It’s a bit naïve to talk about how often miracles should happen, and to encourage Christians to live miraculous lives, without dealing with the 500-pound gorilla in the room: “Why, when I pray for miracles, don’t they happen?”
Bluntly, God is not your genie.
My biggest problem with certain Christians is how they arrogantly expect everything they pray for, to just happen. They named it; they claimed it; God’s gotta cough it up because he promised he’d give us whatever we ask for in Jesus’s name. And he wants us to live successful, prosperous, territory-expanding lives. And he gave us the power to call forth the things that are not, as though they were.
Nearly all such teachings do not have the ultimate goal of glorifying God, and growing our faith in and relationship with him. They have the ultimate goal of pleasing ourselves. Glorifying God and growing faith are side effects. The relationship with God is skewed into that of a grandpa who wants to spoil you, or a Santa Claus who wants to know your Christmas list. It’s entirely dependent on what God can do for us.
If he comes through, we call him a mighty God. If he doesn’t, we figure we prayed wrong. So we start analyzing ourselves to see why the miracles didn’t happen. Maybe our faith wasn’t strong enough. Maybe we have unconfessed sin in our lives. Maybe we this, maybe we that—it all comes down to maybe we lack good works, and we’re not gonna get God’s miracles, or deserve God’s miracles, unless we’re good and obedient.
All hogwash. But popular hogwash.
God’s miracles and God’s grace.
God’s acts are not dependent on our goodness. They’re dependent on his grace. They’re consistent with his grace. Both grace and miracles come from the same God, so naturally they’re interconnected.
Moses explained to the Hebrews before they invaded Canaan how everything God had done from them had nothing to do with merit. It wasn’t about their goodness, but his.
After the LORD your God has done this for you, don’t say in your hearts, “The LORD has given us this land because we are such good people!” No, it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he is pushing them out of your way. It is not because you are so good or have such integrity that you are about to occupy their land. The LORD your God will drive these nations out ahead of you only because of their wickedness, and to fulfill the oath he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You must recognize that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land because you are good, for you are not—you are a stubborn people.
—Moses, Deuteronomy 9.4-6 NLT
Likewise, what God had Ezekiel tell Israel.
I am bringing you back, but not because you deserve it. I am doing it to protect my holy name, on which you brought shame while you were scattered among the nations. I will show how holy my great name is—the name on which you brought shame among the nations. And when I reveal my holiness through you before their very eyes, says the Sovereign LORD, then the nations will know that I am the LORD. For I will gather you up from all the nations and bring you home again to your land.
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.
—The LORD, Ezekiel 36.22-27 NLT
God doesn’t do things for us, or perform miracles on our behalf, because we deserve them, or because we’ve earned them. They are gifts. He is generous. He delights to give good gifts to his children. Good gifts—not the short-sighted crap we so often ask for.
Only God “calleth those things which be not as though they were.” (Ro 4.17 KJV) This doesn’t mean, as it’s so frequently misused, that when God wants to make something, he acts as if it’s here already—and it suddenly is. The original text, kalúntos ta mi ónta os ónta, means “calling the not-existing so that it’s existing.” It’s about God’s ability to create ex nihilo, out of nothing. It refers to God’s creative power, particularly in the life of Abraham, who believed in God because he knew God can create.
I do not have the power to create like that—to speak a word, and something exists. My words can trigger the creative process. I can share an idea, and that idea might develop into something, depending on how good or bad the idea is. But other people—employees, friends, acquaintances, myself, God—have to act upon my words, and at any point in the process they may choose not to. I can speak all the positive words I like into the atmosphere: They won’t do a thing unless people hear them, understand them, and act upon them. Just as in Jesus’s parable of the four seeds, they have to fall upon good soil. (Mk 4.13-20) Only in God’s case will his words not even need soil, for he can create the very soil.
That’s why, when I ask God for stupid things, he so very kindly and graciously responds, “No. I have better plans. Learn them and pray for them.” He doesn’t—as some Christians wrongly teach—give me what I ask for anyway, “The Monkey’s Paw” style, to teach me a lesson about the power of misspoken words. God is kind, not passive-agressive. He is gracious, not punitive.
Follow the Spirit’s lead.
Do you want miracles to happen? By all means pray for them. Can you demand miracles happen? Can you make them happen? No. We have no ability to force God’s hand. If we did, we’d be in an extremely dysfunctional relationship. God would be forced to do our bidding—or forced to retaliate for our evil behavior. But no one can force God. He is almighty. He always maintains the upper hand—as he should, since power only belongs in his hands anyway.
Why, then, can some people perform miracles? Two reasons: They prayed, and it just so happens their prayer fit precisely with God’s will, so God immediately answered yes. Or they didn’t take the initiative—God did. The Holy Spirit told them, “Pray for this.” And though they thought it unlikely or impossible, or even ridiculous, they obeyed. And God immediately answered yes.
