5

BEYOND THE SERMON

Gifts of the Spirit

Message 5: Gifts of Healings and the Working of Miracles

Pastor Rod Meyers  •  Covington Community Church  •  Key texts: 1 Corinthians 12:9-11; Acts 3:6-10 (NIV)

 

Message Overview

Every child of God has been given a superpower. Turn to your neighbor and ask: what is yours? It may not be the comic-book variety — fire from your hands — though there was a miracle worker who called fire down from the sky, and we are going to see Elijah again. Your gift is not from you. It is beyond nature. It is given by God and expressed by Him through you. And if your superpower is miraculous power or miraculous healing, please share it now, because we need it.

This message takes the two power gifts together — the working of miracles and the gifts of healing — because they so often go together, and Rod says up front that no single sermon can do justice to everything Scripture and our own lives show of the wonder-working miracle power of Jesus. So it moves fast: what a miracle is, why the supernatural is normal for God's people, Moses and the daily miracles of the wilderness, what the gift of miracles does for faith, whether miracles still happen, what the gift of healing is, and a piece of Rod's own testimony. We have seen the gift of healing and the gift of miracles right here in this congregation. Believe and pray; faith is the key to your miracle.

Key Scripture

 

 

Word Study

 

What Is a Miracle?

Miracles are supernatural events that occur outside the bounds of what is natural. Supernatural power is exactly what it says: beyond nature. Some Christian movements have shied away from the supernatural aspects of our faith because it is a little spooky. But the events of the Bible cannot be duplicated and have no rational explanation — and your faith is itself a supernatural event, because the One who reveals Himself to you and saves you is beyond nature. You have the ability to pray to the most powerful being in the cosmos, in all time and eternity, and He has given you gifts beyond anything Marvel Comics could invent. The supernatural is normal for us (Romans 12:6-8; Ephesians 4:11; 1 Corinthians 12:7-11).

Moses: The Rare and the Daily

By definition miracles are rare and extraordinary. Israel was between death and the sea — the most powerful army in the world breathing down their necks — and Moses called on God, the sea parted, and Israel crossed (Exodus 14:13-22). It cannot be duplicated. God had lined them up at the exact place where a path could take them through, with deep water on either side; there was no other way.

But the miracles did not stop at the far shore. In the deserts of Jordan, Trans-Jordan, and Saudi Arabia — brutal, waterless, sun every day — the only way anyone survives is the power of God. For forty years a miracle happened to each person every single day: the cloud by day and the fire by night (Exodus 13:21-22), clothes that did not wear out, feet that did not swell (Deuteronomy 8:4; Deuteronomy 29:5; Nehemiah 9:19-21). Sometimes our miracles become ordinary to us — even salvation can start to seem ordinary — but they are miracles nevertheless.

The Gift of Miracles

Those with this gift have the ability, by the Holy Spirit, to do powerful and miraculous things: raising the dead, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the mute, hearing to the deaf, and the use of limbs to the lame. Elijah called down fire from the sky (1 Kings 18:36-39), and we will see him and his miraculous powers again. These are not powers of bending steel or scaling tall buildings; they are powers that showcase God. Do miracles save people? Sometimes. But they always testify to the One who is able to deliver. The gift of miracles does three things:

 

Notice how often the gifts work in combination. Moses had the miracle and also knew what would happen next; Ananias had a word of knowledge, faith, and healing all at once; Peter's healing of the beggar is both a miracle and a healing. That is why a community needs the combination — we need every one of these gifts.

Do Miracles Still Happen Today?

Every single day. Some in the church believe miracles were for the apostolic age and died with the apostles. But Jesus said something else:

 

The age of miracles has not ended, because He is not here yet. When Jesus left the earth, miracles did not cease; when the apostles died, the miracles were passed on — spread out through the body of Christ. God works through His people to perform miracles whenever He wants. They are not on demand, but we can pray for them (Mark 16:17-18; Hebrews 13:8). There are people in this room who have this gift and have seen things beyond explanation. Keep praying for those things. And there are people in this room who by every natural measure should already be gone — and they are alive because of faith and the miracles of God.

The Gift of Healing

Rod used to joke that if you have the gift of healing, you need to head to a hospital. There are people who do exactly that — praying over the sick in hospitals, mental hospitals, and nursing homes — and the work that gets done there is amazing. There are many things medicine cannot cure; only the power of God can.

• The gift of healing is when the Holy Spirit heals someone from a disease or infirmity supernaturally — no natural cause for what happens. It is different from ordinary healing, though your body's ability to heal itself with traditional medicine is a miracle too. Whether natural or supernatural, healing is still from God.
• In the Gospels and Acts, Jesus' followers healed through prayer, anointing with oil, and the power of their words (James 5:14-16; Mark 6:13). Your words in Christ have power. Peter and John told a lame beggar to get up (Acts 3:1-10); Philip preached in Samaria and the paralyzed and lame were healed (Acts 8:4-8); Peter told a paralyzed man to get up and roll up his mat (Acts 9:32-35) and prayed for Dorcas and she came back to life (Acts 9:36-42).
• Like every gift of the Spirit, healing is received, not earned, striven for, or bought. When a magician tried to make a commodity of the Holy Spirit, Peter told him his heart was not right (Acts 8:18-23). We see the same thing in our own age. It is not for sale, and no individual controls or conjures it.
• The Spirit may give someone the ability to heal in one situation and not in another; it is by His will. God can heal every time, but sometimes He has other purposes, and it does not happen every time even if you have the gift (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). But everyone who prays will be healed in some way — emotionally, physically, or in the healing that takes you on to the Kingdom, permanently, never to be sick or die again (Revelation 21:4).

