When people think miracles they think of amazing and supernatural power from above. Many people don’t realize that the things that make up a miracle aren’t necessarily what one would expect. The end result of a miracle is always incredible and we tend to think of the impossible when we think of a miracle. Nothing is impossible for God. When in doubt, ask a child.

My eight year old son has what I believe to be the true definition of “child like faith” as he has inspired me to write on different subjects and is the first to take our family needs into his room and pray for them. “OK Mom! I prayed everything is going to be alright!”

When I sat down to write this article he happened to come into the room to borrow some paper to make yet another creation on his computer, Louie is gifted when it comes to graphics software and at times amazes me that he can navigate the programs with absolutely no instruction. His latest endeavor involves talking my husband into letting him have an otter.

“An otter?” Mike exclaimed. “Lou, we don’t have anywhere to put an otter”. (Not to mention we already have three Yorkies, a Saint Bernard, a cat, two lovebirds, seven fish and a hamster)

“Well” my son replied “We can always use the girl’s bathtub”. This did not go over well with the girls and it is everything I can do to keep their bathroom clean as it is. Nevertheless, Louie went in his room and printed his favorite picture of an otter and hung it on his wall to pray for. He decided he was going to write his prayer out, thus the need for some of my paper. This was my big chance to get his opinion on such an important topic.

“Hey Lou, what’s a miracle?” I asked him casually. Louie thought his answer over carefully before responding and then stated it like it was.

“A miracle is when things are really bad and no one can help you and you pray to God and get what you pray for even bigger or more than what you asked God for” Good answer. I went to Merriam Webster to see how close he was.

According to the dictionary a miracle is an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs, to put it simply, “when things are really bad and no one can help you and you pray to God and get what you pray for even bigger or more than what you asked God for.”

“When things are really bad” can entail many “human affairs” or things we humans get ourselves into that require a cry to God for intervention.

“Divine intervention” usually implies that no one can help you so you pray to God and God sends you bigger or more than what you prayed for.

Straight out of the mouth of babes. Children have a way of simplifying spiritual issues to the point of sometimes making me feel dumb.

First ingredient, when things are really bad: Some folks start their miracle journey with a broken marriage, a lost job that needs to be replaced, lack of money or financial problems that leave a mountain of bills you don’t know how your going to climb, a broken heart, a shattered dream, a lost friend or some type of betrayal.  A miracle has to start somewhere. The more severe the problem the bigger and better the miracle. Sometimes we go through half of our lives trying to figure all of these problems out and never stop to realize that The Lord is waiting for you to ask Him to help or we get so caught up in the issues that we lose sight of the fact that God wants us to call on Him. Then one day the big one hits and we are left on our knees with no relief in sight except from heaven.  We dig out the Bible and start praying… “Dear God, please help me I need a miracle”.

“Finally!” the Lord exclaims, “He has turned to Me for help. I have heard his cry and will heal his land but first I want to show him that no matter what, he can always turn to Me.”

You needn’t be a preacher or a missionary in the field, miracles are given simply by looking up to God and asking, but often we do not see our answer when we want to or see it the way we expect to see it so we give up on what it was we hoped for and we move onto something else. How many miracles have been forfeited because the person asking just gave up for lack of patience? Some people even get angry with God because He doesn’t respond as quickly as they’d like. When all they had to do was be still and let God work the miracle in THEM first. They never knew that the answer was just around the corner.

The first ingredient of most miracles is “when things get really bad”. Do you have a “really bad” right now? Then you have the first ingredient needed for a miracle. Our cry to God for His hand in our situation is what He desires from us. It is by taking the bad, sometimes horrendous situations of His children who believe in Him and fixing them when nothing or no one else could have in a way that glorifies God. So when things are looking really bad and you feel like there is no hope and it feels like God has gone silent on you, take a breather and tell yourself that YOU have what God needs to not only make the miracle but to glorify Himself in the process.

Now, I know you may be saying to yourself “I just don’t understand why God is allowing this bad thing to happen when He can just fix it in the blink of an eye”, one reason God may be saying “wait” is to bring about a change in you. It is through the miracle process that we draw closer to Him and we develop a personal relationship with Him. That is the most important reason for wait (also a miracle in itself)…to make you a more God-like person which in turn teaches you to pray for guidance on all future matters thus avoiding the need for the same devastating situation to rear its ugly head again. The second reason why God may be requiring a waiting period is to cause others to turn to Him through your situation. If you as a believer are going through the same situation one of your non-believer friends or co-workers or maybe even a family member is going through and the hopeless situation bares an incredible miracle you have been made part of a testimony that faith, trust and love of God has produced exactly what the Bible said it would. It might make that non-believer take a step, if not a plunge towards heaven for his answer.

A perfect example of this is found in the Bible in the passage John 11:38-44 where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus was informed of Lazarus’ illness two days before Lazarus died and he said “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God…” (John 11:4) Jesus waited TWO days before going to His friend and by then His friend was dead. This could most definitely be classified as a “when things are really bad” but God used the situation to glorify Himself and it resulted in many people believing.

So no matter how bad things look right now the bad situation makes up the first ingredient for your miracle. Try looking at it this way, the worse it is the more eligible you are for a miracle because it will bring greater glory to God.

The second ingredients are sometimes harder to find for some than others. They are: blind faith, trust in God, humility, dedication and patience. It all starts with a mustard seed of faith. Which is actually the easiest ingredient to get, you need only look up and ask for it and The Lord will plant the seed of faith deep in your heart so that when the other ingredients are added, your miracle will start to take form.

The key to faith is to simply believe. Blind faith is tough especially when you don’t know what it is you believe in, but by searching the miracle cookbook, the Bible, you will find all you need to know about having faith. Trust in God ties into faith because, again you have to believe in what you can’t see with your eyes but can feel in your heart. That little ray of hope that keeps peeking through, that’s faith and when you feel it, it is confirmation from the Great Chef in the sky that you are on the right road for your miracle. Faith is the substance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1).

Humility is a tough one for many of us, it means humbling yourself to what God is teaching and showing you. How can you expect Him to bless you with a miracle if it won’t be appreciated, maintained or understood? Humility causes us to take a look at ourselves from the inside out and it provokes us to open our hearts to His guidance about what we need to change about us in order to be a regular recipient of miracles. Dedication to learning this lesson is paramount in receiving a miracle. You either want a quick fix to your problem or you truly want a life where miracles aren’t taken for granted. That life involves dedication to prayer, which is communicating with God, dedication to listening which is meditating on God’s word, and dedication to learning what His will is for you by reading the Bible regularly.

The final ingredient is patience. While the other ingredients are being added and marinating, you need to be still and let God work His masterpiece. If you focus on Him and not on the situation needing the miracle your wait will become much easier and before you know it, you’ll have your answer. You’ll also be living a whole new life with whole new ideals and beliefs.

A miracle can’t be miraculous unless God is taking a situation that man can do nothing with and producing divine results. If you’re feeling like giving up because your situation looks hopeless you can rejoice knowing that your hopeless situation is God’s specialty. You have the ingredients for a miracle, will you Let Him prepare it for you now?