SGs - Healing and Miracles

What Are These Gifts?

See the following Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 12:9-10

These are two distinct gifts, but for time's sake, I will treat them together in one blog entry. The gifts of healing and miracles are both miraculous in that the effect of both of them is supernatural occurences that are scientifically inexplicable.

Healing is obvious in its application: it is the miracle of restored physical health. In the Bible, we readily think of numerous healings by Jesus for the blind, lame, leprous, etc. We can also think of Peter raising Dorcas, Paul raising the sleepy worshipper, and many others. Today, we can see this on the mission field, especially in areas where the Gospel is penetrating for the first time. I can relay a second-hand story of a missionary (who was a cessationist) and in an African tent meeting, they prayed for a man with a shrivelled arm. As they prayed, the man's arm began to blow up like a balloon and was fully restored.

Miracles is the gift of doing miraculous things beyond the realm of health. Moving mountains, walking on water, exorcisms, causing fruit to grow on barren trees and vice-versa, all are examples of NT miracles. Also, there are OT examples, like the widow's oil running endless. Many-a-Christian can recount financially tight years when their "oil" miraculously continued to pour.

In the Bible, the use of both these gifts always involved prayer. Even Jesus usually prayed before discharging the miraculous. More often than not, these gifts were employed in the evangelism of unbelievers. Today, it is the Church's experience that miraculous sign gifts occur much more in the frontiers of God's kingdom than in the "conquered territory."