Saturday December 9, 2023
Good News Reflections:
Making scripture meaningful to your daily life
by Terry Modica
“The Lord will give you the bread you need and the water for which you thirst.” (From Isaiah 30:20)
Good News Reflection for:
Saturday of the First Week of Advent
December 9, 2023
Today’s Readings:
Isaiah 30:19-21, 23-26
Psalm 147:1-6
Matthew 9:35–10:1, 5-8
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120923.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-december-9-2023
God hears you when you cry out
Truly, God hears you when you cry out. This Saturday’s first reading assures us that God will be gracious to us when we cry out. As soon as he hears us, God answers us.
But do you have complete faith in that? Hopefully we all know that he hears and answers us, but I have my doubts about the next verse:
“The Lord will give you the bread you need and the water for which you thirst.”
Has the Lord given you everything you need? I’ve been waiting a long time for his miraculous interventions in a few of my thirsts. Having faith in the promises of God doesn’t always mean that our experiences match what faith tells us. Right? It’s sometimes hard to remember that God hears us when we cry out.
For a long time, my morning prayers have included: “Come Holy Spirit, renew me. Come Holy Spirit, increase in me the gift of faith for miracles.” But then I learned that it’s important to add: “Forgive me for disbelieving Your Word. Gift me the gift of faith for miracles and the experiences that will increase my faith and the faith of others.” Since then, he’s surrounded me with a community of friends who believe in miracles. He also put Ralph and me in charge of the Prayer Team at a Catholic Charismatic Conference. As a stream of people brought their hearts’ desires to the Lord, the whole team witnessed miracle after miracle.
“The Lord will give you the bread you need and the water for which you thirst.” Relying on God for supernatural help is supposed to be normal Christian living. Where people gather to praise and worship the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit, the results can be like what we read about in the Book of Acts. When the earliest Christians gathered, their faith and enthusiasm were so strong that it converted unbelievers. If you have that available, put yourself into those opportunities often! The world needs the witness of God’s supernatural love.
I’ve been studying the experiences of those who have the level of faith that allows divine intervention to flow freely. They put a lot of time and effort into it. For example, one worship leader and his team fast and pray before every meeting, praising the Lord and doing spiritual warfare while walking the perimeter of the room for at least an hour. Thus, their meetings are so full of the glory of the Lord that even first-timers see angels. What if a prayer team in your parish did that every Saturday for the weekend celebrations of Mass?
Miracles are not meant to be extraordinary events. They evangelize non-believers and build the faith of half-believers. God answers us, in part, because the people of today’s world desperately need this witness of his divinity. They need to be reminded that God hears us when we cry out.
See Faith-building Miracles of the Holy Spirit, provided by Rina Manuel, a Good News Ministries member who lives in the Philippines: wordbytes.org/holy-spirit/faith-building-miracles.
To improve your relationship with the Holy Spirit, see my set of three courses (the videos are short yet life-changing): How to Hear the Holy Spirit, Living in the Power of the Holy Spirit, and How to Pray in the Power of the Holy Spirit. These archived courses are available on our Paracletia site: gnm.org/paracletia. Find out more about how God answers us when we cry out to him!
© 2023 by Terry A. Modica
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