The Miracle @ Cana; Fresh Insight
In continuing writing my devotional book on the sayings of Jesus, today I re-read the passage where Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana. This is commonly considered to be Jesus' first recorded miracle. As I read it this time, I saw something I hadn't noticed before. I believe there are some lessons here regarding prayer.
Prayer is not limited to just presenting a laundry list of requests to God. Sometimes it is discussing situations with Him with the expectation that He will do what is best in the situation. That seems to be the case in this story. Mary, His mother, simply apprises Him of the situation; the wine had run out. Jesus' response would seem to have ended the discussion, however Mary assumed that He would do something, and alerted the servants to follow His direction. The directions that Jesus gave defied logic, and yet, when the servants obediently did as He bade them, the result was miraculous.
So it is with our prayers. Perhaps we need to spend some prayer time discussing our situation with God and expecting Him to act regarding it without telling Him what He should do. When He does respond, often in ways we don't understand, we need to obediently carry out His directions with the expectation that the miraculous could quite possibly occur. This to me opens up an exciting new dimension of prayer. If I should put it in a formula, it would be;
Prayer is not limited to just presenting a laundry list of requests to God. Sometimes it is discussing situations with Him with the expectation that He will do what is best in the situation. That seems to be the case in this story. Mary, His mother, simply apprises Him of the situation; the wine had run out. Jesus' response would seem to have ended the discussion, however Mary assumed that He would do something, and alerted the servants to follow His direction. The directions that Jesus gave defied logic, and yet, when the servants obediently did as He bade them, the result was miraculous.
So it is with our prayers. Perhaps we need to spend some prayer time discussing our situation with God and expecting Him to act regarding it without telling Him what He should do. When He does respond, often in ways we don't understand, we need to obediently carry out His directions with the expectation that the miraculous could quite possibly occur. This to me opens up an exciting new dimension of prayer. If I should put it in a formula, it would be;
- Situation presented to God
- Faith that God will answer demonstrated in what I do next
- Obedience to His direction regarding the situation
- Experiencing a miracle
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