When I was being trained for ministry years ago, my instructors would often argue that God no longer intervened in the lives of men through miracles. The contended that we have the complete revelation of God in scripture and a sufficient record of all God’s miracles for man to believe. Therefore, miracles were no longer needed.

Of course, their view of miracles was that they were only granted for a certain season to authenticate the claims of Christ to be the Son of God and to validate the apostles so that we could believe that what they wrote and spoke was inspired by God.  Once those miracles were recorded, their function was fulfilled.

Of course, I accepted their explanation at the time because these were men who were revered as scholars and great articulators of the Word in my denomination. But looking back, I see that they had a very narrow view of miracles. The assumption that God acted in miraculous ways only to validate Jesus and a few apostles misses the point of many miracles and ignores a number of scriptures.  As you follow Jesus through the gospels he does say that the miracles he performed demonstrated that he had come from the Father.

If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me.  But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (Jn.10:37-39)

And yet, many of the miracles Jesus performed were not motivated by a need or desire to prove who he was but purely out of compassion. In the first chapter of Mark, Jesus encounters a leper who asks for healing. Mark tells us that out of compassion Jesus touched him and healed him and then told him not to tell anyone how he was healed.  To the Gadarene demoniac of Mark 5, Jesus directed him to tell people how God had displayed his compassion by delivering him from his torment. In Luke 7, Jesus raised a widow’s son from the dead because he felt compassion for her.

If you  chase that word “compassion” through a concordance you will see that Jesus (and the Father) were motivated to perform many miracles, including the feeding of the 5000, because they were touched by the suffering of ordinary people.  On numerous occasions Jesus told those he had healed or set free not to tell anyone. If Jesus were simply looking for validation from these miracles he would have instructed them to go tell everyone.

There is a great deal of suffering today that science, medicine, and psychology still cannot touch. I prayed for a good friend and a great Christian leader yesterday who, from a medical perspective, has terminal cancer.  The best oncology can do is buy him some time at the cost of a great deal of suffering through chemo.  We are asking for a miracle of healing because God’s heart is still touched by the suffering of his people.

To believe that God only healed, raised the dead, and cast out demons to validate the Bible is to miss his character completely. If God is good and if he is love then he cares deeply about our pain and our suffering. Miracles are simply an expression of that love and his great grace. Like salvation, miracles are not earned by our goodness or even great faith.  They are given from the compassionate heart of a Father because he cares. Miracles do not flow from our belief in what God can do but in our belief of who God is.

Certainly the side effects of miraculous healing, deliverance, provision, and protection are the praise of men, the glory of God, and the reality of Jesus. But we can believe God for miracles today because he still cares. Yes, God heals in church services and in great revivals, but he also heals in hospital rooms, living rooms, the garden department at Lowe’s, the center aisle at Wal-Mart, and, of course, at Starbucks.

He does so because of his unfailing love and compassion for hurting people.  Is everyone healed? No.  Is God’s heart for everyone to be healed?  Yes. I know that because there is no sickness in heaven where God’s will is perfectly expressed.  I know it because Jesus never turned down one person who came to him for healing. God’s will is not always done on this earth. There are also mysteries related to healing that we have yet to understand.  But many are healed, many are delivered, many are protected and provided for in miraculous ways.  And when more of God’s church begins to expect their God to work through miracles the more we will see and experience personally.  Simply put – expect miracles because it’s who God is.