Does God do miracles now?

Many people all over the world have experienced miracles in their lives, including me, and many more have come across miracles that have happened in other people's lives. So the real question is not if God does miracles now, but why He does not seem to do as many miracles as Jesus used to do when He was on earth. Many people have got disappointed with Jesus and some have even left Him because some of their earnest prayers were not answered. Let me offer a partial explanation for this.

The primary reason why Jesus came to earth was to offer us salvation from sin (Mt.1:21). All the miracles He did were to be seen as signs to show that He was the Messiah and the Son of God (Jn.20:30,31). When people saw these signs and put their trust in Him, they could follow Him, and be set free from their sins and be transformed in their life to become like Him. The most precious promise that God has given us through Jesus is not that we can receive miracles to deal with every problem that we come against, but that we could become like Him in our nature (2Pe.1:3,4).

But the sad reality is that people are more interested in comfort and solutions to problems now than on eternity. This is quite understandable considering the pain and suffering we have to go through at different times in our life due to various reasons. But we must realise that Jesus made it clear that we should not be mainly looking for 'earthly' food instead of seeking 'heavenly' food (Jn.6:26,27). After saying this, Jesus continued to do miraculous healings. So He was not saying He would not care for the sufferings of the people or that He would not do any more miracles. But what He meant was that our primary goal in seeking Him should not be earthly benefits.

Jesus has not promised us a trouble-free life on earth. In fact what He has told us is that we will have trouble on earth, but we can have His peace (Jn.16:33). The peace that people generally expect is where there will be freedom from problems. But Jesus gives us peace in the midst of problems so that we can go through them peacefully, without losing courage or hope, and thus get the opportunity to get a little closer to Him and His nature.

Whenever we face trouble, as God's children we naturally turn to Him for His intervention. If He answers in a miraculous way, praise Him! But if He doesn't, let us remember that He has precious lessons for us to learn through such experiences, and not get discouraged. We are being trained for eternity, and all our earthly troubles can be made to work for our eternal glory if we so choose (2Co.4:17). Or we can forfeit that glory by complaining, murmuring or turning away from Him. Earthly pains are real and tough to handle, but we must still keep the hope of glory before us, like Jesus did when He was on earth (He.12:2). It takes time to become like Jesus, and it is usually through facing trouble that we get opportunities to deny ourselves and obey our Lord instead (Ac.14:22).