Desperate For A Miracle

[00:00:03] Welcome to the Pursuing Faith Podcast where we explore questions of faith, doubt and life.

[00:00:11] I am your host, Dominic Done.

[00:00:14] One day, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer

[00:00:27] at three in the afternoon, and a man who was lame from birth

[00:00:32] was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts.

[00:00:40] And when he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money.

[00:00:45] Like all great artists, Peter paints this story with stark contrasts.

[00:00:58] Firstly, we see here a man who for years was suffering and unable to walk.

[00:01:06] Now keep in mind that Peter would become one of the leaders of the early church,

[00:01:10] but first he went through his own season of stark contrasts.

[00:01:14] And so too Luke, who is telling this story, he understood some of the pain that was represented in this moment.

[00:01:22] Luke, as we talked about a few weeks ago, he was a physician.

[00:01:26] And all throughout the book of Acts, he uses medical terminology to describe some of the miracles and the events that were taking place.

[00:01:35] And we know from history that he's using a term here that was used to describe a severe injury either in this man's feet or his ankles.

[00:01:45] And we don't know the cause of it.

[00:01:47] It says that he was born this way.

[00:01:49] But we do know for years he had been living with intense pain, not just emotionally and physically, but spiritually and culturally as well.

[00:01:59] Because 2,000 years ago having a disability like this meant it would be impossible to work.

[00:02:07] It would have been really difficult for him to marry because he wouldn't have been able to support a family.

[00:02:13] He would have been excluded from many of the social gatherings back then and dependent on others just to survive.

[00:02:23] Luke then tells us that he was begging at the temple gate called Beautiful.

[00:02:30] Now there's some interesting controversy around this because if you go to Jerusalem, I was actually there a few years ago,

[00:02:37] and there is no gate by the name Beautiful.

[00:02:40] There's lots of other gates. Jerusalem is a walled city, and they have these gates that have been there for many, many years,

[00:02:47] but there's none called Beautiful. What's he referring to?

[00:02:50] Well some say that Luke is simply saying it was a beautiful gate. He liked how it looked.

[00:02:57] Others say, no, no, no, this is the Shushan Gate.

[00:03:01] The Shushan Gate is part of the Christian tradition that goes back to the 5th century or so.

[00:03:06] And then you have others like Josephus who says, no, this was the Nicanor Gate.

[00:03:13] And the Nicanor Gate was really described as the most extravagant.

[00:03:18] And so maybe this is a reference to some of the wealth that was represented.

[00:03:22] Either way, Luke is painting a picture of contrasts.

[00:03:28] We see here beauty, community, a temple, worship.

[00:03:36] And on the other hand, a broken, hurting man who was living on the margins and desperate for a miracle.

[00:03:45] It's in that space of contrast that a miracle was about to take place.

[00:03:51] As the American novelist Cormac McCarthy wrote,

[00:03:54] between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting.

[00:03:59] And Peter looked at him, verse 4, as did John.

[00:04:03] And Peter said, look at us!

[00:04:05] And so the man gave them his attention expecting to get something from them.

[00:04:10] And Peter said, silver or gold I don't have, but what I do have,

[00:04:15] I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth Walk.

[00:04:20] And taking him by the right hand, he helped him up.

[00:04:23] And instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong.

[00:04:27] He jumped to his feet and began to walk.

[00:04:31] Now this is the very first miracle in the book of Acts.

[00:04:36] And it begins with a scene that was really not uncommon in ancient world,

[00:04:41] nor is it uncommon in our day.

[00:04:43] In fact, we probably experience this driving in here to church today,

[00:04:47] where you see a man on the streets, he's calling out for money.

[00:04:52] And Peter then stops and rather than ignoring him like most people would do,

[00:04:57] he says, hey, silver and gold I do not have,

[00:05:01] because I only carry credit cards, I'm off the hook.

[00:05:04] Right?

[00:05:05] I don't have it, but what I do have, he says, I give to you.

[00:05:10] Now why would he say silver and gold I don't have?

[00:05:12] Well, we touched on this last week.

[00:05:14] The reason is because the early church, every single Sunday,

[00:05:18] they brought their silver and gold.

