The Makings of a Miracle
♥ 12 MIN READ-
If I’m honest this topic caught me by surprise. I wasn’t planning on writing about this because my miracle isn’t “finished yet.” At the beginning of this year, God promised me something that I have been progressing toward, believing for, and praying. It is almost December and I’m still here. Honestly, it feels premature to speak on this, but I’ve learned when God tells you to talk, you do what you’re told.
We all want miracles. They are exciting moments when heaven touches earth, the hair raises on our arms, our pulse races and God takes our breath away. Who doesn’t want an experience like this (I do!)? But I’m finding that these mind-blowing moments are often not moments at all. They’re a journey, a series of decisions and events that continue our partnership with God and allow these miracle moments to manifest.
What makes a miracle? That’s the question rolling through my mind as I look back over this year. I see the lessons that have led me to the cusp of my miracle.
For me, it has always started with a word from God. And that has typically been followed by a freak-out session, but we won’t major on that. Well since we’re here, let’s get into it. Faith or excitement has rarely been my first response when God tells me He’s going to do something over and above my expectation or what I think is possible. For so long fear has been my response. What if it doesn’t happen? What if I can’t handle it? What will I have to go through to get this? And I know I’m not alone on this. Many of us allow fear, not faith, to hijack our response to the promises of God. But I tell you this, it’s harder to move toward a miracle with fear weighing you down.
What is it that you’re afraid of? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours…well I’ll go first.
My fear typically voiced three questions that would keep me up at night:
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Did God really say it?
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Can I make it through the process to get it?
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Will it actually be worth it?
This journey has addressed all of these fears and they no longer slow me down. For that, I am so grateful. They were my traveling companions for a very long time. So, let’s get into each one of these and I’ll share with you the lessons I’ve learned that helped me silence these voices.
Talk to Me
Did God really say it? That question is as old as creation, and it’s been tripping us up ever since. Honestly, it has worked because it majors on our doubts that we hear God and our lack of confidence that we know Him. If you doubt those two things, it’s tough to have the stamina for the miracle process because what we know of God is what fuels our faith.
“My sheep know my voice and a stranger they will not follow.” That scripture always made me nervous because I was never sure I knew God’s voice so I lowkey put myself in the goat category. But I have learned that “knowing” is a process.
Growing up in the era of landline home phones, very few people could tell the difference between my voice, my mother’s, and my sisters’. If someone called the house, they would have a 1 in 4 chance of guessing who picked up the phone and they were usually wrong. But if one of us called the house, we could almost always tell who it was. We knew the voices. We recognized the nuances when each person spoke. We learn God’s voice the same way. There are nuances when He speaks and clues He includes to let us know it’s Him.
Now, I am only an expert on how God speaks to me. It may be different for you, but it was in learning how others navigated their communication with God that I learned how He was speaking to me. I will tell you this though- many people have tried to share with me their process for hearing God, but I only take advice from the people whose lives show that God was actually speaking to them. If I can’t see God’s presence in your life, I’m not really confident it’s Him you’re actually talking to.
Anywho, there are a few things I pay attention to that help me validate the voice of God.
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My pattern of thought. If ever I’m unsure I go back to the thought, I was thinking right before I feel like God was speaking to me. There have been times when I was asking God a question or trying to figure something out and He spoke the answer to me. It was in line with my thinking, but it was a thought that appeared without my train of thought heading that way. It just dropped into my mind, and it was something I couldn’t have come up with because I’m not that smart (lol). I know the depth of my mind. I’m smart, but I know when a thought is past my level of intellect. That’s when I know it was God.
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My response. The funny thing is fear used to derail me, now it often serves as my confirmation. Sometimes when I hear God give me direction- Say this, do this, go there, give this I will start getting a bit stressed and I will question whether or not it was God. Now when the direction is something out of my comfort zone- speaking to someone, doing something, giving a large offering- when it’s something like that I pause and check my response. Nine times out of 10 if when I hear it I get nervous then I know it’s God. My fear is confirmation because something in me knows that it was God, that’s the only reason fear would be my response. Fear only rises up like that within me when deep down I know it’s something I’m supposed to do. (Now I’m working on my initial response being excited because we can’t stay here.)
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My feelings. The voice of God became clearer to me when I learned to sort through my feelings and focus on what I felt in my spirit when I heard the words. I will literally stop and put my hand on my stomach sometimes when I’m trying to validate whether or not it was God speaking. For me, when it’s God, there’s a sensation like a spark of fire I feel in my stomach. When I feel that, no confirmation is needed, God made it clear it was Him.
