Signs and wonders today?

There is no doubt that most people are greatly interested in and really curious about signs and wonders.  News about miracles always attracts our attention. Most of us have a desire that God will somehow confirm our calling through wonders and the supernatural.

When we read the Word in Acts 2: 43, especially as Christians with a ministry, we wish to have our own divine signs that we are part of God’s growth priority:

Acts 2: 43:  Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.

During the ministry of Jesus on earth, the religious leaders asked him to show them a sign! But Jesus refused to be manipulated by their misguided requests. He did not do his miracles as a performance or for their entertainment! 

His miracles had a purpose. They were the signs that the Kingdom of God, his dominion through the Messiah, had come into the world. This is still God’s purpose with signs and wonders he grants us through his grace!

Signs and wonders are not related to the power of our faith. It is related to the revelation of the might of the resurrected Jesus and therefore is intrinsically part of and related to the sovereignty of God’s grace and the mercy of his Son!

Paul taught that (2 Corinthians 12:12), "The things that mark an apostle — signs, wonders and miracles — were done among you with great perseverance."  God worked in a special and even unique way through these first apostles. They truly had and will always have a special place in the establishment of the Church of Christ and of his dominion amongst his people after the ascension of Jesus and after Pentecost. There was something unique and exceptional about the grandeur of the signs and wonders done through the first Church and the apostles.

The signs and wonders given by the Lord through the first Church served a most important purpose.  The purpose was to help those in need (a pastoral purpose), to grow the faith of the apostles and the first Church (a ministry purpose) and most of all to transform them into an awe-filled worshipping Church to exalt and glorify the ascended Jesus (a doxological purpose).

But we can miss what God is doing because of our limited understanding of God’s pastoral, ministry and doxological purpose amongst his people!  

As there is no doubt that God does not give signs and wonders to thrill and entertain us, God works and will always work his miracles to fulfil his purposes.

This is basically whom God is! And always was and will be.

God is not limited by our inadequate understanding or faith!

The signs and wonders of God remain part of his sovereign interventions to make his Church an agent of his purpose!

God’s purpose for an inspired church, filled with his Spirit and enabled by the resurrection power of his Son, remains to care for us pastorally, to minister to us efficiently and to glorify and exalt his most holy Majesty! Amongst other ways, also through signs and wonders.

Believe it, and pray for it!