[00:05:20] They brought their resources, 1 Corinthians 16.

[00:05:23] And it says they would tie, they would give,

[00:05:25] and then they would take that money and redistribute it

[00:05:28] to those in their community who had need

[00:05:31] and to their cities and for mission.

[00:05:34] The early church was built on a foundation of giving and generosity.

[00:05:40] Now here's the sad truth of church history when you look at it,

[00:05:45] is that that wasn't always the case.

[00:05:48] Certainly in the early church, very, very generous.

[00:05:51] And people like Tom Holland, not the actor, the historian based in England.

[00:05:54] Tom Holland's written a book on this recently and other historians.

[00:05:58] But then when you fast forward to the fourth century or the fifth century,

[00:06:03] you find that in so many ways politics became enmeshed with the church

[00:06:08] and the byproduct of that was essentially corruption,

[00:06:12] definitely financial corruption.

[00:06:14] One example is in the 12th century of this brilliant theologian,

[00:06:18] a thinker named Thomas Aquinas, he probably heard his name.

[00:06:21] Fascinating guy.

[00:06:23] And he went to go visit Pope Innocent II.

[00:06:27] And Pope Innocent II lived in this lavish, ornate, beautiful building

[00:06:32] and he walks in, it's just impeccably decorated.

[00:06:36] And Pope Innocent II is sitting there counting this huge pile of cash.

[00:06:42] And Thomas Aquinas walks into the room, this theologian,

[00:06:45] he sees him there with all this money.

[00:06:47] And Pope Innocent says sarcastically to Thomas Aquinas,

[00:06:51] he says, well we don't have to say silver and gold we don't have anymore.

[00:06:58] And Thomas Aquinas said back to him, true.

[00:07:01] But neither can you say in the name of Jesus rise up and walk.

[00:07:07] And it's true that throughout history, whenever the church gets away from generosity

[00:07:15] it loses effectiveness and power, but whenever the church is intentional

[00:07:20] with its giving the impact is exponential.

[00:07:24] And that's what's happening here.

[00:07:26] Peter looked at this guy and he's like, in the name of Jesus

[00:07:30] I want you to rise up and walk.

[00:07:33] And this man instantly was completely healed.

[00:07:38] What I love about this story many of you have read it is his reaction to the miracle.

[00:07:44] Verse 8, so here's the guy, he's healed and he went with them into the temple court.

[00:07:49] So essentially he's going to church walking and jumping.

[00:07:53] Some translations say leaping and praising God.

[00:07:57] And when all the people saw him walking and praising God, just imagine him

[00:08:02] skipping into church.

[00:08:04] He's rejoicing, he's so much joy and thankfulness in his heart.

[00:08:09] And they recognize him it says verse 10 as the same man.

[00:08:13] Hey aren't you the guy who used to sit begging at the temple gate called beautiful?

[00:08:18] And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

[00:08:23] Sometimes life gives us the gift of joy.

[00:08:27] You know those moments when you're just overcome by gratitude

[00:08:32] or you're mastered by the sheer surge of wonder.

[00:08:37] You think of the joy in a groom's eye when he sees his bride

[00:08:42] walking down the aisle toward him.

[00:08:45] Or the joy of a mother who is holding her newborn child

[00:08:51] for the very first time.

[00:08:53] Or as we saw here a couple weeks ago, the joy of someone being baptized

[00:08:58] and pulled out of the water and their arms go up like this.

[00:09:03] Or the joy of the moment you hear from a person that you've been praying for

[00:09:09] for years.

[00:09:11] In those miracle moments you can't help but laugh or cry or dance.

[00:09:18] That was this man's story.

[00:09:21] For the very first time he could walk.

[00:09:24] For the very first time the pain that wracked his body was gone

[00:09:28] and he went into the temple walking and leaping and rejoicing

[00:09:32] and praising God and this is the first miracle of the book of Acts.

[00:09:37] But it's not the last.

[00:09:39] In fact, Acts records for us 31 different miracles

[00:09:43] that take place over the course of 30 years.

[00:09:47] I'm curious because I'm wondering how many of you guys have ever experienced

[00:09:51] what you would say is a miracle.

