Here’s a question for you to kick off the week: how much of your brain time do you spend worrying about things that are out of your control? Really! You might actually be shocked at the answer to that question.    

One of the things that we’re all keen on these days is transformation, becoming a better person, ditching some of the baggage we’ve been carrying around, lightening the load and living a better life. Is there anyone who doesn’t want that in their lives today? But if you’re anything like me you’ve tried all the self help programs and they work for a while but then you slip right back into the same old, same old and nothing ever changes for real, does that sound familiar?

Well in a sense that’s what this series, ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’ is all about because when Jesus speaks powerful healing comes into our lives. I can honestly say that the most powerful changes that have occurred in my life over the last couple of decades in walking with the Lord, have come when I’ve heard His Word taken into my heart and allow the Holy Spirit to do His thing in me. That and only that is what brings lasting change.

And so today we’re going to continue taking an in depth look at this purple patch of teaching and healing in chapters 5 to 8 of the Gospel of Matthew in the first Book of the New Testament where Jesus completely blows people away with the power of what He has to say. You may recall last week we had a look at this Scripture; Matthew chapter 7 verses 28 to 29:

When Jesus had finished saying these things the crowds were astounded at his teaching for he taught them as one who had authority not as one of their scribes.

That’s what happens when you hear Jesus speak, it’s a work of power and a work of healing and today we’re going to see what He has to say about all the worrying that so many people do. We worry about this, we worry about that, it never achieves anything except to make us feel miserable but still we worry about this stuff, right? Stuff. Stuff that’s outside our control, stuff that we quite don’t understand, stuff that causes hidden fears.

Well let me ask you something, do you want to be set free from the scourge of all that worry in your life? Would you like complete healing from all that worry? Because that’s what I believe Jesus wants to do for you today. Remember Jesus speaks, Jesus heals and I believe in some mighty healing in your life today.

Well what did Jesus say about all this worrying that we do, Matthew chapter 6 verses 25 to 34:

Therefore I tell you do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these but if God so clothes the grass of the fields which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you you of little faith.

Therefore do not worry saying, ‘what will I eat, what will I drink, what will I wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all of these things and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring worries of its own, today’s trouble is enough for today.

Now whenever you see a ‘therefore’ in Scripture you always have to ask yourself, what’s the therefore there for? And in this case Jesus starts His whole bit of teaching about worrying with a ‘therefore’. By doing that He’s pointing back to what He has just said about money and wealth which is this, Matthew chapter 6 verse 24″

No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

The thing that we worry about most, not exclusively but mostly, is money. Somehow we’ve been programmed haven’t we to believe that we need more and more of the ‘stuff’ and if we don’t seem to have enough coming in through the door then we have to hit that big, red panic button that we all have somewhere deep inside. And the reason that we worry so much about this, Jesus is saying here, is that we’ve started to be influenced more by the reality of wealth, or the lack of it, than the reality of God.

We were made to walk in the cool of the morning with God just as Adam and Eve did, we’ve been made, you and I, to be with God and to trust Him but these days, just as our kids through their twenty four by seven connectedness to social media, are being influenced by forces outside the home than by their parents inside the home, so you and I are being influenced by the world than by God because many people have made a god out of money and wealth, an act of idolatry that squeezed the one true God out of their lives.

And with this bit of teaching here Jesus is trying to refocus us back on what’s important. If you worship quicksand, of course you’re going to panic when it gives way and you start sinking. But get a grip here on reality, life is about so much more than what we eat and drink and what we wear.

I mean look at the birds of the air, they don’t labour and yet God feeds them. Aren’t you worth so much more than them? And look at the grass of the field, those beautiful lilies out there, not even Solomon with all his wealth was as beautiful as them. And yet God loves you so much more, you are worth so much more to Him than the grass of the field.

We’ve all been in that place in life where we don’t have enough. Sometimes it’s money, other times its health, other times it’s love or nurture, whatever it is we’ve all been in that place and we’ve looked at the reality that we simply don’t have enough and so we panic.

Some people, many people are in a constant state of worry, all we ever see is that we don’t have enough and so we churn that around and over and over and over again as though somehow that’s going to make things better. Well get a revelation today: it’s not going to make anything better. Who by worrying can add a single hour to the span of their life?

