Sermon Transcript
We start a series on miracles, and if you got your Bible or your message note sheet, you might want to open it up this morning. We’re going to begin our series in the book of Exodus, in Exodus chapter 13, and we’re going to focus for the next several weeks, just the remainder of the summer, on Old Testament miracles where we really get a chance to learn something about God’s power and character and his love, the ways and creative ways God demonstrated life lessons that I think were meant to cement in the minds of children that were following Him and adults that were following Him that, you know, He intentionally wanted us to live in close relationship with Him and to grow to love who He is and follow Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so, that’s where we’re going in this series. We’re really looking forward to this. I’m especially looking forward to these different messages that we’re going to bring together from different Old Testament miracles.
I just encourage you to be here as much as you can the remainder of the summer for these Sundays as we take a look at these different miracles. The first miracle is here in Exodus 13 where God intervenes in a situation where the people really were on what could have been a trip of a lifetime. Think about that, a trip of a lifetime. It could have been, I said, had they enjoyed the trip more than they ended up enjoying the trip. And I got to thinking about this trip in light of many of the summer trips that I’m seeing many of you are taking this summer as I’ve been looking at Facebook and Instagram and other channels like that.
Some of you are posting pictures of places that you’ve gone and trips that you’ve been on and all these fun things that you’re doing. It looks like you’re having a great summer, and, you know, I’m right there with you. We’re hoping for a lot of fun this summer. Well, certainly, when you think about having fun, this trip that God was taking His children on the children of Israel on from Egypt to the Promised Land, from, you know, this land of slavery to a land of freedom, the land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey. You would think for sure this would be an amazing trip for these people, an amazing place that they could hardly wait to get to, kind of like, you know, a land that we would say would be better than Disneyland.
Now, many of you have heard of Disneyland, right? Okay, like all of us have heard of Disneyland. How many of you have been to Disneyland? Okay, yeah, here we go. All right, so we’re going to get this.
Disneyland was aptly named by its imaginer, its creator, its designer, Walt Disney. And Disneyland, of course, came into existence because Walt Disney had a dream. His dream was to create this amusement park where his cartoon characters could come to life and they can interact with the visitors. Of a park where the entire family could have fun together, unlike the stereotypical dirty, grimy American amusement parks that were part of the 1950s. Walt Disney wanted to create a park where parents and children could play together, they could have fun together, and so he envisioned these visitors traveling down a typical old-fashioned version of Main Street, USA on their way toward 4 distinct dreamlands where guests would be given the opportunity to temporarily escape the realities of daily life and enjoy themselves in Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland.
Well, as you know, the dream came true in 1955 so that today you can, you know, pack up your family and get a bunch of friends together and you can head down to Southern California for a price and you could spend an entire day or days there with 40,000 other people on that same day. That’s the average. And you can stroll down Main Street, USA your way to Adventureland, Frontierland, and now New Orleans Square, Critter Country, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Mickey’s Toontown, and now Star Wars Land. Surely, you put all the 9 lands together, a person should be able to have the time of their life. Now, you’d think the same thing would have happened for God’s children when he took them from Egypt, slavery, and to the Promised Land.
We know they were looking for better jobs. That job of slavery was something they wanted to be a part of their past. They were praying for a better life. So when it came time to go to the Promised Land, you think everybody would have been happy, especially after they saw and experienced all that God had in store for them. And really, the experiences began with a series of miracles.
You remember the miracles? They were called the 10 plagues, otherwise known in educational jargon as 10 audiovisual presentations. These presentations were a demonstration of the greatest God. He was proving that He was greater than all the gods that this place worshipped. They were polytheists.
They worshipped the god of anything and everything. And the great God came along and He said to Pharaoh, through Moses, let my people go. Now, Moses, if you know the story, wasn’t sure what was going to take place, but God was going to use these miracles to ultimately free his children from Egypt and begin a journey toward the Canaan land. For Pharaoh, if the people left, that would mean a loss of a huge, you know, job force. Because there are 2.5, 3.5 million of these people.
For God, it meant picking up the challenge of moving these people from one location to another. And with over 2 million people, if they were to walk out not in a single file, but if they were to walk out 40 abreast, we’re talking about the people in the back getting out of Egypt 10 hours later, 10 hours later. So, we’re talking about a long, long line. And you thought the line at Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge Millennial Falcon was long? That was nothing compared to this long.
