New Testament Scripture stacks up too much evidence for us to claim that suffering is never within the plan of our sovereign God, whether through His perfect or permissive will. Do the new covenant priorities of inward works and the role of suffering discourage me from asking and believing God for miracles?
Hardly!
And I’ll tell you why.
Knowing the truth always sets us free (John 8:32).
Knowing the truth about God, His unceasing ability to perform miracles, and the truth about the undeniable role of suffering under the new covenant only frees me up to believe Him more.
Why?
Because I’m freed from what scares me, and many of you, most about getting out there and believing God. We’re scared half to death that He won’t come through for us, dignify us with a yes, and prove faithful. Or that we’ll prove to be failures at having enough belief for Him to bless with a miracle.
If I’m convinced that God really loves me and has certain priorities for me that take precedence at times, then I am ‘safe’ to walk by faith. I am freed to know that my God is huge and my God is able and that if I don’t get what I asked, if I’ll cooperate, I’ll get something bigger.
I’m going to believe Him to do anything His Word says He can, then if He chooses not to, I don’t have to assume…
He doesn’t like me
He doesn’t answer my prayers like He does others’
He hardly knows I’m alive
He can’t do it
He’s never willing to do it
I didn’t have enough faith
I wavered for a split second
I have that sin in my past
I’m a failure
I’ve made a fool of myself
Instead, I get to know that a greater yes is in progress, and I can count on the bigger miracle.
Beloved, we are safe with God. We are safe to believe Him for miracles…We are free to believe that God is who He says He is and can do what He says He can do.
Neither His dignity nor ours is at stake…
…Having been a cessationist for so long, I have experienced a dramatic difference between my old approach and my new. Before, I may have hoped for a miracle, but I can’t say I ever expected one. I treated a miracle as a last hope.
Quite often now a miracle might be my first hope, prayer, and anxious expectation; but if I don’t receive it, I assume God has a more inward agenda. The difference is like night and day. I have witnessed God’s miraculous intervention more times than I can count and a greater sense of peace and confidence when I haven’t…
‘Do not attempt,’ C.S. Lewis advises, ‘to water Christianity down. There must be no pretense that you can have it with the Supernatural left out. So far as I can see Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated.’
– Believing God by Beth Moore