Should Christians expect miracles to be an aspect of their walk with Christ? - Podcast Episode 81

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Welcome to the

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God Questions Podcast, on today's episode, I've got a special guest with us and we're going to be discussing a topic that's fascinating to me and I think will be very interesting to you.

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We're going to be discussing miracles and how important the miraculous is in both the Bible and in the

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Christian life. Our guest today is Dr. J .P. Moreland. He is the author of A Simple Guide to Experiencing Miracles.

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Dr. Moreland is one of the leading evangelical thinkers of our day. He is a distinguished professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and the director of the

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ADOS Christian Center. He has degrees in philosophy, theology and chemistry. So he's written many books, several of which have been very helpful to me and my

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Christian walk, especially in the philosophical arena, which is not typically my specialty.

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So, Dr. Moreland, welcome to the show. Well, Shay, I'm so glad to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.

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So, Dr. Moreland, what led you to write A Simple Guide to Experiencing Miracles? That's a great question.

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I became, in my 52 years of ministry, I was growing increasingly saddened by the fact that we weren't having the kind of impact on the culture that we ought to be, given our numbers.

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And so six, seven years ago, I decided to study the

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Book of Acts with a fresh eyes and I was looking for what was uppermost in their minds in maturing and believers and winning people.

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And I then followed that up by looking at the first four centuries of the church and I interviewed a church father, an expert in the church fathers, and I came up with the conclusion that there were three things.

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Now, these aren't all that matter, but these were three central things that you find in Acts and going forward.

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One of them was the cultivation of a distinctive Christian mind, knowing what we believe and why, so we can not get sucked into cultural ideas that are harmful.

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The second was the cultivation of a Christlike character centered around a tender heart and that is drawn toward affection toward God and others.

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The third thing surprised me, and it was the manifestation of the spirit and the kingdom's power through signs and wonders.

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And that continued all the way up to the fourth century or so and throughout church history.

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Well, I had experienced people that were into that sort of thing. It's a little bit goofy, to be honest with you, but I began to attend the

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Vineyard Church 19 years ago and some Vineyard churches are not good, but this one is.

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And I saw miracles and things happen that I had never seen in my life.

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And in the book, I break down five different kinds of miracles and I explain how to recognize them, but specific answers to prayer, miraculous healings, hearing

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God's voice in six different ways outside, but under the authority of Scripture, the manifestation of angels and demons and then near death experiences.

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And so what I did, Shay, is I theologized this through the present power of the kingdom, not spiritual gifts.

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I do happen to believe that all the gifts are for today, but I'm not going to die on that hill. I think that one of the ways that the kingdom of God is manifested, as Paul says, it is not in words, but in power.

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So that's what motivated me because I wanted to give my brothers and sisters a credible account they could trust about seeking

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God for more of a supernatural lifestyle. And that's why.

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Yeah, well, I find that very interesting. Most of my theological training since I became a believer in my late teens has been from cessationists, those who do not believe the miraculous gifts are functioning.

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But thankfully, with that in mind, I never lost it. I never had any doubt that God still performs miracles.

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So to me, like the miraculous spiritual gifts, whether it's tongues, prophecy and so forth to me is you can separate that from God performing miracle.

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And I wouldn't even consider myself a strict cessationist anymore. But like you said, a lot of what

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I've experienced in charismatic churches, I like your term goofy and then not necessarily done in agreement with what the

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Bible teaches in first Corinthians 14, for example. So I have some concerns about what's taking place and being called the miraculous gifts of the spirit.

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But in terms of God performing miracles, I have absolutely no doubt that God is performing more miracles than we're even aware of.

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And God has done some amazing, miraculous things in my life and people who are close to me in their lives as well.

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So no doubt about miracles. But coming from my background, it almost seemed to me like there were some people who were almost embarrassed by the idea that God performed miracles.

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Have you found that as well? And why do you think that is? Well, yeah, good, good question. By the way,

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I'm with you on what you just said. So what I'm trying to do is present a book that opens people to seeking

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God's interventions more with more confidence, but with wisdom. And so you can judge for yourself whether I've accomplished that.

