Within our bodies we have a number of systems ready–built to provide healing forces within us. Where these are damaged or prove inadequate and God is involved through prayer, such systems can be supernaturally speeded up, to give us a miracle. Jesus consistently refers to such miracles as ‘works’, the inference being that his healing miracles were the work of God, the sort of thing that happens regularly and fruitfully in the kingdom of God.
What does it really mean —to ‘believe’?..? If it means only that we must have some head knowledge that Jesus is the Christ and that he once had the power to heal (and still does) then the entire Christian church would find working miracles an easy thing to do. Many do believe those things. What really matters is our relationship of trust with him. So we begin to love the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and strength. Similarly, we do not work miracles simply because we believe Jesus was a worker of miracles and is still alive today. We come in love and simple, child–like trust to our Father in heaven who loves us and whom we love.
Expectancy in our hearts that Jesus can be trusted to have mercy flow every time—without exception—into all of us who need and who ask, is a working belief in the miracle-working context.
The understanding that God does not make individual decisions about the giving of his grace which may vary from one person to another has to sink very deep into the hearts of all involved. We have to believe in the Jesus of the Gospels, the totally reliable one, and not some other concept of Jesus who has to be somehow persuaded by clever, well thought out prayers, sent up to heaven by ‘experts’. We have to believe that God wishes abundant life for all who ask.
These concepts are not necessarily easy to grasp or apply and the early disciples found the task daunting.
So what exactly do we have to believe if we want to lead a miraculous kingdom life like Jesus did?
We need to believe that, by doing miracles of healing, Jesus is showing us the heart of God. Now what will start to happen if we really get this under our belt, that the heart of God is to see everyone who comes to him set back on the road of an abundant kingdom life? That is: EVERYONE.
Anyone who has a trusting and loving relationship (faith) in Jesus Christ will do what he was doing. We will do even greater things because Jesus is alive To this day.
