Oh Lord, You Worked Miracles Before, Where Are They Today? Encouragement To Keep Pressing In!

“O God, we have heard with our ears,
Our fathers have told us
The work that You did in their days,
In the days of old.
You with Your own hand drove out the nations;
Then You planted them;
You afflicted the peoples,
Then You spread them abroad.
For by their own sword they did not possess the land,
And their own arm did not save them,
But Your right hand and Your arm and the light of Your presence,
For You favored them. “

Psalm 44:1-3

Brothers and Sisters,

I know that many of you are seeking miracles and healing; I am too. We read in the Word of the glorious healings and miracles that Jesus performed. He commissioned His disciples to do the same, and they did. He told His disciples to teach their disciples to do these same works, and their disciples did!

When you study Church history, you see that the gifts of the Spirit, including miracles and healing did not die out with the apostles, but in the following centuries they became scorned and people stopped walking in them. The Bible never gives any indication that the gifts should cease. God reveals Himself from the book of Exodus 5 on as “The Lord your Healer.” So why do we see a lot less healing than we would like to see?

I feel like God is helping me to understand part of the problem. Feel free to disagree if this doesn’t bear witness with you, but I feel like it may be helpful.

Think about this: when a person has been bound to a wheelchair for years and the Lord heals them, they often need help to get out of their wheelchair and begin walking, they lean on someone, they take a few steps—more than they could take before—and then they need to sit and rest. We say, “His leg muscles haven’t been used in years. Though God has healed him and his legs work again, his muscles need to readjust.”

Well unfortunately for centuries the Church has put the gifts of healing and miracles into a wheelchair and declared they don’t work anymore.  There has always been a remnant who still practiced healing and miracles, and today many people believe and see healings and miracles, and many more pray and want to see them on a regular basis and believe that God still does these things through us.

So what’s the big deal?

Our expectancy for healing and miracles is kind of like that man’s legs: we know it’s available, but we are slowly moving into the ability to walk in these gifts. Why? Because we “retired” them for so long that when we were saved, born into faith, we saw no expectancy to see healings. It’s not the Christian culture we were born again into, it wasn’t “ordinary Christianity” to us. So though we believe it can happen, our faith is hindered because our expectancy is low.

Here’s another example. I have lately observed that brand new Christians who are in an environment where the believers pray in tongues, prophecy, and so on,  have complete expectancy that they will receive the gift of tongues or that they can hear from God. Why? Because what they see in the Christians around them is what they perceive to be “normal” for Christians. They put two-and-two together, and think “I’m a Christian, so I can be filled with the Spirit and speak in tongues. I can hear from God in prophetic dreams or words, etc.” So when someone asks them, “Would you like to be filled with the Holy Spirit and receive a prayer language that will help you to walk in the rest of the gifts God want to use you in?” The new believer says “yes”, we lay hands on them, and 3 minutes later, they are feeling the power of God on their bodies and they’re off babbling in tongues. A week or two later they’re sharing a dream that they had and saying, “God spoke to me in this dream.” And sure enough, it comes to pass. However, myself and others who came to Christ in churches that didn’t believe in tongues have had to spend a year or two just wrestling with whether or not it’s right for today. Then when we realize we believe it is right, it often still takes months (for me it took a year) to receive and walk in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with tongues. Why? Because even though we believe it will happen, our expectancy has been hindered by what we saw or didn’t see in our early days as a Christian. In fact our experience has taught us they don’t happen.

So it is with healing. I believe that as we continue to press in in prayer and in praying for the sick to be healed, the dead to be raised, the demonized to be set free, those in need of miracles to receive them, meals to be multiplied, water to be walked on, walls to be walked through, and every need to be met by our wonderful Father–WE WILL SEE THEM COME TO PASS, AND THEY WILL BEGIN TO HAPPEN WITH REGULARITY! What God wants to do in and through us surpasses our wildest (holy) imaginations!

I believe that we need to realize that we are seeking to recover the ability of the Church to walk in the power she was intended to walk in that has laid dormant for centuries, just like a man reclaiming the ability to walk on his once-paralyzed legs. Even though we believe these things can happen, our expectancy is limited by our experience. When it doesn’t happen, we don’t change our theology! We just realize that we are still trying to get the blood flowing in our numb legs! We try again and never believe that it’s not God’s will because it didn’t happen.

Friends, let us not give up! Keep pressing in! Keep pressing in! Keep pressing in! There will be a day when the uncommon is commonplace if we do not lose heart!

Father, give us the faith to believe beyond our expectancy! Poor out the power of your Spirit without measure! Give us a breakthrough in our expectancy, that we will believe to see things we’ve never seen before!  Amen.