A GOD OF MIRACLES PART 2

During his mortal ministry, Jesus performed many miracles. He healed the sick, gave vision to the blind, turned water into wine, fed the hungry masses, raised the dead, walked on water and calmed the troubled seas. These miracles He did not do just out of compassion but to show people who He was and what He could do. The physical nature of these miracles stood as the mirror image of the spiritual miracles that Christ could perform. Healing physical ailments typified His ability to heal spiritual ones. Christ's greatest miracle is His ability 'to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man' (Moses 1:39). This He achieves in two ways: immortality comes to us through the miracle of His resurrection, and eternal life, meaning life with God, through the miracle of making us holy.

Many spiritualists in the world today are pushing the theory that we are good enough as we are. Whereas it is admirable to teach people that they should love themselves on all levels of self-improvement, this theory can also be damaging. It stands in stark contrast to the scriptures which repeatedly tell us to 'consider our unworthiness' (Alma 38:14, Ether 3:2, Mosiah 4:11). Because of this repeated mandate many people abandon religion feeling guilty and lacking faith that they cannot live up to godly standards. In their efforts to remain connected to deity they tend to gravitate towards theologies which expect very little of their followers. For instance many people forsake Christianity in favour of Buddism. Dalai Lama declares the simplicity of his religion thus: "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." As needed as kindness is in our world today, this is not, however, the only virtue that will lead us to eternal life. This philosophy overlooks virtues such as honesty, integrity, sexual purity, obedience, faith; not to mention the very first commandment, to love God and not have any other gods before Him.

Those of us who find it hard to accept scriptural references to our unworthiness tend to  miss an important mark. They miss the Saviour amidst the scriptures. When the scriptures speak of our unworthiness it is always in conjunction with Christ's power to save. Reflecting upon our imperfections therefore should bring us to Christ rather than push us away from Him. We were given imperfections and weaknesses for this very purpose (see Ether 12:27) with the promise that He will make us mighty to overcome. Why is it important to be harnessed with Christ on our journey to perfection and improvement? Because it is motivating to know that we do not need to do the work of changing alone and because no matter what we do, we can never secure salvation by our merits alone. Eternal life, being the greatest gift of God (D&C 4:7), can only be given to us through the grace of Christ, after all we can do (2 Nephi 25:23); Christ's grace being power to overcome. Accepting Jesus Christ as our Saviour outweighs any virtue we could possibly live up to for His greatest miracle is what He can do with what is within us. Thus coming to Christ serves the purpose of giving us hope of eternal life rather than cause to lose it. Coming to Christ means faith in His ability to make of us more than we can make of ourselves. Is this not His greatest miracle?

"Trust me, learn of me, do what I do. Then, when you walk where I am going, we can talk about where YOU are going, and the problems you face and the troubles you have. If you will follow me, I will lead you out of darkness. I will give you answers to yours prayers. I will give you rest to your souls."

- Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "Broken Things to Mend", Ensign May 2006

A GOD OF MIRACLES PART 1

"A small congregation in the foothills of the Great Smokies built a new sanctuary on a piece of land willed to them by a church member. Ten days before the new church was to open, the local inspector informed the pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the building. Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be able to use the new sanctuary.

Unfortunately, the church with its undersized parking lot had used every inch of their land except for the mountain against which it had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to move the mountain of the back yard. Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all members who had 'mountain-moving faith'. They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted before the scheduled opening dedication service the following week.

At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation's 300 members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At ten o'clock the pastor said the final 'Amen'. 'We'll open next Sunday as scheduled', he assured everyone. God has never let us down before, and I believe He will be faithful this time too.'

The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud knock at his door. When he called 'come in', a rough looking construction foreman appeared removing his hard hat as he entered. 'Excuse me, Reverend. I'm from Acme Construction Company over in the next county. We're building a huge new shopping mall over there and we need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We'll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge, if we can have it right away. We can't do anything else until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle properly'. 

The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned and there were far more members with 'mountain-moving faith' on opening Sunday than there had been the previous week."

- Author Unknown

Gilbert Fowler White summed up his understanding of Albert Einstein's conversation with David Reichenstein as such: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is." In context of this theory, readers of the above story would be divided into believers in faith and miracles and believers in coincidences only. Some would believe that it is a fictional story and some would believe that this is an account of true events. What group you would fall into would very much depend on your level of faith in an unseen God. It would also depend on your understanding of God. It is one thing to believe that God exists and another to know God. The Lectures on Faith state that for a man to exercise sufficient faith in God unto salvation, he needs to have a correct idea of God's character, perfections and attributes (Lecture 3).

In Mormon chapter 9, Moroni points out two things about the character of God; one is that He is an unchangeable being and another, that He is a God of miracles (vs 9). For God to be changeable it would mean that He would be eternally progressing and adding onto His knowledge and power. This is an erroneous theory. If God was constantly learning new truths our salvation would be in peril for He would constantly have to revise the Plan of Salvation and Redemption. There would be no certainty in His dealings with His children. (See Maxwell, Neal A., "All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience" p 14-15). If God was an ever learning personage, He would be an ever changing God. If God was ever changing, we would never know for sure what He was like and could not exercise faith in Him. Miracles are born out of steadfastness of character, both God's and ours. His steadfastness is grounded in never changing power, omniscience and love for His children. Our steadfastness is grounded in faith. God can do nothing without our faith; faith of the mind, faith of the tongue, faith of actions, "for if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them....." (Ether 12:112).

What are miracles? To some a miracle is something as grand as 'the burning bush' or Jesus walking on water, while to others it can be the smallest of things coming about in miraculous ways, our faith being a good measure of our perception. What some of us may deem a miracle may be just an answer to a prayer for others. The crucial element of this phenomenon is that we believe and acknowledge that God is involved in our lives, that He answers prayers and that all good things come to us from Him. Failure to acknowledge such, breeds ungratefulness and dullness of faith.We do not need to know 'how' a miracle we have asked for will happen, we only need to know that it will. In whatever form they come, and through whatever channel, miracles are creations of faith, the righteous exercise of our agency, the end product of our belief in the God of Miracles.