My Miracle

When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”   —John 6:5

Shortly after I returned from a mission trip to Central America, I met Art Winger. He had gone on numerous short-term mission work teams with World Gospel Mission. Art told me how he was miraculously healed from liver disease the year before.

Weeks before he was to lead an upcoming mission trip, Art lay gravely ill on a hospital bed watching evangelist Pat Robertson on television. Robertson was praying and naming illnesses and persons whom the Holy Spirit was telling him were being healed. As he was about to finish praying, Art yelled out to the TV screen, “What about me?” At that moment, Robertson paused and added, “Yes, someone lying in a hospital bed is being healed of liver disease.”

Art shouted, “Hallelujah,” felt a warmth come into his body, and began to get better at that moment. A few weeks later he was healthy enough to lead a work team to Honduras. Many of us often feel like Art Winger. God seems to answer other folk’s prayers, the other person has the financial breakthrough, and someone else receives their miracle, but we ask, “What about me? Where is my miracle?”

The Gospel of John includes seven miracle signs performed by Jesus so we might believe. The feeding of the multitudes in John 6 is the only miracle besides Jesus’ birth and resurrection that is included in all four Gospels. In each of the miraculous signs in John’s Gospel, there is an obstacle of faith to overcome, an act of obedience to demonstrate, and a personal participation in the miracle.

In feeding the 5,000, Jesus tested Philip by asking where they would buy enough bread to feed the multitude. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus told the disciples, “You give them something to eat” (6:37). Jesus then directed the disciples to have the people to sit down in groups of fifties and hundreds (Mark 6:39-40). After Jesus blessed the five loaves and two fish donated by a young boy, the disciples distributed the loaves and fish to the crowd and then gathered up twelve baskets of leftovers.

The feeding of the 5,000 was a miracle for each person in the crowd, but it was especially a miracle for the disciples. The disciples ate of the blessed and multiplied loaves, but they also helped give the miracle to others. Maybe some of us who are waiting for our miracle are supposed to be a miracle to others. When we say, “What about me?” Jesus may be saying, “Yes, what about you? What miracle are you going to bring to others?” As He told the disciples, “You give them something to eat,” Jesus may be telling us, “You, go, and be a miracle to another.”

What about you? Don’t sit around and wait for Jesus to perform a miracle for you, go and be a miracle for someone else. Allow God to use you to give and bless someone in need. We cannot, in our human ability, multiply food and heal the sick, but submitted to and in the hands of Jesus, we can do all things. Jesus told the disciples and us, “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” (John 14:12). What about you? Where is your miracle?