miracles – Faith in Jesus

Miracles Now or in Another Life? (first version)

I had met Kirk for breakfast. I liked him. We met on a water taxi from Belize to an island. We were now having breakfast at Amor y Cafe. Kirk is younger than I but still feeling the weight of his sixth decade of life. He observed that aging is not enjoyable. I concurred wholeheartedly, for that was the reason I had come to this island: to swim and hopefully regain some of my health.

I quickly added: “But then there’s Isaiah 65,

Never again will there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
    will be thought a mere child

It is a verse I have been “claiming” in an approximate way—that I have many good years ahead of me.

To this, Kirk quickly and confidently rejoined, “Ah, yes. The Millennium!”

I knew exactly what he meant: Christ would return someday, Satan would be imprisoned, and earth would be well for a thousand years. During that time, we will experience a wealth of miracles, all the healing imaginable.

The Millennium is somethings I rarely think of. It is something Kirk readily thinks of. And this leads to the question of this post, Should we expect miracles now or leave them for another age, for the Millennium? If we expect them now, we must learn to weather disappoint when they don’t occur (and they often don’t). If we postpone the expectation for the Millennium, we have perhaps a smoother, tidier ride (unless we are stricken by an incurable illness).

If we are keeping score, Kirk gets a point for allowing the statement to be true (even literally) and at the same time entirely futuristic. If we are still keeping score, I’d like a point for saying the statement is hyperbolic. Whether someone lives to be a hundred this year or in the Millennium, there’s something rhetorical and exaggerative about calling that person “a child.” Similarly, if someone dies at, say, 95 years, calling that person “accursed” is equally hyperbolic. The obvious point of Isaiah 65 is that things will, at an unspecified time and under unspecified conditions, get incredibly better for people.

Enough of Isaiah 65 for now, beautiful as the vision is. What I think characterizes the difference between my thinking and Kirk’s is this: I look for miracles of healing today, in this life, both with and without medical intervention. I see them as part of our daily bread, the sort of thing Jesus illustrated while on earth, the thing the disciples illustrated after Jesus ascended, and the thing occasionally experienced, sometimes in crowds, sometimes alone, by people over the ages.

Kirk, I assume, sees the one miracle of being born again as the miracle we can both count on and help manifest in our lifetime. The rest—the physical miracles—can wait until the Millennium.

Unlike Millennial thinking, I cannot passively wait. If miracles, especially of healing, were needed and delivered to the people in Jesus’ Palestine, they are equally needed today. Yes, medicine does much but doesn’t come close to curing many, many ailments. When I am pressed for why miracles occur so rarely (few people I know have documentable divine healings), I immediately think of the one thing for which Jesus criticized his disciples most frequently: disbelief.

If Peter had enough faith to get out of a boat and take a few steps on stormy water, began to sink, cried for help from Jesus, and was met by, ““You of little faith, why did you doubt?””—if that, then why in the world are we satisfied with our level of faith? Most of us are still sitting in the boat. Many of of us cry out for help. Few of us even imagine walking on water or doing anything that suggests that a great reality undergirds us.

The advantage of Kirk’s thinking, if it truly is his, is that it lowers expectations in this life. One wouldn’t worry about not getting healed divinely. It isn’t part of the plan. What is the plan is to appreciate the miracle of being reconciled to God. Not only do we appreciate the one miracle but we also propagate it. We have churches that teach the gospel. We are all able to share in one capacity or another the gospel. Those who believe, start a new life with Jesus and our Father. Those that don’t may later. Someday we will die and experience much, much more. It’s beautiful.

It is beautiful! And I need to appreciate this vision. Of course the standard way of sharing the gospel needs constant tweaking. After all, it’s often preached to the choir. But beneath the cliches and rote understandings lie treasures that cannot be measured and shouldn’t be missed. Being born spiritually means never being alone again. It means always being in Christ, always being loved by God. It dwarfs about any other experience imaginable.

