Focus: Understanding God's Methods
Read Luke 5:1-7.
There is a carefully defined scientific method for conducting a scientific experiment and reaching a conclusion. Methods and formulas enable us to calculate long-term strategies and manage risk. But God does not make a miracle happen by using a method or formula. Each miracle He creates is the result of the supernatural, personal response of a God of love and compassion.
1. Tommy Barnett gives several biblical illustrations of miracles. He also states, “In each case what caused the miracle to occur is that the people did what the Lord said.” Why do you think obeying the Lord is so important in the making of a miracle?
2. The purposes and methods God uses in any particular incident may seem strange or useless. The disciples had been fishing all night and had caught nothing when Jesus told them to put their nets in the water again. What would you have said to Jesus? What would you have done?
3. How God performs a miracle for your brother or sister may not be the way He chooses to bring a miracle into
your life. We must have a firsthand revelation of God’s plan for our own lives and circumstances. What revelation of God’s plan for your life has not yet come to pass? What has God revealed that He wants you to do to bring His plan to pass in your life?
4. Tommy Barnett makes the following statement: “In the making of every miracle are faith, obedience and the willingness to take a risk. These represent for you the three hurdles that you must overcome: doubt, fear and thinking you know it all.”
Recall a miracle in your life and share how you overcame the hurdle of doubt, the hurdle of fear and the hurdle of thinking you knew it all.
5. Another thought-provoking statement is this: “Every promise of God and every hope and expectation for miracles are qualified or even discounted by the memory of their past disappointments.” Has your memory of past disappointment limited God from doing a miracle in your future? How can you begin walking in victory unhindered by past failures?
“I suppose it would be much easier to reduce everything to formulas, but that’s not how it works with God...
If there is any formula...at all, it is that obedience to the Lord is the essential ingredient for the making of miracles.”