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But the reason that people are embarrassed and don't think that God's acting as much as he really is in our culture is, number one, they're embarrassed because they've sort of absorbed a naturalistic view of the world and that science is kind of what really tells us what's real.

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But we have hope at least that Christianity is true or we have some kind of faith in it that's sort of blind.

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But the miracle stuff is a little bit out there. And, you know, if you if you go around sharing that with people, you're going to they're going to think you're kook.

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So I think it's the embarrassment and the absorption of naturalism without knowing it.

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Nobody would say I'm a naturalist in the church, but we've allowed too much of that to seep into our being in our in the fiber of our bones.

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The second one is and I can document this and I mentioned it in the book, Jay, is that I go to churches and I ask how many of you have had a specific answer to prayer that you know was from God?

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And by the way, in the book, I tell how to recognize a miracle from an act, just a miracle incidence. Well, 80 percent, 90 percent.

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How many of you have God had God direct you specifically? Same thing. How do you how many of you know of somebody or one step removed that was healed?

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Seventy percent. But the problem is we don't talk about these things with each other.

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And so we get the impression that nothing's happening in my church when there's a ton happening.

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But we don't share it because we're a little bit hesitant. We don't want to come across as spiritual braggers if we see

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God intervene. And so in the first chapter, I list eight specific things you can do to grow in your confidence of of the supernatural world.

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And one of them is when you go to your Christian friends, start asking them this question.

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Say, listen, hey, in the last year, have you ever seen God do anything that you would say it just had to be an intervention by God and it just could not be explained any other way?

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I'd love to hear about that. And you would be surprised if you start asking that question.

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The encouraging faith building stories you'll hear from your brothers and sisters. So you mentioned this briefly and as part of your book,

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I really enjoyed how do you separate or distinguish between a miracle and a coincidence?

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I think that was the word you used because a lot of people find that, wow, that seemed the odds of that happening by chance seem outlandish.

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But I'm still kind of hesitant to call it a miracle because I really don't know. Well, there you go. And see, one of the reasons

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God acts in the world for us, intervenes specifically, is to show compassion and to build our confidence in him.

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And so you see something and you say, oh, my, this had to be God. And then the next day you start saying, you know, but that could have been a coincidence.

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And it starts eroding your confidence that you should sustain because you saw

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God act. And so this principle is important. Now, in the world, we see all the time something, a cause will produce an effect.

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And sometimes the cause is just some natural object, like a flash of lightning causes a tree to split.

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Now, that's just a natural cause that produces an effect, tree splitting. But sometimes when

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I go in, sometimes the cause is the act of a personal, rational, free agent.

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And so when I go in and see our table set in a certain way, I don't try to explain that by the laws of physics and chemistry.

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I do what we do every day in court. And that is, I say there was a person who did that, that had the know -how to do it.

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And they had some motive or intent in setting up that table. And I think it's because we're having our

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Chinese neighbors, not our Mexican neighbors because of the way the table's set. So we do this all the time.

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And in fact, in science, like archaeology or forensic science and others, there has been a principle that has been developed that's used by scientists.

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And I apply it to the Christian life. And it goes like this. Whenever two things are present, you can know beyond any reasonable doubt that this event was produced by the act of an intelligent, rational agent.

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And the first one is the result has to be highly improbable. But as you pointed out, that's not enough, because if you and I were playing bridge and we were playing for a $500 kitty and I was a dealer and on the first deal,

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I dealt myself a perfect bridge hand and won the 500 bucks on the first deal, you'd probably be suspicious.

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And rightly so. So because first of all, getting that hand is unbelievably improbable.

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But your hand is every bit as improbable as mine. In fact, if somebody predicted the specific 13 random cards you got before the deal, we'd wonder if something was wrong.

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So high improbability is necessary, but you need something else. And that is that this event is special for some reason besides the fact that it happened.

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Now, look at your hand. There's nothing special about your hand, except it was the one that happened or you got.

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It's just some random hand that you received. But my hand has an independent specialness besides the fact

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I got it. Namely, the rules of bridge before we even sat down specifies that there is one specific hand that if you get that, you win.

