedroom wall is an excerpt from the poem ‘God Knows’ written by Minnie Louise Haskins in the early C20th, and used for King George VI’s Christmas broadcast in 1939. You may know it from the opening lines:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

It is undoubtedly easier to put this into practice when the way is clear and the light shines brightly on your road ahead. Sometimes, however, your way is not clear until you are on it, and this is the path I found myself treading one spring in 2009. First, a bit of backstory...

Although a career in writing and history had been my ambition from my earliest years, the twin revolutions of finding Christ and a diagnosis of dyslexia took my life in a different direction.  I fully believed – and still do – that the dyslexia was  both a gift (in the way that only God is able to turn a negative into a positive and so much more) and a command to direct my life in service to others with the same condition. The setting up and running of a school for children with a range of specific language difficulties was therefore a straightforward, unquestionable act of obedience. It wasn’t easy, in fact there were many obstacles over a long period of time that threatened to stop the project in its tracks, but not once did I question the validity of what I had been asked to do.

So what has this to do with writing, you might ask? Well, quite a lot really. I had long put aside any desire to write, and the development and running of the school dominated life for a considerable number of years. Content with this, I didn’t look for anything else. It came as something of a surprise, therefore, when a thought became a niggle, and the niggle became an itch. In 2009, I resisted no longer, and scratched the itch until it became a book. But what sort of book and who was I writing it for? Herein lay my dilemma.

Although Mortal Fire is primarily a book about a developing romance and the mystery that surrounds the central characters, I introduced elements of faith because it is important for my heroine, and has a bearing on the unfolding story. Emma is a Christian but in this first book of the Secret of the Journal series her faith is almost dormant as she hides in a bubble created in an attempt to protect herself from her past. Emma is not seen praying on a regular basis, does not attend church – yet faith underlies her life and the choices she makes and, gradually, as she is shaken from her somnolence, she wakes. Nonetheless, I would describe Mortal Fire as a secular book, albeit written from a Christian perspective. How could I justify the amount of time spent writing a story and one not intended to enlighten or comfort, but merely to entertain? Where was this in God’s plan for me? How did it serve Him?

I discussed it with Christian friends, read how other authors and singers juggled secular and non-secular aspects of their work, and, of course, I prayed, bending God’s ear repeatedly over the months it took to complete Mortal Fire. And each time I prayed for clear direction I had the same message to keep going and I would ask ‘but why?’, because I couldn’t quite believe there could be any purpose in it. Non-Christian friends didn’t see the problem – ‘write because you want to’, they said. But it was difficult for me to see how I could serve God through writing this book, whereas the purpose of the school had been abundantly clear from the outset.

There came a point when I had a completed manuscript – well two, but that’s another story – and I set off to find a publisher. To cut a long story short (and what a story) I entered into negotiations with a Christian publisher in the UK. We discussed what they were looking for, I explained my perspective - toning down some elements, and highlighting others - until we had a balance and I had a contract.

I had accepted the directive to write; but I still didn’t understand why? Then a friend said to me “Write for God in the best way you can and He will find a purpose for it”, and someone else said, “It’s not what you do that matters” and at last I understood that it wasn’t up to me to decide God’s purpose in this, all I had to do was to let go.

It came down to trust. The lesson I learned when writing The Secret of the Journal series is echoed by one of the characters who, taking from Isaiah 55:8, quoted:  

 ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.’  (King James 2000 Bible)

Mine is not to reason why; mine is to do and write. Stepping out of our comfort zone is a matter of trust, stepping out into the unknown – at whatever level – is a matter of faith.

Donna: So true, Claire. Obedience is a lesson we just have to keep on learning, isn’t it? Where can we find you on the web?