So come on, what’s Jesus answer, what are the words of healing that He has to bring into your life today, here and now? Here they are”

But strive first for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.

In other words, refocus, get your eyes off the things that you’re worrying about and focus them back on God, go hard after the Lordship and the reign of God in your life, focus completely back on Him and living your life for Him. Get your priorities back in order.

Remember God, the God with the power to create the whole universe, the same God who gave us all of Creation, the same God who loves you so much more than the birds of the air or the grass of the field both of whom He provides for abundantly. Remember that God. Get your eyes back on Him, worship Him, love Him, serve Him, live your whole life for Him.

Not the shallow stuff of this world, not the trinkets that will pass away, not all that rubbish that somehow we’ve come to worship. No, focus on God and you know what’s going to happen when you take Jesus advice, where when you accept His Word in your heart and start acting on them, I’ll tell you because I know, the worry just disappears.

When you experience the love of Jesus in your heart there’s no room for worry, it just doesn’t make sense anymore and right there in that place is the healing that you’ve always been looking for.

Let me ask you something: How well do you know God? Not an easy question, because we can’t see Him, touch Him, feel Him, the way we can with physical people around us? But let me ask you again – How well do you really know God? What do you believe about Him and what He wants to do in your life? Really.  

I’ll put something out there and see what you think.  I believe that many people, who in their heart of hearts believe in Jesus, have a distorted view of God – a completely distorted view of God.  A bit radical I know but hear me out.  Either we think that God is some ‘sugar daddy’ who’s meant to come along and give us whatever our spoiled little hearts’ desire or we believe that God might be a God who blesses other people but me?  I mean look at my life, no, God’s not in the business of blessing me, no way.

Now you see a lot of that ‘sugar daddy’ model of God out there.  I was at a Church service once and a well known TV preacher from America was visiting.  The preacher, at the end of the service, told everyone to get out their purses or their wallets.  Now I was just a new Christian at the time so I did it although I was feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Then he told us to lift our purse or our wallet above our heads and close our eyes.  Well at this point I’m going nah, no way, what’s going on here?  But everyone else in the auditorium did just that, about fifteen hundred people.  Then the guy at the front prays that each one of us would become a millionaire.

Now these days if you live in an apartment or a house around where I live you are pretty much a millionaire but back then that was an enormous amount of money.  And people are shouting ‘Amen’ and ‘hallelujah’ and I’m standing there just a new Christian mind you, not really sure, but with this sense of outrage welling up inside me.

I wanted to shout out, “NO! Jesus died even without the clothes on His back, are you people for real?”  And now a couple of decades on that’s still the sort of stuff you see pedalled again and again in the name of God.  I asked one of my lecturers at Bible College about this a few weeks later and he smiled and said, “maybe it would have been more Biblical to pray for the person next to you to become a millionaire”.  He was joking.

It’s sad and please if you see that sort of stuff being pedalled in your Church, reject it.  God is not a ‘sugar daddy’ who showers us with all sorts of gifts that we desire but then again there are people who believe that God is never going to bless them.

Had an email from a young man in the UK recently and he was asking me why it is that nothing good ever seemed to happen in his life.  “I mean I dream”, he said, “I plan, I work hard but I never achieve my goals, doesn’t God want me to be happy?  Why is this happening to me?”  And can I tell you there are plenty of people in that boat too and whether you’re torn to one extreme or the other, can I tell you, a lot of people really don’t know the Father, heart of God.

They’ve been led astray and they need to find healing, deep healing inside which only comes when we know the true nature of God.  I’ve said many times over the course of this series, there is no better place to find that healing than in the Words of Jesus.  Have a listen to these, Matthew chapter 7 verses 7 to 11:

Ask and it will be given to you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.  For everyone who asks, receives and everyone who searches, finds and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.  Is there anyone among you if your child asks for bread will give them a stone or if the child asks for a fish will you give them a snake?  Well if you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

So according to Jesus is God a good God who wants to bless you?  Yes He is.  Of course this passage has been used over and over again by proponents of the so called prosperity gospel who will tell you that yes, if you want it God will give you a BMW seven series, two of them if you want them and a big house and all the riches you want if only you will support their ministry.