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Well, my hand is highly improbable, but it's independently special besides the fact

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I got it. And that is beyond reasonable doubt that I cheat. I cheated. The Democrats actually used this years ago to sue a

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Republican, and they won this in court because in the state of Ohio, there were eight districts having their in -house state house voting, and there were eight, seven or eight parties on each ballot.

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But when the ballots were produced in every district, the Republican candidate was first.

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Now, that's extremely unlikely. But so would any other random one if it showed up in all eight districts.

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But what made this, what got this guy in court and he lost was that having the

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Republican first, whoever's first, guarantees that they get more votes because they're first.

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And the Republican was in charge of printing the ballots. So it was his desire for his party to win, plus putting them first, that would give him a better chance, that it was independently special, that indicated it was done on purpose by him.

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Now, when I have an answer to prayer or if there is a very specific need that I have that's been really troubling me and something, but it's highly unlikely that it will ever be satisfied.

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And there's something that happens that is highly unlikely, but it's special because it was what

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I was praying for or it met this need I was longing for. That is really strong evidence, according to the secular principle, it's not a

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Christian principle, that this was done by a rational, free agent, but in this case, a really big one.

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It would be, you know, God, not a finite agent. So that's that's how you can tell the difference.

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Yeah. So in preparation for this interview, someone asked me, so Shea, what would you point to as the most hard to deny miraculous event from God?

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And just let me describe it briefly. So after we launched GotQuestions and we started translating our articles into other languages, some of these languages were pretty difficult to find translators for.

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And my wife, being the more spiritual and often more wise person, said, well, Shea, have you tried praying and asking

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God to provide the translator for this particular language? I was like, oh, why didn't I think of that? Well, so we just pray like,

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Lord, please provide a translator for this language. And literally within a couple of days,

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I receive an email from someone saying, hey, I love your website. I've been using it for years. I don't know if there's any way

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I could possibly serve or help. And just to let you know, I live in this country and I'm fluent in this language. So I don't know why

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I'm contacting you, but let me know if you can use any of that. And it was kind of like, did God just like sovereignly lead someone to send me an email?

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He didn't even know why he was sending it, because he was the answer to the prayer for a translator for that language.

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And then he ended up serving as our first translator for that language for a couple of years. So that's something like. The odds of that being a coincidence is just astronomical.

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And to me, that was a powerful confirmation that God hears our prayers and God answers them in his timing and in his way.

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It's beyond reasonable doubt because, look, how likely was that to happen?

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Well, it's off the charts unlikely. But secondly, there was something special about that event, apart from the fact that this guy wrote you.

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Namely, that was a need that you guys had specifically and you'd prayed about it.

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So it's the combination of the specialness of that particular outcome, plus the fact that it was there was not a chance that it would happen indicates beyond any reasonable doubt that this was done on purpose by God.

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And this is used in court cases and to decide guilt.

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You know, that guy had a motive and it's unlikely that this person would have died this way and whatever.

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So that's a great example. So what would you say, what are some of the dangers, the risks of the body of Christ diminishing the importance of the miraculous in our lives?

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Well, there are dangers that go both ways, but I think that the

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Christian religion teaches us that God is not just transcendent, but he's with us and that he not only is with us, but he loves us and that he co -labors with us to use us for his kingdom.

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Now, there are times when he has invited us to pray and even to pray for the sick and to try to discern his voice.

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You have to be wise about that. But there are ways that God can lead and guide us under the authority of Scripture.

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And so if we just make it all about what's in the

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Scriptures, then what we're missing is the spirit part of it. And I think it needs to be word, spirit, and specifically the spirit's power to work alongside us.

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And I can tell you that my faith has been enormously strengthened from the accounts that I put in the book.

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There's something like 50 cases in there, Shea, and I vetted them very carefully.

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I interviewed people, I gathered evidence, and I didn't put accounts in this book that I'm not confident.

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And when you read them, I don't know about you, but I find my heart being, my gosh, this is just unbelievably great, you know?

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And it gives me a faith strengthener, draws me nearer to God since he really does know

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I'm here and he loves me, you know? Yeah, so maybe a little even a little more practically speaking, how would you say recognizing the miraculous and even talking about it, sharing it with others is important in order to build up our faith, to encourage us, to build us up in community together?

