God Running is a place for anyone who wants to (or even anyone who wants to want to) love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.

In our last post from the book of Acts we looked at where Jesus and Paul invested their time and energy. If you’re interested you can learn more here: Where Jesus and Paul Put Their Focus (and where you and I should focus too)–Acts 19:8-10. Today I want to mention something I’ve written about before, and that’s the question of miracles, and whether or not they could be true, and how that might effect the way we look at the New Testament.

Acts 19:11-20

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

A Hopelessly Analytical Personality and Miracles

In today’s passage we see Paul performing miracles. And I’ve had questions about miracles. Because I have this thing inside me that wants the truth, no matter how brutal it might be.

Here’s a joke that might illustrate the point:

There was a lawyer, a priest, and a peasant with an analytical personality sentenced to the guillotine during the French Revolution. The lawyer went first but when they pulled the lever the guillotine malfunctioned. The lawyer quickly pointed out that there’s a law in the land that says, in the event of a malfunction an executioner may not submit a criminal to the guillotine a second time after repairs.

So they let the lawyer go free.

They repair the guillotine, or so they thought. During the priest’s turn, once again it malfunctioned. This must mean it’s the will of God that I should live, the priest said. They agreed.

So they let the priest free.

Finally the peasant lays his neck in the guillotine. And once again the thing hangs up. So the peasant with the analytical personality looks above him at the mechanism and says:

Well there’s your problem.

Anyway, sometimes when I hear what I think might be a fair question about the Gospels, or scripture in general, or the life of Jesus, or some other Christ related issue, I look into it, because, yeah, I want to know the truth, even if it’s painful. I genuinely believe in the fearless pursuit of truth. One argument that caught my eye was the thought that the miracles in the Bible could be evidence that the Gospels aren’t true. The idea is that if we don’t see miracles today, then why would we believe miracles were occurring around the time of Jesus. To be sure, this is not an airtight argument because anomalies do happen sometimes, like the “virgin birth” of California condors. (Yeah, so, virgin Condors laying eggs, nobody expected that.) So just because we haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. But still, if we never ever see miracles then it seems like we should take a hard look at the miracles recorded in the Bible and the Gospels.

So I looked into it.

And what I found didn’t meet my expectations at all.

What I found exceeded my expectations dramatically. Craig Keener who I’ve come to find as a very thorough reliable source of information wrote two books about miracles, the first is a two volume tomb written on a scholarly level called Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. To be fair, I have it in my library but I’ve only used it as a reference because the content is so dense.

The second book is written on a more popular level–it’s only one volume. And its title is the supernatural work of God in the modern world: Miracles Today. It was published in 2021. I was amazed by what I read in that book.

For anyone who would prefer video, you can always watch Keener discuss his work on miracles here: Miracles Today with Dr. Craig Keener

When I checked out these resources, I was astounded to learn about the evidence we have for miracles today. I’ve shared Keener’s work on miracles before but the video is a new one and I wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to view it.

In Our Next Post on the book of Acts

I’m excited about our next post because in our next post on the book of Acts we’ll look at how God’s face lights up when He thinks of you, and what that might mean for your face and mine.

Available on Amazon! Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus) Love Like Jesus begins with the story of how after a life of regular church attendance and Bible study, Bennett was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus’ every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus’ words than he was following Jesus’ words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett’s own moral failures affirm he wrote this book for himself as much as for others. Love Like Jesus examines a variety of stories, examples, and research, including:

• Specific examples of how Jesus communicated God’s love to others.
• How Jesus demonstrated all five of Gary Chapman’s love languages (and how you can too).
• The story of how Billy Graham extended Christ’s extraordinary love and grace toward a man who misrepresented Jesus to millions.
• How to respond to critics the way Jesus did.
• How to love unlovable people the way Jesus did.
• How to survive a life of loving like Jesus (or how not to become a Christian doormat).
• How Jesus didn’t love everyone the same (and why you shouldn’t either).
• How Jesus guarded his heart by taking care of himself–he even napped–and why you should do the same.
• How Jesus loved his betrayer Judas, even to the very end.

With genuine unfiltered honesty, Love Like Jesus, shows you how to live a life according to God’s definition of success: A life of loving God well, and loving the people around you well too.

A life of loving like Jesus.(Kindle, hardcover, and paperback now available on Amazon.)