This week, we looked at the moment when Jesus healed the officer’s daughter in John 4, which was one of MANY instances in the new testament where we see the inextricable link between a display of power and groups of people coming to belief. Our cultural outlook on the miraculous is very different to that of the crowd who had assembled to see Jesus that day in Galilee, who were expecting to see Jesus the magician not Jesus the Messiah… But the officer, who came to Jesus in sheer desperation, took him at his word when he said ‘Go. Your son will live' (despite him being 25 miles away, and the cultural understanding requiring a healer to be present for the miracle to occur.), and when it happened, his whole household believed. Our western minds and cultural expectations (even within church!) work very differently these days, but if we look at the experience of the church in other parts of the world, where the spiritual realm is more readily included in the day-to-day, we see that the Spirit is still healing, delivering, raising people from the dead and VERY much still doing the same stuff He always was.

While we certainly will always seek to satisfy the mind and the intellect, we also want Bread to be a place that is known for the miraculous. We want to see healing, we want to see deliverance and all the signs of the kingdom, just like on the pages of the bible. Make sure you put the Alpha weekend away in your diary (Oct 20-22 in Big Bear!).