Mark Batterson - A Million Little Miracles

Right now, you have no sensation of motion. It seems like you’re sitting still, but that, my friends, is an illusion of miraculous proportions because you are on a giant merry-go-round that’s spinning at a miles per hour around its axis. Oh, you’re also speeding through space at 67,000 miles an hour, and you’re having a pretty good hair day! Even on a day you didn’t get much done, you traveled 1.6 million miles through space. I mean, pat your neighbor on the back; quite the accomplishment! But wait, there’s more! We are part of the Milky Way galaxy, which is spinning at 468,000 mph, and you don’t even get dizzy. It’s moving at a speed of 1,342,162 mph toward something that astrophysicists call the Great Attractor.

Things that make you go, «Huh?» When was the last time you thanked God for keeping us in orbit? I’m guessing never. Like, we don’t kneel down at the end of the day, «Lord, I wasn’t sure if we were going to make the full rotation today, but you did it again!» We don’t pray that way. Why? Because we take constant for granted. I would submit that God is so good at what He does that we take it for granted. I know people who would say they have never experienced a miracle. With all due respect, you have never not; in fact, you are one of 37 sextillion chemical reactions happening in the human body at any given moment, and you didn’t flip a switch. Your heart will beat 100,000 times today; you didn’t change the batteries. Your heart will pump six quarts of blood through 60,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries—that’s twice the circumference of the Earth!

Oh, you have 30 trillion red blood cells, each with 260 million proteins called hemoglobin. When was the last time you thanked God for hemoglobin? Now, speaking of those cells, your body will recycle about 330 billion cells every single day, which means every day you are 1% different. Why don’t you just turn to your neighbor and tell them, «You look miraculous!» Don’t get carried away; there are only two ways to live your life, said Albert Einstein. One is as if nothing is a miracle; the other is as if everything is. Which way are you living your life? Are you taking things for granted, or are you taking them with gratitude?

Here’s the challenge: most miracles are so big or so small, so fast or so slow that we fail to notice them. Psychologists call it intentional blindness, but I would argue that there are a million little miracles hiding in plain sight, and that’s what we’re going to try to discover over the next four weeks. Welcome to National Community Church in the house, online, DC, Nova! We kick off a series, «A Million Little Miracles,» and here’s what we believe: series are seasons. I believe this starts a season of miracles. This is a house of miracles; this is a course in miracles. You are now enrolled in a miracle, and tuition is free, but you have to pay the price. You can meet me—I don’t know if it’s funny to me—I’m going to say it. You can meet me in Genesis 1:1. We’re going to begin at the beginning, and here we go.

It was about two years ago; I was in Miami midwinter, and I was in a pool doing a little vitamin D therapy. I had one of those metacognitive moments, and this thought fired across my synapses. It’s actually a question. It’s a question I’ve asked thousands of times since then: What’s really happening when what’s happening is happening? I’m less and less concerned about what’s happening. The news cycles come fast and furious; I can’t keep up with trending hashtags or opinions that are a dime a dozen. There are a lot of things happening on a horizontal plane. I’m more concerned about what’s really happening when what’s happening is happening.

Now, I have to be careful not to preach a whole different message here, but can I just tell you, before you woke up this morning and after you go to sleep tonight, the Holy Spirit was interceding for you with groans that can’t be put into words. Oh, and Jesus is at the right hand of the Father interceding on your behalf. So can I tell you what’s really happening right now? Two-thirds of the Trinity are interceding to the other third of the Trinity on your behalf. Let’s go! Game on, right? That’s where our holy confidence comes from!

So I’m in that pool, sunlight shimmering off the surface, and it dawns on me. What’s really happening? There is a star that’s 93 million miles from Earth; we know this, right? It’s a yellow dwarf about 330,000 times the size of Earth—the mass, which is massive. It converts about 4 million tons of matter into energy every second via nuclear fusion, which is the energy equivalent of a trillion megaton bombs every second of every minute of every hour of every day. And we don’t give it a second thought, but maybe we should. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of heavenly lights. What if we actually took that literally?

We’re going to jump into the deep end—Genesis 1:1, and here we go. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Now the Earth was formless and empty; darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering. And God said, «Let there be light,» and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light «day,» and the darkness He called «night.» And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

I think we discover three things about God right in these first three verses: God is bigger than big. The theological word is transcendence. He is God Most High. God is closer than close; the theological word is imminence. He is God Most Nigh. And then, He is better than good—shout out to my editors, who actually let that go on the cover of this book. It’s called the benevolence of God, that He is God Most Good. I would argue that the rest of this book is a progressive revelation of the bigness, closeness, and goodness of God.

