miracles

I've been wrestling with some questions lately: Does God still perform miracles today? If He does, why does He only seem to answer some prayers for healing by miraculously healing people? How does God decide which prayers to answer by healing a person and which ones He won't answer that way?

Many times in the Gospels and the book of Acts there are records or Jesus performing miracles, or Jesus' disciples performing miracles, or people praying for miracles and God stepping in to perform them. Yet, in my own life and the lives of those around me, I'm not sure how many miracles I have actually seen, or how many prayers for healing I have seen answered. Is this because I'm not paying attention when they do happen? Is this because I discount things that some people would call miraculous? Do my prayers for God to intervene in something in a miraculous way just lack enough faith for God to respond by performing a miracle? Or do the lack of miracles just mean that God doesn't perform them today the way He did in Scripture?

I have to say that this blog is not even going to attempt to answer these questions. Right now, I'm just asking the questions and I feel like I'm rather far from having any kind of answers to these questions. And, I think that being willing to ask the hard questions is often the first step in coming to any kind of an answer. If we never ask the questions, we will never find the answers. Some of the answers to our questions may not come until we are in the presence of God, but that doesn't mean asking the question and allowing it to drive you to God in search of an answer is a bad thing.