I also know it’s God when peace washes over me or joy and it wasn’t a feeling I mustered up. When my spirit responds that way I know heaven is here.
When you gain confidence in learning the voice of God you can relax into it and focus not so much on what’s being said but on how. For me, how it’s being said leads me to understand who is saying it. Is it my desires, the enemy, or actually God because to the untrained ear they can sound really similar.
It is easier to hear God when you’ve prioritized giving Him space to speak. That means not having so much noise in your space or your mind. It’s slowing down and creating time where you can speak to Him and listen.
Now, this isn’t fool-proof protection against hearing in error. I’ve been duped before assuming that just because I’m talking to God that means that’s who responded. No, our own desires or the enemy has a way of trying to speak up during that time too. When that happens, I keep praying. I try to go deeper into God’s presence because the deeper I go the better chance I have of God confirming what was or wasn’t Him.
If you remember nothing else, I say about this remember this: Clarity comes in pursuit and practice. Don’t be so quick to take the word and do. Stay in the presence and keep pursuing. That’s where protection is.
And also, when you know it’s God, write it down. Record the message in a moment of clarity so that if doubt comes you can remind yourself what He said.
Stamina for the Process
I pride myself on being realistic. I know that miracles are divine, but they usually have a process that requires endurance. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There are rough days and challenges. But sometimes in my hopes to not sell myself a fantasy, I sell a struggle instead. I think I’m counting the cost and assessing my stamina for the process but what I’m really doing is questioning God’s ability to sustain me.
Let me tell you something. This miracle-making journey confronts everything in us and reveals whom we serve. Do you really believe in the God of miracles and wonders or a liar who gets your hopes up to let you down? Is He a Sustainer or someone who’ll abandon you and make you look like a fool? Is He someone who promises the moon and laughs at you when you fall for the okey-doke? Does He set you up for failure and leave you drowning in the ocean when you muster up the faith to walk on water? Who is He really to you?
The thing about this journey is you will undoubtedly be left in a position where it looks like nothing is happening like it’s supposed to and it seems like God is nowhere to be found. It may feel lonely and like there’s nothing to hold on to. Spoiler alert this point is inevitable. So, since you know that, what are you going to do when you reach it?
I’ll tell you that is my location right now and at first, I started feeling discouraged. What I thought was going to happen didn’t and for a second I felt betrayed and disappointed. I felt tired and like I made a mistake believing that this would happen but thank God, I snapped myself out of it. And the key word is myself. It wasn’t an encouraging word from someone else or a thundering word from God. It was a thought that I initiated.
“No, we can’t let ourselves go there. God is good. We’re not going to sit here and act like God let us down. He’s still moving. We’re still holding to this promise. I command my soul to bless the Lord.” Yal this is what I had to tell myself. I had to remind myself of whom I believed God to be and refuse to let it go.
See, I have to fight my weariness because when I get tired if I’m not careful I’ll be ready to have a seat and let it all go. If I focus too much on all I’ve done and how long it’s been I can discourage myself from a miracle.
Here’s the key: You’ll have to fight yourself for the miracle and choose what you’ll hold on to. Your feelings, your list of what you’ve done right and what you deserve because of it, your plan of what should happen when, your justification for being discouraged or tired- you can have these things, but you can’t have the miracle too. One’s gotta go.
This journey will always reveal the depth of our trust in God. And every time I questioned whether or not I could endure the process what I was really unsure of was my commitment to God. Do I love Him enough? Do I trust Him enough?
Those are the questions and let me add some more: Can you be trusted not to give up on the process? Can you hold onto Him and let go of everything else? The answer is yes you can because if you want to God will empower you to do it. So, the only question is, do you want to? My Granny used to say God will use your “want to” and it’s true. If you want to, you will.
So, remember this secret to stamina: Trust feeds faith, and faith fuels stamina.
It’s your trust in God, not your confidence in yourself that will propel you to miracles. I have learned that what I focus on determines how much I enjoy the process. My Spiritual Father, Apostle Jonathan Ferguson, says you become what you behold and that key has helped me so much. What am I looking at during this journey and what am I looking for? Do I only want evidence that I’m getting the miracle I’m after or am I looking for evidence of God’s love for me, His strategy, and protection?
See, when I look for validation that the miracle is coming I get weary waaaay quicker, but when my focus is to see God’s love for me or His goodness, the process becomes more enjoyable because, in the end, the miracle is only a reinforcement of His love for me, His goodness and His plan for my life. That’s what I really desire to see deep down so that’s what I look for. And when I look for it intentionally, that’s what I see.
