Our Miraculous God

The prophet Isaiah says, for those who wait on the Lord, he will renew your strength. You will mount up with wings like eagles. You will run and not grow weary. You will walk and not faint. This is the word of God. This is what we were just singing. This is what we were just using as a, as a, as a really a platform to worship the one true God. But we come back to this idea of what it means to wait and, and, and you were just speaking to it a second ago here. We have all of our sides now that are gathering with us. But that idea of waiting, it isn't passive. We keep saying this. You got to remember waiting in a biblical context is it's, it's like you wrap the last strand of you around the goodness and the character and the power and the faithfulness of God. That's what it means to wait. That's why that word sometimes gets translated hope. You see, we hope in the Lord, we wait on the Lord. That's how we live this life. Father, we come before you now after a full and rich time of worship. We come before you now, uh, entering into a moment and a discussion that, uh, will be interesting to some, uh, it'll be unsettling to others, but God, if we lean in the truth at the center of your word, the truth at the center of this story will give life to each of us. So Holy Spirit, we need your help. Lead us and prepare us, refresh us, encourage us, challenge us. I pray that by the time we get to the end of our time, Lord, that some of us will actually take a physical step out towards you, but Lord, right now we give you the glory. I ask this in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Whew. Well, I know y'all fist bumped each other just a second ago here, but can you now, let's just give glory to God and let's thank all of our worship leaders at all of our sites. You turn around now, you can say hi to somebody one more time and then have a seat. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to get started here. Thank you, brother. That idea of waiting and the fact that it really is a kind of reaching out and that reaching out is a kind of hope. That's what we do. We hope, we hope. What are we hoping for? We're hoping for change. We're hoping for improvement. We're hoping for relief. We're hoping for comfort. What else? Somebody said healing last night. We're hoping for healing. We're waiting for healing, many of us. Some of you are at a place where it's like, would God even show up that way? I mean that powerfully? Would God show up that way? Because if he did, would that be like a miracle? Some of you are on the backside of a storm, like the bad news has already hit. You've already gotten the answer that you didn't really want.

Things have already started to feel like they're fraying and falling apart. You're staring at a loss right now and you're saying, man, can God show up even then? Because if he did, that would be like a miracle. Now we use that word in a bunch of different ways, don't we? And we kind of kid about that from time to time. I mean, there's just so many different ways we kind of water the word down a little bit. You know, it's like, it'll be a miracle if I pass that class. It'll be a miracle if he texts me. It'll be a miracle if she texts me back. It's a miracle that I'm at church on spring forward Sunday. I mean, you know, there's lots of different ways that it'd be a miracle tonight if the baby slept four hours. Would that be the miracle? I don't know. You know, it'll be a miracle. It'll be a miracle. It'll be a miracle. Well, what is a miracle? We need to go on ahead and technically define it one more time. Lewis says that, and I love this, he says that it's an interference with nature by a supernatural power. Now, a couple of things there, nature, the natural law. It means that there is a supernatural power, God, who intervenes and does something that is so out of the ordinary, it's just not the way the universe normally operates. That's a miracle. Now, the question for us is how comfortable are we with these things? You see, we're about to enter into a discussion that's going to get kicked off by a story in the gospel of Matthew, but I want you to be honest with yourself where you are with miracles. So here we go.

Look at each other and don't forget there is someone sitting next to you who's going to, like right now they're thinking it'll be a miracle if somebody includes me. So you go on ahead and give them their first miracle of the day, okay? But here's the thing. How comfortable are you with real miracles? I mean, miracle miracles. We'll just put them on a spectrum. Like over here, like you think it's harmful for us to even be talking about it. Or maybe it's like you mock it because it just seems so silly to you. Or you're skeptical. Or maybe you're kind of open to it. You're curious about it. You think they happen, but they happened back then. You think they happen, but you've never seen them. You're longing for one to happen. You have a healing service every Tuesday night in your garage. I mean, just a whole spectrum here. Go ahead. We're going to put some music in the room now. But I'd like for you guys, if you would, to just go ahead, turn and talk to each other. Let's do that. Guys, let's pump the music a little bit. And let's go ahead and just talk to each other. Okay. All right. So, let me just ask you, kind of in a general sort of a way, we'll just do this Sites Play Along. But, like, I just want to, you don't even have to clap or raise your hand or anything. But how many of you are kind of on this end of the spectrum? Just give me a little, hmm, hmm.