Now, I don’t know how far we’re going to get, but we’re going to get as far as we can go. So let’s talk about those three things. God is bigger than big. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. In the science of hermeneutics, the opening sentence of a book, movie, or anything else would be called the interpretive horizon. It sets the tone, sets the table, and gives you a place to stand, a perspective. Name that book: «It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.» Yeah, Charles Dickens, right? «Call me Ishmael.» Moby Dick, Herman Melville. Movies do the same thing. Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls—Barbie, just putting it out there. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away—you know you kind of need that Imperial march, right?

What those openers do, and those are all-time classics, is they give you a horizon of possibility. Those are great opening lines, but nothing holds a candle to the very first words of Scripture: «Beit Elohim barah.» In the beginning, God created, and He created ex nihilo, out of nothing. We think people are smart who make light bulbs, computer chips, and rockets out of stuff already provided. Said Dallas Willard, He made the stuff! What stuff? Every seed, every star, every plant, every animal, every element in the periodic table, every nanosecond in time, every subatomic particle in the expanse of space—you name it; God made it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He made all things. Nothing was made without Him. There is not a single atom in the universe that is not subject to the sovereignty of our God.

And by the way, I know people who would say they’ve never experienced a miracle. I know people who say they’ve never heard the voice of God. Well, everything you see was said; God spoke it into existence. I mean, if you think in just the audible range between 20 and 20,000 hertz that we can hear, but I promise God’s voice is more than that! We think phonics; you should think physics because God’s voice is infrasonic, ultrasonic, supersonic. He uses His voice to speak the universe into existence. Abraham Kuyper, former Dutch Prime Minister, said there is not a single square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not exclaim, «Mine!» He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and He owns the hills! Hallelujah!

Now, can I sidebar for a second? I am a little weary, and I hope this is okay. I’m a little weary of being made to feel foolish for believing in intelligent design—that there’s an Almighty creator of the universe who spoke it into existence, that there is a God who knits you together in your mother’s womb and has ordained all the days of your life. Now, I would acknowledge you cannot prove the existence of God, but you cannot prove a universal negative either. It’s a dimension of faith, either way. The last time I checked, life doesn’t come from non-life; reason doesn’t come from non-reason; order doesn’t come out of chaos without intelligent design. Sir Fred Hoyle, the guy who coined that phrase «Big Bang,» said, «Let’s be scientifically honest. The probability of life arising to greater and greater complexity by chance through evolution is the same probability as having a tornado tear through a junkyard and form a Boeing 747 jetliner.»

I have a friend, Phil Cunningham, who says you can throw paint at a canvas a billion times; you’ll never get the Mona Lisa. Glenn Scrier said it this way: Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus; atheists believe in the virgin birth of the universe. Choose your miracle! All I’m asking for is just a level playing field. Let me have a little bit of fun. The most complicated clock in the world is the Jens Olesen clock in Copenhagen—15,444 parts, and I think we have a picture of the front and the back. The fastest gear does one revolution every 10 seconds; the slowest gear will do one revolution in 25,753 years. It took two years to design this clock and 12 years to build it!

Now, can you imagine a Danish tour guide walking you through City Hall where this clock is and saying it was the result of a lightning strike or an earthquake or happenstance? No, no one would believe them. Why? Because we recognize intelligent design when we see it—whether it’s a well-plated meal prepared by a chef, a home designed by an architect, a smartphone engineered by scientists, or a sculpture created by an artist. We recognize intelligent design when we see it. Maybe, just maybe, nature, the human body, the human mind is God’s way of saying, «I made you.» Romans 1:20 says it this way: «Since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.»

Now, where I would go with that is this: all truth is God’s truth. Everything is a branch of theology; there is no secular or sacred. That’s a false dichotomy. Einstein said, «Religion without science is lame; science without religion is blind.» In other words, we embrace all of it—yes! Now, if you’re taking notes, I want you to jot this down; you’ll find it in your message notes on the NCC app. The book is kind of built on a simple premise: nothing is as simple as it seems; everything is more miraculous than we can imagine. We’ll drill down on that, but I think what I’m getting at is this, friends: you are not a cosmic accident. You are not the result of random chance. You were created a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory. You are the image of God, the apple of God’s eye. You’re fearfully and wonderfully made; you were God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works prepared for you in advance. You are a miracle! And God said, «Let there be light.»