[00:09:53] Maybe financially you'd say, man, that was a miracle.

[00:09:56] Or a relationship there was a breakthrough.

[00:09:58] Or maybe physical or emotional.

[00:10:00] How many of you show hands have experienced a miracle at some point in your life?

[00:10:03] Okay look around.

[00:10:05] What we're experiencing here, majority of us would say,

[00:10:08] yeah, at certain points in my life I've seen the miraculous.

[00:10:13] We walk out through the doors of the church back into our city,

[00:10:16] back into culture in 2024.

[00:10:19] Our experience, what we would say is true,

[00:10:22] is not shared by both people in a post-Christian culture.

[00:10:28] We live in a day and age where even believing in miracles

[00:10:32] is considered irrational.

[00:10:34] We all know people who struggle with the Bible

[00:10:36] because they think the Christian stories are implausible.

[00:10:41] That miracles are unscientific.

[00:10:44] This morning I put on the daily.

[00:10:47] Maybe you've heard that it's a New York Times podcast,

[00:10:50] comes out every day and they talk about things that are happening in our world

[00:10:53] and our culture.

[00:10:55] And the very first thing you heard on the daily today was

[00:10:57] this podcast is funded by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

[00:11:03] And in this ad they then go on to kind of berate people who believe in God,

[00:11:08] who believe in the supernatural.

[00:11:10] And I wasn't really surprised by that because that is very much the culture

[00:11:15] that we swim in right now.

[00:11:17] Nor is that kind of thinking new.

[00:11:20] In fact, this goes back to, you could go to the Enlightenment

[00:11:23] and you have Spinoza, Voltaire, David Hume, Thomas Paine,

[00:11:27] who all said that miracles are impossible

[00:11:31] because they violate the laws of nature.

[00:11:35] Or Richard Dawkins, who recently called miracles, quote,

[00:11:39] meaningless coincidences.

[00:11:42] And what's happened is that that kind of thinking towards the miraculous

[00:11:46] has really shaped how many people read Scripture.

[00:11:51] People now look at the Bible and they'll be like,

[00:11:53] well maybe it's a book on ethics, maybe it's a book on morality,

[00:11:58] but it's not really a book that we can take literally.

[00:12:02] And people tend to dismiss the Bible when it comes to the miraculous

[00:12:06] and certainly stories like here in Acts 3.

[00:12:09] Now here's the fascinating truth is that that hard naturalism

[00:12:15] is actually getting a bit of pushback, ironically from the world of science.

[00:12:23] Because what scientific discoveries,

[00:12:25] that's why I love looking at the world of science

[00:12:27] and what physicists are discovering or biologists are discovering

[00:12:30] because what we're learning about the universe

[00:12:34] is whether it's quantum mechanics or chaos theory

[00:12:37] or dark energy or dark matter, possible universes,

[00:12:40] we're finding that unpredictability lies at the heart of reality

[00:12:45] that maybe natural laws aren't as ironclad as we thought.

[00:12:49] It's a story of a convention of scientists who are getting together

[00:12:53] and many of them were atheists and this group got together

[00:12:56] like you know what, we need to pass a resolution

[00:12:58] that we don't need God anymore.

[00:13:00] Like yeah, we don't need God.

[00:13:02] We've come up with all these amazing scientific discoveries.

[00:13:06] We don't need Him.

[00:13:07] And so they said, okay, we need to elect one person who's going to go tell God this.

[00:13:12] And so I chose one guy, we only, tell God we don't need Him anymore.

[00:13:16] He's like, okay, I'll do it.

[00:13:18] The scientist then walks up to God and he's like,

[00:13:20] God, we've decided we no longer need You.

[00:13:22] We've come to a point where we can clone people.

[00:13:25] We have AI, we have Apple Vision Pro.

[00:13:28] So we can do all these miraculous things, so get lost, right?

[00:13:32] We don't need You as an explanation for reality.

[00:13:35] And God's listening very patiently to him.

[00:13:38] And when he was all done, God said, well,

[00:13:40] instead of me just leaving instantly,

[00:13:42] why don't we just have a conversation here?

[00:13:44] Let's have a man-making contest

[00:13:49] to which the scientist is like, sure, we can do that.