Yeah, okay. How many of you kind of just goof on it and you make fun of it because you've just seen things? How many of you are a little curious about it? Anybody here curious? Anybody open to miracles? Do you think the possibility of them, you have some of you? Yeah. Woo, woo. Okay. Like, have you seen them? Like, have you, do you think God can still do it? Just curious. Anybody have a healing service in their garage? I don't know. It's just like, I want to come one night. So it's just, yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. We've talked about these things before, so we're not going to go into some of the things that we've covered. We will put on the app this week, I think, links to a couple of recent messages, like over the last, let's say, four years, where we talked about healing and then we talked about miracles. And one of them, man, we covered everything from a theologian to a famous skeptic philosopher to PET scan studies to obviously opening the word of God. But I think throughout it all, what you will see is why we here are open to the possibility of the miraculous. I don't think it would surprise you that my worldview is a vision of a God who is over all things, a God who is in charge of all things. If there is a God, and some of you are maybe still struggling with that, and if you are,

let's talk. We can share how we have come to those conclusions, and we've got people here. We don't have all the answers, but we can talk to you about it. But if there is a God, it's not illogical for him to be able to do something that only he can do, for him to intervene. You see, that's really what we think is happening in the Gospels. Now, by the way, a miracle doesn't happen like every eight minutes. Now we see miracles, and we've even seen clumps of miracles, and things happen in certain seasons and moments. But just by definition, not everything is a miracle. It's what draws attention to them. It's what kept drawing attention to Jesus. So now here we go. If you've been with us, you know that we're in the middle of this Peak Experiences series, and we're traversing the mountains of Scripture. And now that we're in the New Testament, we're just following Jesus all over the Gospels. Last week, really the last two weeks, we've been in the Sermon on the Mount. And the Sermon on the Mount is just, by the way, last week, didn't Angela, Pastor Angela, do an amazing job of leading us? There were just so many profound truths in that teach regarding prayer. But by the time you get to the end of chapter seven in Matthew, we're done with the Sermon on the Mount. And so what we do is we pick things up now in Matthew chapter eight, and what we see is that Jesus comes down off of the mountainside, and the crowds keep following Him. Now, if you keep reading this Gospel, what you will see is in the next couple of chapters, He sets up His headquarters in Capernaum, which is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. All of that is beginning to happen. He's calling specific disciples to Himself. One of them is Matthew.

He's the guy whose eyewitness account we're looking at now. But throughout the whole region, there around that northern part of the Sea of Galilee, he's preaching and he's performing miracles. This is the ministry of Jesus. Now a lot happens between where we were last week and where we're gonna pick things up this week. I mean, there were familiar parables, there were familiar stories, familiar healings, famous sayings like, come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Jesus walks on the water in the middle of a storm, he feeds the 5,000, really famous things in the life of Jesus happened between last week's Sermon on the Mount and this week where we pick things up in Matthew 15. We're gonna be at the end of Matthew 15, but let me set it up for you now. What we see here is that, well, if you look at this, that's the northern shore up there where Mount Beatitudes is. But now we're turning it around and we're seeing that the next place he takes them is what is called, it's a region called the Decapolis. On the far side of the Sea of Galilee, Decapolis means 10 cities. And so it's a region of 10 cities.