Now, scientifically speaking, I think God was saying, «Let there be electromagnetic radiation with varying wavelengths. Let there be radio waves and microwaves and X-rays. Let there be bioluminescence, photosynthesis, and the Aurora Borealis. Let there be satellite communication, laser surgery, and Crayola crayons. And let there be rainbows after rainstorms.» See, without light, there’s no sight. Without light, there’s no color. Without light, there’s no photosynthesis, which means there’s no food chain. Without light, there is no periodic table of elements. Without light, there’s no you and me. Without light, there’s no nothing! Light is the basis of absolutely everything.

And here’s what is amazing: because a hundred years ago, I think many, if not most, astronomers believed in a static state universe. They thought that the Milky Way was maybe the sum total of the universe. But then along came Edwin Hubble. On January 1, 1925, he delivered this speech, and he noticed that the redshift in light coming from different planets changes in proportion to their distance. In other words, the universe is expanding. What I’m getting at is this: those four words are still creating galaxies at the outer edge of the universe. The universe is God’s way of saying, «Look at what I can do with four words!»

Let’s do a little thought experiment. I’m going to zoom out—way out. «My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways,» declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. So God likens the difference between our thoughts and His thoughts to the expanse of space. Now, last time I checked, astronomers estimate the co-moving distance from one side of the universe to the other at 93 billion light-years, which is almost impossible to imagine. But let’s give it a go! Light travels at 186,187 miles per second, so the light that leaves the sun travels that 93 million miles in 8 minutes and 20 seconds! Which is pretty amazing because if you could drive there at 65 miles an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it would take you 163 years to get there. But that’s the closest star in our galaxy called the Milky Way.

Let me throw up a map of the Milky Way—it’s not to scale, but the Milky Way measures 100,000 light-years from one side to the other. There is not going to be a quiz at the end of this message! A light-year is 5.88 trillion miles—if you could drive that, it would take 11.2 million years to travel just one light-year! So, to cross the Milky Way galaxy at 65 miles an hour would take you 1 trillion 120 billion years to hitchhike our galaxy. Friends, it’s one of two trillion galaxies that we’ve discovered! You start getting brain cramps, don’t you? So I better get to my point.

When I say that God is bigger than big, I’m not talking about planets and exoplanets. We’re not talking about the sun, the moon, and the stars. We’re not even talking about galaxies; He’s bigger than the whole kit and caboodle! It’s almost inconceivable that God says that that’s the distance between your thoughts and my thoughts! So here’s a thought: your best thought on your best day is still 93 billion light-years short of how great and how good God really is! Hallelujah! «Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us!»

So let me ask a couple of questions: How big is your God? Come on! Is He bigger than your biggest problem? Come on! Is He bigger than your biggest mistake? Is He bigger than your biggest dream? If you back up and do kind of a study of God through different cultures and through human history, what you discover is that in most cultures, at most times, and in most places, there are gods—kind of lowercase «g"—that are regional and seasonal. In other words, they have a reign of rule. You even see it when Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. It was an away game because Baal was the god of that mountain. There were gods of fertility, gods of war, and gods of love—they basically had sovereignty over certain seasons and certain regions.

Then along comes the God who created the heavens and the Earth, who is not regional or seasonal. His sovereignty is not limited. Every atom in the universe spoken into existence is at His command, and if you believe in anything less than that, it’s idolatry! He’s the God of the mountain and the God of the valley; He’s the God who gives songs in the night and the God whose mercies are new every morning! He is the God of winter, the God of spring, the God of summer, the God of fall—the God of all! As my friend Amos Dodge says, He’s God when I’m sick! Hallelujah! He’s God when I’m healthy! He’s God when I’m up! He’s God when I’m down! He’s the God of my strengths and the God of my weaknesses. He is the God of life and death and everything else!

If you read this book from cover to cover, I think you come to one inescapable, undeniable, incontrovertible conclusion: God is God, and I’m not! And I’m okay with that! That’s right! Remember at the burning bush, He reveals Himself as «I am who I am.» But what’s interesting is that in Hebrew, it’s the imperfect tense, so really a better translation is «I will be who I will be,» and it’s kind of left open! So, yeah, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. But then along comes Jesus, and what does He say? «I am the light of the world.» I suppose that with what we’ve been talking about for the last 10 minutes, I’m the basis of everything. I am the way, the truth, and the life! I am the resurrection and the life!

