Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
A friend’s mother passed away and she asked me to conduct her memorial service. I had never met her mother so when I arrived at the funeral home for the visitation I was hoping the Lord would speak to me. The service would be in a couple of hours and although I had sought the Lord for direction and had a lot of thoughts, I could not seem to pull them together.
There was a display of family pictures set up and as I looked over them my eye fell upon the picture of “The Miracle Catch” recorded in Luke 5. There were a couple of yellow sticky notes under the picture with a brief explanation of its significance.
That was the missing piece that I had been looking for that pulled all my thoughts together for the service. And not only that, the picture was very inspiring and encouraging to me personally. This is a great example of a person’s works following them into eternity (Rev. 14:13).
Later I was given a copy of the picture and a more detailed explanation of its significance.
“This picture comes from a card that my mom, Stella Liberti, received from the Oral Roberts Association. The picture was very special and inspirational for her. This is because one day when she looked at it God gave her a supernatural experience where the picture suddenly came alive.
She could smell the sea, hear the waves and even hear the men struggling to haul in their catch. The picture then moved forward for her to after the fish were in the boat and she could hear men laughing. It was not just because of the enormous catch, but also because Jesus was there with them. They knew the joy of being with and obeying Jesus.
My mother knew that if she could have such an amazing experience from just looking at a little card, how much greater the reality of heaven would be for her! She kept this card up for many years tucked into the corner of a picture frame and was willing to share what it meant to her to anyone who asked.”
It turns out that Stella was a saint of great faith who had and continues to have much impact upon her family and those who knew her. This encounter she had was an important part of a life lived well before the Lord.
Supernatural encounters are so vital for a healthy life in Christ. It was this supernatural encounter of the miraculous catch of fish that initially catapulted Peter, James and John into their callings (Luke 5:1-11). About three years down the road they had another supernatural encounter involving a miraculous catch of fish that kept them in an hour of sifting from drifting from their calling (John 21:1-8).
The love of God is not something we can understand apart from experiencing it and the experience of His love is what leads us into a healthy life in Christ (Eph. 3:18-19). The normal Christian life is a life of experiencing God, not simply knowing about God. I believe one of the greatest reasons we do not understand the Bible is we are trying to understand it at the expense of experiencing it.
Many Christians shy away or have reservations concerning the supernatural because they do not understand it. Thinking we need to understand the supernatural in order to experience it is not Biblical.
In His explanation of the Parable of the Sower, Jesus revealed that hardness of heart causes us to refuse to accept things that we cannot explain, define or describe and consequently, we never receive the benefits of the word of the kingdom (Matt. 13:15).
I discovered that removing the prerequisite of having to understand the supernatural actually opened the door for me to experience it and through the experience the Lord opened my mind to understand what He was doing and saying (Luke 24:45). We must never forget the Bible is a supernatural book and must be approached as such.
Many Blessings, BW