They're very Roman, very Greek, very non-Jewish. And Jesus is going there to proclaim the good news of the gospel. So we're gonna pick things up now. Here we go, Matthew 15, verse 29. Jesus left there where he was and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. Here we go again with the mountains. If we've learned anything in these mountains, we've learned that we are going to encounter the living God. We keep seeing these powerful stories of people who these are moments of, well, it's everything. Moments of surrender, moments of rebellion, moments of worship, moments of instruction, moments of faith, moments of sacrifice. But the thread running through all of these things on the top of these mountains is people are coming face to face with the power and glory of the one true God. Same thing's gonna happen on this mountainside. Now, we don't get the specific name of the mountain here. The phrase actually could just mean up into the hilly country, but now Jesus is moving up, one more time, big crowd. He's moving up into a higher elevation so that he can minister to these people. And Matthew says he sat down. Now, that's the traditional posture of a rabbi, of a teacher.

He's getting ready to teach. Now, it doesn't say here. Matthew doesn't say that he's teaching, but every place we read in the Gospels, Jesus preaches and he heals. It's kind of a package deal. But let's just keep reading in verse 30. Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and laid them at his feet, and he healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking, and the blind seeing, and they praised the God of Israel. Now, that phrase, praise the God of Israel, that's not the way, that's not a Hebrew way of saying things. These are folks who are not connected to the Hebrew faith, but they're praising the God of Israel. Now, a couple of things I want you to notice. First of all, he's healing the blind. Now, some of you are like, yeah, it seems like he does that. I've seen that in the Gospels. Well, you're right. In fact, if you stack up all of the physical healings of Jesus in the Gospels, the healing of the blind is at the top of the list. It's the one that is mentioned the most. But wait, it's not even mentioned any other place in the Gospels,

except Paul regains his sight later, but that was after an encounter with Jesus. In the Old Testament, there's absolutely no mention of a healing of someone who is blind. Now, why am I telling you that? Psalm 146 says only God can heal the blind. Now, you get to Isaiah, the prophet we were reading from earlier, and three different places. He says, when Messiah comes, he will give sight to the blind. I just want you to know who they are encountering on that mountain. It is the living God in the flesh, Messiah, the king. That's who they're talking to. That's who they're bringing their friends to. And I believe that same God is here today, and I believe he can still do the miraculous. Now, as soon as I say that, those of you who might be down on this end are going, oh man, Greg, don't get people's hopes up. And I hear people say that to me at different times, and they mean it. And I know why they mean it, and we'll get to that in just a second, but I can't live without hope. And I'm not gonna tell you to live without hope, and I'm not gonna tell you to not pray bold prayers for miracles, but I'm also not gonna tell you that these things are kind of, you can just line it up, and it's a formula,

and if you check all of the boxes, then God has to do it. I'm not gonna tell you that, because we don't see that in the scriptures. We simply do not see that in the scriptures. Jesus doesn't even heal the same way in the. gospels. Sometimes he touches someone, sometimes he says it, sometimes it's up close, sometimes it's from a distance. One time he spits on the dirt, makes a couple of mud patties and sticks it on somebody's eyes. He's just so unpredictable in the way that he heals. I'll tell you a couple of things I see that are similar that do happen. One of them is that he never makes a fanfare about it. Another is he never makes it about money. Never once do you hear Jesus say, if you'll just plant a seed in my ministry then your healing, your miracle is guaranteed. It's just not there. It's not there. You see, it's so different than any of the other ancient accounts of the miraculous because those are all kind of mythical and superstitious and there are incantations and spells as the people are trying to manipulate the crowds. You don't see any of that with Jesus. It's very, in some ways, it's very powerful but in other ways it's, I wouldn't say it's matter-of-fact but it's just like, he's just doing that because he can. But whenever we start talking about like the manipulating and the kind of the stuff that you just kind of start to feel like, I don't know if that's real. Some of you right now, the reason you're at this end of the spectrum is because you've seen things and you've made fun of things. You've mocked things that you've heard about or that you've seen or that you've watched online or you've seen something on TV or something like that. So what do we do with that? Here's how it sounds sometimes. People go, well Greg, what about those people that, you know, they say they're performing miracles but then there's the investigative reporter who comes in and finds out that it was all a sham. You're right. Sometimes it's a sham. Sometimes it is. I mean, I don't like admitting that but sometimes it is. Sometimes it's counterfeit. The counterfeit is real, if that makes sense. It really does happen. And sometimes the

