Many Christians today believe that if they pray and have faith then God is obligated to preform a miracle or give them what they ask for in prayer.  However, this mindset often fails to take the whole of scripture into account when trying to understand when and if God will move on our behalf with a miracle. I believe Christians today have a patch work understanding of scripture and not a cohesive understanding of what God is communicating in his word.

Ask anyone who has had a disease or crippling physical problem and they all will say they would loved to be healed and would do almost anything to get healed. Yet there are millions who have never received what they longed for or prayed for. People in many different age groups from young and old will tell you the doctors and medicine don’t seem to be able help them even with all our advanced discoveries. Some sicknesses and problems in life we don’t seem to recover from, so people have to live with chronic illness for the rest of their natural lives. I know this isn’t a popular thing to say but many people, Christian or not, will not receive their healing. In many Christian circles, especially if you believe prayer makes a difference, this seems contrary to what they have been taught in scripture.

We live in a day and age when this life is hard pressed on so many fronts. Turn on the nightly news and one quickly sees people are so stressed out they end up doing extreme things that are out of control, like pulling out a gun and shooting someone for little to no reason other than they were mad. It seems people have little to no ability to control their emotions these days.

As people watch the recent shootings in Texas where 19 young kids and 2 teachers were killed by an 18 year-old boy, it should be a stark reminder of how violence is the outcome of a heart devoid of God. Seeing such sights reminds us of what demons did, and still do, in and through people devoid of the spirit of God. Throughout the gospels Jesus was constantly casting out demons that torment people. These demonic spirits are more active today as we get near to the return of Jesus and the final judgement of Satan and his demons.

So often believers have one of two mindsets about when and if we have God’s power actively working in our lives. Having or experiencing power from God to perform healing or experience miracles often is confusing at best, and can tend to create a misunderstanding of scripture that makes us stumble in our beliefs or practices.

Do we have any responsibility for making a miracle happen? Granted we all should realize that God is the only one who can truly make a miracle happen, but we need to consider a few things about what provokes God to move on our behalf.

It’s interesting how people’s real beliefs about who Jesus said he was has a direct correlation on the kind of ministry Jesus can do with us. It’s amazing that our faith, or lack there of, affects how Jesus ministers in our lives and when we minister to others who confess that they believe in Jesus as well.

We have been exploring the idea of how easy it is to get stuck in “Yesterday” and fail to move forward in today and tomorrow. Our memories are a wonderful thing that God gave us but some memories can be a hindrance toward gaining the inheritance that God’s Word promises us. Those memories can be good or bad.  Sometimes good experiences cause us to reject new ones and cause us to get stuck. Bad experiences are generally used by the enemy to trap us in the past.  If you haven’t read the first part of this series,please read that one first.

All of us have a past, and from my experience we all have at least one major event that has the potential to keep us stuck in pain and disappointment. If you find yourself heading there, or are currently stuck, read on and learn from one of the greatest men of the Old Testament.

I opened the first article about dealing with doubt by saying that doubts are a part of life, even when we come to faith in Christ. There are “Road Blocks” to faith that happen to all of us, even strong believers, because we have imperfect sight and information. One of the main reasons we are encouraged to read scripture regularly is because all scripture is like a chain link fence of interconnected verses, stories and principles. If we are missing verses, or even whole chapters, we get only a partial understanding. Then we can come to distorted perspectives of who God is and what he is trying to do in our lives. Faulty assumptions don’t just come from things that are untrue, but also can come form misapplied information or truth.