[00:13:52] We can clone people.

[00:13:53] No big deal.

[00:13:54] And God's like, well, here's the deal.

[00:13:55] Here's the catch.

[00:13:56] I want you to do it like I did back in the old days with Adam.

[00:14:00] And the scientist's like, sure, we can even do that.

[00:14:02] And the scientist reached down and he grabs some dirt

[00:14:05] and God says, uh-uh, get your own dirt.

[00:14:09] And it's interesting how much culture right now

[00:14:13] is realizing that life without God

[00:14:18] in some ways it leaves all kinds of questions

[00:14:22] and discoveries in the scientific world

[00:14:25] are creating even the concept of perhaps there is room

[00:14:30] for the miraculous.

[00:14:32] A world without God is insufficient to explain the miracle of life.

[00:14:38] But a world with God means that not only are miracles possible,

[00:14:42] they also express God's dream and heart for this world.

[00:14:46] So what I want to do in the next 15 minutes or so,

[00:14:49] I want to just share with you three thoughts on miracles.

[00:14:53] What are they?

[00:14:55] How do we understand them?

[00:14:57] How does it engage and intersect with our life?

[00:15:00] Number one, miracles reveal who God is.

[00:15:06] Miracles reveal who God is.

[00:15:08] Notice verse six.

[00:15:09] Peter said to the guy, hey, I don't have silver or gold,

[00:15:12] but here's what I do have.

[00:15:16] In the name of Jesus,

[00:15:20] I want you to rise up and walk.

[00:15:23] Peter, he doesn't take credit for the miracle himself.

[00:15:28] Instead, he points to the name of Jesus as the source of power.

[00:15:34] Now if you're new to church, if you're new to Christianity,

[00:15:36] you may have wondered why do Christians always pray

[00:15:40] in the name of Jesus?

[00:15:43] What is that? Some kind of mantra or whatever?

[00:15:45] No, in the ancient world a person's name,

[00:15:48] and today too it's synonymous with authority.

[00:15:52] Back then if a law was signed and it has Caesar's name at the bottom,

[00:15:56] it meant that law carried weight of his power,

[00:16:00] his authority when Peter says in the name of Jesus,

[00:16:04] it's his way of saying what's happening here is because of him

[00:16:08] and it's showing us, it's revealing us that he is Messiah,

[00:16:12] that he is king of kings and Lord of lords.

[00:16:16] This miracle is confirmation and evidence of who Jesus is.

[00:16:21] Number two, miracles are a signpost to new creation.

[00:16:29] I love how it describes it in verse 8 when it says he went into church

[00:16:36] walking, jumping, leaping and praising God.

[00:16:41] You know this word for jump or leap?

[00:16:43] It's an interesting original word.

[00:16:45] It's found one other place in Scripture in the Hebrew version of the same word.

[00:16:50] It's found in Isaiah chapter 35.

[00:16:53] For those who like to go deeper in this, oh it's so fascinating.

[00:16:56] This is actually a prophecy of Acts 3.

[00:16:59] Isaiah is talking about the day when Messiah would come

[00:17:03] and he says here are the things that are going to take place.

[00:17:06] Say to those with fearful hearts, be strong, do not fear, your God will come.

[00:17:12] He will come to save you.

[00:17:14] Then will the eyes of the blind be open and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

[00:17:18] Then, here it is, will the lame, same word, leap like a deer.

[00:17:25] And the mute tongues shout for joy.

[00:17:28] Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

[00:17:35] Isaiah 35, and I wish we had a ton of time on this.

[00:17:38] It's this beautiful prophetic chapter that describes what will happen

[00:17:42] when Messiah returns, that in the age to come all things will be restored.

[00:17:49] Creation will be healed.

[00:17:51] The injured and outcast will be embraced.

[00:17:55] No more suffering or disease or pain.

[00:17:59] God's kingdom will rule over the earth and the lame will leap like a deer.

[00:18:07] Acts chapter 3 is a fulfillment of Isaiah 35.

[00:18:11] It's Luke's way of saying signs of God's kingdom are breaking out.

[00:18:16] The spirit of God is at work and this man's healing is pointing us toward the day

[00:18:23] when all creation will be healed.

