MY PERSPECTIVE, Gary Damron

My wife received a birthday card with the words inside, “Asking God to bless you with an incredible year of mountain-moving, sea-parting, wall-falling, chain-breaking, world changing faith.”

What would you consider the greatest miracle of all time? Is it something in your life, or something you've heard about? We often pray for miracles, asking God to intervene in sickness, to open closed doors and move mountains, to bring provision where there's lack, or to change seemingly impossible situations. Yet we may not consider that every true miracle rests on one foundational event: God came to earth as a human being.

The apostle John identified the man Jesus as the Word in John 1:1, and in John 20:31 he declared that his gospel was written so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ [the Messiah], the Son of God. The infinite God entered time and space. The Creator stepped into His creation. The eternal Word took on flesh.

God's transformative power was first revealed in Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Creation formed a staggeringly complex universe, with finely tuned laws, information-packed DNA, galaxies and living cells that work with order. An all-powerful, all-knowing Creator makes far more sense than any other explanation. Later, the incarnation of God, in the person Jesus, completes the story that began in the Garden of Eden. His conception bypassed ordinary human generation, so that the child born of Mary would be both the son of David and the Son of God.

In the first chapter of the New Testament, an angel spoke to Joseph in a dream. He instructed that Mary's son should receive the name prophesied in Isaiah 7:14, "'They will call him Immanuel (which means "God with us")'" (Matthew 1:23). In choosing to dwell among us, God shares our limitations, feels our hunger and weariness, knows our temptations. And yet, the child Jesus who grew to adulthood remained without sin. After teaching and leading by example, the incarnation of Jesus took Him to the garden of Gethsemane. There he prayed and accepted the cup that the Father gave him (Matthew 26:36-46). On the cross He bore the moral burden and penalty of human sin. His dying words were, "'It is finished!'" (John 19:30).

The apostle Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The sinless One took our place, and the miracle of the cross brought full atonement to all who believe and repent.

The empty tomb revealed the miracle of resurrection, and after Jesus ascended to heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit (read Luke chapter 24 and Acts chapters 1 and 2). The ongoing miracle is that God is still Emmanuel, "God with us". The same God who once walked the dusty roads of Galilee now lives inside us, and our bodies become the temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).

What began in the incarnation continues through the indwelling Spirit. Emmanuel, the baby in the manger, is the present reality of every Christian life. The Spirit convicts, regenerates, transforms, comforts, and empowers. This is the direct continuation of “God with us”. 

Even better - all miracles point forward to a greater completion. One day, the people of God will be fully united with Him. Revelation 21:3-4 speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, where God will dwell with His people and where there will be no more death or mourning. There, we who know Him will share in His resurrection and see Him face to face. Until that day, we live in the tension of the "already" and the "not yet". While we wait for the full revealing of eternal life, the Spirit within us guarantees all that is still to come (Ephesians 1:13-14).

When we pray for any miracle, we're not asking for a distant deity to reach from afar; we're turning to the God who is already near and who loved us even before we knew Him (Romans 5:8). The incarnation assures that God understands our humanity. The cross assures that He has fully dealt with our deepest problem. The Spirit assures that He remains present. The promise of resurrection assures that the story is not finished. Every healing, answered prayer, transformed life, finds root in the fact that God became flesh, and the Word lived on earth. May we never lose our wonder at the miracle of God with us. And may that miracle shape the way we live, pray, and wait.