Jesus is the dictionary, said Eugene Peterson, with which we look up the meaning of words. Let me bring this down to earth—pun intended. I think some of us find ourselves in no-win situations—relationships with irreconcilable differences, addictions that seem unbreakable, hurts that just won’t heal, and dreams that are beyond our ability and beyond our resources. And we say to ourselves, «No way,» and I say, «Yahweh!» He is able—to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.

Is it okay if I testify a little bit? When I say «miracle,» and we did a word association test, we would tend to think of things that defy logic, that defy the laws of nature, that might defy a doctor’s diagnosis, right? We think of the anomalies and the epiphanies. We think of the exceptions to the rule. Now, we believe in those kinds of miracles. I’ve experienced those kinds of miracles! My earliest memory was an asthma attack. I mean, I’d go to the hospital and get a shot of epinephrine. That routine was repeated night after night, eventually diagnosed with severe asthma. An inhaler became my best friend for the next 40 years! I slept with it under my pillow; I played basketball with it in my sock!

When I was 13 years old, I was in Edwards Hospital in Naperville, and I was code blue! Doctors and nurses rushed into my room. I thought I was taking my last breath. I thought this might be it. My parents were so desperate that they called the pastor of the church we had just started attending, and he was at the hospital in 10 minutes flat—in a suit, no less! I think he slept in that suit! He had no idea that the 13-year-old kid he was praying for 9 years later would ask him if I could marry his daughter!

Can’t make that up! A prayer team came over to our house afterward and said, «Let us pray for you, and let’s pray for a miracle!» So let’s do it! Let’s pray that the Lord will heal my lungs. And the Lord did a miracle that night! I woke up the next morning, and I still had asthma, but all the warts on my feet were gone! This is a true story. It was a little confusing at 13; I’m thinking to myself, «Is this like the game of telephone? Somewhere between here and Heaven, something got terribly confused. There’s someone somewhere who is breathing great but still has warts on their feet!»

And at 13, that was the moment that I heard that still, small voice of the Spirit. It just felt like the Spirit whispered to my spirit, «Mark, I just wanted you to know that I’m able.» I held on to that for decades. On July 2, 2016, we were in a series called «Mountains Move» as a church. Do you remember this? I mean, at some point, you’ve got to stop talking to God about your mountain and start talking to your mountain about who your God is and what He is capable of doing because He can move mountains with the mustard seed of faith!

So I remember just kind of kneeling next to the altar at the Miracle Theater, and it was not even a King James prayer, y’all. It wasn’t like Shakespearean English; it wasn’t super fancy—it wasn’t like some combination of words that all of a sudden unlocked. It was just faith: «God, I know You’re able!» And do you know I have not touched an inhaler from that day to this day? God healed my lungs! There is no rational explanation for it other than this is the God who heals!

But I want to back up a step: should it take severe asthma for us to thank God for every single breath we take? Take a breath! You just inhaled 25 quintillion molecules—more molecules than all the sand on all the seashores on Earth! Amazing! And it gets delivered to every cell in your body! Maybe that’s why when the Psalmist gets to the end of the book, Psalm 150:6, do you remember how it ends? Like, it’s this roller coaster of praise, but at the end, it’s almost like the psalmist just throws up his hands: «Let everything that has breath praise the Lord,» because that’s all it should take! Are you breathing today?

Let’s thank God for those 23,000 breaths! I think what I’m getting at is this: I believe in the God who still makes sidewalks through the sea, who can make the sun stand still, who can float iron axes! I believe in a God who can walk on water, turn water into wine. I believe in the way-maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, and even when I don’t see it, even when I don’t feel it, I know that God is able! He is God Most High—God bigger than big! We are not getting as far as I thought we would today, but that’s why I gave you a book, Mark!

That’s great! I get it! Like, God doesn’t exist within the four dimensions of space-time; He created much less the logical constraints of my left brain! Because here’s the problem: in the beginning, God created us in His image; we have been creating God in our image ever since! And so what happens is you bring God down to your level! You know what Chesterton said? «How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God would smash your small cosmos!» I think where I’m going with this is, our biggest problem is our small view of God. Tozer said, «A low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils; a high view of God is the solution to ten thousand temporal problems!»

Come magnify the Lord with me! Like, God is bigger than big, but Mark, sometimes it feels like He’s a million miles away? Let me flip that coin and make it a little more personal: He is closer than close—an ever-present help in time of need. A friend who sticks closer than a brother—a God who will never leave us nor forsake us! The psalmist said it this way: Psalm 36:5-9: «God’s love is meteoric; His loyalty astronomic; His purpose Titanic; His verdicts oceanic.» Yet, in His largess, nothing gets lost; not a man, not a mouse slips through the cracks!

