faster. Here’s what will happen: You will accomplish more in less time. You will be promoted beyond your education. You will increase beyond your experience. The right people will help you go where you could not go on your own.
The Scripture tells us about the first miracle Jesus ever performed. He turned water into wine. He had just attended a wedding. Afterward, He went to a big reception, and right in the middle they ran out of wine. Jesus’ mother, Mary, came up and told Him about the problem. Jesus said, “Mom, why are you telling me that? I can’t do anything about it. My time has not yet come.”
I can imagine Mary just smiled and said to the workers, “Do me a favor. Whatever He asks you to do, just do it.”
Mary knew what He was capable of.
There were six stone water pots over to the side. They held about thirty gallons each. Jesus said to the workers, “Fill those pots up with water.”
They filled them up. Then Jesus said, “Now dip out some of the water”—which He had transformed into wine—“and take it to the host of the party.”
When the host tasted it, he called the groom over and said, “This is amazing. Most people serve the best wine first, and then when people have had a lot to drink and don’t know any better, they’ll bring out the less expensive wine. But you’ve done just the opposite. You saved the best wine for last.”
I read up on how long it takes to make wine. It’s a very lengthy process. It starts with the planting of seeds in the ground. The grapevines have to grow and produce their fruit. The grapes have to develop. When they get mature and just right, workers pick the grapes and eventually the grapes are made into wine. The process from the time they plant the seed to the time they have wine is typically three to five years. And that’s just average-quality wine.
The higher-quality wines take between five and seven years to make. To increase the quality and make it more valuable, often they will age the wine, put it up on a shelf, and leave it for years and years. You’ve seen wine that’s twenty or thirty years old. That would be considered the best wine.
Here’s what I want you to understand: in the first miracle Jesus ever performed, He created fine wine, a process that should have taken twenty years, but He did it in a split second. The twenty-year winemaking process was accomplished in a moment of time.
Maybe it should take you years to recover after an illness. But just like Jesus sped up the process of making wine, He can speed up the process of healing. Maybe in the natural it should take you thirty years to pay off your home mortgage. You’ve run the calculations but they are based on the laws of economics. The good news is, God has a faster calculator. He can give you one good break that will allow you to pay off your mortgage on His much faster schedule.
A woman visited our church while in Houston awaiting a liver transplant at the medical center. She had just been approved for the list of recipients. Doctors told her it could take between three and five years. She wasn’t sure she could make it that long. I encouraged her that God could heal her without the transplant, or God could speed things up and she’d get her new liver sooner than the doctors had predicted.
We prayed and she went on her way. A few weeks later I saw her back in the Lakewood Church lobby again. She smiled real big and said, “Joel, you are looking at a woman with a brand-new liver.”
She received a call from the hospital just two weeks after she was put on the transplant list. It just so happened a perfectly matched liver for her had become available. It wasn’t suitable for anyone else on the list. Her doctors said, “If you can get here tonight, this is your liver.”
She jumped on a plane, drove to the medical complex, and immediately went into surgery. The good news was there were no complications. She said, “Joel, I feel better today than I’ve felt since I