Acts 14:3 So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders.
Have you ever wondered why miracles don’t happen today, miracles like those written in the pages of the Scriptures? Or do they happen, and we just don’t hear about them because of the skepticism of our society. I have read some reports about miraculous things happening in other places around the world, usually at the cutting edge of the Gospel in a society.
I have been struck, as I have been reading the Book of Acts, how many times the Christians shared the Scriptures and then miracles happened. It is almost as if the two went together, the miracles confirming the reality of the message. The miracles were the seal of God’s approval, the proof of the authenticity of the message.
Now we might say, “But they didn’t have the Scriptures like we do. They needed the miracles.” But they preached from the Scriptures they had, the Hebrew Bible. That was the text to which the miracles attested.
But they also had eyewitnesses who testified about what they had seen. People could see the people who had formerly been crippled, perfectly healthy, walking around praising God. They could question those involved and hear their direct testimony. They had the perfect combination of evidence and they had miracles.
We, like them, have the Scriptures. They now contain some of that eyewitness testimony, recorded for the ages. But we can’t question the witnesses for ourselves. If anyone needs miracles to confirm their faith, it is us.
And yet it seems that the types of miracles we read about in the Scriptures aren’t happening. Or are they? Now I don’t want to redefine what constitutes a miracle in order to explain why miracles are either happening or not happening today in the Western Church. I don’t want to water down or distill what the LORD is doing today. I want to affirm what Scripture declares.
The first thing I want to observe is that miracles did happen in the New Testament narratives. They are there, plain as day. We need to accept their existence, or we have to go through an Olympic sized gymnastics routine in order to explain what is written. I am not very good at gymnastics.
But this does not settle the question. If the LORD enabled the believers to do miracles back then when new frontiers were being reached, where are the frontiers today? We see lives radically changed by the power of God’s grace, especially in marginal communities, like drug addicts and those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
Perhaps we need to be working more on those margins. If that is where the LORD is showing up as He used to, wouldn’t that be a good place to be involved? Wouldn’t it be better to find out where the LORD is working, and then go and join Him in His work!
Now I don’t want you to hear from what I am writing that I am downplaying the miraculous work of salvation in individuals. On the contrary, I am lifting that up. A changed life, death to life, chaos to order, stagnation to growth. But the New Testament records things of even greater astonishment. People’s lives were changed, but they were also healed and restored physically. Dead people were raised to life. Is it reasonable (if that is the correct standard to measure faith) to expect the LORD to show up as He did back then, not all the time, but some time, at His choosing?
Maybe we need to work more at the fringes. That is where He seems to have shown up before. Maybe He will do it again!
The Arnold Journey 