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1Many people want God to do something obvious in their lives. They want God to perform miracles to ‘prove’ himself to them. “If only God would give me a miracle or some kind of sign, then I would believe in him!”

But this idea doesn’t stand up to the evidence. Jesus performed hundreds of miracles, healing people, feeding crowds with just a few bits of bread and even raising the dead . . . yet most of the people who met him did not really believe in him. If God performed miracles today as he did in the past, the result would be the same. People would be amazed and possibly believe in Jesus for a short time. But their trust would be shallow and would probably disappear the moment something unexpected or frightening happened.

God doesn’t want us to trust him based on what he does, but on who he is. God performed the greatest miracle of all time when he came to earth as the man Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins so that we could be saved and made part of God’s family. God does still perform miracles—but they are not the guaranteed way God makes himself known to us. We shouldn’t assume God will wave a magic wand and just fix things that are broken. He isn’t a genie. He is God, and he wants a real relationship with us based on us actually knowing and trusting Jesus. If we’re just asking God for miracles, we’ll forget about him once we’ve got what we want.

So, while God does still do miracles sometimes, the real reason for miracles was to make Jesus known in the first place. So, he already has proven himself to us! We’re told: “God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him” (Acts 2:22). We now have the truth and story of Jesus in the Bible. In this sense, miracles are no longer necessary, as the message of Jesus has been proven and made known in the Bible. Yes, there are examples of God performing miracles today. But at the same time, we should not necessarily expect miracles to happen in our own lives just as they did in Bible times.

— Chris, an Our Daily Bread reader

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