Rod's Testimony

Rod contracted hepatitis B on the mission field through dental surgery. Once you have it, you have it: it may pass, but the markers stay in your blood for life. For about four years he was sick every day — a year of full hepatitis, sallow skin, jaundiced eyes, feeling like he had been beaten with a board — a CDC statistic that year, warned by his mission doctor not to be a hero if he was ever cut. He had pretty much given up on the idea of being healed.

Then, in a prayer group in Springdale, Arkansas, wearing a prayer shawl, he felt something come off his body like a reverse electric shock. It scared him; the supernatural makes us a little queasy. He told his wife immediately afterward that something had happened in the prayer. The next day his doctor called him in for the annual hepatitis B test and added a first-ever test for hepatitis C. Within a week the doctor called back: not only no hepatitis C — no hepatitis B either. No markers. Like he had never had it. Hallelujah. And there are miracles like that right here in this very room.

Miracles Here and in Nigeria

• One day in Torah study, five or six people who had needed canes or walkers came in without them. They were just gone.
• In Nigeria, Rod has seen the pages of the Bible open up: people saved from calamity, starvation, and death, and healed of diseases modern medicine has no way to cure — because we believed and prayed.
• The key: believe and pray, and you will watch miracles happen. Faith is the key to your miracle, together with the ability and will of God to answer (Matthew 17:20; Mark 11:22-24).

America's camp meetings and tent revivals saw people healed and miraculous signs and wonders. Was there some snake oil sold at a few of them? Absolutely — avoid the snake merchants. But those things have not left, and it does not have to happen in a tent by a supermarket. It can happen here, and it can happen in your home. God has power and authority in every situation, and whether healing comes through prayer or through medical intervention, it is still from God, and to God be the glory.

Application

• Name your superpower. If your gift is miracles or healing, share it now — pray for the sick, call out the miracle. The rest of us do not have your gift, and we need it.
• Stop taking the daily miracles for granted: breath in your lungs, a body that heals, salvation itself. Give thanks for the manna before you ask for the sea to part.
• Believe and pray. Miracles are not on demand, but they are asked for. Bring the impossible situation to the One who has answered before.
• Expect God to work in combination — through a doctor and a prayer, through a word of knowledge and a healing. Praise Him for both.
• Guard against the snake merchants. Anything that puts a price on the Spirit's gift is not from Him.
• Hold the outcome with open hands. God heals in His will and His way; and the healing that takes a believer home is still a healing.

 

Series Roadmap

 

 

Reflection Questions

1. "The supernatural is normal for us." Does the supernatural make you a little queasy, as it once did Rod? Why do you think some Christian movements have shied away from it, and what is lost when they do?

 

 

 

 

 

2. Read Deuteronomy 8:2-4. Israel lived a miracle every day for forty years and still grumbled. What daily miracles in your own life have become ordinary to you? Write down three.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Read Acts 9:10-19. Ananias had to obey God by going to a man sent to arrest him. When has a miracle — or obedience — put you in harm's way, or asked you to trust God with someone you feared?

 

 

 

 

 

4. Read Acts 16:25-34. Paul and Silas prayed and sang before the walls fell. What does worship in the jail cell have to do with the miracle that followed? What are you singing in your current "cell"?

 

 

 

 

 

5. Read John 14:12. What do you think Jesus meant by "greater things"? How do you respond to the view that miracles ended with the apostles?

 

 

 

 

 

6. Rod said God can heal every time but sometimes has other purposes, and that everyone who prays is healed in some way. Read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. How do you hold together bold faith for healing and trust when the answer is different?

 

 

 

 

 

7. Who in your life needs a miracle or a healing right now? Write their name here, and pray for them this week — believing and praying — in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further Study

• Acts 3:1-26 — the full account of the beggar at the Beautiful Gate and Peter's sermon that followed.
• Exodus 14:1-31 and Exodus 15:22-27 — the Red Sea, and the Lord who heals revealed at Marah.
• 1 Kings 17:17-24 and 2 Kings 4:32-37 — Elijah and Elisha raise the dead.
• Mark 5:21-43 — the woman with the issue of blood and Jairus's daughter: healing and life from the dead in one chapter.
• Luke 5:17-26 — Jesus heals the paralyzed man "so that you may know" He has authority.
• Acts 9:32-43 — Aeneas and Dorcas: two healings that turned whole towns to the Lord.
• James 5:13-18 — the prayer of faith, anointing with oil, and Elijah as an ordinary man who prayed.
• Isaiah 53:4-5 and 1 Peter 2:24 — by His wounds we are healed.

 

Next in the series: the Gift of Prophecy — speaking on behalf of God.