Someone writes, “I’ve known some people whose conversion would basically be a miracle. Yet God doesn’t convert people by a miracle. He does it by someone sharing the good news of Jesus and the love of God.”
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I would like to select “all the above.” Yes, God brings people to faith through preaching the gospel. But God is the one who opens spiritual eyes (2 Cor. 4:4-6), who opens hearts to hear (Acts 16:14), who gives faith (Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:9), who gives life to men and women dead in sin and enables them to repent and believe (Eph. 2:1; Acts 11:18).
God is still in the general miracle business as well. Reliable contemporary reports of divine encounters abound by which God prepares people for the gospel, brings them into contact with the gospel and brings them to conviction to accept the gospel — including dreams, visions, speaking to them directly, as well as complex but precise scenarios involving timing, placement of persons and circumstances.
Yes, dear brother, our conversion is a miracle from the Almighty, and so is that of everyone else who comes to Christ. “No one,” said Jesus, “can come to me unless the Father draws him.” But everyone who is taught by God comes to Jesus (John 6:44-45). As my college Bible teacher Homer Hailey used to say, “That’s not a problem if you spell your God with a capital “G.”