But the bit that they’re missing in this powerful piece of teaching from Jesus Himself is that the only sorts of gifts that a good God gives to His children are good gifts.

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?

Did you get that?  Good gifts, good things, things that are good for you.  The powerful reinforcement of that is the parallel that Jesus draws here with human parents.  I had great parents growing up, my dad was a great dad, he worked so hard for me having emigrated to Australia after World War II. Having fought in the German army on the Russian front, having experienced starvation and deprivation and three years in a P.O.W. camp, my dad wanted the best for my sister and me and he worked so hard to get it.

He wanted the best education for us. He worked long hours to pay for that, as did my mother I might add.  But he was no pushover, he was no ‘sugar daddy’, he didn’t shower me with gifts and pamper me and tell me that I was the centre of the universe the way that some parents do these days.  He didn’t gloss over my rebellions, pat me on the head and say, “that’s okay Berni, I love you, you can behave how you want.”

No I remember being disciplined by my father, I remember the odd belting, I remember being driven hard, I remember being taught how to serve others.  It was my chore each evening after school not just to polish my own shoes but my father’s shoes too, I had to help with the dishes and when I was old enough mow the lawn.  He allowed me to bear the consequences of my own mistakes something that parents these days seem to want to rob their children of in their desire to pamper them.

My father only gave me good gifts.  Some of those gifts were real blessings to me at the time, others like the discipline, the training, I hated; they only turned out to be good gifts in my eyes as I look back on them years later.  Was he a perfect father?  No and that’s the point that Jesus makes.

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

When it comes to knowing the heart of God, whether it’s to bless you or not and what that blessing looks like, the power of Jesus’ healing words here come from the comparison to good parenting.  And God is the ultimate Father, the perfect Father, the Dad who knows how to bless you with truly good things; things that will make you healthy and strong, humble and loving. Things that will make you look and sound more and more like Jesus.

Let me come back to the question I asked you earlier, how well do you know God?  What do you believe about what He wants for your life?  Is He a God of blessing or not?  Well here through His powerful words Jesus is bringing some healing to somebody’s heart today.  Yes He is a good God, He’s the best Dad that has ever been or ever will be and when the evidence appears to contradict that fact then remember what a good dad is meant to be and what he is meant to do; Hebrews chapter 12 verses 9 to 11:

Moreover we have human parents to discipline us and we respected them.  Should we not even more be willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live?  For they discipline us for a short time as seen best to them but He disciplines us for our good in order that we may share His holiness.

Now discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

No, not everything that God dishes up seems like a blessing and not all of it feels all that good at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, if we’ve allowed ourselves to be trained through those times, when we’re dining out on the peaceful fruit of righteousness, Christ likeness, oh yeah God is a good God who gives us all good things.  So seek, ask, knock and all good things will be given to you.

You’ve heard that saying “life wasn’t meant to be easy”. We all have and here’s the thing. When you hear it, it can be quite … discouraging. Why? Well, (a) because we know it’s true and (b) because as you look at your life, your today, your tomorrow … well, it’s just not a very encouraging thought now is it.

Well, yeah, life wasn’t meant to be easy. How many times have you heard that and thought to yourself ‘ain’t that just the truth’? The times in my life when everything has been going my way, everything has been going swimmingly well, everything has just been hunky dory and tickety boo, let me tell you, have been very few and far between.

I’m talking everything, every part of my life. Now don’t get me wrong I haven’t had a bad life, I love everything I’m involved in and I’m blessed with a wonderful wife and great kids, I’m safe, I’m provided for by God but there’s always something isn’t there? One thing that seems to rob us of our peace and our joy; I’m sure it’s the same for you too.

I’m praying that there have been some truly awesome times in your life but probably at the moment there’s just something out there, a person, a relationship, some work situation, maybe a health issue or a family issue or a finance issue, something that is taking the shine off things.

And then add to that, God seems to demand things of you a lot of the time that you don’t want to do or to give. Have you noticed that? He can be a tad pesky that way if we’re listening to Him at all. We all have that one sin in our lives that seems to be our Achilles heel, our particular weakness, the one thing He wants us to give up and we struggle to obey. Yeah there’s always something. Surely if God loves us He’d want to make it just a bit easier for us than what it is.

