How to Pray for Miracles

The Early Church didn't pray for miracles... they prayed for boldness to accompany them.

Acts 4:29–31 (ESV) And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, 30 while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” 31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

I like this prayer. It starts in Verse 25 with the address, "Sovereign Lord..." God is sovereignly doing something right now.  Our job is to jump on board with God and talk about Jesus in any situation. The Early Church saw what God was doing, and made the main issue to preach Jesus. 

We ask for miracles to make our lives better or free of pain. But that was not the pattern of the movement of Jesus in the beginning. Think about it, if you need a miracle, it's never a good place to be. Miracles are isolated and rare because God made the world to function a certain way normally. When through sin's curse we experience trouble, a miracle is available, but the point of the miracle is not simply our comfort - it is Christ's call to all people - "come to me"! 

God wants to draw people to the truest and best miracle available to them... the miracle of the new birth. Nicodemus wondered how a man could be born twice... It's a miracle of the Holy Spirit conceived in our hearts by a sovereign move of God.

Miracles are not for show, they are for signs. The heart of every miraculous sign is to point to Jesus. Jesus performed signs but the epitaph of his generation was disbelief in spite of them!  "But despite all the miraculous signs Jesus had done, most of the people still did not believe in him." John 12:37 (NLT) Notice how John saw the miracles as void because people did not BELIEVE in CHRIST! In other words, the healings, the deliverances, the signs of power in Christ came without conversion of the heart as a result. That was the resolve with His disciples.  What does healing matter for someone who will eventually die apart from Christ anyway?

When we ask God for a miracle, are we then asking for an opportunity to tell someone about Jesus because if it? That is a great question. It was a question the Early Church had resolved. May our quest for God's power never terminate on simply experiencing a unique power but may it center on God's Sovereign plan to draw men and women into faith. 

PRAYER:

Father, help me to be bold as You do what You are doing in the world. Empower the Church in America to believe again in the miraculous, not for our sake, but for the sake of Jesus' Name.