Cooperation is the Key!
A couple of weeks ago, I joined a group of women, who attended my old college, to participate in a spiritual retreat called “The Way We Were; The Way We Can Be.” Thirty years ago, we would have probably gathered in a different way, most likely at a drinking party, but now we were discussing the transformation that our relationship with Christ had brought us since college.
It was amazing to hear the different stories of how God worked in people’s lives but in each case, it involved a choice to follow Christ. Transformation is a choice and a cooperative effort. Before Jesus performed his first miracle at the wedding in Cana, he asked the servants to fill six stone jars with water before he turned the water into wine. He is Jesus! Did he need water in the jars to create the wine? No, but he did want the servants to participate in the miracle for it to make more of an impact. The end result, the disciples who attended the wedding, believed in Jesus.
In almost all of the accounts of Jesus’ miracles he performed, there is some action required by the recipient of the miracle. When Jesus was in the process of calling Simon Peter, a fisherman, to be his disciple, he hadn’t caught a fish all night. Jesus told Simon Peter to put his nets into deep water, and let down the nets for the catch. Simon Peter probably thought, “We haven’t caught anything all night. How is this going to change anything!” However, Simon Peter listened to Jesus, lowered his nets, and when he raised them, there were so many fish, his nets were breaking. Jesus didn’t need Simon Peter to lower his nets to perform this miracle, but again, Simon Peter’s cooperation made the miracle that much more powerful. The end result was that Simon Peter became a fisher of men and transformed into one of the most powerful disciples of Jesus Christ.
I believe Jesus still performs miracles in our lives. The evidence of that was clear in the lives of so many who attended our college retreat; however, we have to say yes to what Jesus tells us to do. There is obedience involved. If you want to be transformed, ask the Lord to create a miracle in you and He’ll let you know how to cooperate!