Activating the Miraculous

Many Christians are buckets. They want God to fill them up with blessings, with favor, and finally with heaven. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be filled. But Jesus calls us to something more: to be pipes, the kind of people through whom heaven flows to earth.

The world doesn’t need more people trying to escape to heaven. It needs more people bringing heaven to earth. God is looking for people who will shift their focus: from getting to becoming, from escaping the world to transforming it, from being religious to being alive in Christ. Revival is not coming to us. It is coming through us.

So how does that actually work? How does an ordinary believer become a channel of the miraculous? Let me show you, starting with a young man sitting under a fig tree.

An encounter under a fig tree

In John 1, Philip finds his friend Nathanael and tells him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote — Jesus of Nazareth.” Nathanael is skeptical: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip doesn’t argue. He simply says, “Come and see.”

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

John 1:47–49 (NKJV)

What an encounter with the Son of God! One sentence of supernatural knowledge, and a skeptic becomes a worshiper. It is much like the encounter Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well. But stop and ask the question: how did Jesus see Nathanael before he ever met him? How did He know things about a stranger?

The man who could do nothing by Himself

Here is something that surprises many believers: Jesus of Nazareth, the man Jesus, could not perform a single miracle on His own. Don’t take my word for it. Take His.

Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.

John 5:19–20 (NKJV)

He says it again a few verses later: “I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge” (John 5:30). Philippians 2 tells us that though He was God, He did not cling to His divine privileges; He gave them up and was born as a human being. Hebrews 9:14 says He offered Himself to God “through the eternal Spirit.”

Everything Jesus did, He did as a man who lived one hundred percent dependent on God. The Son of Man lived like the Son of God because He was led by the Spirit of God. That is why He had the results He had.

What “led by the Spirit” really means

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Romans 8:14 (NKJV)

To be led by the Spirit means that the source of your actions, your words, and your thoughts is the Spirit of God. Your deeds are birthed from that source. This is the true meaning of being “born of the Spirit.”

Everything you do is born of something. It can be born of the flesh, your natural senses and feelings, or it can be born of the Spirit. And when what you do is produced by God, you are born of God. You are a son of God. That is the person Romans 8 says creation is waiting for: “the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19).

How the Spirit speaks: Isaiah’s pattern

So practically, how can our thoughts, actions, and words flow from the Holy Spirit? The prophet Isaiah gives us a clear window into how a person receives from God. Describing a vision, he writes: “Therefore my loins are filled with pain; pangs have taken hold of me, like the pangs of a woman in labor. I was distressed when I heard it; I was dismayed when I saw it” (Isaiah 21:3).

Notice three things happening in one prophet. He felt something in his body. He heard something in his mind’s ear. He saw something in his mind’s eyes.

This is exactly how we see Jesus operate with Nathanael. He “saw” him under the fig tree. He “heard” what kind of man this was, an Israelite with no deceit. And somehow He knew what God had prepared for him. Then, simply by opening His mouth to declare what He had seen and heard, a stranger had an encounter with God.

You watch Jesus do this again and again. With the Samaritan woman, He knew how many men had rejected her and that the man she was with was not her husband. With the man at the pool of Bethesda, He knew he had been there a long time and that his moment for healing had come. Passing through Jericho, He looked up into a tree, stopped, and called a stranger by name: Zacchaeus.

The key that activates it: ask, seek, knock

Here is the good news. Just like Jesus, we too can get to see what God is doing and do it in like manner. So what is the key? Jesus gave it to us in a story about a man knocking on his friend’s door at midnight, saying, “Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.”

So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you… If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!

Luke 11:9, 13 (NKJV)

Hear the heart of that midnight prayer: “I have nothing for my friend, but I have come to You to give me something.” That is the posture of a pipe. God wants to use you to deliver His love, His bread, to the world. John 3:16 says God so loved the world. But how will the world know that God so loved them unless someone delivers that message?

Learning to release the love of God

The most important thing to settle before you ever open your mouth is this: God loves everyone. God has come to rescue everyone. God has put everyone’s sin on Jesus. So your goal is never to put fear into people; it is to put love into them. We call this releasing the love of God, releasing the presence of God.

Most times when we pray, we are going vertical, from down here up. We need to learn to also go horizontal, from here out. Just like Isaiah, you may see a picture, hear a word, or feel something in your body.

Then grow in it. If you are hearing, become someone who journals a lot; write down what you sense God saying. If you are growing in pictures, learn to rely less and less on what your physical eyes see (Isaiah 11), like Jeremiah, whom God simply asked, “What do you see?” (Jeremiah 1:11–12).

Then take what you have seen, heard, or felt, and ask God: “What is Your message of love for this person?” It could be a healing. It could be an encouragement. It could be a word to strengthen, or a word to comfort.

When it is time to share it, keep it humble and gentle. Three simple ways:

• Ask: “Does this… mean anything to you?” and let them answer yes or no.
• Say: “Well, I feel like God…” and share the message of love simply.
• Ask: “Does any of this resonate or mean something to you?”

And keep these guardrails: do not condemn. Do not release fear. Do not say, “God said I should tell you…” You are a delivery person for love, not a judge.

Why this matters so much

But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you.

1 Corinthians 14:24–25 (NKJV)

That is Nathanael’s story happening in an ordinary gathering of believers. This is why Paul says, “Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1), and “you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged” (14:31). All. Not a special class of super-Christians. You.

So here is your invitation this week. Ask, and keep asking, for the Holy Spirit. Sit quietly with a journal and pay attention to what you feel, hear, and see. Then ask the Father for His message of love for one person in your life, and deliver it gently.

Stop living like a bucket. Become a pipe. Heaven is not waiting to evacuate you; heaven is waiting to flow through you. So go, and let heaven flow through you.