counterfeit's really good. Like at first you're like, is that, did that really? Okay, let's try it from a different angle. Let's just catch our breath here. Anybody familiar with the Netflix show, Is It Cake? You ever seen that one? It's kind of amazing because there's like things that are real and then there's cake and they make it look like the real thing and you cannot tell the difference. I want to test you on that, okay? So here's the thing. Lean over, don't be vashful, but tell your neighbor, going ahead and point and make a commit, which one of these is the cake and which one of these is real. Go ahead, try it. This one's amazing to me. That's the cake. All right, this is gross. This is just plain gross. It gets, oh, don't. It gets worse. It gets worse. No, I'm not talking about the handle. That's, no, it gets worse. Don't do it. Don't do it. Okay, she's really good at this. Here's my point. It's weird, but it's hard sometimes to tell the counterfeit from the real. I need a volunteer real quickly, just real quickly. It'll only take like 60 seconds. There's a payout for it. Just give me, there really literally is a payout. Todd, come up here for a second. Oh, there we go. Fleek, come on. Hey, just stand right here. There are, you, do you, there are counterfeit dollar, dollar bills in the world. Which one of these is real? You're right. Yeah. Now, now here's, here's the thing. There's, there's a couple of things. Well, first of all, this one's real too. So, uh, and, and the reason that I'd set you up for that, but the reason is, uh, cause you know, this is public and everything. If you're from the government, we did not use counterfeit money to make this illustration. Okay. This is real. Uh, but the point is the existence of the counterfeit, like if one of these was counterfeit and one of these was real, you wouldn't devalue the real one. If you just go, oh, well there's counterfeit stuff out there, so I'll never trust this. Well, then you'll miss out on some things. Does that make sense to you? Okay. This is yours. Go ahead. Have a seat. No, no, no. You do. You take it. You take it. Write it in your journal tonight. Today, the pastor gave me money.

So so so here's the thing. Here's the thing. I want to say it one more time It's very very important for you to understand this this point the existence of a counterfeit Does not mean the real can't exist The existence of a counterfeit does not prove that the real can't exist What do you think it's trying to copy? Jesus the real the one and only son of God is performing miracles in healing these people Now one more miracle He sees these people and he begins to feel a compassion for them. That's a word that means something deep He's really feeling it deeply. He's he's caring for them. It's like I'm worried about them Why because they're gonna go home and like they don't have anything to eat They don't have anything to eat It turns out this is a big crowd But he knows that they that they they need something to eat and now they've been there for three days I don't know if it means that they didn't have food for three days My guess is they just ran out of their food along the way Most of them probably didn't plan on being with Jesus for three days on that mountain But now we're here and he's worried Please do not forget the setting I think it's really important here Remember I told you they're on the far side of this Sea of Galilee This is a primarily Gentile non-Jewish audience I promise you there were people near Jesus People he grew up with People he knows Who would say to him They aren't our people But the heart of Jesus is revealed because he wants to care for these people They don't have any connections They don't have any leverage

They don't have anything that they could give to his earthly ministry Or to his disciples that could help him But Jesus, my Jesus, our Jesus, the Savior says I want to help these people because they matter You see that's the heart of God God will reach in and touch and help people who have been excluded Who have been called names You see the Jewish people would call them dogs at this point They live on the wrong side of the lake But God says no, I will reach in I want to care for, I want to love people who think that they are excluded Jesus says we've got to feed them What do we have? Well I don't know, we've got We've got seven loaves and some fishes That's about all we could find Alright, why don't you give them to me Now remember, this is a big crowd You'll find out how big in just a second I don't know what it looked like Jesus takes these seven fishes I'm sorry, seven loaves and some fishes Maybe they're in a basket Just try to picture yourself on this mountainside He thanks God He asks his Father to bless this moment And to provide for these people that he knows God loves And however it now plays out Jesus just keeps handing off food to these disciples Who no doubt have to then hand it off to other people

