The miraculous power of faith has been deemed able to heal a countless number of ailments from the time when Jesus walked the Earth performing miracles all the way to present day medical miracles involving prayer and strong faith. But what do these miracles tell us and prove in both the teachings of the New Testament and their modern day occurrences? I believe these miracles are put in place by the books of Acts and occur in modern times to show signs of God's power and answers to our prayers present in a physical form and the stories from the New Testament not only show and tell these miracles in a physical sense but provide a much deeper lesson about faith, the power of human beings, and the way God answers our calls of prayer. By looking at Acts 14:8-16, a chapter titled Paul and Barnabas at Lystra, with an historical and literary approach I was able to divulge a much deeper lesson from this amazing miracle performed by Paul.
[...] Paul and Barnabas make numerous attempts to tell the crowd that they are simply servants to the all powerful Lord and that he, through them and faith, is actually the one performing the miracle and thus should be worshipped. The crowd is unmoved by their proclamation and soon another crowd of Jews arrive and sway the crowd in their direction resulting in Paul being stoned and dragged out of the city. On the outskirts of the city Paul regains consciousness and miraculously walks away and the Apostles continue with their missionary work. [...]
[...] It also teaches the important lesson to center your faith in Jesus rather than the performer of the miracle, which is a common mistake in many modern day healing miracles. The passage shows the simplistic approach that we should have faith in the god that created the heavens and the Earth and the sea. Francis MacNutt's book, Healing, provided a wealth of information on the subject of healing and gave me another perspective and source to see this practice in a present day setting and compare it to healing in the New Testament. [...]
[...] I believe the next two sections where the strongest in the book and really helped reiterate on the lesson from Acts 14 and the connection to other modern day healing miracles. The first of these two sections was a chapter titled the Greatest of These is Charity” which dealt with the faith of the patient and the doctor and the power of God's love. MacNutt states, “While faith is a requisite for healing, both in the sick person and the one praying for the healing, the primary disposition needed by the minister of healing is love” (MacNutt 149). [...]
[...] There seems to be a strong parallel between both these experiences in the New Testament and modern day miracles and by examining both they should shed light onto each other and help us understand miracles and the power of faith both in the past and the present. The modern day experience I chose to look at was a piece titled A Physician's View of the Healing Ministry by Hank Kankowski, M.D. The experience deals with Dr. Kankowski taking a deeper look into the power of healing through faith and prayer after he starts a family practice in the San Diego area. [...]
[...] The power of inner healing in patients after a physical healing has been performed far surpasses the power of the miracle and because of this miracle the patient's inner faith should grow. I think these amazing physical healings do take place between doctors and patients, usually because they both have strong faith and pray together, but regardless these miracles are taking place and people should focus their energy not on the miracle itself but spreading the word of God and showing others that God loved them and they will you as well. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
