“Extraordinary"

"Extraordinary"

     

     The Lord's transformation of water into wine as His first miracle foreshadows the entirety of His redeeming work on our behalf (John 4:1-11).  He changes the ordinary into the extraordinary as we trust Him, or the natural into the supernatural, the earthly into the Heavenly, the fleshly into the spiritual.  The transcendance begins in salvation as the Lord births a spiritual being from that which had heretofore been merely earthly.  "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh" (John 3:6).  Where once our innermost being existed as merely human, now we are human as inhabited and empowered by the Divine.  "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit… ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (I Corinthians 6:17; Romans 8:9).

    We also live our lives in the experience of water, as it were, transformed into wine.  Relationship with God does not exempt us from the norm of human experience, including the challenges of difficulty, weakness, and sorrow that are "common to man" (I Corinthians 10:13).  The problems of life come at us no differently that they do to all others.  Moreover, they feel the same.  The difference, however, is that we do not face trouble alone.  "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1).  When challenge comes our way, we initially respond based on the humanness of our particular personality, upbringing, and inclination.  As we walk in the light of Scripture and God's presence, however, we trust the Lord to overcome and transcend the mere earthly with Heavenly realities of wisdom, strength, provision, and protection.  In this sense, water becomes wine as God's Spirit infuses the ordinary with the extraordinary.  Of Christ, the prophet foretold, "The Spirit of the Lord us upon Me… to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He might be glorified" (Isaiah 61:1; 3).

   When the ordinary of life presents itself, let us see it as opportunity to know our Heavenly Father's extraordinary.  Indeed, the Lord Jesus did not cause wine to appear from nothing.  He used the most common substance on earth as the vehicle to produce something beyond the norm.  He does the same in countless ways in those who trust and submit unto Him through the Lord Jesus.  The first miracle of Christ led to millions upon millions of miracles produced by a similar process whereby our Lord overcomes rather than obliterates the earthly, the natural, the common, and the ordinary.  He births the spiritual, the supernatural, the uncommon, and the extraordinary from such unlikely sources, and thereby reveals His transcendent glory.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

(Romans 8:35-37)

Weekly Memory Verse

     Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for He is faithful that promised.

(Hebrews 10:23)