God is great not just because nothing is too big! God is great because nothing is too small! I love this picture of the Holy Spirit hovering. The Spirit wears lots of hats. He’s always comforting and convicting; He’s gifting and guiding; He’s healing and sealing and revealing! It’s no secret I have a theory of everything: the answer to every prayer is more of the Holy Spirit! Well, Mark, what about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control? Those are the fruit of the Spirit! So what we need is more of the Spirit that produces more of that fruit!

But the very first revelation of the Holy Spirit is a Spirit who hovers. And the Hebrew language here is fascinating; the word «panim» can be translated as face or surface, presence or countenance. But it’s really hard to describe because it’s two-dimensional in terms of time—it’s right before and right after! Well, which is it? Yes! In terms of space, it’s right in front and right in back! Well, which is it? Yes! That’s why the psalmist said, «You hem me in behind and before.» I’ll just maybe throw this in to help explain it: the shortest possible time, in terms of quantum mechanics, is 5,4×10^-44 seconds. It’s called «Planck time.» And the shortest possible distance is 1,6×10^-35 meters; it’s called «Planck length.»

Okay, any shorter and you can’t tell the difference between here and there! Any shorter and you can’t tell the difference between now and then! Are you kind of picking up? So I think what’s happening here is, «In Him we live and move and have our being!» There’s something bigger that’s happening! He is Jehovah Nissi, the God who goes before us! He is our rear guard! Tozer said, «God is above, but He’s not pushed up. God is beneath, but He’s not pressed down. God is outside, but He’s not excluded. God is inside, but He’s not confined. God is above all things, presiding; beneath all things, sustaining; outside all things, embracing; and inside all things, filling!» That is the imminence of God!

I just, part of what I want to do is just mess with our minds a little! Is that okay? Let me mess with our minds one more time! In 1964, John Stewart Bell coined this idea of quantum entanglement! I’m getting a little carried away today, but regardless of distance, every atom in the universe is somehow connected! Somehow hyperlink to each other! If you split a quark in half, like a candy bar, and let’s say one Twix stays in Washington, DC, but the other Twix gets on a flight from DCA to LAX, if you were to take that quark that’s in LA and reverse its spin, the quark that remained in DC would reverse its spin simultaneously. It’s called instantaneous non-locality or simultaneous duality.

Albert Einstein called it «spooky action at a distance!» That invisible link between atoms is superluminal! In other words, it’s faster than the speed of light, which is the cosmic speed limit, which makes no sense! And so we’re left just throwing up our hands! Listen! A quark can be in one place, disappear, and then reappear in another place, and it can do so—are you ready for it? Without traveling the distance between them! It’s called quantum weirdness! I call it omnipresence! I call it omniscience! I call it omnipotence!

I think the thing I love about science is you start catching up with these truths of Scripture in a way that adds dimensionality to it! Oh, let me kind of bring this in for a close. I hope today you don’t walk away with a few scientific facts; I hope you walk away feeling seen, heard, and loved by the Almighty creator of the universe! Because you need to know today that He knows the number of hairs on your head, that He collects your tears in His bottle, and that your name is tattooed on the palm of His hand! A couple of years ago, Summer and I wrote a little book for kids, kind of a bedtime storybook titled «God Speaks and Whispers.» And I love the last few lines, and this is maybe a parting gift:

There’s a lot to think about today, but part of what I’m praying is, «God, just blow up these little boxes that you put Him in!» I’m just stretching our faith, taking us to a different place! Forgive us for creating You in our image, Lord! Let us believe in the God of miracles and step into that miracle season!

But we wrote this little book, and in the last few pages, I kind of love it! Summer gets more credit than I do; she’s the one who rhymed it: «Above all else know this is true, that God is speaking all around you. And what is He saying? In that voice, still and small—that you, my dear, are His favorite of all!» You’re His favorite! You’re His favorite! You’re His favorite! You’re His favorite! You’re His favorite! You’re His favorite! Well, how is that possible? To the infinite, all finites are equal! Don’t bring God down to your level! Like, let Him recreate us in His image!

It is not the task of Christianity to offer easy answers to every question, said Kalistos Ware. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder. Oh God, wake us up to a million little miracles hiding in plain sight! In Jesus' name, amen!