WHY DOESN'T GOD PERFORM MORE MIRACLES TODAY?

God is always at work, and His work is always supernatural. However, we seldom perceive this. Consequently, someone just asked me:

• Wouldn't it be nice if He could appear to us now. Why only then and then nothing after? 

I answered:

• Along with many others, I have had numerous supernatural encounters with the Savior. However, these intense encounters came to an end about 35 years ago. Why? Here is my understanding. I had struggled with decades of depression topped with panic attacks which had left me devastated. The Lord knew that I needed those intense supernatural encounters to keep me afloat. 

Now, He expects me to walk "by faith and not by sight," even though there are times when I long for something more tangible. But why this miracle-lean diet? Why must we walk by faith and not by sight?

According to Jesus, we are blessed by walking in faith. When the Apostles had reported that they had encountered the risen Jesus to Thomas, he refused to believe without seeing Jesus himself. However, Jesus reprimanded him:

• Then he said to Thomas..."Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:27-29)

Why are we blessed by believing without seeing? Jesus wasn't teaching His disciples the blessedness of blind faith. Instead, He was addressing disciples who had witnessed His hundreds of authenticating miracles for three years. Elsewhere, He had taught that they should not believe Him in the absence of evidential corroboration - namely, miracles:

• “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father." (John 10:37-38; 5:31-37)

Instead, Jesus was reprimanding Thomas' stubbornness for refusing to believe in light of the many miracles he had already observed and the testimony of His fellow Apostles that Jesus had risen.

Well, how can having a miracle-lean diet be a blessing? Such a lean diet means little instant gratification. Instead, God prefers character over comfort, and character is the product of waiting:

• Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

If God had given me everything I wanted and when I wanted it, I would never have poured myself into His Words in search of answers. I would not have grown to know Him and to enjoy a relationship based on truth.

Consequently, David thanked God for making him wait by withholding a miraculous deliverance:

• It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalms 119:71-72)

Had David been miraculously rescued whenever he asked, he would not have received something better.

We are too ready to indict God when He doesn't answer our prayers and wrongly conclude that He is untrustworthy. We esteem our own understanding more than we ought. Instead, if we examine ourselves during these times, we should find that untrustworthy-ness belongs to us.

When we were babes, our mother held our hand as we took our first steps. However, eventually, she removed her hand to enable us to learn to walk on our own. She stood a distance away to beckon us to come. When God stands away and beckons us, we rail against Him.