I grew up in the Episcopal Church (my dad is an Episcopal priest), and was introduced to the Charismatic as a whole when I was about 20 years old and in college. Early on, I began a wild pursuit of the miraculous, and during this time I heard lots of different opinions about how to walk in signs, wonders, and miracles, and I want to share with you all some observations and lessons I have learned over the past decade and a half since.

First, I would often get advice from people about how to operate in miracles. They included a lot of random, often contradictory, at times unscriptural, and occasionally downright nonsensical suggestions:

1. Pray to walk in healing, signs, wonders, and miracles
2. Pray to know God
3. Believe in faith that I already have it
4. Praise God for the fact that I already walk in it all even if I don’t really, as an act of faith that I will at some point
5. Stop praying for miracles because I need to get to know God instead
6. Spend time with Jesus, because that’s what the disciples did that set them apart
7. Seek God’s face instead of His hand
8. Go witness/evangelize to people because signs, wonders, and miracles are the work of the Evangelist.
9. Only some people can do miracles, so if I am an Apostle then it will happen, but otherwise it’s just not God’s will for my life.
10. In the Old Testament it was Prophets who operated in signs, wonders, and miracles, so Prophets should be the ones operating in them today.
11. Get filled with the Holy Spirit because Acts 1 says that’s how I will be filled with power.
12. Since I have already been baptized in the Holy Spirit I am good and have all I need, especially since the Bible says I have already been given everything pertaining to life and godliness.
13. Stop being so focused on miracles, as they will lead you astray, and get back to the Word.
14. Get in the Word because reading the Bible will give me an impartation for the miraculous.
15. Pray in tongues
16. Praise in tongues (in this context, they just meant meant “do tongues to music”)

I’m sure there were more, but I hope you see the problem here. That’s over a dozen different things that one should or shouldn’t do to walk in miracles—and while some of the suggestions above are really good, half the time they contradict one another or just make no sense. Understandably, this left me awfully confused about which of the different things I should be doing to walk in miracles, and 15 years later I still greatly desire to do more miracles in spite of having seen some cool healings, signs, wonders, and miracles already.

It took me a number of years to wade through all of the well-intentioned theological double-speak because I was so new to the prophetic and the power of the Holy Spirit, but I eventually figured out some things. One of the things that really strikes me as incredibly illogical are the people who say things like “Just follow Jesus and it will happen” or “Seek His face and not his Hand. Seek the giver and not the gift.” The Bible doesn’t actually agree.

In fact, in Matthew 7:7-11 it says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.  Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

Think about that. The Bible (and not just any part but Jesus personally) literally instructs us to ask for things we desire, and that if we do, we will receive them. Anyone who tells you to stop seeking after the miraculous, kindly and gently ignore their advice.

The other one that really gets me is “Don’t focus on that stuff (the miraculous) because it will draw you away from God if you focus on it too much.” I’m sorry, but Jesus spent multiple years going around teaching his disciples to heal and do signs, wonders, and miracles, and suddenly when I want to do the same things Jesus did, it’s a problem that I focus on it and want to walk in it?? Jesus certainly didn’t agree with that line of thinking. In John 14 Jesus said that we should believe in him, and if we can’t take him at his own word, then we should believe on the *evidence* of the miracles that he did. As followers of Jesus, we are supposed to walk in miracles.

My friend Steve once pointed out on social media that while Mark 16 does say that “these signs will follow those who believe,” it’s not meant to be a passive thing but something that brings action. Think of it this way. Let’s assume for a minute that the Holy Spirit dwells within each one of us (which He does), and that because of that we can all operate in the miraculous (which we can). If I were to assume that because I’m a nurse that all of my patients will improve but I never actually do any interventions to help them get better, it would be absurd to expect positive results. Likewise, if we assume we can walk in miracles but never exert any effort to actually do so, it would be improbable to expect that we will see any occur.

I’m not saying one has to purposefully enter dangerous situations or go evangelize on random city streets for hours each day for miracles to occur (although both theoretically could yield some results). What I am saying is that if we never step out to pray for anything to occur, why are we expecting to sit on our laurels and have miracles just fall in our laps? Passivity has never been the way of the Kingdom of God. John 11:12 says, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” If we want to see miracles happen, we need to actually do some miracle-ing. Not-praying for them, not-expecting them to happen, not-seeking them, not-talking about them, not-doing-anything-related-to-them is a highly unreliable way to experience the power of God, whereas if we do the opposite of all of those things, we will see God move.

The Christian life is all about partnership with God. When God wants to do things, He partners with us. In the same vein, miracles shouldn’t only be a passive thing we wait to have occur to us. Certainly there are times God will do things in times and ways we don’t expect, but as a whole we should be actively engaging the supernatural instead of waiting for it to happen to us.