And so God’s gonna move these people out of Egypt, and as he does, things really get interesting. In fact, it’s interesting how especially the people responded to all of this. If you were among the Type A’s in the crowd, you would have probably come to Moses and said, hey, listen, Moses, let’s just make sure this trip is short. So let’s find the shortcut. Let’s take the 11-day quick route out of Egypt, out of this land.
Let’s take the way through the land of the Philistines. Now, if you look at a map, you can see actually there are 2 primary routes out of Egypt. There was, as you can see, the dotted purple line up there, the way to the land of the Philistines, which was the shortcut. This would have been cut. This would have been the way that, you know, you would— if you were a cowboy, this would be the way you would go to drive your sheep.
But God had other plans. He wanted to lead this group of people like you would lead sheep. He wanted to lead them like a shepherd, and his planned route wasn’t to take the shortcut, but as you can see in the red line here, his plan was to take them through the wilderness outside of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and then over to Marah, and then the Sinai wilderness. In other words, God wasn’t planning to take the shortcut. He was planning to take the long cut.
And to make sure that they knew exactly what He wanted, He personally led them in a way that could be described as nothing short of miraculous. The miraculous way that God led them is the miracle we’re looking at today. So, in Exodus chapter 13, We have a first record of this miracle, Exodus 13, verses 21 and 22. It says, by day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.
Now, try to imagine this. I don’t think they could even imagine what God was going to do until they saw it with their own eyes. But God Himself, God Jehovah, Jehovah God, He appeared in a non-human form to lead His people from the land of slavery to the land of milk and honey. God’s appearance is what has been called God’s Shekinah glory. And God’s Shekinah glory is a miraculous, visible manifestation of the presence of God.
You know, one of the greatest manifestations, obviously, of the presence of God is in the New Testament, is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was a visible manifestation of God’s glory, of His presence. He came as a gift to the world. Well, in the same way, what you have here is a cloud and fire that were a gift to God’s people. So that they could unmistakably know that He was there with them, that He was present with His people, and He wanted to manifest Himself to them so that they would know Him in a personal way.
Now, you might ask, well, why did God do that? Why did He manifest His presence in that way? Why didn’t He just, you know, tell Moses the direction? There it is, you know, and go that way. And if he didn’t get it, then, you know, draw it out on a map for him or something like that, or come out with an early version of a GPS or something else, but why would he show up in a cloud and a pillar of fire?
Well, because it’s obvious when you look at the accounts that surround this that his plan was more than just to give them a new place. His plan was more than just to move them from one location to another. His plan was more than just to change their location. His plan was to change their lives. And so, it was His intention from the outset on this journey to bring them into a relationship with Him, a new personal vibrant relationship with Him.
He wanted them to know and experience His presence in new ways. He wanted them to know about His goodness and His mercy and His grace and His wisdom and His purposes and His plans. And his generosities, and he wanted them to know about his patience and his forgiveness. He wanted to turn a let’s just get there as fast as we can trip into an unforgettable journey of a lifetime. So there is more going on here than just moving from one location to another.
He wanted to change their lives forever. He wanted to teach them a couple things that I want to pull out this morning. Number one, He wanted to teach them to live with awareness. He wanted to teach them to live with awareness of God’s presence, that they needed to learn that. In fact, not only did they need to learn that, we need to learn that, don’t we?
We need to learn that one of the best things that can happen in our lives is that we would intentionally live in God’s presence, not apart from God’s presence, in God’s presence, not sort of close to God’s presence, in God’s presence, not sort of aware of God’s presence, but fully aware of God’s presence. Let me just stop there. Is that something, we ask ourselves, that we consciously bring to mind? Is that an ongoing thought in our minds? Right now, I am present in God’s presence.
It was a pretty easy thing for God’s children to see, to get the lesson. In fact, in Exodus 40:38, it says, so the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight— in the sight of all the house of Israel during all— not some, not a few— during all of their travels. God was present. He was right there in front of them day after day, year after year, for all to see. And you would think that the lesson of learning to live in the awareness of God’s presence it would have sunk in.