[00:18:26] It's pointing forward, but it's also pointing backwards.

[00:18:33] Because in Genesis chapter 1 what we find is that God's heart from the very beginning

[00:18:39] is a world that is healed.

[00:18:42] Sometimes we will hear people saying things like,

[00:18:45] well I can't believe in miracles because miracles are a suspension of the natural order.

[00:18:53] But if you have a biblical worldview, miracles are a restoration of the natural order.

[00:19:01] What is a miracle?

[00:19:03] It's simply a return to the way that God originally intended things to be.

[00:19:09] Jürgen Moltmann, the theologian, he said,

[00:19:12] when Jesus expels demons and heals the sick,

[00:19:15] he is driving out of creation the powers of destruction

[00:19:19] and his healing and restoring created beings who are hurt and sick.

[00:19:24] The lordship of God to which the healings witness restores sick creation to health,

[00:19:29] His healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world.

[00:19:33] They are the only truly natural thing in a world that is unnatural.

[00:19:52] You know for so many years this story of Acts 3 has meant a ton to me personally.

[00:19:59] Some of you know this when I first graduated high school,

[00:20:02] so 18 years old, this was like four or five years ago.

[00:20:06] I moved down to Mexico and I lived down in Mexico for a year

[00:20:11] and it's a place I go back to frequently now.

[00:20:14] But I lived there for a year right after high school.

[00:20:16] It was an orphanage that was caring for children with special needs.

[00:20:22] And these are kids who were rejected by many cases their homes,

[00:20:27] some of their own parents, many had gone through abuse,

[00:20:31] severe physical problems.

[00:20:36] And they were embraced by this orphanage.

[00:20:39] It's really the only place in that area that opened its doors wide

[00:20:44] to find healing and care and love.

[00:20:49] And my job that year volunteering there was to care for a young man named Ricky.

[00:20:55] Ricky had severe cerebral palsy.

[00:20:58] He couldn't walk, couldn't drink, couldn't talk on his, really without,

[00:21:03] unless he knew him and his story.

[00:21:06] He had certain ways of describing things through sounds,

[00:21:09] but he couldn't speak in the normal way.

[00:21:15] And at first caring for him was really, really challenging

[00:21:19] because I'm a big learning curve.

[00:21:21] I'm trying to understand him, his needs.

[00:21:24] But over the course of that year, it became the highlight of my life.

[00:21:30] And he taught me so much about God, about faith, about patience, hope, joy.

[00:21:41] And looking back at that, I would say that year,

[00:21:46] I learned more from that experience from him

[00:21:50] than any book, any degree, any university.

[00:21:54] That shaped me at the deepest level.

[00:21:59] I go from there fast forward a few years and I'm living in Oregon at the time.

[00:22:05] And one night I had this dream.

[00:22:09] Now let me just preface it by saying, I'm not a dream guy,

[00:22:12] maybe some of you are, but I'm not.

[00:22:14] I've had two dreams, I think my entire life that actually means something.

[00:22:19] Most of them are really bizarre.

[00:22:21] I had one a few days ago where I was dressed up in a squid outfit

[00:22:27] as a giant squid hiking in the Himalayas.

[00:22:30] So if any of you have an interpretation for that dream,

[00:22:33] I would love to know.

[00:22:34] See me afterwards.

[00:22:36] But most of my dreams are bizarre.

[00:22:38] But this one actually meant something.

[00:22:41] I had this dream where I was holding Ricky and something was wrong.

[00:22:48] And I'm rushing him to this hospital.

[00:22:51] And I just knew my dream like, oh, he's really sick.

[00:22:55] He's possibly dying.

[00:22:56] I'm trying to get him to the hospital.

[00:22:58] I was having a hard time.

[00:23:01] And then suddenly, you know, dreams can change.

[00:23:05] And it shifted to this beautiful scene of these rolling hills.

[00:23:12] Kind of look like Sonoma County, beautiful green hills.

[00:23:16] And I saw on one of the hills Ricky.

[00:23:21] But in my dream he was dancing, jumping.

[00:23:26] His arms were lifted.

[00:23:29] And he was worshiping God.

