Go and tell what you hear and see

Feel the pulse: Signs. Wonders. Miracles. Healings. Deliverance. God.

I’m one of those people who love to hear the stories of revival, signs, wonders, and miracles. As a new Christian, I listened to old recordings on a gramophone record player of the revival in 1904, hearing George Jeffries, in his compelling Welsh accent, telling us, "All over the nation, they are coming in their hundreds and their thousands to Jesus—Healer, Saviour, Baptiser, and Coming King."

I like the stories, not just because they’re thrilling or because they remind me that God is still at work, but because they confirm something I’ve always known deep down: God has not wrapped up His work and left us to fend for ourselves. Tick tock, tick tock...

I’m Reformed in my theology, and I’ve read the Bible front to back, and nowhere—nowhere—do I find a God who leaves us a calling card that says, “You won’t be needing Me to do anything again.” Jesus didn’t rise, commission His disciples, and then retreat to some heavenly armchair, watching history unfold with disinterest.

It's His world, His story, His glory. He is still moving. Still speaking. Still healing. Still saving.

The rhetoric is not wasted here... Feel the pulse: Signs. Wonders. Miracles. Healings. Deliverance. God.

We live in a world saturated in cynicism that shrugs at miracles, yawns at the gospel, and has traded wonder for irony, reverence for mockery. The spirit of our age is weary and unimpressed—looking at the big stone buildings with their dry rot and leaking roofs as irrelevant. They sadly believe their own press and mistake the buildings for the Church.

The challenge is, if the gospel is just a theory, if it’s only a philosophy, if it is merely a collection of moral platitudes wrapped up in ancient poetry, then it really isn’t worth much at all. Gulp!

BUT...

But, if the good news of a kingdom is breaking in right now, disrupting darkness, healing bodies, restoring souls—then we have no excuse for silence; it's time to break out the megaphones!

When John the Baptist, languishing in a prison cell, sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt. 11:3), Jesus didn’t give him a theological dissertation. He didn’t offer a systematic argument or a carefully worded 'apologetic'. His response was emphatic:

"Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them." (Matt. 11:4–5)

In other words, the evidence of the gospel is not just in words but in power. The gospel is audacious. It dares to declare life where there is death. Hope where there is despair. Healing where there is brokenness.

This is where we might hesitate, hold back. We tone it down, dilute it, make it palatable. We let the cynicism of the age dictate the boldness of our proclamation and worry about offending, fearing being misunderstood.

We shrink back because we don’t want to be labelled as “one of those Christians”—as if there were any other! But here’s the thing: the gospel was never meant to be safe. It has always been disruptive. Always confrontational. Always unsettling to the powers of this world. Just close your eyes, open the pages of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and point at any page—you will see it.

The early Church didn’t turn the world upside down by being careful.

They preached, as must we, with fire, with conviction, with an unshakable certainty that Jesus Christ was alive and that His kingdom was advancing. They saw miracles, not because they were extraordinary people, but because they were audacious enough to believe that God meant what He said.

So why do we hesitate? Why do we let fear and doubt muzzle us?

If we truly believe... (Scrap that—we do truly believe) that Jesus is who He says He is and that the kingdom of God is here and now, and so, it is fitting that we be relentless in our audacity and speak when the world says be quiet, proclaim hope when the world groans in despair, and pray for healing when reason says it’s impossible.

We must/will/shall... even can, stand in the fire—unflinching, undeterred, unwilling to compromise the message that Christ is Lord, that He is the answer, that He is still opening blind eyes and setting captives free.

The world doesn’t need a domesticated, sanitised version of the gospel—no, it needs the real thing. It needs to see the power of God in full force, and that will happen when we refuse to be silent, choose boldness over comfort, and live like the gospel is as real today as it was when Jesus first walked the earth. It’s our challenge, custom built for us.

Deep in your heart, you know that conviction is true for you too!

May God be ever so pleased to pour out His Spirit in unprecedented ways in this hour and in the uncertain days ahead of us.

Nahum 1:7