The Church-keeping the lid off-final

The Church-Taking the Lid Off

Opening: Video Clip

Intro: Unpack clip-portrays common perception of people about “Faith healers”…held by Christians & non-Christians

Acts 3:1-10-Peter heals the crippled beggar

-          What do we do with passages like this?

o   Acts 5:12-Apostles performed MANY miraculous signs.

o   God does heal today in many ways…acknowledge Him for modern medicine not available in 1st century

There are a couple of different approaches people have taken

1)      Of course God heals in miraculous ways…wants everyone to be healed, Simply need to believe He will

a.       Some not healed. Not enough faith! Faith as small as a mustard seed.  Push selves

b.      Can treat God as our servant

2)      God doesn’t world that way today-dispensations

a.       This again puts us in charge of who God is…because we haven’t seen something, God doesn’t do it

b.      God’s character doesn’t change…Heb 13:8-Jesus same yesterday, today and forever. Interacted with people in miraculous ways throughout the Bible.  No significant event to suggest change now.

c.       Denies solid evidence…many people today claim to have been miraculously healed by God. Can’t always confirm, though-has made it easy to say not real.  More and more Christian leaders, though, are acknowledging confirmed acts of God

                                                                           i.      Christians from Africa-common

                                                                         ii.      Little personal experience…but a few

                                                                        iii.       

3)      Even with no experience, I think there is a third approach to this issue that is balanced, Biblical and gives glory to God.

First, story: Training fleas:

Using a jar, the flea catcher somehow lures the unsuspecting flea into the jar. But, because fleas are big jumpers, they need to immediately put a lid on the jar to keep the flea from jumping out of the jar. So, the flea trainer quickly puts a lid on the jar. Subsequently, the flea tries top escape. But, when it jumps, BANG, it hits the lid and falls down. Over and over, the flea will jump and BANG hits the lid. Until, after some time, you can see that the flea is jumping just almost to the lid, but not quite. He jumps and jumps, not quite hitting the top, but jumping as high as he can. Now, it appears as though the flea is pretty smart. What's strange is to see what happens when you take the lid off the jar. The flea continues to jump just almost to where the lid was. But, it won't jump any higher. It continues to act like the lid is still there. The flea hit a limit to what it could do. He decided that he could not go any higher and then never tried to improve.

In a similar way I think we can sometimes put a “lid” on our ideas about God. We try to explain Him and end up limiting our understanding of Him.  We need to take the lid off…both acknowledging that we don’t know it all and accepting on faith what we learn from the Bible…

When it comes to this issue of the miraculous works of God, I don’t have all the answers.  I don’t think there is any special way of praying to God in order to bring on a healing miracle…

I do know our prayers are somehow effective…Jesus said if we remain in him, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you…somehow God does interact with us when we come humbly before him.

I don’t know if there is a certain attitude of faith that is required in order for God to perform a miracle in our lives…all I know is to believe what I’ve learned about him, regardless of what I’ve experienced. If the Bible testifies that God can perform miracles, then I’m going to believe He can

Jesus does say our faith is important:

-          Matt 13:54-58-when in his hometown of Nazareth, people looked down upon Jesus, “And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.”

-          Matt 17:15-20 – disciples could not heal a boy with seizures. Jesus said it was because they had so little faith.

I don’t think this is a question of whether the individuals had enough faith to be healed.  More a question of what they believed God was capable of.  They had a “lid” on their understanding of God…and God will not force himself on us in ways we are not ready for.

So I want to ask you what you believe God to be capable of.  Are you willing to believe what the Bible tells us about God, regardless of our own experiences. Willing to trust His “voice of truth?”

If so, encourage you to act in faith. Faith acts on belief.  I want us to act in faith that God can and will work in supernatural ways among us.  We act upon that belief by presenting ourselves in prayer before  God whenever we have a need.

Prayer opportunities….