You’re drowning in the surf and what do you think about? How foolish you are or perhaps you feel embarrassed that you’re going to need rescue?

Apparently, that’s common to all surf drown survivors. But what if there’s no sign of a rescue?

You need a miracle right? Something miraculous would not only be life saving, but forever life changing one would think.

Many of us, including our kids have asked... ''if only God did something miraculous in front of me, then I'd be sure, then I'd have no trouble believing!''

I read a story in the paper recently of a young girl whose spontaneous dash into the sea on a remote Victorian beach quickly got her in danger. She got dumped then dragged into a rip that took her out to sea. The more she tried to get back in, the less progress she made and after a few hours, was becoming exhausted.

Safety tip for parents: As a surfer, myself I know the dangers and benefits of rips. It’s important to teach your kids about rips and help them understand where to look for them and most importantly how to avoid them and get out of them. The best thing to do when stuck in a rip is not swim back into the beach against the rip current but swim across the rip until you hit the breakers again and let them push you in to the shore.

While the fear pulses through her body, she is physically and mentally more in the moment than she has ever been in her whole life. Yet her brain, part of it, roams across time and as it does, her life passes before her eyes.

“I got a reel of my life that was completely unsentimental and truer than any reflections I’d had before. Maybe because of the concentration of time-that you know you only have a tiny bit left-there’s no self-delusion. It wasn’t just a narrative. It was heavily laden with all sorts of judgement calls and moral assessments and a very keen awareness of being answerable to something. I was agnostic but I had such a spiritual experience with this drowning”. (Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald, February 11, 2016 p23.)

She saw her life flash in front of her. Her worst moments. Her regrets. Her highs and lows. Where she had been kind and where she had been cruel. An incredibly sure feeling of being weighed and found wanting confronted her.

Then she prayed…for a miracle.

The prayer for salvation comes from desperate lips
 “I felt ashamed of every bad thing I’d done…. I was aware someone had been assessing me…I was praying, please save me!"

In the book of Exodus, we are told of Israel’s intolerable slavery under Egypt. Israel’s call for help came from that desperation and was heard by God and he answered, remembering his promise to Abraham and delivering them out of the hands of oppression under Pharaoh.
Israel was drowning and God plucked her from the raging sea. Then he threw the oppressor who caused all the suffering into the raging waters to trouble no-one no more.

We need to be broken before we are open
Was Israel broken under Pharaoh or just horribly enslaved? I don’t think the book of Exodus says she called out to Yahweh. Only that her ‘’cry’’ was heard and Yahweh remembered his covenant.

It seems that while we travel through life unscathed, we feel in control and self-sufficient, even successful. Until something goes pear shaped and we start to doubt our control and may even reach out for help. Sometimes we just stay enslaved to our sad state of affairs, like Israel. We’re not broken to the point that we surrender. And if there’s no moment of surrender then there’s little hope of seeing clearly, having our eyes opened to have vision over visibility.

How quickly we move on- faith is hard to come by
It wasn’t long before Israel forgot her salvation. It wasn’t long before Israel was back to her old ways, serving other gods just like she did in Egypt. Think the golden calf, the complaining, the desire to go back to her vomit and be in Egypt as slaves to Pharaoh.

Miracles outside of our hearts and minds don’t change people. In fact, as Israel’s history shows us, it often has the opposite effect.
After 9/11 people walked into churches…for a day. Then they went back to their lives.

In Jesus time, people saw him do miracles and then asked for a sign. He’d just finished feeding the 5000 and they ask him to bring down manna from heaven!! Yet they seem to have forgotten that the very generation that saw and ate the manna from heaven died in the wilderness because they did not believe!

So, kids, miracles won’t save you. Miracles won’t give you faith. If you saw a miracle you probably still wouldn’t believe, not by the miracle alone. You and your friends need more than miracles or signs. You need the miracle of rebirth, a changed heart.

What about our girl drowning in the sea…Does God still do miracles?
At the time our girl in the sea called out for help she made a promise to whoever was watching over her, “I will be your greatest servant’ and she apologised for being such an idiot.

Her prayer barely uttered she sees a golden beam of light break through the dark clouds illuminating a dog and two people walking the dunes. An instant later the boy in the pair strips off and swims to her rescue. He just happens to be a state swimming champion, his sister on the beach just happens to be a nurse who can help her when she beaches full of water. Miraculous, wouldn’t you say.

Does the miracle change her life?
In the days to come she has second thoughts and doubts the ‘divine intervention’. “Now that I was safe, I wanted reason to prevail. Fear and desperation made me do what apparently, everyone does: atheists, agnostics…whether drowning or 9/11…Suddenly it’s, God, save me! […] I had to put quite a bit of energy into suppressing that experience because I wanted to consider myself a rational being, but lately I find myself thinking about it more and more’’ (p23)

A miraculous salvation, but no faith
Miracles don’t have the power to change minds.
God’s word does that. God’s word can enter a broken life, a broken heart. Or just a soft heart of a child who doesn’t have all the baggage of a grown up yet. The real miracle is the change of the human heart.

The desire for miracles hides an excuse to avoid the real question

If a friend asked for a miracle to believe then it’s most likely just an excuse to keep God at arm’s length. Once the miracle is done they’ll find an excuse not to believe anyway.

The problem is the human heart doesn’t want to believe or accept God is weighing their lives. The human heart doesn’t want a judge, someone calling them to account. We want salvation but we want autonomy and a God free zone, so we can be god.  
Why can’t God show me a miracle so I can believe?

No-one likes talking about judgement or being weighed…we all know we’d be found wanting. So, I guess that’s really the question…not if I showed you a miracle would you believe but if I showed you a miracle would you be willing to accept that you are going to be judged and that you are answerable and you cannot make yourself right before God on your own terms. No-one really wants to go there do they? Just give me a sign so I can go ‘wow’ and fashion a god into my own comfortable, pocket size image.

The reality is that we don’t need a miracle to tell us that. It’s self-evident: our conscience makes it plain that there is moral order and we are to be held accountable.

Jesus saw his miracles as pointing to the resurrection of all the dead, where His Father had appointed Him judge. So, the real problem behind wanting a miracle is whether you’re prepared to surrender your autonomy to God and give Him the rightful place as Lord of your life.

What questions have you heard people ask about miracles?

Send in your questions as I'd like to write shows that answer people's objections to faith in Jesus. Let me know what questions are left unanswered by this post. If you're not receiving these posts regularly to your email, sign up using the subscribe button on www.antonsantics.com