By Chris WittsSaturday 7 May 2022Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
What’s a miracle? Now what an interesting question that one is. The Oxford dictionary says a miracle is an extraordinary and welcome event that’s not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.
In 2021 a survey was conducted of 1000 people. They were asked a number of questions about their belief in God. And one of the questions was, do you believe in miracles? Well, roughly a third of people said I believe that this exists. Another third, about 29% said, well I’m open to the possibility that miracles exist. Some opted for the unsure or unlikely box to tick, but only 13.8% were willing to say they did not believe that there’s anything such as a miracle. I found that a very interesting result.
Dr Sean George Miracle Story
Is it really possible to be dead for one hour and 25 minutes and come back to life and you’re probably shaking your head and saying no, never, that’s not possible. But let me tell you this, you may not have heard of Dr Sean George. Dr George is a consultant doctor in General medicine at the Western Australia Country Health Services, Goldfields.
He’d come from Malaysia to work in Australia. It was 24 October 2008 and he was driving on his own from Aspirants towards Kalgoorlie in Western Australia when he started to feel severe chest pains. This alarmed him. So he pulled into a small health clinic at a place called cam Balda and he was checked out by the small group of staff and they found he was having a heart attack.
It was serious business because 11 minutes later his heart stopped beating.
They frantically tried to revive him, but after 80 minutes the small staff realized it was too late. Sean George had died. His wife Sherry, also a doctor, arrived to view his body. She took his hand and prayed. Lord, Sean is only 39. We’ve got a 10 year old boy. Dear God, I need a miracle and immediately his heart started beating weakly. He was still unconscious. He was flown to the Perth Royal Hospital. The cardiologist cleared a blocked right coronary artery, but they were very doubtful that he actually pulled through.
Three days after this initial heart attack, he woke up a few days later, he was completely awake and two weeks later he was discharged from hospital and three months from there, he returned to work at the Kalgoorlie hospital. You can actually have a look at this true story online yourself. Quite incredible.
But Dr George says this himself, medically, It’s impossible. What happened to me could only be done by God. In other words, here was a miracle, a supernatural intervention by God himself, the powerful creator of our universe. It’s a wonderful account of an ordinary man who believes God gave him another chance at life. And he gives praise to God.
The Questions that revolve around Miracles
This topic of miracles is a problem for many people. The miracle stories of the bible pose problems that are partly historical. Like did this really happen? To partly theological – why did it happen? And partly personal – can something like this happen to me?
A generation ago CS Lewis pondered these problems. He wrote a book that’s available, still called miracles worth a read. You can’t read the bible without running into miracles. They don’t happen all the time and you can’t predict in advance when they will happen. But I think this ought to help us when we think about miracles today.
In one of his books, William buckley quotes the english author Evelyn War, who said God does work miracles, but it’s presumptuous for us to anticipate them. Do you believe in miracles? We can pray and believe and hope and trust and wait for miracles to occur. But this is important. We understand that God works according to his own will. We cannot anticipate miracles even as we pray and hope for them.
He can break into our world any time that he chooses to and God can do things that we cannot explain, really. It’s not God’s power that’s the issue here, it’s not our belief in miracles, past or present. The issue rests at a much deeper level, the sovereign plan of God for you and I the question is not, do we believe in miracles? What kind of miracles do we believe in now? I don’t have all the answers today, but I can say this, that God still loves you, He loves you enough to give his Son to die for you and He is with you. Even when you don’t sense his presence. Trust the Lord with full confidence, miracles are not about us, miracles are about God, let God be God, and all will be well.
Lets Pray
Heavenly Father, it’s true, we don’t really understand this complex matter of miracles, but Lord, I believe they do happen. Each day is a miracle. Help us to not take for granted the little miracles that happen every day, every second, and I thank you in Jesus’ name.
Amen.