God Who Works Inwardly and Outwardly

Thursday April 9, 2026

God Who works outwardly and inwardly.  In many ways, the miracles that God does outwardly is likely what gets remembered the most.  We recall how God flooded the Earth, parted the Red Sea, sent manna down from heaven to feed an entire nation of people for forty years, made water come out of a rock, healed the sick, cause the lame to walk, gave sight to the blind, and raised the dead.  This is not an exhaustive list of miracles, but a list that easily just comes to the mind.  I’m finishing up a book called “The Possibilities of Prayer” and in the book the author writes, “Natural laws are simply God’s laws, by which governs and regulates all things in nature.  Nature is nothing but God’s servant.  God is above nature, God is not the slave of nature” (E.M Bounds, p.90).  In our reading this morning, we read about a great miracle of sending fire down from heaven to consume a prepared sacrifice by Elijah.  However, what stood out to me was not the great spectacle that must have been absolutely amazing to see, but it was the quiet work that was not seen.  We read as Elijah prayed, “Answer me, Lord! Answer me so that this people will know that you, the Lord, are God and that you have turned their hearts back” (1 Kings 18:37).  There really were two miracles, weren’t they.  God was going to use the one miracle (fire down from heaven) to accomplish the other (turn the people’s hearts back to Himself).  This is found in Elijah’s prayer.  He was not asking for God to do a miracle so that Elijah could be seen or benefited in any way.  Elijah was asking God to work so that the hearts of the people would be turned back.  Elijah was not focused on himself, but God and the heart of the people.  One of my takeaways was that Elijah was faithful to pray and God was faithful to work.  So many times we try to create the “miracle”, but that is not our role.  Our role is to faithfully pray and work, while trusting God to do the work that we cannot do.