The advantage of my thinking is that I pay attention to all the stories of healing in the Bible, closely, as though I’m reading the news. Even when I’m not healed (and at the moment I’m imagining a divine touch), I’m coming closer and closer to learning God’s will. Just because things happen frequently in this world doesn’t mean God wills them. And just because things don’t happen, doesn’t mean God doesn’t will them. God’s will is revealed in Jesus, and it is expressed wherever there is faith and obedience. God’s will is wholesome, meaning God wants us whole, body, mind, and spirit. It will not be realized completely in this life—we all see through a darkly lighted mirror—but there’s not a bit of confusion of how Jesus treated sickness, never turning anyone away, always healing, always delivering. Call me little faith, and I’m encouraged! If a little faith untangles God’s will from all the evil that happens, a little more faith will be much better.

Miracles Now or in Another Life?

I had met Kirk for breakfast. I liked him. We met on a water taxi from Belize to an island, Caye Caulker. We were now having breakfast at Amor y Cafe. Kirk is younger than I but still feeling the weight of his sixth decade of life. He observed that aging is not enjoyable. I concurred wholeheartedly, for that was the reason I had come to this island: to swim and hopefully regain some of my health.

I quickly added: “But then there’s Isaiah 65,

Never again will there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
    will be thought a mere child

It is a verse I have been “claiming” in an approximate way, hoping that I have many good years ahead of me.

To this, Kirk quickly and confidently rejoined, “Ah, yes. The Millennium!”

If we had been keeping score, Kirk would get a point for allowing the statement about the hundred-year-old child to be true (even literally) and at the same time entirely futuristic. I’d get a point afterward for writing that the statement is hyperbolic. Whether someone lives to be a hundred this year or in the Millennium, there’s something rhetorical and exaggerative about calling that person “a child.” Similarly, if someone dies at, say, 95 years, calling that person “accursed” (as Isaiah 65 soon states) is equally hyperbolic. The obvious point of Isaiah 65 is that things will, at an unspecified time and under unspecified conditions, get incredibly better for people.

Enough of Isaiah 65 for now, beautiful as the vision is. Enough of Kirk, too—only because he had to leave the island the next day and I never questioned him further about his beliefs.

But the conversation we started at the cafe continued a debate within me. On one hand, I am one who believes miracles are for today. On the other hand, I looked at the advantages of those who believe miracles are for the Millennium.

I see miracles, especially healings, as part of our daily bread, the sort of thing Jesus illustrated while on earth, the thing the disciples illustrated after Jesus ascended, and the thing occasionally experienced, sometimes in crowds, sometimes alone, by people across the ages.

The other school, sometimes called dispensationalism, sees the one miracle of being born again as the miracle we can both count on and help manifest in our lifetime. Salvation, period. The physical miracles can wait until the Millennium.

Unlike Millennial thinkers, I cannot wait passively. If miracles, especially of healing, were needed and delivered to the people in Jesus’ Palestine, they are equally needed today. Yes, medicine does much, but medicine doesn’t come close to curing many, many ailments. Look at the disease stricken world and realize the need is greater than ever. The reason, I think, people join the Millennial school, is because they don’t understand why divine healings are so rare. When I am pressed for why miracles occur so rarely (few people I know have documentable divine healings), I think of the one thing for which Jesus criticized his disciples most frequently: disbelief.

If Peter had enough faith to get out of a boat and take a few steps on stormy water, began to sink, cried for help from Jesus, and was met by, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”—if that, then why in the world are we satisfied with our level of faith? Most of us are still sitting in the boat. Many of of us cry out for help. Few of us even imagine walking on water or doing anything that suggests that a great reality undergirds us.

I bring up disbelief because it was a problem among the disciples and is surely a problem among most modern “believers.” There is no condemnation in admitting one has disbelief, just as there’s no condemnation in admitting one has a past. We all need to start somewhere. The question isn’t, “Where did we start?” but “Where are we headed?”

Faith has little to do with with our will power and much more to do with what we are listening to. To become absorbed in the teachings of Jesus, including the prophetic voices of, say, Isaiah, is to be on the path to faith. Learning to see what is real for God (read Romans 8 for a sample) is learning to doubt our experiences and instead trust in the good news.

In conclusion, on one hand, I like the tidiness of Millennial thinking. The plan is to appreciate the miracle of being reconciled to God. Not only do we appreciate the one miracle but we also propagate it. We have churches that teach the gospel. We are all able to share in one capacity or another the gospel. Those who believe, start a new life with Jesus and our Father. Those that don’t may later. Someday we will die and experience much, much more. It’s beautiful.

