Miracles, dreams, and visions are not a strategy

Let me say from the outset that it’s wonderful when the Father steps into our human situation in ways that work outside the norm. When healings, visions and even floods occur to gain respect and honor for the message of the true God of Heaven who does not rejoice? I’m always grateful that we serve a God who hasn’t stepped back and is merely watching events here as they unfold Yes, He IS involved for His glorious purposes in ways, and at times, of His choosing. I know first-hand that to be true. 
 
I also know that God is not my genie in a bottle who works in my time frame or at my command. God did not make up for my lapses in diligence when we served overseas. In our first months among the Iteri people I prayed regularly for the gift of tongues. I WANTED a miraculous gifting. I hoped that He would want so badly to see the message proclaimed to the Iteri people that He would supernaturally bless me with the ability to speak truth in a language I’d not worked to learn.
 
I would have been truly grateful for that gifting, but the Father didn’t say “yes” to my requests. He also didn’t suspend other laws of nature. People died in those language-learning years. Babies were burned, a snake killed one, trees fell on people and malaria took two lives. Life on this fallen earth went on. I continued to work hard to learn their language.

Today a growing contrast exists in these two ways of doing ministry: 1. Waiting and banking on a miraculous overcoming of natural barriers, or 2. Praying for the miraculous even as one does the hard work that has generally been required to be an excellent communicator. Some of what is written today about the commonness of miracles, revivals, breakthroughs, dreams and visions can easily make the long-term worker wonder if he has ‘missed something’ if miracles aren’t a regular occurrence. Today, “In dreams and visions Jesus is introducing himself to Muslims, revivals are happening and cultures are being transformed” is the triumphalistic word that some are proclaiming. If this is true, are fluent gospel messengers even needed? I have to wonder why would anyone leave his home country and endure years of language and culture study if preaching the gospel is something that Jesus has now taken upon himself to personally do? In fact, compared with the lack of clarity some gospel workers speak with, it would probably be far better if Jesus DID do the task of gospel communication all by Himself.
 
“Jesus will do it”, “Dreams and visions are making the gospel clear”, “Find a surrogate or man of peace and turn the job over to him” are all variations on the gospel worker abrogating his responsibility.

In scripture, gospel workers were not spared jails, whippings, hunger, doing the work of discipleship, or any other price tag associated with incarnation. No price was too high to make this message clear. The ‘work’ of the gospel is more than the work of travelling by plane, boat and foot, or living in a strange land. Our primary work is to make the gospel clear. And, depending on the barriers (language, culture, government, religious and unrest are just a few) the gospel worker must overcome, it is a lot of hard work.

Miracles, visions, dreams... or hard work? How wonderful it was when God DID step into our world among the Iteri [tribe] and wonderfully reveal His power in positive and ‘other’ ways. I know no one who doesn’t want to see God do powerful works in big and small ways. But, as we see in scripture, it was not the strategy of Peter or Paul to wait for God to do a miracle. Neither was it ‘the’ method they endorsed to others. In our situation, years of frustrating work preceded some incredible instances of unique intervention. The work of the apostles and of the modern day gospel worker is to articulate the gospel message in such a clear way that men can understand it, believe it, repent and find forgiveness in the finished work of Christ alone. II Cor. 5:19 “ ...And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Has God taken that job back from us? Cornelius in Acts 10 had a vision AND heard an angel... but it still took Peter to make the gospel clear to him.

(Buser, “Miracles, Dreams and Visions Are Not a Strategy,” The Radius Report, 1/19/17).