A while back, I met a couple who told me they met on a missions trip. They didn’t know each other before the trip started, and at the start of the trip, they really didn’t, you know, pay attention to each other. But as the trip kind of went along— it was a 2-month trip— as it went along, they began to notice each other more. They got to know each other quite well, and they began to even have feelings for each other, so that after the trip was over, they so loved being together that they decided they’re going to hang out together a lot. Even though they weren’t on this trip.
And after a while of hanging out together for a lot, months and a couple of years went by, that eventually led to marriage, which meant they were saying, we want to live in each other’s presence for life. Well, like a loving spouse or parent, God wanted to be present with his children and his children to live fully in his presence. They want— he wanted them to grow into a love relationship with him. And so what happened was actually this, what could have been an 11-day journey, turned out to be a much longer journey so that when Moses is summarizing their journey, the journey is over now. In the book of Deuteronomy, he’s recounting what God’s been doing and what God expects.
And in Deuteronomy 2:7, Moses says this to the people, the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey. Through this vast desert, these 40 years, these 40 years, the Lord your God has been with you. It took 40 years, not 11 days. It took 40 years, and there’s a lot more we can talk about, and we’ll come back to it sometime else.
But the point is, is that they had 40 years to fall in love with God, to fall in love with his presence, not so that they were living reluctantly with, oh, no, you’re here still? Are you kidding? When are you getting out of here? But they were glad for God’s presence.
Now, if only that was the state of their mind all the time. But we know as we look in the Scriptures that there were times where they abandoned God on this journey. In fact, Nehemiah, reflecting back on those years, said this, because of your great compassion, speaking about God first, You did not abandon them in the desert. You could have, but you didn’t. By day the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take.
Why didn’t God abandon them?
He could have said, you know, I’ve had it with you people. You’re messed up. This trip’s taking too long. It should have only taken 11 days. It’s taken longer than that.
I mean, you’re a waste of my time. I mean, you really don’t want to have me as your leader anyway. You constantly are moaning and complaining. It’s obvious that you think you can make a better life for yourself than the life that I’m leading you to. I mean, that’s frequently what was going on in their midst is that they just didn’t really want to be with God.
And even during that time, God didn’t abandon them. And Nehemiah actually went on to say this, they refused to listen and they failed to remember the miracles You performed among them, Nehemiah 9:17. God did miracle after miracle, just like He continues to do even in this day. He showed them His Shekinah glory, His visual presence, and that should have impacted their relationship with their God and their lives forever. But you know what happened?
This, verse 17, the last part, Nehemiah 9:17, they became stiff-necked, and in their rebellion they appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But then Nehemiah says, but you, are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore, you did not desert them. Why didn’t God abandon them? Why, when they abandoned God, did they not— did God not abandon them?
The answer is because God daily wanted to continue to demonstrate His presence to them, and His presence to them was reflected in His compassion and His grace and His Abounding in love. I mean, what a picture this is. He loved them and he wanted a vibrant relationship with them now and forever. And so Exodus 13:22 tells us, neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people. God was just there for them to see and to grow into a relationship with.
And, you know, I think He wants the same thing from us, doesn’t He? He wants us to recognize His presence. He wants us to bask in His presence, to live in His presence.
You know, I’ve come to have a different perspective on mothers-in-law than I used to have when I was younger, and part of it was because I heard joke after joke about mothers-in-law, you know, and how bad of a life a mother-in-law can make it for you. So forth and so on. And so you hear these people saying, ditch your mother-in-law and send her away as soon as possible, and stuff like that. I know, I know that a mother-in-law can be miserable for some families, but now I live with a mother-in-law. I do.
I have my wife who’s a mother-in-law, and you know what? I think they’re pretty cool. I really do. And so do our kids. They love having Bernice around so much that they call her up all the time.
They invite her over to help with the kids and help with the animals and sort of like take over the place. In fact, she’s this weekend over in Merced caring for some of our grandchildren. They love her presence. They welcome her presence. They long for her presence.
Well, that’s the picture here. God longs for a relationship with us where we welcome him, where we love being in his presence, where we want to be with him in his presence. We joyfully live with an awareness of his presence. So that’s one of the life lessons that God was seeking to communicate to his people through a theophany, it’s called. A theophany is a visual representation of God’s presence.
In the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, you have a theophany, or you have a demonstration of the presence of God, the visible representation of that. God is still present. He may not show up in the same way, but he’s still present. In fact, do you remember God saying through his word, I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you? You ever call that to mind?