On the other hand (of my internal debate) I love the hope of the early gospel, the message that Jesus lives in us, that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I love the promises that whatever we ask in his name, we shall receive so that our joy may be full. And I love the occasional testimonies of those who were so ill that nothing could be done until the Spirit of God miraculously healed them. More than health, they gained a better knowledge of Jesus than otherwise possible.

So I do think I gained more appreciation of the purely spiritual salvation message that Kirk got me thinking about.

It in no way dislodged my appreciation of the physically miraculous.

I pay attention to all the stories of healing in the Bible, closely, as though I’m reading the news. Even when I’m not healed (and at the moment I’m imagining a divine touch), I’m coming closer and closer to learning God’s will. Just because things happen frequently in this world doesn’t mean God wills them. And just because things don’t happen, doesn’t mean God doesn’t will them. God’s will is revealed in Jesus, and it is expressed wherever there is faith and obedience. God’s will is wholesome, meaning God wants us whole, body, mind, and spirit. It will not be realized completely in this life—we all see through a darkly lighted mirror. But there’s not a bit of confusion of how Jesus treated sickness, never turning anyone away, always healing, always delivering.

Call me little faith, and I’m encouraged! If a little faith untangles God’s will from all the evil that happens, a little more faith will brings us in touch with the “God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not”—yes, the God who enabled geriatric Abraham and Sarah to give birth to a son (Romans 4:17).

Genuine Miracles (contributions welcome!)

What is a genuine miracle for the purpose of this post? The short answer is that it is one that I find convincing because (1) it is beneficial and (2) cannot be more easily explained as a natural occurrence.

The longer answer (but not dreadfully long) goes like this. On one hand, every thing is a miracle. But as soon as we admit that, the term loses its usefulness. Perhaps it’s better to say everything is a gift and some gifts are miraculous.

A physician’s report that says an individual recovered in spite of medical predictions would be bonafide in my mind, whether or not we knew that someone had prayed for that healing. Missing a flight or a ride that happened to culminate in an accident might be a miracle. Finding oneself in an airport and receiving a call from one’s grandmother warning one not to board the flight that did culminate in an accident would be an even more convincing example of divine intervention.

You get the idea: the less probable and the more helpful an otherwise difficult-to-explain event is, the more likely it is to be a miracle.

As a reminder, we believe in Jesus because his Father has revealed him to us (Matthew 16:16-18). That revelation—that conviction that Jesus is the Christ—is less tangible but more reliable than a reported miracle.

Even so, miracles that reveal the love and kindness of God deserve our attention. Frequently in the New Testament, they serve two purposes at the same time, to help the individual and to reveal the goodness and power of God (John 9:1-6).

In my experience, Christians talk about miracles and even imagine miracles far more often than they experience them. What counts as miracles here are experiences that cannot be more easily accounted for as coincidences or instances of random luck. Bonafide miracles in this context result from the Spirit of God somehow moving in this physical world to make a much-needed change.

So, if you will, in the comments below, please share any bonafide miracles you’ve witnessed. Please be as honest as you can. When I was in high school I told a friend my van had miraculously started running well. She told her dad. He was a skeptic. I stood my ground. The truth is, I didn’t mention that I had replaced a spark plug. This was something I didn’t even think about in my zeal. If I could go back in time, I’d simply thank God for the ability to put a new plug in my car and leave the miraculous out of the picture.

If I see a need to edit your comment, I’ll send you an email letting you know the reasons (for clarity and integrity). Let’s start with one of the few documented miracles in my life. There are many events that I think are divinely guided but they do not make compelling stories to outsiders.

Prayer is Not Begging and is More than Hoping

Listen to the old version of this post (10 minutes, 16 seconds)

Sitting on my couch, I looked at the name of a woman written on a piece of paper. We will call her Beautiful. It was a reminder to pray for her healing because her cancer had returned. I thought of all the people who were praying for Beautiful. Probably a hundred or so.

Beautiful died about a year later. And so I revise this post, soberly.

When I re-read the gospels, I never see Jesus begging, nor, when it comes to healing, hoping. When he announces the death of Lazarus to his disciples, he says, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up” (John 11:11). He does not, for example, say to the disciples, “and I hope to wake him up.” Nor when he is at the grave site does he say, “Father, I’d really like it if you raise Lazarus from the dead.” No, what does he say? “Lazarus, come forth.” And it happens.