Yesterday on the program we talked about the idea of God as a ‘sugar daddy’ who showers you constantly with gifts and blessings and affirmations. Surely if God loves you isn’t that how He’d treat you? I mean surely. If believing in Jesus is about grace, the free unmerited favour of God that’s how it should be, right? And then you remember that universal truth, ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’.

How do you reconcile those two? The empirical real life evidence of the struggles you’re going through on the one hand and the apparent Biblical truth that God loves you and wants to bless you, something you want to believe by the way, with all your heart. Well the honest truth is that a lot of people don’t reconcile the two, they can’t understand how those two realities, our struggles and God’s goodness, can co-exist.

Maybe if you’re living on ‘Struggle Street’ at the moment or perhaps you’re taking a short trip down ‘Struggle Lane’ I want to see the words of Jesus bring some powerful healing into your heart right now. So have a listen to what Jesus has to say, Matthew chapter 7 verses 13 and 14:

Enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it.

I know what you’re thinking, “Geez Louise Berni, all that is is bad news, all that is is Jesus telling us that life wasn’t meant to be easy, what’s the good of that? Am I right? Well the first step to healing, the first step to discovering God’s real blessings in your life is accepting the reality and the reality is that following Jesus isn’t easy, it’s counter-cultural.

The world wants you to follow them down that nice, gentle, wide, well paved road to destruction. Sure believe in all the perversions that people are now saying are normal, equal and free. Sure be selfish, sure live for yourself, but Jesus is calling you to go a hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction, He’s calling you to swim against the tide, to be ridiculed, to lose things because you do the right thing.

What for? For the prize of course or did you miss what Jesus said about the prize on the other side of that narrow gate at the end of that hard road? Where does it lead? It leads to life and there are few who find it. Remember this is Jesus who just a few verses before in this same chapter said to you:

Ask and it will be given to you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you, for everyone who asks, receives and everyone who searches, finds and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you if your child asks for bread will give a stone or if the child asks for a fish will give you a snake? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?

Blessing, the blessing of God, the good things of God come right, smack bang in the middle of the tough journey. The problem is, all too often, we think that the blessing of God is the removing of suffering and replacing it with gifts and presents and all sorts of goodies.

Well okay sometimes that happens, sometimes that’s God’s will, but more often than not the good things that He wants for us are to grow our character, to make us more humble, to help us to learn to serve people who don’t deserve it, to discover our lives in Christ in a way that we never imagined possible.

Let me tell you, some of the greatest blessings that I’ve experienced in my life have come in the darkest times. They had nothing to do with changing my circumstances but everything to do with changing me. Get a grip, get a revelation today, life wasn’t meant to be a cake walk, life wasn’t meant to be one great big party, following Jesus is hard some days, in fact following Jesus is hard most days.

Will you follow Him anyway? Following Jesus means losing things, losing the world’s approval, the money we might have earned, the comfort we might have had, will you follow Him anyway? Because when we live our lives like that, in the knowledge of the trials but experiencing His blessings, hey that’s the place of healing, that’s the place where we find our lives, that’s the place we experience a joy and a freedom and a sense of fulfilment that we never ever, ever, thought was possible.

I was chatting with a friend of mine on the phone the other day; he’s a farmer who lives a hard life. He was out on his farm early the other morning and he had a fall that knocked him out. Out on his own he came to, his shoulder and arm were dislocated, he was in a huge amount of pain and he’s not a young man and he thought this could be the end of him.

You know what he said about the incident? He said to me, “I was in serious trouble Berni, but seriously I wasn’t troubled”. See that rocked me, how powerful is that? Does this guy have an easy life? No but there’s a powerful force at work in him when even the most dire of circumstances happens, even at a point when he thought might be his last, he was at peace. He was in serious trouble but he wasn’t troubled, seriously.

There haven’t been any flashy miracles of healing in this man’s life. Sure, flashy miracles, the sort that Jesus performed are awesome right? But the miracle of the Holy Spirit working away in him as he labours long hours in all sorts of weather on that farm, the miracle of the Holy Spirit transforming his life, bringing him peace, bringing him courage when he needs it, hey that, that is just awesome and they’re the sorts of miracles that God has on offer.