You ever call to mind Psalm 46:1, that God is an ever-present help in times of trouble? I think that’s something we need to call to mind all the time, to be reminded that the Lord is here right now, and that can change how we’re viewing our circumstances, give us a different perspective. And you remember Jesus, as a final reminder before ascending back to the Father, he said, Lo, I am with you always. Now, that’s not a statement against flying, you know, like, I’m only with you low, not high. No, don’t get that wrong.
Lo calls out special attention where Jesus is emphatically saying, I myself am with you right now. My presence, my power, my love, my words, my will. I am with you right now. Even though I am not with you in person, I am with you. Do you recognize that?
Do you want that kind of relationship with Jesus? And that’s not all. Jesus said that when he left, He was going to send back, and he did, the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit would come back to live within us. And according to Jesus, it would be better to have the Holy Spirit in us than it would be to have Jesus next to us.
In fact, Jesus said, John 16:7, it would be to our advantage, our advantage, to have the Holy Spirit with us constantly comforting and counseling and helping And giving us the power that we need and much, much more. So all of that is to say, if we wake up to God’s presence, then we wake up to the fact that God the Father is here, and Jesus, God the Son, is here, and God the Holy Spirit is with us. In other words, we are in the best place that we could be in, even if we’re in the midst of a desert experience. In fact, you may remember the patriarch Jacob, in the midst of a desert experience, woke up and he said, surely the Lord is in this place. And perhaps that’s what we need.
Maybe we need to wake up in the situation that we find ourselves in, in life, to the fact that the Lord is in this place that will bring a whole new awareness. And a whole different perspective on the situations that we are in right now. Well, there’s a second matter just to bring into focus in this life lesson that’s found here in Exodus chapter 13, one that the Lord wanted His children to come back to, one that He wants us to learn something from. It’s actually recounted by Moses in the book of Numbers, so I want to read from that little passage where in Numbers chapter 9, verses 17 and 18, it just simply focuses on the cloud. Not so much the pillar of fire, but the cloud.
And it says, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tent, the Israelites set out, and whenever the cloud settled, the Israelites encamped. At the Lord’s command the Israelites set out; at his command they encamped. As long as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle, they remained in the camp. Now, the text goes on. If you have a Bible open there, you could read along.
And it says, and when the cloud remained over the tabernacle a long time, the Israelites obeyed the Lord’s order and did not set out. And sometimes the cloud was over the tabernacle only a few days. At the Lord’s command they would encamp, and then at his command they would set out. Sometimes the cloud stayed only from evening till morning, and when it lifted in the morning they set out, whether by day or by night. Whenever the cloud lifted, they set out.
So, what you have here is a picture of uncertainty. They’re not sure when Jesus or God is going to move, when the cloud’s going to move. But there’s a readiness on their part to move whenever the cloud moves. In fact, in Exodus 40:36-37, it says, in all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out. But if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the day it lifted.
Here’s the lesson: readiness. Live with readiness. Not only live with awareness, but live with readiness. Readiness for what? Readiness to do God’s will.
Whenever God wants something done, live with the readiness to do it at that moment in time. Adjust your life, adjust your schedule, adjust your plans, adjust your purposes, adjust your timing. Be ready to do whatever God wants whenever God wants. Now, is that easy for us? The answer to this is no, because we have a schedule, and what we would like is we’d like God to make adjustments to our schedule.
What we see in this particular situation is that God’s people are willing to make adjustments to his schedule. So if he was not setting out, they were not setting out. And this, of course, was one of those good times where they didn’t have all losses, you know, in the relationship with God. There were many wins where they instinctively did and naturally did and even supernaturally, no doubt, what it was that God wanted. And really, an expression of love to God from anybody who says that they love God will be to naturally and instinctively follow him so that when he sets out, we set out, and when he doesn’t set out, we don’t set out.
You say, well, it’s hard for me to do that because I don’t have a cloud. You know, if God would just give me a cloud, or if God would give me like a fire or something like that, then I’d set out. But think about that for a minute. Has God given us anything, any kind of indicators that would help us know when to set out and when to stay? What does He work through?