Now I know this is a sensitive subject because when we pray for a healing (or a resurrection, which I have done with no success), the disappointment of someone or ourselves remaining sick is compounded by the disappointment of prayer or our faith being inauthentic. When that happens, we might doubt God’s existence, his character, or the accuracy of the New Testament. In the end of this scenario, we are left with a sickness (or death) and an imaginary God.

At that point, we often backpedal, and there are plenty of Christians and agnostics to help us do so. Because of my low opinion of this kind of help, I’ll deliver some of their consolation in a rambling sentence.

Healing miracles are rare because medical science has rendered them unnecessary, and you can’t expect to pray like Jesus, especially since all those miracles were to introduce the world to the gospel, not to be part of it, I mean, they symbolized our spiritual healing and nothing more, so we should be satisfied with inner healing and leave the rest up to God who, after all, would heal if he wanted to … look at the apostle Paul whose prayer for healing wasn’t answered and who concluded that in his weakness God’s strength was made perfect … who do we think we are to expect any more than Paul?

If you’ve been exposed to intelligent people of faith—or have read the New Testament with an eye on how faith and prayer are expressed—you’ll know the entire ramble is not in the scriptures.

Here are the counterpoints.

Medical science is in its adolescence; many diseases including cancer are often fatal, the blind to not have their sight restored, those with withered limbs do not, in a moment, regain a fully functional limb, and deafness is only partially addressed medically
Jesus never suggested that he was the only one with God’s ear; in fact he said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12)
The miracles did introduce Jesus and his disciples to their world with a bang, yes, but nothing in the New Testament suggests the miracles were destined to stop at any point in time; the Book of Acts was apparently written 50 or so years after Jesus left the earth, and nothing in it suggests that the divine show of healing had ended or would end
It’s always suspicious when any miracle of God—any show of the supernatural in Christianity—is watered down to something humans can do, something that no longer requires a miracle; thus, saying “spiritual healing is all that Jesus was trying to point us to,” or saying “inner healing is more important than physical healing” is, what shall I say, suspicious? so suspicious that the people who say such things would do better to publish self help books
My ire is raised by the idea that God would heal if he wanted to: who in this world would say the vast amount of sickness, let alone violence, is what God wants?
Finally, for the low hanging fruit, Paul’s unanswered prayer: if you read the passage in II Corinthians 12, where Paul asks three times for God to remove the thorn from his flesh, you see that in the previous paragraphs, he listed the persecutions he endured (much more frequently than his fellow apostles), that it makes sense that persecution was the messenger from Satan that humbled him since he had received so great a revelation of Christ…besides, in light of those revelations, even if Paul were talking about his alleged bad eyesight, how many sick people have ever needed humbling because of the greatness of the revelation they had received?

Back to my couch and to Beautiful. She had many (many) people praying for her. She did live a year longer, but left the world too soon. If the number of people praying worked like addition, the healing power would be great, but faith is not like arithmetic. One plus God is a majority. One person with faith can be in a crowd and God will look over the crowd to find that person (2 Chronicles 16:9a). When Jesus went to raise the little girl from the dead, he allowed only three disciples the the girl’s parents into the room…and he healed her.

I have no idea what kind of prayers were spoken on behalf of Beautiful. I do know the kind of prayer I received when I was about to be diagnosed for cancer. Going up to “the prayer team” after a lively service at a large Evangelical church, I explained my concerns to the mature couple who were appointed to pray for me. As soon as I expressed my desire for healing, the man said, “Well, we all have to die sometime.” And that was followed by his wife telling me about a motorcycle accident that injured her in a way she has never recovered from.

As soon as I could get away from their aura of disbelief, I headed to the parking lot and called my sister in another state in order to shake off the bad vibes from the prayer team. My sister speaks words of faith—and did that night. My healing came through successful surgery (not what I had hoped for, but a heap better than having to die sometime soon).

This post focuses on what prayer is not. When I write a sequel, by God’s grace, it will express, at least in part, what Jesus-inspired prayer is. I surmise it will involve the classic verse from Mark: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Until then, be well, speak well, pray from the heart and believe God knows what you need before you mention it.

Publishing Info
This post was first published on: July 30, 2022 at 22:46. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.