What about miracles? How can you believe in miracles?

I was talking to this young man one day and he told me “If miracles were happening today, we would hear about them.” I told him “We do hear about them, but we don't believe.” He looked at me and said “You're right”. It happens occasionally :). I am not claiming that everything you hear is genuine. I have often heard “Two thirds of it is fake”. But if you think about it, one third genuine is a lot of genuine! I don't want to confuse you with the facts, but there are many carefully documented miracles. And they are happening today. Let me ask you, are you open to the possibility that there may be something in it?

There is a controversial move of God that has shown up in Toronto and other places. Check out http://www.catchthefire.com/ and/or what is happening at Bethel Church in Redding http://www.ibethel.org/. Years ago I went to Africa because I heard there was revival there, but it had moved on by the time I arrived. I would have gone to the ends of the earth to find something real. In the end all I needed to do, was to go to Toronto.

I said above that it is controversial, it is. The response of many Christians to some of the things that have happened there has been “That's not God”. There are couple (or three) things to say. The first is that not everything is genuine. That is what the parable of wheat and the weeds is all about. If you believe the Bible, you will believe in Satan, and wherever the Spirit of God is moving so is the fellow with the pitch fork. You can't read the New Testament without seeing that. The second point is that wherever the Spirit is at work there will be controversy. We are in a war to the death with the enemy of our souls. He is at work always, but especially where God is at work. Finally we need to be careful that we are not found opposing God. Too many of us confuse what is God with what we are comfortable with. But Christ did not come to make us comfortable, and religious people have a history of dismissing the work of God. We need to be like those we read about in the book of Acts who said “We will hear you again on this matter” (Acts 17:32), and like the Berean Jews who “were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (17:11).

The Bible tells us that Jesus could do no mighty works in Nazareth, because of their unbelief. Randy Clark of Global awakening, talks about the downward spiral of unbelief. We don't believe, so we don't expect, so (since it is by faith) we don't get. If you want to reverse this downward spiral, then take Randy up on his invitation to go on one of his short term missions where he promises that you will experience miracles. I have been to India with him twice, and I can tell you he delivers (well actually Jesus delivers :)).

One incident stands out. Actually there had been so much happening and so fast I had this sense of unreality about all the healings that were taking place. I prayed about it and asked the Lord to change that and He did. The man I shared a room with on the that trip, had a local contact and we went to the contact's church. My room mate preached that Jesus is the same yesterday today and forever. He healed two thousand years ago and He heals today. He then released the team to minister to the congregation. Most of them just wanted to be blessed but they pantomimed to me that one man had a hearing problem. I put my hands on his ears and (as we had been taught) commanded his ears to be healed in Jesus name. I then used one of the Telegue phrases I had learned to ask him if it was better. He nodded in the Indian way, that it was. I had the same sense of unreality, but later saw him on the floor of the church holding his ears. I thought to myself “This man is not healed, he is in pain.” Anyway I got the interpreter to come and ask him about it. “Oh yes”, she told me, “He was 80% deaf.” Then we realized that the noise in the church was painful for him after being deaf for so long, and then the reality of it did indeed kicked in for me!

So for me, it is easy to take the stories of the miracles in the Bible literally, and as I was saying last day, to take the Bible seriously. Miracles are no problem for a God who spoke and stars were flung into space. For me a God who was not capable of miracles would not be worth believing in, and certainly not worth worshiping. On the other hand many of those who would ridicule my faith have an even more bizarre faith than mine: They belive “In the beginning nothing created everything that is out of nothing.” And they call my views unscientific! This is what people like Hawking and Dawkins and believe. In an interview, when Richard Dawkins was asked what evidence he had for this belief, he had to admit that he had none. When you clear away the clutter of the unbelief of our culture, you can start to see that it all makes sense. I will say more in the coming post “The Bible is the best explanation of reality.”