Give me that sort of miracle anytime, the miracle of a transformed life, the miracle of healing deep within, the miracle of discovering real life out on that difficult road, the healing that comes when finally we’re set free from the shackles that this world would bind us with.

Come on! Those are the miracles that we really want. ‘Jesus speaks and Jesus heals’. That’s the name of this series of messages and it’s so apt, so appropriate because when Jesus speaks healing flows. Have you heard Jesus speaking today? Then may His healing flow abundantly into your heart. May you have the abundant life that Jesus came to give you.

The saddest disease, the worst disease of all that any of us can suffer from, is self–delusion. Why? Well self–delusion is a powerful force that dwells in our hearts. It’s a powerful weapon that Satan uses, to prevent us from receiving all that Jesus has for us and becoming all that God made us to be. Self–delusion. 

You know the problem with me sitting here and chatting with you and a stack of other people about self-delusion, well none of us believes that we suffer from the problem, that’s the delusion. But before you change channels just humour me for a moment. Before we start with the disease let’s just go to some of the symptoms and see if you can identify them in your life.

Here are some of the symptoms of self-delusion. The really big one is that you keep telling yourself it’s all okay but deep down you have a nagging suspicion that it’s not. People criticise you and you don’t want to hear, even though you know in your heart of hearts you’re afraid they might have a point.

You’ve set your life on a certain course towards success and each time you hit a milestone of success after an initial flurry it somehow seems hollow. You’re longing for something but you just can’t put a finger on what that something is. You’ve tried a lot of things but nothing ends up delivering that one something that you’re becoming increasingly desperate to find.

My hunch is that there are more than a few people listening to this thinking to themselves, “hang on, how does Berni know that about me?” Well quite simply they’re the primary symptoms of self-delusion and they’re symptoms that I’m all too well acquainted with, being as I am a recovering ‘self-delusionist’, if there is such a word.

And I reckon that the biggest bit of self delusion that many of us carry on with is that we’re disciples of Jesus Christ. Now that may sound just a tad confronting, and if it is, know that it’s meant to be, not because I’m trying to be some self righteous preacher telling you that I have it all right and you don’t, but because I’m a fellow sinner travelling on a not dissimilar road to yours, who has had the privilege of having Jesus speak into my heart about this very thing. Confronting? Yeah! You bet, ya!

So what does Jesus have to say about your self-delusion and mine? Does He have anything there, any wisdom, any healing, any power to set us free so that we can finally find that something that we’ve been searching for all this time? Matthew chapter 7 verses 21 to 23:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you, go away from me you evil doers.

Yeah I told you this was confronting, Jesus often is, He doesn’t ‘mamby-pamby’ around, He tells it the way it is. I know, I know, we want to think of this Jesus as some nice, soft, warm, cuddly, fluffy toy that we can cuddle so we can feel better. Does Jesus love you? Of course He does, but His love is often a tough love, a love that cuts through our self delusions in an instant. And here He’s pointing out that it’s not what we say that demonstrates our faith to Him but what we do.

Now let’s get this straight, you and I, if we believe in Jesus, are saved by grace. It’s a free gift from Him. It’s not about what we do, it’s about what He’s done but at the same time our works; what we end up doing with our lives, whether we obey Him or not. Those works and deeds are the evidence of our faith in Him or not.

So right here what He’s saying to you and to me is, “stop kidding yourself. If you’re saying one thing and doing another, no you are not my disciple and when it comes to the day of judgement I’ll be looking for the evidence of your faith.” Ouch. There are some people who want to shoot me at this point, but please remember I’m just the messenger, those are Jesus’ words and not mine. In fact He goes on; Matthew chapter 7 verses 24 to 29:

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on a rock and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and how great was its fall.” Now when Jesus had finished saying these things the crowds were astounded at His teaching for He taught them as one having authority and not as their scribes.

What an amazing picture He paints here; a picture that’s meant to show you and me how shocking our self delusion really is. A picture that encourages us, woos us, to build our house on solid ground.

