The Strategic Miracles of Jesus

 (Unless otherwise noted, scriptural quotes are from the NKJV.)

Strategy – it can be, very simply, a clever plan or method.  However, from its origin from the Greek strategos, it had a much fuller concept.  From Merriam Webster’s Deluxe Dictionary, Tenth Collegiate Edition, we have:  “the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological and military forces of a nation, or a group of nations, to afford the maximum support to the adopted policies in peace or in war.”  Its secondary definition follows: “The science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions.”  Let us keep this as we explore the unique power of the strategy employed by Jesus in the performance of His miracles with regard to the impact they and their strategic implementation had on the minds of those to and among whom He ministered.

We can see, at one level, a clear distinction between the warfare that occurred in the Old Testament and that in which Jesus engaged and in which he empowered His disciples to participate.  In the Old Testament we read of great battles between men, e.g. David and Goliath, or between nations, e.g. Joshua leading the armies of the tribes of Israel against the Amalekites.  When Jesus comes on to the scene, He “ramps it up,” and He starts casting out demons, unclean spirits, even a “Legion” of them.  Now we are dealing with spiritual warfare as Paul declared in Ephesians 6:12 –

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  In addition, Jesus has given to His disciples (that includes us) this power, this authority, over demonic forces.  Note, from the very first time Jesus sent His disciples forth, we read that “He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of diseases” (Matthew 10:1b).  Awesome, is it not?  Hallelujah!

But, wait.  Was there no dimension of spiritual warfare in the Old Testament?  Indeed there was!  We have only to look to the Ten Plagues God sent upon Egypt as one of many such examples in the Old Testament.

These Ten Plagues were, each and every one of them, strategically directed against one of the major demon deities of the Egyptian pantheon of their false gods. 

Over the next few installments of this teaching, which will constitute the first part of this series, we are going to examine these miracle plagues and then we will examine how Jesus strategically utilized them when He performed some rather unique miracles that stand with, in comparison, and against, in contrast, those Egyptian plagues and how Jesus took them “to the next level!”  Stay tuned ~

LEARNING FROM OUR PAIN

Conclusion

We learn to turn to the Lord! First, we turn to the great Shepherd. Remember, as 

children we are taught Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd.” He cares for me. He feeds; me brings me to freshwater, and He leads me in Paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake, and then, when we encounter a Valley of the Shadow of Death, He is ever with us. With His rod, He protects us, and with His shepherd’s staff, He rescues us. He prepares us to sit in the presence of our enemies at a table of feasting. He anoints our head with oil, and our cup overflows with the wine of his grace. He pursues us with his goodness and His mercy every day we live, and we will live every day in the House of the Lord!

Then, we learn to turn to the King. In Hebrews 4:16, God the Father invites us to enter into His Presence, into His Throne Room and to approach Him with boldness, with confidence, for, although He is the Almighty God, He is also Abba – our Daddy. He invites us to climb up into His lap and to be held in His great embrace, and He brings to us a sense of the true Peace of his Presence, and we know that it is truly well with our soul.

Finally, we learn to turn to our Best Friend – Jesus, the Son, the Glorious One. In Matthew 11:28, Jesus tells us that when we become weary in the labor of the ministry, we can come to Him. He will place a yoke upon our necks, if we would but permit him to do so, and he will, Himself, place Himself under the other side of the yoke. All that we need to do is to keep pace with Him and walk beside Him as He bears the load and carries the weight and gives us rest for our soul.

No matter what goes on in this world, no matter how bad it may ever seem to grow, we must always remember that in Matthew 5, Jesus told us that we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. This is not based on how we feel at any given moment. This is our identity. Our body is temple of the Holy Spirit whom we have from God (1 Cor. 6:19); we are a member of the Body of Christ (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12), and it is the living God who dwells within us (2 Cor. 6:16), and our Lord and King, Jesus, is knocking upon door of our heart (Revelation 3:20), and he is the anchor of our souls, and he is anchored within the veil, in the throne room of God (Hebrews 619). Therefore, with the tribune God living within us, where ever we go, we must shine forth the light of his love, and every person that we “rub up against” has been given a seasoning of the salt of the glorious God whom we serve.

Once again, and in conclusion:  When in pain, we learn turn to our Good Shepherd, we turn to The King, we turn to your Best Friend; we walk with him; we shine forth the light of God’s love, and we season our society with the salt of the Holy Spirit, and in so doing, we then we learn, yea, we know the true meaning of Living in Victory in Jesus!

May the LORD bless and keep you;

The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;

The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. ~ Numbers 6:24b-25

LEARNING FROM OUR PAIN

Part 3

The next step in the process of Learning from Our Pain is to continue the Paradigm Shift we absolutely must successfully complete if we are going to turn our pain and suffering from a feeling of defeat to a position of true Victory.  As we have noted, the First Step is to ask the Question: Father, What do you want to teach me as You walk with me through this “valley of the shadow of death?”  The Second Step is to allow the Father to gather us up into His loving embrace where we can “be still and know that He is God” (that is, to be able to c come to a place of complete trust that He is in control of the situation.  We begin to look beyond the present moment to the future when we can look back on this painful experience and see how He has caused it all [the whole suffering, refining, learning process] to work together for our eventual “good,” because we do truly Love Him and know that we are, indeed, called to fulfill His purposes for our lives (Romans 8:28).

To conclude this teaching, let us “come full circle,” and say that we often learn the greatest lessons in life when we (a) go to the very extremities of our resources and then (b) “partner” with the King and experience true “on the job training” as we learn to rely upon and draw from the reservoirs of His wisdom, strength, and His very presence.  A great vocal artist of the mid-twentieth century named “Tennessee” Ernie Ford told the story of a teenage boy who was trying to dig up a stump to expand his family’s tillable acreage.  As the young man’s father approached the field by taking a short cut through the woods, he stopped at the edge of the tree line to watch his son as he strained to accomplish his task.  When he saw that his son was nearing the point of exhaustions, he stepped out from under the shade of the trees and called out, “Son, how is it coming along there?”

The young man straightened up and looked at his dad with an expression of frustration and fatigue and replied, “Dad, I’ve failed.  I just can’t get this stump out!”  His father then asked, “Son, have you used all of your strength?”

Emphatically, the big, strong lad wearily said, with a not e of defeat and despair in his voice, “Yeah, Dad.  I’ve used every ounce I possess.”  The young man’s father smiled, looked lovingly  into his son’s eyes and said gently, yet quite firmly, “No, Son – you haven’t.  You didn’t ask me to help you.”

That’s the Life Lesson the LORD God wants us to learn.  We have not brought to bear all of our strength, resources and abilities and applied them to the task at hand or employed them to relieve our pain and suffering until we have come alongside of and in the presence of our King, our loving Father until we have come to Him and asked Him for His help.

To be Continued . . . . next, our “Conclusion”