[00:23:31] It was so vivid.

[00:23:33] And I woke up.

[00:23:34] I'm like, whoa, what was that?

[00:23:38] A few days later, I get a call from one of the staff people

[00:23:41] who were working at the mission.

[00:23:44] They're like, Don, we wanted you to know this

[00:23:46] because you worked with Ricky for a long time.

[00:23:49] But just a few days ago, Ricky died and went to be with the Lord.

[00:23:56] And I realized in that moment, like, oh my gosh,

[00:24:00] God allow me to experience that.

[00:24:04] To remind me this is how the story ends,

[00:24:08] that he is with Jesus now,

[00:24:10] that the longing, the pain that I saw in his eyes,

[00:24:14] over the time I got to know him and work with him,

[00:24:17] all that unrealized joy, that pent-up worship,

[00:24:21] he was now having an opportunity to worship God

[00:24:25] in the way that his heart had longed for for years.

[00:24:30] Many of you know the story of Joni Erikson-Tata

[00:24:33] who suffered an accident that left her paralyzed,

[00:24:37] written beautiful books.

[00:24:39] And she said in one of her books,

[00:24:41] the first thing that I'll do on resurrected legs

[00:24:45] is fall to my knees and praise the God

[00:24:48] of resurrection and healing.

[00:24:50] And then I'll stand and dance before him with all my might.

[00:24:55] Whenever we see a miracle in someone's life,

[00:24:59] it is but a tiny glimpse of the beauty and wonder that is to come.

[00:25:04] That God will someday do this for all of creation.

[00:25:08] Which brings me to the final point.

[00:25:10] Miracles give us hope.

[00:25:16] Every miracle story in Acts is a reminder to us

[00:25:20] not just of God's intention to heal the world,

[00:25:23] but here's a good news.

[00:25:24] To heal you and to heal me.

[00:25:28] Here's the reality.

[00:25:30] Every one of us in this room need healing.

[00:25:35] For some of us it might be a physical healing.

[00:25:37] Maybe you're battling sickness or a disease.

[00:25:40] For others it might be an emotional healing,

[00:25:43] something that happened in your past

[00:25:45] that you're having a hard time moving on from.

[00:25:48] Maybe it's mental healing.

[00:25:50] Or you need healing from an addiction

[00:25:53] or healing from a past relationship

[00:25:55] that was fractured and broken.

[00:25:57] You're like, where do I go with all of this pain?

[00:26:01] We all need healing.

[00:26:05] But here's the good news.

[00:26:07] Brothers and sisters, God is a God of healing.

[00:26:11] He is a God of miracles.

[00:26:14] And every time we read these stories,

[00:26:17] these are not just superstitious legends.

[00:26:20] They're hope-fused reminders of what God can do right now.

[00:26:26] This last week as I was reading through this passage,

[00:26:30] I'm trying to figure out what's the beautiful gate?

[00:26:32] The Nicanor gate, the Shai Nar gate and Josephus.

[00:26:35] Doing all this history.

[00:26:36] And then I realized, oh, there's a ton of historians

[00:26:40] who translate the same word beautiful.

[00:26:43] It can go either way actually.

[00:26:44] Some say it's translated as beautiful,

[00:26:47] but it can also be translated as

[00:26:50] happening at the right time.

[00:26:55] That's a cool name for a gate.

[00:26:58] Happening at the right time.

[00:27:04] Because by definition isn't that what a miracle is?

[00:27:08] It's something that you've waited for for months or years

[00:27:12] that seems improbable, impossible, impractical,

[00:27:15] but at the right time God shows up.

[00:27:23] In the book of Galatians chapter 6 verse 9,

[00:27:25] it says, let us not grow weary in doing good

[00:27:28] for at the proper time we will reap a harvest

[00:27:33] if we do not give up.

[00:27:35] Some of us have been waiting months or years

[00:27:41] for a miracle to happen.

[00:27:44] With that person, that prayer, that hope, that dream,

[00:27:50] that sickness, that battle you face internally.

[00:27:55] And the hard part is this.

[00:27:58] How do we not get weary and discouraged

[00:28:01] as we wait for the miracle to happen?