I was reading recently an article that was in the Los Altos Town Crier that told the story of the author Bill Myers, whose books are, by the way, found on bookshelves of many elementary schoolchildren. And in fact, his animated series McGee: The Adventures of McGee and Me lined the shelves of Los Altos Christian School. They also lined the shelves of Los Altos Library. He’s had more than 100 kid, teen, and adult books. He’s traveled the world.
He’s appeared on Good Morning America, ABC Nightly News. Anyway, Bill was speaking at a recent Mount Hermon Christian Writers’ Conference. And he was recounting an important time in his life where he had a friend who said to him, you know what? I’ll make you a bet. He said, I’ll bet you that from this moment on, if you promise to say yes to God always through your life, your life will be anything but boring.
If you’ll say yes to God whenever He calls you to do something, if you’ll say yes to God, your life will be anything but boring, this friend said. Bill took him up on the bet, and he’s been living with that awareness since then. And he said in this interview that he gave, God has taken him on an unexpected journey. For instance, he said, it began when I was choosing my career. I thought I was going to be a dentist, but God didn’t take me into dentistry.
In fact, early on, he led me into film. I never imagined that I would end up in film over in Italy, but that’s what happened. He said, when I was in college, the writing class I had in college, I did terrible in. I got a C in this class. And yet, he’s gone on to write.
He’s written for television series. He’s directed. He teaches. He writes books and all of— so, it’s really been anything but boring. And when asked, well, what does a say yes look like?
What does that look like in your life? And Bill said, well, you know, I kind of liken it to a ship who’s coming into a treacherous harbor, and as they come into this harbor, they look for certain lights, like 3 lights. I know that in Italy there are harbors there that they line up their navigation with 3 lights as they come into the harbor. And Bill said, so I kind of liken safe passage and saying yes to God to lining up with 3 lights, and those lights are God’s Word, the Holy Spirit, and godly counsel. And so, I’ve tried throughout my life to be aware of what does the Word of God teach?
Am I doing what is in line with the Word of God? Am I paying attention to the nudgings and the promptings and the leadings of the Holy Spirit? And am I receiving wise counsel from other people that are seeking to live a life that’s pleasing to the Lord? In other words, what I hear Bill saying is he’s seeking to live with an awareness of God’s presence, and he’s seeking to live with a readiness, a readiness to do whatever it is God wants. See, he recognizes that God is the ultimate guide.
He’s the ultimate guide. And even when a trip seems like it’s just going on and on and on, and you want to say, God, I don’t get this. I mean, why is this taking so long? Or when it seems like He’s leading you in the wrong direction and you want to say, God, I don’t— I think you lost track here. This can’t be right, is it?
I have a friend who just got back from a Holy Land tour. He’s been several times before, but he said to me, Dave, this one was different. He said, yeah, we went to the same places. I love going to those places. They’re filled with meaning for me, but this one was extra special.
And I said, why? He said, because of the guide. The guide, he said, this guide, he just had so much knowledge and wisdom and facts to share. The stories he told, the manner that he led, the way he cared and he listened to the people. He really wanted to tune in to make the best experience possible for them.
His timing was spot on. He even took us away from the crowds instead of where the crowds were. We still got to see those places, but we went back at other uncrowded times. He knew when to linger and he knew also When to make a visit brief. And he said, Dave, you got to go to the Holy Lands, and when you go, you got to make sure you got this guide.
I’m going to try to go back every year. I’m going to try to have the guide every time. Now, if you’re on a trip like that, you’re making adjustments to the guide. You’re not the person trying to set the agenda. You want to make adjustments to the guide, and that’s the picture here.
It’s living with the readiness to adjust to God’s plan. To God’s timing. I still kick myself for the one-time opportunity that I had at Hume Lake to take a trip of a lifetime around the lake with Bob Vernon. I don’t know if you know the name Bob Vernon, but Bob Vernon used to be the LAPD Assistant Chief of Police. He just is an incredible person, his character spotless, devoted Christ follower.
The books that he’s He’s written, I’ve read, I’ve loved every minute of them. He’s a person that walks with character in whatever work he does. So here I was, I was at Hume Lake, and they invited people to take a hike with Bob Vernon. I said, I want to do that. Only 5 to 7 people showed up, and so it was just a small group.
It was just going to be a small group of us hanging out together with Bob Vernon leading a nature hike around Hume Lake. Now, what I didn’t know was that Bob Vernon was planning a nature stroll, a nature crawl around the lake. He wasn’t planning a lake blitz. He wasn’t planning a move it, move it, move it kind of, you know, exercise, invigorate your body kind of, you know, walk around the lake. Bob’s intent was something different than I had in my mind.