Is it Worth it?
Well, the answer to this question depends on what you’re after.
Typically after I hear the message from God of what I’m meant to do, what He’s about to do, or whatever somewhat overwhelming piece of information He drops on me, there’s a period where I may fall apart but then I decide I’m going after it. (Thankfully this period has gotten muuuuch shorter. I’ve gotten to the place where I just take a deep breath and say, “We’re doing this.”) But at the moment when I make up my mind to go after the miracle God’s promised, I have to be careful what I attach my heart to. What is the “why” I’m going after because that reason makes all the difference.
See, how you process God’s instruction lays the foundation for your journey. It determines how you start and what your motivation is.
Many times, the why I convinced myself of was because deep down I wanted it or I was worthy of it. Now in themselves, these aren’t bad. Off the top of my head, I can come up with biblical reasoning for why these could be spot on.
God does give us the desires of our hearts and we are His children and royalty, so nothing is too good for us (see I told you).
But one danger in this rationale is that it involves God, but it doesn’t solely focus on Him. God is the whole why, not just an add-on. This time around my why was, “God wants me to have this because it serves a kingdom purpose.”
This why has kept me grounded. See, for you to become disappointed the process has to become about you. It was hard for me to make this process about me because my why was never about me. When the process to the miracle and the purpose of it is about God, it makes it easier to keep your cool when things don’t go like you thought they would because you have already given God free reign to do whatever He wants with His stuff. (My Granny used to say God knows what to do with His stuff, including you. Man, she’s showing up a lot in this post. Can you tell she talked a lot….:))
What is it that you really want in this process? What is the miracle you’re really after?
I think the process is only not worth it when we misunderstand what God promised and that happens when we pursue the miracle or the thing and not Him. I’ve learned that my lack of pursuit leads to disappointment and it’s usually because I didn’t seek God to find out what His promise actually was.
A lot of times when God first speaks, He’s not actually finished. There has always been more, but I found out more as I pursued Him. The depth and clarity came as I kept coming closer and following along with Him doing what He said. But when I didn’t lean in to listen and pursue Him for more, I would inherently assign my own meaning to what He said and run off following altered directions. This could only end in tears (please tell me you got that movie reference).
So often we get mad or disappointed with God because we felt like He didn’t do what He promised but ask yourself, did you get the full instruction, or did you try to bake a cake with a partial recipe? The only way to know we got all the information is to never stop pursuing God. If we stay close, then we have the confidence that we’re getting direction every step of the way.
So, What Makes a Miracle?
If I had to distill this miracle journey down to three ingredients that I contributed it would be: Trust, Faith, and Pursuit, but a generous layer of God’s love covers it all. Without trust, I would have never made a step toward this miracle, let alone stayed in it this long. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God or believe the impossible is possible. And without pursuit, I would have never found God. He has made Himself known but each new revelation of who God is has come from a new level of pursuit that He has given me.
See, so often we regulate the miracle to manifestation. Even I did. This testimony wasn’t ready to be told in my mind because the miracle hadn’t happened yet. But I would counter that the miracle isn’t really the manifestation. It’s whom you become and whom God becomes to you during the process. And I believe it’s when this becomes more important than getting the “miracle” you’re waiting on, that’s when manifestation happens. When the miracle you want pales in comparison to the miracle you already experience communing with God that’s when you posture yourself to receive more than you fathomed.
I think back to the Bible and how Jesus reacted to the people who were so enamored with getting or even seeing miracles. It was a letdown to Him because they weren’t focusing on the most valuable thing. Let’s not make that mistake. And never forget that those who had the correct response to what was most important got everything.
The road to a miracle is paved with testimonies that may be easily overlooked or under-valued when we’re just focused on getting to the pot of gold at the end. I encourage you to celebrate every testimony- the fact that you had the faith to believe, the joy or peace you’ve experienced during the process, the new revelation you have of God’s love or closer relationship with Him, more clarity, trust, or faith in God. There are testimonies you have that shouldn’t be silenced just because it’s not the testimony of the miracle you’re waiting for. Share what God is doing for you and celebrate your progress.
So as always, I want to know how this impacted you. The thoughts or revelations you had because of this episode. How this helped you, the decisions you made, conversations this inspired. I want to know all the things. Be sure to subscribe to the Clarisee Podcast on any podcast platform or visit clariseeblog.com for all Clarisee content. Also, connect with the Clarisee Blog social media pages to continue the conversation.
