I know many, like me, are grieved and frustrated with all the division and confusion in God’s church. How can so many sincere, well-meaning Christians have so many conflicting beliefs and teachings? One particular time, feeling that frustration, I was thinking on it, and talking to the Lord, and I said, “Lord, You don’t want this strife and confusion in Your church. Why don’t You confirm Your Word with great signs and wonders for those who are preaching the truth, and withhold signs and wonders from those believing and teaching wrong doctrine? Wouldn’t that really make it plain?”
He answered, “It’s My love. You don’t understand the compassion in My heart. Would you want Me to deny My love, and hold back healing and deliverance for those in need, just because they don’t fully know Me… when it’s the demonstration of my love and mercy and power, that shows them who I am, that they might come to know Me?” And He asked me just whose word it was, that I thought He should confirm.
He then went on to teach me that my kind of thinking actually often hindered the great miracles and wonders that He would like to do for His people. For example, say I was to pray for someone in need of a real miracle, and I prayed, “Lord, do a miracle for this person now, that everyone may know that my doctrine is true.” If my doctrine is not 100% true, I’ve put the Lord in a tough spot. His love for that person wants them to be miraculously healed. But His love for me doesn’t want me, or the people that hear me, to be deceived into thinking my doctrine is perfect, when it’s not.
That’s why healing and miracles should always be a demonstration, and a testimony, of who God is… not who WE are. Of course, the closer we get to truly walking in the steps of Jesus, the closer our results will match His. But even then, it will be all about glorifying the Father, not ourselves.
The apostle Peter was one of those, who, according to Mark 16:20, “went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.” Yet in Acts 3, when a great miracle had been done through him, he said to the people, “why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus.”
The “word” that the Lord confirmed with signs following, was a whole lot simpler in those early days of the apostles, and the church was a whole lot less fractured. That made it easier for God to move in great power. Yet, the glory of these latter days will be far greater the early days. Part of the reason for that, is that God is fulfilling His Word, and bringing His church back together in one faith, and one spirit. He Himself is making it happen, and not by the feeble fleshly striving of man. It will happen as God’s love is understood and received, and His name alone is lifted up.
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