And say hey will you pass this down Hey will you go And something begins to happen Now again, just picture yourself on this hillside I'm guessing when it started to happen There was a murmur, a buzz of hey what's going on, what's going on But I can't see And then little by little there's laughter There's cheering There's whoa wait what And as the scale of this miracle starts to land on people I'm just guessing, just me But that laughter and the cheering gave way to a kind of quiet awe Maybe there's tears Who is this? I'll tell you who it is It's the Son of God And he's caring for people And then what you see next is I think just really important It says that they all ate and were satisfied Everybody was satisfied I think that's a really important word Afterwards the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces That were left over The number of those who ate was 4,000 men Besides the women and children Most scholars think that that means this crowd At least 10,000 people This is a big crowd and this happens There's a lot going on here

First thing and the question that many of you have is Greg I don't know how to say this but Matthew got his numbers wrong It's 5,000 It's five loaves and two fishes I learned that in Sunday school No He just told that very story the previous chapter Matthew's not confused This is a different story A different miracle A different place A different crowd Same Jesus Same Jesus Same disciples Here we go At least Matthew You included it in the story. I mean, they've just seen this, and now they're going, I don't know, Jesus, how you gonna feed these people? I mean, it literally just happened. So what's going on? Well, it could be exactly what happens in my life. I forget about the provision of God. He has done so much for me. He has come through for me so many times. And then the next challenge I face, I'm like, oh, Lord, how are we gonna deal with this? And he's like, I just, oh.

It could be that. Or it could be that these disciples couldn't get their head around the idea that God would serve, you know, those people that way. Even the leftovers tell a story. In the Bible, numbers are symbolic. You don't wanna lean too much into them, but when you see them sometimes, you wanna go, hmm, what's going on there? Seven is the number of completion. It's the number of perfection. Could it be that part of what's going on here, even at the end of the story, is that like seven, perfect, complete, is the perfect and complete plan of God that Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, is gonna meet the needs of all people? We're not that far from the gospel now breaking into the entire world. Whatever's going on here at the end, Jesus, at the end of this miracle, at some point, sort of formally dismisses the crowd and they all go home. That's a pretty cool miracle, but what does it have to do with us? The first part, the healing, the physical stuff, we can relate to that, but this, what does this have to do with us? I would say an awful lot, actually. You see, every miracle I've seen, every miracle I've experienced,

every miracle I've been close to, every miracle I read about in the gospels, every miracle that we will see God begin to perform at the end of our service when we pray bold prayers, every miracle points to Jesus. You see, when God intervenes in a way that you can't even understand, like when God does something and rescues and heals and changes, or maybe God reaches into a hurt and a grief and a loss and he begins to heal in a way that you didn't think possible, it all points to the day when all things will be made right and it points to the one who can actually pull it off. You see, I think that's why Jesus keeps talking about the deeper things. These miracles always point to the deeper things. There is a deeper healing at play here. You know this, but every one of those people that was healed physically that day ended up dying eventually. How about this? Every stomach that was filled that day was probably growling with hunger the next day. It's why in the gospel of John, after the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Yeah, I gave you bread, but I want you to know you've got this core hunger that needs to be dealt with. Listen to me.