If I want God to give me a car—just plain give me a car, right out of the blue, through someone’s generosity, through winning a sweepstakes, through dumb luck, through whatever—God is in no way obligated to just give it to me simply because I asked. Even though he loves giving gifts, this may not be a gift that’ll do me, and him, and our relationship, any good. Even though I might swear up and down that I’ll give him all the glory for it, and cover the back bumper in Jesus fish (and what a testimony that will be, what with my lousy driving) my motivation can be pretty much summed up in that I’m trying to get material possessions out of a Lord who teaches, “Store your treasures in heaven.” (Mt 6.20)
If I’m asking selflessly—I need the car, for ministry purposes, or to care for my family—that’s more likely to do me, him, and our relationship some good. Although my need really isn’t the car so much as it is transportation; and I shouldn’t be so limited as to only expect a car to solve my problems. God can solve them all sorts of ways. He could change my job or ministry so I don’t need a car. He could have my job or ministry provide a car—I won’t own it myself, but I don’t need to. He could solve my problem in all sorts of ways that might never occur to me, and the solution will be perfect and miraculous and full of blessing and cause me to regularly praise him. I will pray for that. His ideas are much better than mine.
As a result of surrendering our wills to God’s like this, the Holy Spirit will often respond to it by giving us something to pray—something specific that, at the end of it, our problems will be solved. Sometimes it won’t be obvious just how it solves our problems—“Pray for my business competitor’s growth? How will that solve my problem? Sounds like it’ll just create new ones.” —But when we’re obedient to God like that, that’s how he involves us in the process of doing miracles. Because, in praying as he tells us, we’ll see just how he makes something out of nothing. Praying for my business competitor might mean my business will be bought out—and we’ll all get company cars. Or they’ll sell off their old company cars, and I’ll discover a bargain. Or my company will pour more money into competing with them, which will mean different job duties. Or any number of solutions—which I had no idea about, but God did, and that’s why he had me pray as I did.
Many Christians teach we need to be specific in our prayers so we can receive what we ask for, but they put the cart before the horse: Be general in your prayers, until God tells you to be specific. Prayer is not giving God a laundry list of requests. Prayer is saying, “Give us today our daily bread,” until God answers, “Now ask for Italian bread.”
When it comes time to ask God to heal another person, pray to yourself. Only when the Spirit says, “Go lay your hands on her and tell her, ‘Be healed in Jesus’s name!’ and she will be healed,” do we step up and actually do that. (And keep on doing that until she actually is healed.) Unless we’ve had his prompting, we have no guarantee at all that God will perform this miracle. He might; he doesn’t like sickness either, and may heal the person anyway. But he might not. And I’ve seen wannabe faith healers who stepped ahead of God, didn’t get the results they demanded, and turned round and blamed the sick people, telling them they lacked faith, or they had unconfessed sin. Neither was true. What we had was a person who tried to strong-arm God, failed, and wouldn’t accept blame for their failure.
If God’s people are gonna perform miracles, they must cooperate with God. Naming and claiming things is not cooperation. It is presumption. It is wholly inappropriate behavior for people who are supposed to be in a loving relationship with our Father. We do not demand service from him; we request it. And though God chooses to bless and serve us, he is fully justified in saying no when we approach him wrongly. He might be gracious and do it anyway, if it serves his purposes. But let’s do what we can to avoid such behavior, and approach him correctly.
“But I thought God wanted…”
Lastly, I’ll deal with those who thought they really did hear the Spirit’s leading, and stepped out in faith… and even so, stuff didn’t happen.
The problem is nearly always one of these two: That wasn’t actually the Holy Spirit; that was you, in your own mind, manufacturing a voice you thought was the Spirit, which of course told you what you wanted to hear. Or, that was the Spirit, but you decided to selectively hear him, and interpreted what he told you in the way you wanted, rather than the way he meant it.
In both cases, our desires got in the way of the Spirit’s message. That’s why humility and surrender have to be such an integral part of prayer. We have to put God’s will before our needs. Not dismiss our needs, but leave the solutions to them entirely in God’s capable hands. When we don’t do that—when we’re so desperate for the “right” answer from God that we’ll run with anything that even remotely looks like it—we’ll easily step ahead of him, expect miracles, and wind up with nothing but egg on our faces.
Those who get miracles, get ’em because they wait. They don’t look like they’re waiting, to the rest of us. That’s because we only pay attention to them once the miracles happen. We don’t watch them wait. We don’t see how they behave as they’re going through the process—we assume there is no process, that all you gotta do is throw an “In Jesus name!” on things and presto-change-o, miracles. Nope. We pray. We wait for an answer. We pray on that answer. (Sometimes we even go to other Christians for confirmation on that answer.) Then we step out in faith. Then we see miracles.