We must learn to “see” by observing the effect of the invisible world on everything visible. Miracles offer this opportunity more than any other Christian activity.

One Sunday evening, a young man from our church fell at the back of the sanctuary and broke his arm. His mother came to me quickly and said, “Come pray for my son.” The healing of broken bones, even those from decades ago that hadn’t healed properly, had become commonplace.

I rushed back and found him lying on the ground, his arm clearly broken. I lay down beside him, placed my hand on his arm, looked at the break, and suddenly, fear crept into my mind. I forgot all the miracles I had ever seen and said, “Let’s call the doctor.” Now, I wouldn’t blame anyone for calling a doctor in this situation. For most, that would be the right thing to do. But for me, the moment was personally revealing. I had seen twisted bones disappear, bones reformed, hips reshaped, blind eyes opened, and deaf ears unstopped, but now, looking at a young man with a broken arm, I forgot everything I had seen. I switched from supernatural mode to natural mode.

My experience with miracles had not completely shaped me. I repented and apologized to the mother about a week later, not because I felt guilty or ashamed, but because I realized I had a long way to go in renewing my mind.

It is not enough to simply put our revelation into practice, as we saw in the previous chapter; we must also become students of miracles. This means that the miracles we experience must shape our way of thinking.

Miracles can be dazzling and dramatic, but they are not primarily meant to dazzle us. God gives us miracles to train us to see differently. A miracle is a school. Or think of it this way: just as food contains nutrients, every situation and encounter with God is filled with the “nutrients” needed to make us strong as God’s representatives on this planet.

The problem is, we can go through life experiencing encounters and miracles with God without extracting what was intended for us in those experiences. We can flunk every test. We may fail to extract the nutrients. You can see this happen all the time in churches.

When God performs a miracle, some people say, “Wow, that’s really cool,” and walk away unchanged. They are thankful, but they haven’t learned to see differently. They go home, and their lives continue exactly as before, only now they have one more cool thing to say God did.

If this has happened to you, don’t feel too bad. It happened to Jesus’ disciples too. They participated in the astonishing miracle of the great multiplication of food (see Mark 6).

The multiplication actually happened in their hands, not in Jesus’ hands, and this is a key point to remember. Jesus didn’t say, “Shazam!” and create a huge pile of food. He didn’t wave His hand over the food to watch it grow. He took the small portion they had, divided it into 12 groups, and as the disciples gave it out, it was replenished.

And that’s where they missed the test. Later that day, Jesus told them to cross over to the other side in their boat, and He went up the mountain to pray. There, He saw in His spirit the disciples struggling at the oars, almost ready to lose their lives, so He came walking on the sea close enough to watch over them. They saw Him and cried out in fear, and He ended up getting into the boat. The wind and waves ceased. The disciples settled down. They were utterly amazed:

“for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened” (Mark 6:52).

This is a strange end to the story, but it teaches us something: they had perfectly obeyed in performing the miracle of the loaves and fish, but their hearts remained hard. They had not seen clearly through the miracle. It had not transformed them.

You and I can perfectly obey God, be the instrument that causes the miracle, and still have hardened hearts through and after. This doesn’t mean you’re going to hell, but that you missed the lesson of the miracle. The seed of future transformation could not penetrate and take root in your heart.

The disciples did everything Jesus told them to do, and yet, when they faced the next problem, it became clear they hadn’t learned the lesson from the previous one. What was the lesson? They should have seen their role in the miracle. Because they didn’t see their role in the previous miracle, the next time they faced a problem and Jesus wasn’t in the boat, they had no solution.

Jesus had said, “Give them something to eat.” He didn’t say, “I’ll do it for you.” It was through their touch, their obedience, that the food multiplied. And yet, they missed the point. Jesus’ purpose wasn’t to send them into a storm so He could show up and be the hero. He had planned to pass by, but they didn’t understand the lesson. They hadn’t extracted the nutrients from the last miracle. This hardness of heart prevented them from becoming deliverers, so Jesus had to deliver them once again…

This text is an excerpt from the book “The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind” written by Bill Johnson.

We invite you to read the following article, “A NEW STANDARD“.

STUDENTS OF MIRACLES. STUDENTS OF MIRACLES. STUDENTS OF MIRACLES