Some Gen Z friends came over for dinner the other night and one of them asked me with amusement, “do you have any colour photos of you as a child?” That was when it struck me that not only am I from the last century, but I’m from the black-and-white, sepia generation. Our memories look like museum pieces, fading at the edges.
Here’s the thing, we do that with God’s power too. We talk about miracles as though they belong to another era. Jesus once healed the sick. Raised the dead. Stilled storms like swatting flies. Fed thousands with next to nothing. The Acts-explosion, where Rome trembled because a handful of nobodies got possessed by heaven’s fire. Fast-forward to Azusa Street, the Welsh Revival, Pensacola, Toronto, Sunderland, New Frontiers’ Stoneleigh - great flashes and moments of excitement followed by l-o-n-g stretches where we assume the skies have gone quiet.
Paul refuses to let Galatia slip into sepia. His challenging ink-and-paper scroll message that we call Galatians 3:5 isn’t nostalgia, it’s like accidentally touching a live wire, “Does He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” Paul is talking about real events happening right there in the middle of church life.
There it is - a small, vibrant community gathered to hear a letter read aloud. Not a lovely warm building with soft seats set in acutely straight lines, Wi-Fi, coffee on the go, and my favourite; glory-substitute smoke machines. Just men and women in dusty clothes gathered around, leaning forward listening, because the words were alive with God.
People were being healed. Demons were being evicted. Lives were snapping into freedom as surely as chains falling off. These were not imaginations or hype. They were the fingerprints of the living Spirit - small, minute flashes of His infinite omnipotence.
Miracles weren’t the outcomes or result of tasks, to-do lists, SLA’s, church policies and procedures. There was no clipboard, no twelve-point plan. These miracles flared up like embers caught by a sudden gust - because the Holy Spirit was not a concept to them; He is a Person, present and profoundly at work. They believed Jesus rose from the dead. They believed He poured out the Spirit. And so they stepped out, clumsy and unsure, but fuelled by faith. That was when the Spirit moved.
When Paul talks about God ‘supplying’ the Spirit, he uses a word for financing a choir - lavish, generous, overflowing. In other words, God wasn’t handing out ration cards. He was unleashing extravagant abundance. You didn’t earn it. You simply positioned yourself under the waterfall and dared to believe.
This put the law in its place - not on the naughty step, the law has its place, but not here, not for those who are in Christ. The Galatians however, had started acting like God’s power was wages to be earned, rather than gifts to be received. Today, Paul in writing on his MacBook would have put it in bold, size 18 font,
“Hello?! How did these miracles start happening in your midst? Was it when you followed rules better, or was it when you heard and believed?”
He leaves no room for sentimentality. The Spirit came into their gatherings like a rushing wind because they were open to the voice of God and willing to act in obedience. Not blind fanaticism - but simple trust that the One who raised Jesus from the dead was not done showing His hand. Nothing has changed. Is this the nudge you have been waiting for?
That is what burns the heart. This wasn’t happening out at the fringes; it was happening at the beating centre of everyday church life. In Galatia’s households, over shared meals, during prayer, in communion. Someone would mention a need, a sickness, a torment. Another would respond - not with pity, but with faith. Hands laid. Eyes open. Words spoken boldly, not theatrically. And then the impossible would breach the mundane. The kingdom of God would push through the fabric of normality. Tumours shrank. Minds cleared. Lame feet straightened. None of it explained by law-keeping stuff, all of it explained by the living Spirit, taking the raw material of faith and igniting it into supernatural reality.
What this really means is miracles weren’t occasional fireworks for Catalyst, Devoted or any other Christian knees-up meetings. They were the overflow of a life lit by the Spirit’s flame. And Paul recorded it that way. These things are written for us - not to charm our imagination, but to call us into action. This is an alluring invitation, even a summons. It’s an urgent wake-up to lay hold of the same Spirit. To believe that today all things are possible. To reject tepid respectability and embrace radical, unwavering, audacious faith.
This is not a sepia moment but a response full of colour, sound, life, liberty, faith, courage, grace and God’s loving-kindness.
In the face of the impossible… #expectamiracle