The gift of miracles

The translation quoted here says workings of miracles, and later “miracle workers” (1 Corinthians 12:28). Luke writes that “God worked special miracles by the hands of Paul” (Acts 19:11). These statements ask what has happened when you prayed and what the people who were there called it.

They call nothing a miracle themselves, and they cannot tell this gift apart from an answer to prayer. Whether what happened was this gift is for your church and those who lead it to say, not this page. Many Christians believe God still gives this gift today; many believe He gave it only for the time of the apostles.

It is most often confused with healing, which the same sentence lists separately: healing names a body made well, and this is the wider word. It is also confused with the gift of faith, which is about staying certain rather than about what happens next. Whatever else is true of it, the New Testament never shows it at anybody’s disposal. Every recorded instance sits inside prayer, and when Luke describes the most striking run of them he puts the working with God rather than with the apostle whose hands were involved: “God worked special miracles by the hands of Paul” (Acts 19:11).