Red Panda Stuck
When You Need a Miracle
We all get so stuck at times. We can’t go back or forward. Perhaps we brought the calamity on ourselves. Or it was thrust upon us by other people. Sometimes it’s the logical progress of circumstances. But we know we need a miracle.
At age eleven I got marooned halfway up a cliffside trying to take a shortcut to my aunt’s beach house at Rio Del Mar. I wanted to avoid walking in my swim trunks past the hoity toity folks at the hotel. I couldn’t climb any higher and feared a move down the steep incline. In my panic I sensed only some sort of miracle could save me.
Woman Stuck in Taped Package
Life Dilemmas
We experience jams of all sorts. It seems we can’t go forward and can’t turn around. Only a miracle will help.
Sheila rushed into my office in tears. Three years into her second marriage, she reached an impasse with her husband, Richard. “We never talk. He promised to change, but it hasn’t happened. He just sits in front of the TV every night. I can’t stand to live with him anymore.” She sobbed out, “I should never have divorced Terry.”
Sheila crouched halfway up the mountain, desperately clinging on, unable to go further or turn around. Only a miracle will help. Joshua gets in a similar position in Joshua Chapter 5 with the walls of Jericho.
Joshua at Jericho
Joshua 5:12, “The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan.”
The manna ceased to exist. Only a miracle would do. This transition from manna in the wilderness to eating the produce of the land ended 40 years of dependence on God’s special provision. Manna was God’s gift for the desert journey. Divine food from heaven. But no more free lunch. They crossed the Jordan River with no possibility of return and still needed God’s supply to keep from starving.
1. You need a miracle when the manna ceases.
Leonard and his wife did well in real estate. When times got tight in the business, he bought property at good prices. Then he got a great idea. He decided to build condos on a hillside. So, he liquidated his other property. He invested with the bank in beautiful condos, like modern day cliff dwellings, overlooking the Channel Islands near Ventura, California.
However, the final inspection detected one of the condos starting to slip down the hill. As they investigated the terrain, they discovered the engineers had not given the right instructions to make the ground settled and compacted. They condemned the entire project. And Leonard lost everything. The manna ceased.
Times in our lives, everything goes great—good job, plenty of food, physical health, obedient children, loving relationships, great ministries, then all of a sudden, the manna ceases. God hasn’t stopped loving us or given up on us. He’s not necessarily punishing us. He may be motivating us to push on beyond infancy to maturity. He wants us to move out of the wilderness into a land of milk and honey.
Miracle Messenger
2. For miracle prep, God sends a messenger.
Joshua 5:13, “Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.’”
God hasn’t deserted Joshua. God knows all about the obstacles. You might think that once Joshua made it to the Promised Land, his worries ended. But Joshua knew better. He scouted out the land years before concerning the enemies and fortified cities. Now they camped across from Jericho, the impregnable walled city. They wondered how they would conquer it.
Joshua got the people into the Promised Land, but now what? God sent a messenger. But Joshua so deep in his concern about what to do next didn’t recognize him. “Whose side are you on?” he demanded.
Now What We Expect
When God sends messengers, we may miss it because we’re surprised at the source. It might be a preacher or morning daily devotion or something quite different. For instance, he sent a donkey to Baalam. (Numbers 22:21-39).
At the first church I considered after graduating from seminary, the people wanted me to come. However, the denomination had rules that presented hang-ups for why I couldn’t serve. I needed time away to pray it through. So, I headed into the California Sierra Nevada mountains and hiked to a special place overlooking Kaweah Lake. As I opened my Bible, I prayed God would allow me to pastor this church. I looked for God’s message to me in his Word.
After a wonderful time of fellowship with the Lord, no direction came. So, I drove home through the mountain pass and approached the town on the road going past that church. I fiddled with the radio dial and spun it to a Christian station. An evangelist I never listened to harangued about a cause he believed in. However, this time it wasn’t a money appeal. He repeated a Scripture verse several times: “Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
Woodlake Presbyterian Church
Ask, Seek, Knock
To get home, I must drive by the church. It’s getting late with the sun going down and no one’s around. And I’m thinking about that verse. So, I put on the brakes in front of the church and walk to the front door. I knocked and said out loud, “Lord, I’m knocking. This is the church I want.”
Within a week, I received a phone call that revealed the denomination changed their mind. They’d made an exception in my case. That began a joyful ministry at my first church. And the Lord used a surprise messenger on a chance radio program to give me a call to action.
3. Miracles require reverence.
Joshua 5:14,5 … “Then Joshua fell face-down to the earth in reverence, and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant? ‘The commander of the Lord’s army host replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.”
Joshua humbly knew his place. He bowed down and fell on his face in the presence of someone much greater. But he also had to be reminded to take off his shoes before a holy God.
When you’re stuck on a hillside, halfway up a cliff, you want the miracle first. Then you’ll be good. “God, if you’ll only get me out of this, boy, will I ever be obedient to you.” But God looks for sincere and heartfelt acts of worship and service. Pride keeps us trapped. Some can’t even yell, “Help!” They don’t want to admit they got themselves into trouble. Reverence and humility go together.
