Faith, Disbelief, and Disobedience

Recently, I have had the opportunity to share messages from the Gospel of Mark in the context of understanding the works of God all around us, and how it impacts our lives and sometimes "rattles our cage". We too often in the West especially are comfortable in our faith, and that we don't want to believe in anything that smacks of "supernatural", so that we tend to dismiss or even discount anything that borders on the strange, mysterious, or (God forbid) the miraculous. But as I shared in a message lately, the evidence is all around us that it would appear that God is moving in a mighty way in the world around us.

We don't see much of it in the culture that we surround ourselves with here in America, and even Western Europe because of our spiritual blindness. We are too sophisticated to recognize these kinds of miracles or workings of God in our midst. The signs and wonders of God that accompany the preaching of the Gospel often came (and come) to validate the message being preached. There are many cultures in which this is received and gives God a powerful witness as His people come in power of not only message but in the ability to show through prayer and healing the power of God to do miraculous things in the midst of people even today.

I recently had someone ask me why we still need "signs and wonders" in our culture. I responded that due to the overwhelming disbelief that runs rampant in our culture, it would seem that only the signs from God would gain the attention of those in this culture. However, upon further reflection, I am afraid the answer isn't even that hopeful. We may indeed today be in the mindset that the Israelites found themselves in during Jesus' day. When the Pharisees asked for a sign, Jesus responded with, "There will be no sign for this generation." There reason for wanting a sign was selfish, and in the interest of entertainment (sort of), and that today if we were to see miracles in our midst, we would as a culture treat them with disbelief, and completely disregard the reason that we were given the sign.

More thoughts later...