[00:28:04] How do we not lose faith when we've been waiting

[00:28:07] at the gate year after year after year

[00:28:09] and then what happens?

[00:28:11] We start to face this internal mental battle of discouragement.

[00:28:15] There'll never be a breakthrough.

[00:28:17] She'll never come around.

[00:28:19] He'll never say those words.

[00:28:21] The situation will never change.

[00:28:23] I'll never get to step through those doors

[00:28:25] and we start to believe that the agony

[00:28:28] of unrealized dreams is how life will always be.

[00:28:32] As one poet lamented,

[00:28:34] life is a broken wing bird that cannot fly.

[00:28:40] And something I've been learning

[00:28:43] is that in those moments of waiting and yearning

[00:28:47] and our hearts are aching,

[00:28:50] in those moments that just as important as the miracle

[00:28:56] is everything that leads up to.

[00:29:00] Because it's in the time where we're sitting at the gate

[00:29:04] and we're praying for the miracle to happen

[00:29:07] that God is doing something in your heart.

[00:29:12] He's preparing you.

[00:29:14] Think of the analogy of archery.

[00:29:16] My daughter Amelia who just a couple days ago,

[00:29:19] so proud of her, she went to a Bible college.

[00:29:21] She's in England right now.

[00:29:22] So excited to be there.

[00:29:24] But last week she joined a group of college students

[00:29:27] from our church and Dan was leading this group.

[00:29:31] They went out to the Redwoods

[00:29:32] and had amazing time together.

[00:29:34] She comes back from this retreat grinning ear to ear.

[00:29:37] I'm like, sweetie, how is the retreat?

[00:29:39] And she said, dad, it was so fun.

[00:29:41] It was an amazing time.

[00:29:42] Made some new friends.

[00:29:43] But dad, the best part is we got to play archery tag.

[00:29:48] I'm like, archery tag.

[00:29:49] She's like, yeah, with real bow and arrows.

[00:29:51] And I'm thinking like hunger games.

[00:29:56] The bodies piled up in the Redwoods.

[00:30:00] I guess I'll have a lot of memorial services this week.

[00:30:03] Like what do you mean archery tag?

[00:30:04] She's like, oh, well they put foam on the tip.

[00:30:07] It still hurts, but it's really fun.

[00:30:08] They wear these masks and stuff.

[00:30:10] And I'm like, okay, that's awesome.

[00:30:12] But you think about archery.

[00:30:14] A arrow can only fly by first being pulled backwards.

[00:30:20] Right?

[00:30:21] The more tension there is, the further back it goes,

[00:30:25] the faster the truer it flies.

[00:30:29] Do you ever feel like in life that you're just moving backwards?

[00:30:33] Do you ever just feel like, man, this relationship's taking a step back.

[00:30:37] My walk with God is going backwards.

[00:30:39] This struggle is going backwards.

[00:30:41] This miracle that I hope for, moving backwards.

[00:30:43] There's no breakthrough, no answer prayer, no provision.

[00:30:47] I'm just going backwards.

[00:30:48] What's happening?

[00:30:51] But it's in the waiting that God is doing his deepest work of all.

[00:30:58] It's in the waiting that many times God's focusing you.

[00:31:04] He's aiming you.

[00:31:06] There's the tension.

[00:31:08] You feel it in your soul at the deepest level,

[00:31:12] but at just the right time,

[00:31:15] God launches you into something greater than you could ever imagine.

[00:31:22] Brothers and sisters, your tears are not wasted.

[00:31:28] Every breakthrough in your life begins with breaking.

[00:31:36] Every miracle unfolds when hope seems lost,

[00:31:45] and every painting begins with contrast.

[00:31:51] So don't grow weary and well-doing for the right time.

[00:31:55] You will reap a harvest if you don't lose hope.

[00:32:01] I leave you with this quote by the Bohemian poet Rainer Rilke.

[00:32:06] He said this, be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

[00:32:14] and try to love the questions themselves,

[00:32:20] like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

[00:32:25] Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you

[00:32:29] because you would not be able to live them.

[00:32:32] And the point is to live everything, live the questions now.

[00:32:36] Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,

[00:32:40] live along some distant day into the answer.