God Still Does Miracles
God Sometimes Rains Fire from Heaven
As a young mom, I told one of my daughters the story from I Kings about Elijah and the prophets of Baal. She was perhaps seven years old at the time. She marveled to hear how God sent fire down from heaven, consuming the animal sacrifice, wood, and stones that Elijah laid out, as well as the buckets of water poured over the altar, proving to everyone present that He was and is the one true God. My daughter believed God’s power and wondered aloud if God might repeat this amazing miracle. She hurried to the backyard, knelt in the dirt, and in faith asked God to rain down fire from heaven like He did for Elijah.
Nothing happened. After some time of waiting, my daughter stood up. She expressed disappointment and curiosity. “Mom, if God is so powerful, why doesn’t He show it to me when I ask Him?” I admit to often wondering the same thing.
God’s Ways are Beyond Our Ways
I know God’s ways are not our ways. I understand He is sovereign and does what is best for us. His love is perfect. He has given us new life in Him through nothing we have earned. Yet through the years unbelief and even cynicism have crept into my thoughts.
I ask God questions like, “Why do you wait so long to answer prayer, God, especially when it seems my heart will break in the waiting?” “Why do you allow some people to be healed of illness while others die after a long period of suffering?” “Why do some people receive the longing of their hearts when others don’t?” His answers to me regarding these and other similar prayers is always, “Trust me.”
It is our journey of faith to continue to come to God with the cries of our hearts, year after year, even when nothing seems to change. We never know how God might be working.
Susie’s Years of Prayers
My dear friend, Susie, prayed for decades that her father would come to know Jesus. Her dad was an intellectual and expressed no need for a Savior. He wasn’t interested in church. Susie carefully, lovingly, and intelligently shared the hope of Jesus with her dad. He remained aloof.
An Answer
Susie and her husband cared for her dad in the last years of his life. His body became frail but his mind stayed sharp. She heard that a fellow believer in Jesus visited her dad in the care center where he lived. This man shared the Gospel with Susie’s dad in a way that somehow connected with him. Six months before he died at age 94, Susie’s dad humbled his heart and received Jesus as his Savior. He shared this decision with Susie and other family members. He proclaimed, “I’m a Christian!” It was a miracle not unlike God raining down fire from heaven before the prophets of Baal. Glory to His name!
God hears our prayers. He answers in His perfect time and in His perfect way. We can count on it.
Exodus 26:27b “And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
Photo by Susie Saunders