The Board Member You Need Can See The Miracle

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Now with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Running with Horses, a podcast devoted to inspire you concerning a relationship with Almighty God that empowers you to accomplish things you never thought possible.

Shirley Weaver wants to take you there. And now, here's today's episode. Today on our podcast, I want to look at something we all should know by now. The board member that you need can see the miracle. So in any endeavor, in any board of directors, board of trustees that is assembled, faith to believe God for the miraculous sometimes is rare, isn't it? But it shouldn't be.

Just because it is doesn't mean that it should be. We need eyes to see, ears to hear, the Lord speaking in this way. After all, it is His nature. God's nature is the miraculous. He breathed life into you. He breathed life into me. And we became a living, speaking spirit created in His image. Therefore, when the opportunity to serve in a leadership or governing capacity comes, it is the reward for our faithfulness in imitating the nature of God, our divine nature. Not our human nature as much as our divine nature. Philip was a character in the New Testament.

He sometimes was very questioning. We read in John chapter 6, verse 7, Philip answered, 200 denarii, worth of bread, is not sufficient for them. So it would take 200 denarii and still that wouldn't be enough bread for everyone.

The Living Bible states it this way. It would take a fortune to even begin to do this. So the project presented to Philip didn't get a great response.

A.W. Tozier, one of my favorite theologians, favorite writers, a super author, I love his heart, the way he thinks, what he has written, calls Philip, Philip the calculator. In his book, Faith Beyond Reason, he speaks to this very thing that when it comes to knowing specifics about the obstacles that we face, impossibility can be our next response. The natural man, the natural man, according to 1 Corinthians 2, 14, is that way. For the natural man, the things of God is something like drinking water from a fire hose. Get a visual on that. Here's the fire hose. You're trying to drink. God is so much greater, more powerful.

My intake capacity has to decide to expand, to receive what is being released. So the natural man can't understand, can't accept the thoughts from God, which is why it's so important to emphasize that we have that we have the mind of Christ, so we should have the thought life of a king. So back to what I was referring to that A.W. Tozier has written, and let me slow that down, that's initial A, initial W, Tozier, T-O-Z-E-R. Do a search if you're not familiar with that name. There's a wealth to be found. So Tozier says that in the New Testament we find Philip the calculator, like an instrument where you enter numbers and come up with a conclusion. Philip the calculator. Philip the mathematician.

Philip the clerk. Tozier's speaking here, and he's saying, there was a need for a miracle, and Philip set out to calculate the odds. Probably every Christian group, Tozier says, has at least one person with a calculator. And if you've ever been on a board, if you've ever served in a governing capacity, it's true. It's true, and you've seen this, and this is what Tozier is speaking to. He says, rarely is there a board without a Philip the calculator among its membership.

When you suggest something, out comes the calculator to prove that it cannot be done. And so, you know, you have that person on your board in a governing capacity, in the group where you're discussing what decisions need to be made, you have that person, like Philip the calculator, and then you have those who instantly see the potential for a miracle. They instantly see that there's a capacity here that's been released from God for the miraculous, and they go there in their minds, in their thinking, they can see it. I heard someone say one time, or I read it in an article, I can't remember which, that miracles occur in clusters, and the reference was to the book of Isaiah, and to the prophet Elijah, and to Elisha, the prophets Elijah and Elisha, and Elijah and Elisha, and it's true because you know the miraculous begats the miraculous. And once you have a divine outcome, you tend to increase in your understanding and expectation for that occurrence again, to be repeated.

You're looking for it because now you've sensed it, you've seen it with your eyes, so you can believe, so hence the suggestion that miracles occur in clusters. Just as a practical way of looking at it, I think that's true. I think that's true, I know that's true for me, because the more I see God move, the more I can believe Him to move. So, Tozer is saying that the people with the calculators, like Philip, they've seen the problem, but they have not seen God. They have figured things out, but they have not figured God in. That's a Tozer quote, let me say that again. Tozer said this, Tozer said this, the people with the calculators have seen the problem, but they have not seen God.

They have figured things out, but they have not figured God in. It's true, it's true. He says, Philip the calculator, he's a dangerous man in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every suggestion made in the direction of progress gets a negative vote from this man. Gets a negative vote. How sad. And again, we're quoting from Faith Beyond Reason, specifically pages 137 through 139, A.W.

Tozer. I want to invite us to think in terms of the places where we've had opportunity to govern, to lead, to rule, and to look back on that and to assess the contribution we were able to make. Maybe it's plural contributions. Did we always assess what could be done in terms of the practical, the realistic, what is humanly conceivable? Did we factor God out by factoring in every aspect of the problem or the challenge? Or did we see the Lord, see His nature being released as the true possibility true possibility, the really great option, the greatest option, the superior path?

Did we see that? Did we boldly choose that even if no one else did? Did we champion His righteous cause with His righteous capacity, His depth, and the reality just of who God is? You know, I do not want to be Philip the calculator. I do not want to pull out a mathematical instrument to determine and measure what God can do. I want my faith to grow time and the Word does that, you know. I want my faith to grow so that I can see Him. I can hear Him and think like Him to have the thought life of a king, of royalty, of a ruler, one who governs one who governs in the name of the Lord. That's what I want. That's the goal. And looking back on my life I can see I did not always do that and not just in a formal board setting or maybe even a simpler gathering where decisions had to be made, maybe not something as official as a board, but definitely in the home. You know, the home, that is the essence of the church. That is the link. That is the strongest link that determines how strong the church is.