You were made by him to do life with him. And until you trust him, there is a restlessness that will gnaw at your insides like some unmet hunger. Now we're getting there. The prophet Hosea says that God can heal your waywardness. Is there anyone here who's just tired of always, like, it's just you and God and you're always putting walls up and it's always, I'll come and I'll be here, but I don't wanna get that close. I'm telling you, the Lord can heal that way of life and it's liberating, it's such a relief. It's the miracle of forgiveness. It's the miracle of life with God. None of us deserve it, but that's your miracle. And some of you are like, great, great, you're right. That is the core, but it feels like you're sidestepping everything else. Should I pray for bold miracles in my life? Yes, absolutely, 1,000 times yes. What about those miracles I didn't get? What if I don't get a miracle this time? We tell you all the time about how God answers prayers. I have seen lives lengthened. I have seen scans come back. I have seen reports that confound the doctors. It happens. We pray for those prayers here and we give him the glory. Let's keep praying for those.

But I have also seen prayers that weren't answered the way we begged for God to answer them. We have poured our hearts out and we have seen things that have happened that we just, God, that's not what we wanted. Why, why did it happen that way? I don't know. I don't know. Here's what I do know. If you come to God with a clean heart, a humble heart, and you pray, and it doesn't turn out the way you were just begging Him for, do not automatically assume, oh, I must not have said it the right way, I must not have had enough faith. Y'all, that kind of lie will eat its way through a broken heart like battery acid. You cannot assume, again, that there is a formula for these things. Even in the Gospels, Jesus doesn't heal everyone. Go back and read the Gospels and remember how much power He has. There's a place in John 5 where He walks into an area where there are a bunch of people in need of healing, and He heals one guy. In John 9, He heals one guy for the glory of God. How about Paul? Paul had serious game. Now, he's not Jesus, but even Paul, Paul raised somebody from the dead in the book of Acts. But if you read 1 Timothy 4, apparently, he couldn't heal a traveling companion named Trophimus. He's sick. His protege, Timothy, he just gives him advice on what to do with his ailing stomach. And in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul is asking God, begging God to take care of something, and God doesn't. It's a personal thing. Many people think it's a physical thing, and he didn't get the answer he wanted.

But what he got was Jesus saying to him, I will give you my grace. I'll move in closer than close. Y'all, I've seen that happen. Some of you know what I'm talking about. I can't quantify it. I can't even understand it from the outside looking in. But many of you know exactly what Paul is talking about, because Jesus said, I'll be your champion in this broken world. I'll be enough. I'll be enough. And Paul says, that's how I live. That's how I live with this answer. Now, there's a lot more to this, and we'll come back to it again and again and again. And hopefully, every time, we'll keep saying those words that frustrate you. But at least we're being honest. I don't know. I don't have all the answers. Can I explain some of the suffering that some of you have gone through? Can I explain? There are things that happen in our church. There are things happening in the life of our church right now. Take your breath away. Can I explain that suffering away? The last thing you need is a simplistic answer. I can't speak for God. I won't understand some of this until eternity. But here's what I have said, and I will continue to say. He's not finished with you. And what do I mean when I say that? There are deeper, richer, more rewarding chapters to come.

You see, I've said goodbye to family way too soon. You have too. Many of you. I've prayed for friends and loved ones, and I've watched them deal with a challenge that I can't imagine. I've watched families stand at a graveside and grieve because we grieve here. Please understand. We're not saying, oh yeah, don't worry about it. No, we grieve and we grieve openly. We mourn with those who mourn. We do all of that. But in that moment, even in the loss, even in the grief, we wrap our broken hearts like we reach out to God. God, please, please. And you know one of the things that he reminds us of? He's not finished. This chapter will close. This broken world chapter will close. And the next chapter is what we call the new creation. And we're going to talk about it at the end of this series. And we keep coming back to this verse. But I'm telling you, we're going to get there. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying. But guess what? Until then, we wait. Not passively, but we wait. So we do wrap our brokenness. We do wrap the last strand of us around the goodness and the character and the power of Jesus.