He was all about the spiritual, the emotional, the relational things that could happen on this hike. He wanted to take in all of the sights of God’s creation. He would stop and he wanted to listen for what the Lord wanted to say to us through nature, read some Scripture out there together. And so once I got a drift of that, you know what I did? My lion kicked in.
That’s what happened. My lion kicked in, my driver. My high, whatever. Anyway, that kicked in and I took off. I wanted it to be my way, me, myself, and I. I wanted my own hike.
I wanted to do my own thing. And so I left this group of 5 to 7 people, and when I left them, I missed out on learning from a man who was much farther along in the spiritual journey than I may ever be, a godly man who I could have learned a lot from. What was I thinking? I think it could be that the heavenly host in heaven looked down at the Israelites, and when he saw them fighting the way God was leading or deviating from the way God is leading, I have this feeling that the heavenly host were saying, what are you thinking? Are you kidding?
And I kind of get the sense that God sometimes perhaps looks down at us and says, what are you thinking? Or the heavenly host are looking down and wondering, are you kidding us? You can’t get with God’s plan? I mean, He’s given you a book. And today there are so many people deviating from the book.
Well, I can do it better. Hey, friends, you can’t.
This isn’t a time to adjust the Scriptures. This is a time to trust the Scriptures. It truly is in our culture. So that if you know the revealed will of God and you’re completely or intentionally disobeying the will of God, you’re missing it.
The only way for you to ultimately know God’s unrevealed will is to pay attention to His revealed will. It’s found in the Scriptures.
So willingly say, hey, Lord, if that’s what You want, I want it too. And so pay attention to the work of the Holy Spirit. Oftentimes the Holy Spirit will work in our lives in such a way that he will create disequilibrium. That’s not a sign of his will. It could be, but oftentimes a sign of his will is peace.
If you don’t have peace about moving forward with something, it’s probably an indication that you’re moving in the opposite direction than the Holy Spirit wants you to lead or follow. John Stott, maybe you’ve heard that name. John Stott, who died in 2011, was an amazing pastor, teacher, evangelist, author. He wrote over 50 books. Great example.
He had a habit at the beginning of every day. He would begin the day with a morning prayer, and this morning prayer reminded him every day of God’s presence and his desire to live that day in God’s presence. So, John Stott would pray this way. Heavenly Father, at the beginning of the day, Heavenly Father, I pray this day that I may live in Your presence and please You more and more. And Holy Spirit— I mean, Jesus, then he’d add Jesus.
And Lord Jesus, I pray this day that I may take up my cross and follow You. And Holy Spirit, I pray this day that You will fill me with Yourself and You will cause Your fruit fruit to ripen in my life so that there might be more love and more joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. Now, that sounds to me like somebody who’s saying, I want to live every day with an awareness of God’s presence, and I want to live every day with a readiness to do God’s will, whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it.
So this summer we’re going to talk about miracles. Miracles, you’ll see, happened for a reason. And one of the reasons could be that God wants to teach even us something so that we learn to see and live with an awareness of God’s presence. Quite frankly, There is no better place to live than in the presence of God. Wouldn’t you agree?
Let’s pray. Father, thanks that we can begin this study this morning. We’re really excited about what you’re going to teach us. We recognize that your presence begins in a relationship with you, and you’ve made the relationship possible through Jesus Christ. So our first prayer would be that if there’s anybody here that’s not yet in your family, they’ve not yet received the gift of life that’s found in Jesus Christ, that they would say yes to this gift.
They would receive the gift of life. They would confess with their mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that you raised Christ from the dead and be saved. That they would want to follow your lordship, your leading, that they would want to do what it is that you desire. And God, for each one of us who’ve taken that step of salvation, and because of it we’ve been adopted into your family, then Lord, help us live as children that demonstrate our love for you by living in your presence.
Whatever that means right now, whether it means comfort in this time of grief or loss or pain, suffering, or if it means an infusion of hope, whatever it is that we need, Lord, may we find in your presence the grace to push on, to see life from your perspective and to walk with you daily in ways that reflect the love of Jesus Christ to you and to those we come in contact with. For we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
