Miracle Workers

   God does miracles, let's agree on that.  But rarely does God do miracles without the cooperation of a person.  Think of the most impressive things God did that are recorded in the Bible.  Think of the parting of the Red Sea; God used Moses to perform that miracle.  Think of the altar soaked in water erupting in flame, and you'll remember Elijah as the instrument of that miracle.  Think of the battle for Jericho, fought and won with trumpets and torches.  Think of the 5,000 fed with a child's lunch of bread and fish.  Think of just about any miracle of which you've heard or which you've personally experienced, and chances are you'll see that God used some person through whom to perform it.
   God doesn't need us in order to work miracles, but He consistently uses us to work miracles.  This is important because it tells us that God prefers to work His power through us.  We can pray and pray for God to just do something miraculous, a firebolt out of the blue sky, but the reality is He will more likely deliver a spark through the hand of a friend.  This is the beauty and brilliance of being a Believer, being the conduit for the power of God.  And not just a conduit, but a repository of His power: the Holy Temple of His Holy Spirit.
   When you go looking, then, for miracles in your life, look around at the Believers in your life.  If you're going to see miracles, you're going to see them by way of a Believer - any Believer, as long as they have the faith to be a conduit.  The Lord makes it clear that He's going to do amazing things through us.  Jesus told the disciples,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." - John 14:12 (ESV)

The truth is that we should be working miracles, because Jesus tells us we will.  You need to expect that God is going to move in power through your fellow Believers.  More importantly, you should expect that He is going to move in power through you in their lives.  But if you expect this, both of them and of yourself, it's going to require some faith.  Your faith in what God can do is the determining factor in what He will do.
   If we don't have faith in the miraculous power of God, we become a broken link in the chain of what God can and wants to do.  Because God works through His people, He needs us to cooperate in order to do His miraculous work.  If we don't have faith in what He can do, we're not going to do what He can do; we're not going to be the instruments of his power, and the result is that no one sees the miracles of God.  We can't all come together in a room and expect to see a miracle if none of us are willing to perform the miracle.  It's one thing to ask God to heal the person in front of me, and entirely another to put my hand on them and believe He's going to heal them through me.
  We have to believe that we will be the miracle workers if we're ever going to see miracles worked.  Above all, this faith first requires that we sell ourselves out to the Father.  If we seek Him above all else, if we go after What He's after, if what we want is Him and everything He's doing, then we'll see the miraculous.  And we'll do the miraculous.
   The world needs His miracles, as much now as it ever did.  The world is still full of the blind, the deaf, the hurting, the imprisoned.  And God still restores sight and hearing; He still heals bodies and hearts; He still shakes prisons and opens the doors.  And just as He has often done in the past, He still does: He still uses His people to do what He does.  What a privilege to be His hands in this world, in this world that so needs His hands.  What a job to be the Miracle Workers.