Matthew 10:7-8 “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.” This episode talks about this call Jesus is giving us in this verse. He is calling us out to live a more extraordinary life in the Spirit. Will you answer His call? Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Signs & Wonders
Matthew 10:7-8 “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”
I saw this verse this morning and I thought it was a great verse for today. As you can tell, from a lot of the verses I have been sharing with you lately, the class I am taking talks a lot about the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. I love to share this information with you because I am not sure how many of us really know or believe that the Holy Spirit is still working in a supernatural way in this world. I am sure we all believe in the signs and wonders that occurred when Jesus walked the earth and the ones the apostles saw and did. However, it seems most people do not believe these things are still happening today, or that they have been happening ever since Pentecost.
Through the ages there have been times when the supernatural signs and wonders were less and less. However, there was never a time where there were’t any signs and wonders. If you read about the Saints you will see about the miracles they performed all throughout the ages. I think because the Saints are attributed to a lot of the miracles that we hear about we assume that only Saints can perform miracles. Do you want to know a secret about Saints? They weren’t always Saints. At one point every saint there is was just a regular human like you and me. They didn’t always know they were going to be a Saint. You may be on your way to Sainthood and you might not even know it. All they knew is that they loved Jesus and wanted to do all they could to follow Him. Do you love Jesus, if so you are well on your way!
In the verse above Jesus is telling us what we need to do. Remember the Bible is a living document, what we are reading in the Bible is just as much for us today as it was for the apostles 2000 years ago. Jesus is telling you and me to go and proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” People need to hear this, even today. Today the enemy wants to fill us with worry and anxiety. He wants us to spend our time looking around to the world and seeing what a mess it is. He wants us to look around the world and feel like things are hopeless because that is what it looks like right now. There is so much violence, so much hatred, so much craziness. It is easy to get lost in worry and anxiety when we are looking at the world. This is why we need to affix our eyes to Jesus. He is our savior, He is our peace. It is only when we take our eyes off of Him that we get wrapped up in worry and even fear.
It seems more and more people are giving into fear and anxiety these days. They are taking their eyes off of Jesus and turning them to the news, to social media and to the newspapers. We need to be proclaiming the good news of Jesus. We need to be helping people turn their eyes back to Jesus and what better way to do that than to show them signs and wonders. Signs and wonders will not necessarily be enough to change the hearts towards Jesus, however, signs and wonders might get their attention and once we have their attention we can tell them all about Jesus’ love. I think a lot of people are disillusioned with the Church these days. They see all the division and the scandal and they think that is all the church is. The Church is made up of people and since we are a fallen people there will always be people that don’t do as they are called to do. This isn’t a reason to take our eyes of Jesus, if anything it should be more of a reason to keep our eyes fixed on Him so He can help us not make those same mistakes.
Be honest, when I mention signs and wonders, do you instantly count yourself out? Are you thinking the Saints could do them because they were Saints, but that isn’t something us ordinary humans can do? Me too! I used to think like this too. Well, actually, if I am being honest I still have doubts, but they lessen with each step out in faith that I take. If you are like me you don’t have doubts that God could do miracles through you, God is God, He can do anything. However, when I start to think of God doing signs and wonders through me I think, “Why me?” The enemy gets in my mind and he tells me God wouldn’t use me. He tells me I am too boring, too weak, too sinful, not holy enough, not good enough and so on. The thing is, Jesus doesn’t usually use those who are perfect. He didn’t come to find “perfect” people to start His church. He used 12 people who most of us wouldn’t have picked. One of the reasons the Gospels start with the lineage of Jesus is to show us that Jesus did not come from a perfect line of people. There were plenty of people in Jesus’ lineage that weren’t holy enough, weren’t good enough, weren’t even close to perfect by the world’s standards, and yet they were chosen out of everyone to be part of the lineage of Christ.
Besides proclaiming the good news, Jesus is calling us to “Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons.” This is a pretty tall order. However, Jesus is not going to call us to do something and then not equip us for the call. John 14:12 says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” When Jesus went to His Father, he sent us the Holy Spirit and this is the power we need to do even greater works than Jesus did. It says in this passage “whoever believes in me” this is a tricky statement. I say that because the faith required to do signs and wonders is not something we can manufacture on our own. That type of faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit.
This type of faith can be built up by reading the scriptures and seeing all the signs and wonders Jesus and the apostles performed. It can also be built up by witnessing or hearing about miracles that are happening today. The more you witness these miracles the more your faith will be built up. This is another reason for doing Witness Wednesdays. When you hear about how God is still working miracles today, it helps you believe it could happen in your life. When you see it happening to regular, every day people like you and me, you start to think, “If it could happen to them, why couldn’t it happen to me.”
There is a documentary called “Fearless” and this is what the executive producer said about the movie, “We have come to realize it is more than a movie, it is more of a movement that the Holy Spirit is using to spark an awakening among ordinary Catholics, like you and me, to be able to live their Catholic Faith in an extraordinary way, in an extraordinary, fearless way. It has launched thousands and thousands of people on their own God adventures. You can watch this documentary for free by going to fearlessdocumentary.net (click here) You can also watch it on Youtube (click here). I will put links for both in the show notes. If you get a chance check it out.
I am going to continue to talk about signs and wonders and my prayer is that something I say will be the one thing you need to hear to get you started on your journey to discovering what signs and wonders God wants to give you. God wants to call us to greater things. No matter who you are, where you are, how old you are, God has more for you. That will look different for each one of us, but He is calling you. Abraham was 100 when He has Issac. Whatever age you are, you are not too old to build the kingdom of God. However young you are, you are not too young to build the kingdom of God. There is young boy from Italy that was only 16 when he died and He is blessed and is being considered for sainthood. This is the first millennial too venerated. God can use you for His purposes, all you have to do is say yes. I know it may feel scary to say yes to something when you don’t understand it completely, but if you say yes to the Lord, He will use you in amazing ways.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we are so grateful for all the sign and wonders you have done and are still doing. We ask you to show us how you want to use us Lord. We ask you to give us the strength to say yes to you even if we don’t understand what we are saying yes too. We ask you to give us the courage to step out in faith and trust that we are doing what you called us to do. Lord, if we can’t hear your call we ask that you help open our ears, our hearts and our minds to whatever you are calling us to. We ask that you help us be open to you and your will. Confirm our will to your will Lord. We love you, you are amazing. We are so grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am in the final stages of getting me book up and running. I will let you know when it is available. I ask for prayers from all of you that these final stages of formatting and uploading go smoothly and that God gets the book out to all those that can benefit from reading it. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!