You see, I think he's going to make this happen. I think he is that good and that powerful that he can bring all of this to a conclusion that we are satisfied with. But in the meantime, I think he can intervene right now. So you know what that means? That means we pray and we keep praying. We don't stop praying. You remember last week, what did Angela say that Jesus told us? You pray and you keep praying. Some of you might remember she gave us her translation of Matthew 6. Well, there is something called the The GPONet, that's how they refer to it in institutions of higher learning. It's Greg's paraphrase of the New Angela Translation, because I can't remember all of her wisdom, but I can tell you what, I'll tell you what my takeaway was. What I heard Angela saying, as she told us what Jesus was saying is, y'all keep praying. Ask and seek and knock because God is that good and you keep coming back to him. I have seen healings, I have seen marriages come back from the edge, I have seen people find purpose in a life, I have seen teenagers who thought they were already, like everything was already over because of some mistake they made, and I've seen them refreshed and renewed. I've seen people walk through grief and know the hurt is always there in their memory, but God begins to heal them. I've seen this in so many different ways. I've seen prodigals come home. So what do we do now? Well, we're going to change the rooms up. So you're going to just start to see things in each of our rooms get a little more private now, and we don't have a mountain to come to, but I'm going to ask you to consider something that for some of you will be very natural and for others of you kind of freak you out. But in just a minute, we'll pray, there'll be music, you'll have a chance to sit where you are and to pray.

At some point you'll have a chance to just sneak out, and if you do, I understand that. As you do, you pray too. God, what am I supposed to take away from this one? But for some of you, it's going to be a moment to come here. Not because we're Jesus, not because the pastors and intercessors up here have some direct link, special link to heaven that you don't have. It's not that at all, please. But I'll just say it this way. It might've been a long time since you heard someone else say your name in prayer. Wouldn't it be great to just hear your name held before God in love? What is it that you need a miracle for? Where do you need healing in your life? The first miracle is forgiveness. Have you come to Jesus? You might be saying in just a second, I need to talk to somebody about that. Will you pray with me? Come on. For some of you, it's a broken heart. You've been dealing with a trauma. You've been dealing with something really, it's just so deep, that wound. And I'm not saying that you're going to walk away today with everything. I'm just saying, I want you to know that we come to God and He begins to heal us in profoundly visible ways. For some of you, the storm is real and you're in the middle of it. Maybe we just ask God to intervene miraculously. Maybe it is a physical healing. The Bible says we have not because we ask not. Maybe it's a broken relationship. Maybe it's a friendship that has just faded and you're just so sad about it. Maybe you feel in the coming minutes that when you get here, in fact, if you're an intercessor

now, if you're someone who is ready to pray, will you just come and I'm just going to ask you this. Will you just come and begin to pray for the rest of these people? And maybe you can just kneel here along the front. You won't have to kneel later if you want to stand and come to where you can. Some of you are going to want to come forward and pray for this world that we're in. You're going to pray for our leaders. You're going to pray for all sorts of things that are going on in this world. There are people here that need to come forward and say, will you pray for my family member who's just about ready to be deployed? You see, I can think of a bunch of different reasons that we would pray, but would you stand with me now? I just want you to hear something here and then I'll get out of the way. I'll go back to the very beginning of the story. The very first words we read in this story were people who were bringing their friends and laying them before Jesus so he could heal them. I'm absolutely convinced across all of our sites that there is somebody who is saying, I would go and I would ask for prayer, but you got to go with me and tell them that right now. It could be the other way around where you're feeling the prompting to go, hey, I'll go with you. Let's go pray. Or watch this. The person that you're praying for isn't even here. Let's pray for them. Let's bombard heaven for them right now. Let's hold them up before God. Let's lay them before Jesus and say, do what only you can do. I just think it's time. Let's pray.

time. So I'm going to ask you now, if you would, as we begin to pray, if you'd like prayer, if you'd like to come forward and pray. Last night, people were standing, kneeling. We'll take our time doing this. But Heavenly Father, we're asking now, please, we don't want to take this lightly. We believe you are at work in our midst, and we long to see you at work in our midst. Father, please now move. Holy Spirit, refresh and encourage. Keep our eyes on Jesus, but do a mighty thing now for your glory. It's your glory. It will always be your glory.