Claire: The Mortal Fire video is on YouTube at: http://ning.it/MNRTNQ     

            And the book is on AmazonUK at: http://ning.it/MNSSO1

                                                                                                        

Sometimes It's The Little Things

I became a Christian at the age of twenty after many years of fervent searching. I was not born into a religious family. In fact my only encounter with religion was through my maternal grandmother who gave me a KJV Bible and a Christian picture book when I was five years old. Both meant nothing to me at the time. The Bible was white with gold decorative trim and gilt-edged pages, and crammed with indecipherable words in crisp Roman font. The picture book was full of bearded, earnest-looking men set against stark, dusty backgrounds, and sheep. If anything, they looked scary. Is it any wonder then that my first impression of religion was not a particularly enthusiastic one.

Over the next fifteen years I had many encounters with all sorts of religious folk. Through some early spiritual experiences I was convinced that, as Shakespeare once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy", and so I determined to discover as much about heaven and earth as I could. During my travels I came into contact with numerous religions, from Jehovah's Witnesses to the New Age, from the Occult to Buddhism.

I even dabbled in Scientology. Before you snicker, please understand that there is a certain appeal that has to be experienced to be understood. I get the atraction of Scientology and Dianetics, and why it is people spend a small fortune in trying to achieve the coveted "clear" moniker. For me, however, it was not enough just to get over my painful past. I needed more.

Later I attended a Silva Mind Control course, still wondering if the truth lay within my own mind. Even here, in a course designed to boost your concentration and help you take control of your own thoughts, there is a strong spiritual aspect tucked neatly away under the surface.

Not long after that I settled on Buddhism, to the point of identifying it as my religion when asked. It seemed such a tranquil religion and suited my personality perfectly. Except that the peace I experienced soon began to feel empty. Through meditation I learned to empty my mind and feel nothing, except that I could not believe that Horatio's heaven and Earth was filled with. . .nothing. I knew there was something more.

During the latter part of my search, I came into contact with a particular breed of religious person that I could not understand. Most religious people seemed to be in transit. It was as if that, even though they thought they had found the answer, there was something missing that they could not quite put a finger on. I felt that way myself, as if I somehow knew the answer but had yet to find it. There were certain people, however, who seemed to know that they had found the truth, and you could see it in their eyes.

When I think back on these people, I get the impression that God put them in my life to steer my towards Him. There weren't many, but I will never forget them. They weren't televangelists or preachers standing before huge crowds, but individuals who took the time to step out of their comfort zones and make contact with a complete stranger. Sometimes the contact was one-to-one. Other times it was less direct. There is one in particular that I wish I could find and thank. We never spoke but I saw him almost every day on my way to work. I would see him striding down the sidewalk, singing in a deep baritone voice. At the time I did not understand what he was singing about, but I do now. He was singing praises to God. I remember, just before leaving to go overseas, seeing that same man sitting on a park bench, his head bowed and a sad look on his face. He had the appearance of someone who had been humiliated or even beaten, even though he bore no physical wounds. The biggest change, however, was his singing. Normally his voice was loud and clear. Now, sitting on the bench, slumped forward with his face turned towards the ground, the words were barely audible. He was still singing, but only just.

I wish now that I could go back and find that man, and tell him that his singing affected me and made me wonder what could bring a man such joy that he had to express it everywhere he went. I wish I could tell him that he should sing no matter what the world says to him or does to him. He should sing even though people mock and scorn and laugh because, even if he does not realise it, his words reached everyone who heard them--especially me. I sometimes wonder what happened to that man. I hope and pray that, wherever he is, he is still singing because, sometimes, it is the little things than nudge us in the right direction.

REALITY CHECK

Several weeks ago, my husband asked a young Christian man to share with our congregation how he was coping with a live-in course he was doing with a Christian organisation. He comes from a difficult family background and only made a personal commitment to Christ about three years before when still a teenager. As he spoke, this previously retiring, rather inarticulate young man thrilled us as we saw the growth in this young man both physically and spiritually. One thing he shared with us was what God was currently challenging him to study and think through. Quite a few times since, his words have crept back into my mind and I have had to re-examine my own heart.

What does being a Christian really mean to you?

So, here I am, a woman who has personally loved My Lord as long as I can remember, asking myself this same question.

