Have you ever prayed for a miracle? Maybe it was for a healing or protection.

Look at how often miracles in the Bible happened through a person:

  • The Reed Sea parted when Moses lifted his walking stick over the water.
  • Elisha hit the water of the Jordan River with Elijah’s coat and the water parted.
  • A foreign slave girl told her master and owner, Naaman, that he could get healing in Israel from the prophet Elijah. The miracle healing happened only after Naaman went swimming in a muddy river.

You get the idea.

While a very few recorded miracles happened without a person acting in faith or obedience (like manna from the sky) it is clear that part of the miraculous process is someone who believed God was about to do something beyond human science.

Could it be that God likes to share the delight of doing a wonderful, miraculous thing with God’s own people? Is it that miracles happen to show the presence and love of God, not just to the recipient, but to the performer as well as the whole community?

Or the miracle may require some action before the transformation happens:

  • Jesus told the man at the Pool of Bethesda to pick up his bedroll and walk, not just walk;
  • The ten lepers were to go to the priest and present themselves. On the way miraculous healings occurred for all of them;
  • Then there was the blind man who had to wash in the Pool of Siloam for sight to return.

Western culture Christians have been pacified. Have you ever prayed for a miracle and then waited for it to happen? What can you do to enact the miracle BEFORE God finishes the work?

When you pray for healing do you change your eating habits to a more healthy pattern? Do you meditate? Get more sleep? Follow a regimen of exercise appropriate to the situation?

Perhaps you pray for a certain person to follow Jesus. Do you show them love as Jesus loves? What model does your life demonstrate? Have you an expectation for them to join the “right” church?

Healing, for self or others, transforms from the deep to the surface.

Start at the beginning, not the end.