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Well, yes, absolutely. And I, for example, I suggest that people give a little contribution to the

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Jesus film and get their newsletter because it comes out, I think, a couple of times a month.

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And it reads like Acts chapter 29. I mean, these film crews are seeing things that happened in the book of Acts.

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So what this does for a community is when you go back and then read the word, it starts jumping out at you because somebody in your fellowship just saw something like what you're reading.

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And it kind of makes the Bible just become more, even more alive.

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And it causes people to have an expectation that is not presumptuous, because I have in the book 14 reasons that I've thought through carefully why

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God doesn't answer prayer, because we've all experienced the frustration with God when he doesn't answer.

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And we think, what's going on up there? You know, but there are reasons and this can help us.

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But that's what it does. It brings people together with a greater sense of boldness and courage and intimacy with God, I think.

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Yeah. And I really like how both in your book and then earlier in this recording, you talked about that there are some extremes on both sides, whether it's denying miracles or embracing everything.

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How do you personally strike the balance to recognize, OK, I want to embrace the miraculous.

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I want to realize that God is a God of miracles and that he still performs miracles. But a lot of what

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I'm seeing over here seems like abuses, seems like that's not scriptural.

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So how do you strike that balance? Yeah, I think, number one, you mentioned it. I want to make sure that this that what's going on is not contrary to the

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Bible. Now, if something happens that the Bible doesn't comment on, then I'm free to use wisdom and follow the evidence wherever it goes.

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But if something's contrary to scripture, it's out for me because that's my authority. Secondly, I take a page from Jonathan Edwards, who experienced this kind of miraculous outbreak when he was pastoring.

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And he wrote a book called Religious Affections about how to handle this. And he basically said that you need to not prejudge whether this is the spirit of God or just somebody wanting attention.

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But what you want to judge is the long term fruits that it produces in that person's life.

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Does it cause them to want to lead a holier life? Does it cause them to want to draw near to God and obey him and become more aggressive about sharing their faith?

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Or does it get them off on a tangent and it all becomes about prosperity or about my miraculous gift or whatever?

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That that is not good. So I tend to evaluate it that way. I use this design, this principle, this design filter

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I use to make that judgment. And then I want to see this is

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I want to see if the people that are doing this are word oriented.

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Do they study the word in their church? Is it taught well?

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Do they read books that are solid? And if the answer to that's no, then

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I'm afraid they probably live their Christian life based on emotions and emotions are wonderful servants, but terrible masters.

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And so I get a little bit worried about people that are like that.

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So those are some principles. And then you just have to kind of intuitively sense, do you think this person's credible?

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And you read their body language and that sort of thing. Yeah, so it's very interesting.

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So this has been the Got Questions podcast with Dr. J .P. Moreland, author of A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles.

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And let me tell you, it's a funny story because it's a great read. It can get a little heady, a little philosophical at times, but I think that's good because I think a lot of people need to think about these things from that perspective.

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But one of the other Got Questions employees was reading the book and she told me that at one point she felt like her head was going to explode.

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And then very shortly thereafter, you say in the book, at this point, you may feel like your head's about to explode.

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You correctly read how some people would be reading that section of the book.

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So just briefly before we close the book, A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles will include links to where it can be purchased and where you can learn more about Dr.

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Moreland in the show notes and the description on YouTube and at podcast .gotquestions .org.

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But just briefly, who is the book for? Who would you encourage to acquire a copy of this book?

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Primarily Christians who want to see God do more through them and in and around their lives.

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They want to learn how to be more effective in prayer and to understand why

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God doesn't respond. And so it's for those people who want to see the kingdom advanced and don't want to dismiss the intervention of God just out of hand.

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I hope that this will draw them closer to the Lord. It'll increase their faith and confidence and they'll be willing to step out with more courage and boldness than before.

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Fantastic. So again, Dr. Moreland, thank you for coming on the show. I enjoyed our conversation today. It's been a great time.

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Thank you for inviting me. All right. This has been the Got Questions podcast. Got questions?