The transformative power of God's grace and love, particularly as experienced through salvation, is a profound miracle. It explores this theme through the personal testimony of John Peterson, who was inspired to write the song "It Took a Miracle" after reflecting on his own conversion, the radical changes in his brothers' lives, and the awe-inspiring power of God evident in creation and his wartime experiences. The core lesson emphasizes that salvation is a miraculous act of God's love and grace, capable of radically transforming a believer's life. The sermon concludes by connecting this personal miracle to the divine intervention required for spiritual rebirth, as explained by Jesus to Nicodemus.
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It took a miracle to put the stars in place. It took a miracle to hang the world in space. But when he saved my soul, cleansed and made me whole, it took a miracle of love and grace. John Peterson wrote those lines. John was born on a farm near Linsburg, Kansas. During World War II, he was a pilot of a C-SIV, taking supplies over the hump from Burma to China. After the war, he attended Moody Bible Institute. Here's the way John Peterson tells of being inspired to write, it took a miracle. I sat in a classroom at Moody one day when the lecturer said something that started me thinking in a concentrated way about the grace and love of God as seen in the work of Calvary and about the tremendous transforming power of that work in the life of a believer.
I soon lost contact with the lecturer and my mind turned back to my childhood when I had seen the radical changes in the lives of my brothers, Bob and Bill, through the power of the gospel. I relived my own conversion to me such a miraculous thing, and the subsequent chain of events through which I lost my singing voice and turned more and more to writing. My thoughts raced on to the flights over the Himalayas, the spectacular power of God revealed in those electrical storms, the majesty of the mountains themselves, the incredible variety of the jungle, and the star-filled nights of dazzling beauty high in the air. As these scenes flashed through my memory, I began to focus on the element of the miraculous in all of God's work, creation, and redemption.
The words of a song were forming in my mind, and before the class period was over, the chorus was all thought out. I hurried over to the music building, found a vacant studio, and started to write. My father is on living for him, and as you shall be now, Oh God of light and spirit, Tis written in the sky It took a miracle to put a star to sing It took a miracle to hang the words to sing But when he says, I choose and can make me
fall. It took a miracle of love and praise. After dark one night, a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, a member of the sect of the Pharisees, came for an interview with Jesus. Sir, he said, We all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miracles are proof enough of this.
Jesus replied, With all the earnestness I possess, I tell you this. Unless you are born again, you can never get into the kingdom of God. Born again, exclaimed Nicodemus. What do you mean? How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again? Jesus replied, what I am telling you so earnestly is this. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Men can only reproduce human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven." But when he gave thy shoes and had made thee whole, And took a miracle above and with it.