The point of listening to Jesus and His amazing wisdom isn’t to participate in some interesting intellectual exercise, or to be entertained, or to have a theory lesson, the point of listening to Jesus is to drink in the power of his word and be transformed. Because when you and I take His word into our hearts, when we recognise the power and the authority with which He speaks, as those people did who were listening to Him, when we let that power loose in our hearts, let me tell you, there is going to be some serious healing and transformation that start to happen.

Before we can change what we do we need to have a change of heart. Are you a heart surgeon? No, me neither. I, like you, need some serious help. Well ‘Jesus speaks, Jesus heals’. That’s the name of this series and that is what is ready and waiting to happen if you receive the word of Christ today and allow it to dwell richly in you.

Come on, are you deluding yourself? Sure you are, we all are to some extent. The songs we sing on Sundays, the sermons we hear and nod at and say ‘Amens’ and ‘hallelujahs’ to, so often are a million miles away from the reality of how we live, and the only person who can change how you live, the only person with the power and the wisdom and the love and the care that can transform how you live is not you, it’s Jesus.

So where will you build your house? If I’m honest with myself I think that some of my foundations at this point in my life are on solid ground and others are still built on sand. I think there are more on solid ground today than there were perhaps five years ago but the renovation of my life is an ongoing work in progress.

Just the other day I was reading God’s word early in the morning and He confronted me about an attitude that I was harbouring towards someone. I mean He really confronted me because that’s what’s needed when we’re deluding ourselves. The Bible has another word for self-delusion, God’s word calls it a stronghold, have a listen, 2 Corinthians chapter 10 verses 4 and 5. Paul writes:

For the weapons of our warfare are not merely human but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of Christ and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

See, according to God’s word here, a stronghold is an attitude in our hearts, an argument, a proud obstacle that we raise up against God and it requires divine power to destroy that. And remember here, Paul is writing to the Corinthian Church, so strongholds are arguments and proud obstacles in the hearts of God’s people.

My definition of a stronghold is that it’s something that you hold on to so strongly and while you’re holding on to that, you can’t let go and take hold of the blessings of God. What’s required to destroy these strongholds in our hearts? Human weapons, no. Nothing I can say will destroy the strongholds in your heart, what’s required is divine power and that power comes from the Word of Christ that you have heard today.

Will you take every thought captive to obey Christ? Will you be set free by Jesus today? Well ‘Jesus speaks, Jesus heals’.

Miracles these days seem to be few and far between. You know, powerful, obvious miracles in our lives. I wonder why that is. Is it because Jesus has stopped doing miracles, or is it that we’ve stopped believing Him for them?

Who needs miracles? I think we all do. So what is a miracle? Well my dictionary tells me that ‘it’s an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency’. Hmm sounds pretty much right. Although you know we’ve been talking about the miracle of the transformed life over the last few weeks on the program; the sorts of miracles that happen when

into our lives, and we accept His word into our hearts, and He does things in us that we could never ever have done for ourselves.

That’s why this series has been called ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’ and you can listen to all the messages online right now at www.christianityworks.com. To me it’s a blooming miracle to see how God has dealt with my pride and my anger and how He keeps dealing with those things. And I can honestly say that the transformation has happened because I’ve spent time, most days, in God’s Word, the Bible.

And somehow, as I’ve received His Word into my heart, He’s worked it out in me through the trials and the tribulations and the challenges and the temptations that have met me around the next corner or over the next rise. Without God’s Word each day they would have just been trials and tribulations, and challenges and temptations, without learning, without transformation, without growth. In fact probably they would have just made me more bitter and with a harder heart.

I just think that God is so ready, so willing, so able to perform major miracles in our lives through His Spirit and His Word, yet so many people who believe in Jesus don’t read His Word, don’t receive His Word, don’t bother with His Word. Or they pick and choose, well I like this bit but that bit, well not sleeping together before we’re married, that bit about forgiving that guy over there, that bit about being humble, nah, don’t like those bits and then we wonder why our lives are a mess.

I really encourage you to have a listen to or read of other messages in this series about the amazing miracles that happen when ‘Jesus speaks and Jesus heals’ but right now, as our time in this series comes to an end, I want to spend a bit of time in Matthew chapter 8 which is crammed packed full of the spectacular super natural miracles that so many people crave. We don’t have time to look at them all so let’s just have a listen to the first one, Matthew chapter 8 verses 1 to 4:

When Jesus had come down from the mountain great crowds followed him and there was a leper who came and knelt before him saying, ‘Lord, if you choose you can make me clean’. Jesus stretched out his hands, touched the man and said, ‘I do choose, be made clean’. Immediately his leprosy was cleansed then Jesus said to him, ‘see that you say nothing to anyone but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them.

