Miracles have often been associated with missions. In both Acts and the history of missions, miracles have often been reported on the cutting edge of ground-breaking evangelism. In the early medieval period, examples include Augustine of Canterbury’s early work among the English, Columba’s among the Scots, and Boniface’s among the Germans. They are reported especially frequently in the past half-century in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America (though they also appeared in times of revival there earlier, such as in India in the 1850s and the Korean revival of the early twentieth century).

One could offer only samples of such miracle reports in many places where the gospel is breaking new ground today. An eyewitness shared with me, for example, how he witnessed the instant healing of one nonbeliever’s arm, which had been paralyzed for decades. Local witnesses of this one event sparked a revival among a long-resistant people group in Suriname, leading to tens of thousands of conversions over the next few years. Likewise, many reports surround the spreading of the gospel in previously unevangelized villages in Mozambique, where a number of deaf non-Christians were healed when Christians prayed for them. A team from the United States documented some of these cases to the best that conditions allowed and reported on them in Southern Medical Journal in September 2010. (Objections were answered in Candy Gunther Brown’s book Testing Prayer, published by Harvard in 2012.)

But what happens when miracles do not occur? What happens when we pray and nothing physically changes? Jesus healed all who came to him, but the Bible does not lead us to expect that God will do extraordinary signs every time people pray. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom, or reign of God, and demonstrated God’s reign by his authority over sickness, spirits, and storms. Jesus warned his detractors that if he was driving out demons by the finger or Spirit of God, then God’s kingdom had come upon them (Matt 12:28/Luke 11:20). Jesus also described his miraculous ministry in language that evoked Isaiah’s picture of the future era of restoration (Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22). In his ministry, the promised restoration of the kingdom era had begun.

Miracles, however, are signs of the kingdom, and not the fulness of the kingdom itself. The first century apostles died, and so far as we know, no one raised them. Even those whom Jesus or others miraculously raised eventually died again later; unlike Jesus’s resurrection, these raisings were not meant to be permanent and eternal. Believers through history have continued to die; healings are real, but when they happen they only delay the inevitable that all people through history have faced. Jesus admonished his followers to give special honor to people who were blind and disabled (Luke 14:13), presumably implying that such conditions would often continue in this age.

God often does miracles. I have collected hundreds of miracle reports from eyewitnesses in my recent book on the subject; although I cannot verify the reliability of every claim, many came from witnesses that I know and trust, and some are well-documented. Whereas some are recoveries that could possibly be attributed to natural immune responses (which are also God’s gift), some, such as the instant disappearance of cataracts, reversal of auditory nerve damage, raisings of persons believed to be dead for hours, the instant healing of severe burns or closing of a large wound overnight, are dramatic signs of God’s activity. Hearing these reports encouraged my own faith and motivated me to believe that God can do anything. I pray with renewed confidence and am more prepared to recognize answers to prayer.

At the same time, the world’s suffering continues. In places like Congo, where my wife is from, people have to depend on God and often see miracles, but the rate of mothers dying in childbirth, of children losing limbs, of babies dying of malaria or typhoid fever or meningitis, are unacceptably high. Miracles are not meant as an easy panacea for the world’s problems. Jesus multiplied the fishes and loaves, but then commanded the disciples to gather up the fragments that remain, because they would not need a miracle for their next meal. In a world where health care, clean drinking water and other resources are inequitably distributed, Jesus’s miracles speak an uncomfortable word to us. They show us what Jesus cares about: people’s health and deliverance. They therefore invite us to use all means possible—prayers for healing, medical missions, work for political and economic justice, and the like—to help people. Sometimes we don’t need a miracle—we need to use what God has already given us. Praying for our daily bread, for example, does not mean that we don’t also work for a living if we’re able to.

We pray for miracles that only God can do, and work for transformations that he has given us the ability to do. In both cases, we help people to have a foretaste of God’s coming kingdom, when he will wipe away all tears from our eyes and there will be no more sorrow or sighing or death. There is a message in the Gospels that runs deeper than miracles: the message of the Cross. In the Cross God shows that even in the deepest tragedy, God still has a plan. Miracles are samples of the future, meant to keep hope kindled; but the deepest sign of hope is the cross that gave way to the resurrection. Even when God does not do a miracle when we think we need it, the future is secure.

This is adapted from an article for the A.M.E. Zion Missionary Seer. Craig S. Keener is author of the award-winning Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2 volumes; Baker Academic, 2011).