I remember a time I spoke at The Chapel in Akron, Ohio. The whole town of Winchester, Idaho, could sit in the back row. On a Sunday night, twenty people played gorgeous music in the orchestra while the congregation sang. Then I get up as this farm boy with all these people and think, “Lord, help! What am I doing here?” I felt him there as he helped me speak. Sometimes God humbles us even when he affirms us to teach us about himself.
Miracle March Around Jericho
4. God reveals the miracle method.
Joshua 6:1-5, “Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seen priests carry trumpets the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests lowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.”
We often have a limited view of a solution to our crises. Surely Joshua conferred with his generals about a war strategy. They could surround the city and try to starve them out. But that could take a long time. Meanwhile, other Canaanites could attack from the rear. Or maybe they could build a ramp under the protection of shields and breach the walls. I doubt if anyone suggested marching around the city and blowing horns.
The Process
The victory didn’t happen all at once. In fact, on the first day nothing happened. They marched around the city. The horns played. People inside the city peered over the walls and found not even one crack, shake, or falling rock. Then nothing the second day or third. God’s method often comes in steps and what we consider peculiar timing. But if we trust and obey, we’ll witness a miracle.
Noah and the Ark
5. The mandate is enacted (Joshua 6:16-19).
The people did exactly what God told Joshua they should do. However, he gave the instructions one day at a time. They learned the method bit by daily bit. To me, that’s very dramatic. They trusted the Lord but didn’t perceive what or when the end result would be.
It’s like Noah in the backyard building that ark. Not only no cloud in the sky, but according to some scholars, there had never been clouds before. However, Noah kept plodding and putting the ark together day after day, for one hundred years. He obeyed the mandate.
6. The miracle provided.
“When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city” (Joshua 6:20).
God takes care of every detail in this miracle. Some people who disparage miracles claim it was only an earthquake. What timing though. And not all the walls of Jericho fell down. Not Rahab’s house. Which one was Rahab’s house? The only one standing. Wasn’t that an amazing earthquake?
Purpose of Miracles
God’s miracles come to accomplish his intended purpose, in his perfect timing. We often ask for miracles to accomplish our desire. God isn’t in the business of dispensing miracles for our purpose.
The blind man by the pool of Siloam had been blind from birth. The disciples followed the thinking of the day and asked, “Did this man sin or did his parents’ sin?” Jesus replied, “It was neither this man’s sin nor his parents but that the work of God could be displayed in him now.” The miracle happened at God’s perfect time.
Some situations in our lives require miracles. God wants it to include a walk of fellowship with him. Miracles happen when they accomplish God’s intent. We recognize the manna ceased. God sends a message his way. We examine our heart’s motives and right attitude toward God. God’s method must be followed. We obey his mandate for us. And then we enjoy the miraculous result.
Back to My Hillside Climb
Halfway up that beachside mountain cliff when I was eleven, God didn’t need to send a miracle. But I thought he did. I looked around and spied a chipmunk. He crawled as high as me a few feet away, then turned and slid all the way down on his stomach.
I looked down the hill, scared to death, and decided to try to slide on my backside. On the way down, I ripped my bathing suit. Now I had to walk by the Hotel Rio Del Mar covered with rocks, sand, and dirt. Humiliated to tears, I refused to lift my face. But one of the chauffeurs tapped me on the shoulder. “Son, Mrs. Crawford would like you to have this.” He handed me a crisp dollar bill. I thought about returning every day looking that way.
Sheila and Richard
Remember my friend, Sheila? Even though she didn’t know how to go forward with her marriage, she determined to go on. And then she got a different sort of message.
“I went to our evening Bible study taught out of Revelation about the seven churches. It had nothing to do with a marriage relationship, but I heard, ‘You have left your first love.’ I thought, ‘Aha! I should go back and remarry my first husband.’ But I kept meditating on that verse. It dawned on me that the first love those Ephesians left was their love for the Lord.” She added, “I think maybe that’s my problem.” So, she committed herself to renewing her love for God.
Then she studied her morality. She said, “If I’m going to stick it out, I began to wonder, how would I behave if my husband were perfect? I’d never thought about that before because he was so far from being perfect. I realized I’d have to change a lot of things and decided to be different first.” She committed to godly methods, no matter what. That eliminated quite a few things, like suicide, depression, and divorce. “I’m in it for the long run and I need your help in prayer.”
Three months later, she reported, “A miracle happened. My husband came home last Friday night.“ “Yeah and then what?” I spoke. “That’s the miracle! He never comes home on Friday nights.” It was a start. The process for a miracle had begun.
Stephen Bly
Circa 1995
Red Panda Stuck Image by janeb13 from Pixabay
Woman Stuck Packaging Tape Image by luxstorm from Pixabay
Man as Miracle Messenger Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay
Joshua and Jericho Image by CCXpistiavos from Pixabay
Noah and the Ark Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay
Jesus Sign Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
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Other Miracle Resources
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