A leper, imagine. One of the outcasts of society, they weren’t allowed to live inside the city walls; they had to live outside the city without its protection of community. They couldn’t go to the Temple or the Synagogue the way others did, they couldn’t spend any time with their families, they were the least of the least. If anyone came within thirty feet of them they had to shout, “unclean, unclean!” How humiliating, how demeaning, they were less than human.

And a leper of all people, a leper dares to approach Jesus. As a leper he was forbidden from doing that and he dares to say to this miracle working Jesus. “Lord if you choose you can make me clean.” Have you ever felt like the least of the least before God? Sure you have, so have I. You feel completely unworthy, the stench of your sin in the nostrils of God, no different to the stench of that leper’s pus filled sores and the unwashed body.

And still he comes to Jesus with the temerity to say, “Lord, if you choose you can make me clean.” The response of any other religious leader of the day would have been to send him packing, to withdraw lest he too should catch this disease. The response of Jesus on the other hand was to reach out and touch him.

Can you imagine what that felt like for the leper? To reach out and touch him and make him clean. Immediately, we’re told, the leprosy left him. The leper says, “Lord if you choose” and Jesus’ response is “I do choose, I do choose” and with a healing touch. Of all the miracles in the Bible this is my favourite one because all too often I have been that leper wondering whether to come before Jesus. And whenever I doubt, I come back to this passage of Scripture because I realise the depth of the love that Jesus has for me.

The depth of the love that Jesus has for you; all we need is a mustard seed of faith like the next guy, Matthew chapter 8 verses 5 to 13:

When Jesus entered Capernaum a centurion came to him appealing to him saying, ‘Lord my servant is lying at home paralysed in terrible distress’ and Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and cure him’. But the centurion answered, ‘Lord I am not worthy to have you come under my roof but only speak the word and my servant will be healed, for I also am a man under authority with soldiers under me and I say to one ‘go’ and he goes and to the other ‘come’ and he comes and to my slave ‘do this’ and the slave does it.

When Jesus heard him he was amazed and he said to all those that followed him, ‘truly I tell you in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘go, let it be done for you according to your faith’ and the servant was healed that very hour.

I’ve read the four Gospels front to back and back to front dozens of times and I am here to tell you that Jesus never, ever, ever criticized someone for placing too much faith in Him. In fact the exact opposite is true. He was amazed at this man’s faith.

I don’t know why Jesus chooses to perform spectacular miracles in some people’s lives and not in others but I choose to believe Him for miracles in my life because I know that He comes to little people like you and me and the leper and the centurion and a whole bunch of other people and just at the right time He intervenes supernaturally in our lives.

What I do know though is that a lack of faith in Him is a one hundred percent guarantee to blocking any miracles He was planning on doing. See that’s exactly what happened in His home town of Nazareth, Mark chapter 6 verses 4 to 6:

Jesus said to them, ‘prophets are not without honour except in their home town and among their own kin and in their own houses’ and he could do no deed of power there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them and he was amazed at their unbelief.

See with the centurion he was amazed at the man’s faith, especially since he wasn’t a Jew but a Roman. But with God’s own people, in fact with the very people with whom He grew up, with those people Jesus wasn’t amazed by their faith, He was amazed by their unbelief.

So here’s what I’m thinking, I would much rather have Jesus be amazed by my faith rather than by my lack of it, how about you? Where, when, how Jesus chooses to miraculously and powerfully intervene in your life I can’t tell you, but this I can, when ‘Jesus speaks, Jesus heals’. His word has the power to change your life in the most amazing unpredictable ways

The choice for you as it is for me is: will you hear His word and accept it into your heart as being His powerful truth for you and will you put so much faith in Him that He will be amazed at your faith or will you be like the people of Nazareth and leave Him stunned by your lack of faith?

Want healing, want power, want transformation in your life? Then the answer, the only answer, is Jesus.