An Apostolic Church - Miracles

Acts 2:43

Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.

Acts 5:12

The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.

2 Corinthians 12:12

The things that mark an apostle—signs, wonders and miracles—were done among you with great perseverance.

Those who believe that the age of miracles has passed have no support from the scriptures to back up their assertion. They are left to do the work of witness to the world with nothing more than apologetics (using good, logical arguments to convince others of the reality of God).

The Bible tells us that we need God to show up if we expect people to have a living relationship with Him. He must be more than a nice thought. He must be present in our lives now. A truly apostolic church moves in signs and wonders as naturally as a human breathes. 

Elijah could have never convinced a nation to turn from the worship of a false God if there had not been fire from heaven. Jericho would have never been captured if walls had not fallen down. We would not be ready to die for our faith if Jesus had not walked out of a grave. God has not stopped being God and as long as He is God there will be miracles confirming His reality.

The problem is that miracles can be understood to be magic. Miracles are not intended to fulfill our needs or to establish or display our power. They are to manifest the reality of God. This is a truth that is often forgotten. 

God is not a genie in a bottle that comes to grant us wishes that are borne out of our desires or designs. Signs, Wonders and Miracles are to confirm God's Word in the mouth of His people. 

Even in understanding God's love miracles are not primarily compassionate acts, though every one of His miracles has an element of compassion in it. God's presence is His primary way of demonstrating compassion. If it were not so then every time a tragic event took place he would fix it with a miracle. Babies of believers would never die, Christians would never die in car crashes. No tragedy would come into any believer's life because God would intervene with a miracle and stop it.

This is the primary error of the "hyper faith" movement. It does not understand God's miracles as having their primary focus on demonstrating to others that He is there and the words that have been spoken by his children are true of Him. Believing that miracles are to protect, provide and comfort us they find no place for God allowing us to suffer when He could fix the pain or fill the need with a miracle. Sitting in the room with a mom and dad who are watching their little one slowly die gives you a reason to understand why we want it to be so. But I have learned that the only way that we could ever hope to speak to a world that does not know God is to suffer the same reality they face and find the only thing that really does bring  comfort in such grief - God's presence in the midst of it.

Psalm 23:4

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,I fear no evil, for You are with me;Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Miracles are not primarily for comfort. They are to bear witness to the reality of the living God  to a world that does not believe He exists.

Mark 16:20
And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed

Acts 1:8

but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."

We need to get this deeply ingrained in our hearts lest we find ourselves wither in self condemnation because we did not "get" our miracle or misunderstand God's compassion and feel that we have been abandoned at our point of greatest need because the miracle did not happen.

The second thing we need to understand is that miracles are a gift and not a right. The "rights" issue is one our generation has so misunderstood. Before God our only right is eternal separation from Him and all He gives. Miracles come not as a right that we claim. They come as a gift from heaven to reveal the Heavenly Giver.

The final thing I want to say about miracles is they must be God's will. 

The "hyper faith movement goes so far as to say we must never say "Thy will be done." They say we must claim it by faith as a right that was given with our becoming sons or daughters of God.

My pastor and I often discuss his sermon before he preaches it. He was speaking on creative faith which has to do with faith that brings forth miracles. As I prayed about it I had the most wonderful revelation about our tendency to see miracles as the fulfillment of some personal desire we have that we are seeking from God.

My pastor agrees with me that demanding miracles as a right is not biblical. But all of us tend to feel the pressure to release our faith in a more active way so the concept of "thy will be done" can seem to be a lapse into passivity. I certainly believe it can be. 

We need to be expecting God to do miracles because His word says He will. So when we say, "thy will be done" we are not thinking "Oh well God is really far away, uninterested and nothing will really happen....." We need to be pressing in to see God revealed to the world through genuine miracles. But they are not our from our will..... nor does God have to be strong armed to do them. They must be understood as acts of His will alone. 

With this in mind I  asked my pastor, "What was the greatest creative miracle that ever occurred?" He correctly answered the resurrection of Jesus.  No greater physical miracle has ever occurred. This awesome creative miracle of the savior's resurrection was not preceded with Jesus claiming it by faith. He did not demand it occur as a right of sonship. He did not follow the advise of the hyper faith movement. He relinquished even his right to life into the Father's hands in real faith:

Matthew 26

39 And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will."

42 He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done."

44 And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. 

Jesus knew the correct place of miracles. They were not to keep him safe and protected. He knew the Father's care and in that knowledge he could walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil with only his Father's presence to rest in. 

He knew as well that a miracle would happen. He knew he would rise from the dead. His claim on God's will was not a leap into uncertainty. Releasing himself fully to God's will was a surrender to grace. Grace to sustain him through the darkness knowing that his, and our Father was completely trustworthy no matter what the next few hours would bring. 

This is not a story of self-expression or passivity. It is the story of God revealing Himself to a lost planet. That is what every miracle is ultimately for.

An Apostolic church will continually experience God's power through miracles because their hearts will have a higher purpose than meeting their own needs. You see the word apostle means "sent ones." And why are they sent?  Because they understand that God's heart in salvation was to rescue as many from earth as He could. That is the mission of an apostolic church. Every other concern is secondary. When that is the central mission of the church, miracles will continually follow the word they proclaim.

Romans 15:19
in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

Romans 15:20
And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man's foundation;

1 Corinthians 1:17
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

1 Corinthians 2:3-5

I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, ⁴ and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of  the Spirit and of power, ⁵ so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.