Have you ever witnessed a miracle? Many of us heard the story of Moses splitting the Red Sea and people stood there in awe. Jesus alsp raised Lazarus from the dead and even his most ardent followers were left shocked at the sight. The Bible is full of fantastic and seemingly impossible miracle stories. But I’ve come to believe that some of God’s most impressive miracles can’t be seen. Tyler Brown has one of these stories.
His story begins on the cusp of absolute potential. He entered high school as a talented athlete and dedicated student. The world was at his feet. But when a friend introduced him to marajuana, his life took a sharp turn downwards. It led to an everyday, crippling addiction to drugs. Everything in his life changed. He lost interest in sports, school and even his relationships. He soon followed after harder drugs, sexual immorality and much more. Before he knew it, Tyler was homeless and alone.
This is the point in the story that God could have done something really flashy. He could have spoken to Tyler directly, like he did with Saul in the Bible. He could have cast demons out of him and sent a herd of pigs flying off a cliff, like he did with the man in Mark 5. But instead, God pulled on Tyler’s heart so gently that he didn’t even know that it happened.
“I don’t really know why,” Tyler said, “but I started to pray and I went to church.”
We don’t usually call such a thing a miracle, but that’s what it is. God convinced a man who burned a cross on his wall to pray and go to church. There was no flash, no pizzazz, but that’s a miracle. And the miracle didn’t stop there.
Over the course of just a few months, Tyler gave his life to Jesus and went off to Bible school to learn to be a minister. It was a complete transformation. But also the start of another miracle. While at Bible school, Tyler began to feel he didn’t have what it took to share Jesus with others. There was too much he didn’t know and too much he couldn’t prepare for.
That’s when God showed him the truth of Jesus’ parables. Jesus often spoke about using the small and weak things of the world to move mountains. As I wrote about in my other blog about Tyler, he didn’t need fancy degrees or impressive resumes to make a leader out of Tyler. God just needed a willing heart. If Tyler would be willing to go out into the world and serve him, God would open doors and open hearts.
And that’s what happened. With all his weaknesses and doubts, Tyler held onto enough faith to simply obey God’s call to go and share the good news of Jesus. It led to people finding Jesus for the first time. It led to new churches being started and new leaders rising up to follow in his example.
These are the truly impressive miracles, in my opinion. That God can transform people so fully and use them so greatly without any big flash or showy drama is truly amazing. And it’s this same miracle that each of us are invited into every day. We can each choose to exercise that bit of faith and trust by obeying God’s call to share the good news of Jesus with others. Trusting that God can use each of our limited abilities and tiny bits of faith to do big things for his kingdom is the miracle all of us can experience.
If you have always wanted to see God do the amazing, to show up in surprising ways and to accomplish the impossible, then just trust him and go. He has sent you to be his witness in the world. Trust him and you will experience miracles – even if you can’t always see them.
Get some simple and free training here and learn how you can do what Tyler did in his community.