Is it just about the Christian lifestyle I have known all my life?
Is it about all the blessings God has poured out on me over all these many years? A loving mother and father – even though my Dad died when I was sixteen? A wonderful marriage and family of my own? Years of personal fulfilment in my nursing career – and now this writing career?

Is it all the joy, peace, blessings God has – and still is –pouring out for me to enjoy? Sure, there have been times of trial, times of anger, times of tears, times of trembling in concern, but I find myself thinking of all the things I have been given.

Is this what being a Christian really means to me? God’s blessings, His gifts?

And as I dwell on all I have been given to enjoy, my mind fills with the remembrance of that new Christian’s beaming face as he told us he was still working through all this. I know what being a Christian was delivering him from - a family life and circumstances so very, very different from my own story. You see his face shone as he added rather self-consciously that he was learning it was all about simply “fixing his eyes on Jesus.”

As my hair becomes greyer, as my strength becomes weaker with age, as I take longer and longer to do things I want and need to do, as I try to write that next manuscript, all that really matters is that I moment by moment “fix my eyes on Jesus.” The writer of Hebrews 12: 1,2 reminds us to “run the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...”

This race through life can take unexpected twists and turns. In all of life there will always be the mountains to climb, the pleasant as well as the shadowy valleys to journey through. How much more so this seems to be true for writers!

I need to not only “look” but fix my eyes constantly on Jesus who “for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame” is now seated at the right hand of God interceding for this child who loves Him.

The times I take my eyes from Him, they so quickly become blurred by things of this world. They may even be very pleasant things, not even wrong necessarily in God’s eyes, but if they are not where Jesus is and where He wants me to be at that time and in that place, they will take me away from my intimate, loving fellowship with Him.

So, time for a reality check. What does being a Christian – and especially a Christian writer - mean to you?
 Mary Hawkins is a best-selling inspirational romance author. A Queensland farmer’s daughter, she became a registered nurse before going to Bible College. She and her minister husband have three adult children and five grandchildren, enjoyed over 46 years of ministry including church planting in Australia, two years in England, three short term mission trips to Africa and now live in Tasmania, Australia's island state. Her 19th title, Justice at Baragula was released May, 2011
Read more about her books, her husband Ray and his devotional books on their blog from the website:
Mary Hawkins - and also on Facebook

At Whom Am I Really Angry?

I've been angry recently. Nothing personal. My teenage daughter has been remarkably civil. My adult sons are doing well. I have a wonderful husband. My bank account is in the black. I am warm, fed, clothed, and free to go about my business.

No, the anger seething in my veins is for others. For Afghan Christian Sayed Mossa, who sits on death row in Kabul for the crime of freely choosing a personal faith in God. I grit my teeth for his wife and six children, ages eight and under, who no longer have a husband or an income in a country where there are no food stamp programs. I clench my fists that Sayed's employer of fifteen years, the International Committee of the Red Cross, did nothing to defend or intervene for Sayed until pushed by media pressure to do so. I feel like screaming that my own embassy has agreed to bring up Sayed's case in private conversations with the Afghan regime--instead of trumpeting to the skies that Western free governments don't hand out aid and arms to regimes that murder people for their faith.

Read World Magazine coverage

I am angry for Pakistani mother of five Asia Bibi, arrested when she refused pressure of Muslim female neighbors to convert from her Christian faith to Islam. She's finally had her day in court, only to be condemned to death under Pakistani blasphemy and apostasy laws. I stomp my feet for her husband and children, separated from wife and mother for eighteen months now. I am furious that those unjust laws are not some historic dictate, but were penned scarcely a quarter-century past by dictator General Zia al Huq, setting Pakistan on the path of Islamic extremism. Even as he penned them, his greatest ally, my own government, was pouring billions in military aid into his coffers without raising a voice in protest. A precedent that has continued to this day, encouraging oppression of religious minorities in Pakistan. I am angry that Bristol Palin's dancing receives more media attention from such injustices. I fume that neither the ideological left nor right across the Western 'free' world has taken any definitive stand against arming and supporting regimes that deny basic human rights to their citizens. There's plenty more to stir my anger. Children starving in the streets across Latin America, Africa, Asia while their wealthy rulers waddle from mansion to Gulfstream jet to the Riviera. Warlords who turn machetes and AK-47s on innocents in their lust for power. The world seems increasingly filled with darkness and hate and cruelty. Or perhaps we simply have more knowledge.

