The third gift of power, the effecting or working of miracles.
Healings and miracles are closely related, nevertheless they are distinct.
There are some differences between healings and miracles. Healings may be gradual. For instance, you may be healed of a disease like emphysema. It may take maybe hours or days or weeks. Often, too, healings are invisible. They take place in areas of the body which cannot be seen by the eye.
On the other hand, miracles are normally visible. The result that they produce can normally be seen in some way and frequently, though not necessarily, they’re instantaneous.
Healings may be gradual and are often invisible. Miracles are normally visible and frequently instantaneous.
Both are in some way related to faith.
If a person has had a middle ear removed by surgery, there’s no way to heal a middle ear that isn’t there.
A person may have a short leg or a short arm, say maybe even a couple of inches shorter than the other. Well, there’s no way to heal a short leg or a short arm. It isn’t a sickness. And yet I can testify, I’ve seen people whose legs and arms have been visibly and physically lengthened through the working of miracles.
A person may have a broken bone that has set crooked and is permanently crooked. You can’t heal a broken bone, but a miracle can straighten that broken bone.
One of the interesting things about the working of miracles is that it often takes a specific, inspired act to release God’s miracle-working power.
There’s A principle here that faith without works is dead. Faith must be expressed by some appropriate and corresponding act to be released.
John 9: 9 Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. 4 I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. 7 And He said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing.
Now that was a miracle, not just a healing. The man had never been able to see. His eyes were not diseased. They probably weren’t totally there. They may have been just empty sockets. And Jesus performed a very unusual action. He spat on the ground, made clay, and smeared the clay on the place where the man’s eyes should have been, told him to go and wash in a certain pool.
In faith and obedience, the man washed, and because of that act of obedience, The miracle working power of God was released through the clay on his eyes, and his eyesight came to him.
Soil or gold dust (Gen 2:11 “The name of the first (river) is Pishon”; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold) which was the original material of the creation of man’s body.
When God made man’s body he formed it out of clay. And then the spirit of life from God breathed into that clay and made it a living person.
And I think when Jesus performed that miracle, he was serving notice on the people of his day, the Creator is still with you.
He took the original material of creation, put it on the man’s eyes. And when the man, by his act of faith and obedience, released the power of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit made from that clay 2 perfect eyes.
Let’s look at another example in Luke 17 of how a miracle can be released by a very simple act of faith. It says about Jesus, he entered a certain village, and there met 10 leprous men who stood at a distance. And they raised their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
When he saw them, he said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests. And it came about, as they were going, they were cleansed. You see, the act of going in obedience to the commandment of Jesus released the supernatural power of God, the miracle-working power that disposed of all trace of leprosy in their bodies, so that not merely were they healed, but their flesh was actually restored, which is, as I say, more than a healing, it’s a miracle.
Jesus, inspired by the Holy Spirit, gave them a certain act to perform, and when in faith and obedience to Him, they performed that act of obedience, then the miracle working power of God was released in their bodies.
Acts chapter 3. It says Peter and John were going up to the temple at the 9th hour, the hour of prayer. And a certain man who had been lame from his mother’s womb was being carried along, whom they used to set down every day at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple.
And when he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he began asking to receive alms.
And Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze upon him and said, look at us. And he began to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from them.
But Peter said, “I do not possess silver and gold”, but what I do have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, walk.
And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up. And immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened. And with a leap, he stood upright and began to walk. And he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.
This was a miracle, not just a healing, the man’s bones had never been well. That was not a case of disease. He’d been born with his ankle bones crooked and probably he sat there with his legs kind of curled up under him, as we sometimes see beggars do still today.
Peter and John walked up to him, and they were Led by the Holy Spirit.
It’s so important if we are in ministry that we learn to respond to the leadings of the Holy Spirit. The man reached out to them and looked up to them expecting to receive money.
Peter said, I have no money to give you, but what I do have, I will give you. I’m so glad that as Christians and bondservants of Jesus, we are expected to have something.
We’re not expected to pass human need and simply shake our heads and say, it’s too bad, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.
In faith, Peter said, “I’ve got something”. And then he did something which was very decisive. He reached out his hand, caught the hand of the man which was stretched out to receive money, lifted him up.
And that act of lifting him up released the miracle-working power of God into the man’s feet and legs. And he leapt up, stood upright, and then began to walk and leap. We notice two elements in that miracle.
First, there was the command of faith. It’s the gift of faith that releases the other two gifts. It’s a kind of catalyst that can bring forth either the gift of healing or the gift of the working of miracles.
In this case, Peter’s command of faith was followed by an action, and the action released the miracle-working power of God.
That man could have sat there forever, but if nothing had ever been done in faith, there would have been no miracle.
I remember the testimony of a man of God who said- Many, many times I’ve learned that it takes a specific act to release God’s miracle power. I think of a lady I prayed for once in South Florida who had arthritis. She had been bedridden for five months. She was brought to the church in a wheelchair and brought up to the front and sat there. At the end of my message, I began to minister to the sick. I was asked by the people who’d brought her to pray for this lady, and I kneeled down in front of her, took hold of her feet, and had the faith that I’d released God’s miracle-working power through my hands into her body, but she still sat there. I believed she was healed, but she was completely passive. Then I did something that took a little nerve. I said, get up and start to walk. I gave her my hand and pulled her out of the chair, and I wondered really what was going to happen next. She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, very hesitantly she began to take a step, she found she could do it, then took the next step, and began to walk, and within 30 seconds she was running right around the church building. But I realized looking back, if I’d never given her that prompting, if I’d never made her do something, the miracle working power of God would never have been released into that woman, so remember, it takes an act many times to release the miracle-working power of God.