And because I can do nothing to stop these things, I find myself angry at the only One who can. How can a heavenly Father described as all-powerful, compassionate, merciful so calmly sit in the stands as the Asia Bibis and Sayed Mossas suffer, children starve, war destroys? I know all the proper theological answers. I've heard them, even taught them, throughout my life in Christian ministry. God permits free will. This fallen world is product of human choices. God will bring ultimate good out of human evil. But I am still angry for those I love who are at this moment battered by dark storms while I sit warm, free, safe.
Yes, I love them, Asia Bibi and Sayed Mosa, my brother and sister in faith, and too many others in their situation. The homeless children with whom I've worked on dirty Third World streets, longing to scoop them up like so many stray puppies and take them all home. Abused, despairing women sold as possessions whose eyes look at me with such hollow distance I ache to put my arms around them and tell them all will be well, even though I know that isn't true. Families in my own birth country undergoing sickness, unemployment, broken relationships.

If such love can burn like a fire through my limited being, does not my heavenly Father, Creator of every living soul, love far more? Does He not have the power I lack to reach down and rescue? If God's love is immeasurably greater than mine, how can He not intervene? Even if this unjust world is an unavoidable consequence of human free will, why should the righteous, the innocent suffer while perpetrators walk free?

I've really tried not to be angry. It's not spiritual, I know. I'm not even sure why this particular set of injustices in a world filled with them has burned so hotly in my veins. Even as I've prayed for Asia Bibi and Sayed Mossa, shared their plight with others, I've screamed out my protest to the One who permits this to happen. And maybe our heavenly Father doesn't really mind when His children cry out their anger and confusion and pain to Him. Because this week, unexpectedly, even oddly, He gave me an answer.

It came through a Scripture passage so obscure I'd never noticed it before. I've been reading through the Major Prophets, currently Ezekiel with its strange angelic beasts and fiery living wheels. Ezekiel too was angry. As angry at the idolatry and perversion of his own people as at the devastation of Jerusalem under Babylon's battering ram. Ezekiel begged Israel's remnant to be spared even while he demanded God judge his compatriots' wickedness.
God did not answer by stepping in to set all right. On the contrary:
"For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: How much worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem my four dreadful judgments—sword and famine and wild beasts and plague—to kill its men and their animals! Yet there will be some survivors—sons and daughters who will be brought out of it. They will come to you, and when you see their conduct and their actions, you will be consoled regarding the disaster I have brought upon Jerusalem—every disaster I have brought upon it. You will be consoled when you see their conduct and their actions, for you will know that I have done nothing in it without cause, declares the Sovereign LORD." (Ezekiel 14:21-23).

What value does the Creator of the Universe place in the storms of injustice, tyranny, violence that I cannot grasp? What does His foreknowledge see emerging from the furnace of human pain and suffering that I do not? Certainly we are told that as fire refines gold to absolute purity, so suffering refines and purifies the human soul (Isaiah 48:10; James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 1:6-7).

I still don't know why brothers and sisters in faith should sit undeservedly in prison, even be martyred for their faith. But as I read God's answer to Ezekiel, I find myself consoled. Because my heavenly Father, Sayed and Asia's heavenly Father, does know. And this particular page in mankind's dark and dirty story is hardly the final chapter, not for Sayed Mossa and Asia Bibi, not for me. One day I will meet sons and daughters of the Kingdom whom God is redeeming through the very storms of disaster and injustice against which I fume. And I will see at last clearly what I must now take only on faith. That nothing God has done with His creation is without cause.

Until then I will trust that my Creator really does know what He's doing.