What is your definition of a miracle?

[Lamb]

I've seen miracles being brought up in a couple of threads and I wonder how you define what a miracle is?

 

[psalms 91]

What cannot be explained. I personally know of people recovering physically that were not supposed to and the doctors could not explain it any other way.

 

[tango]

I've seen miracles being brought up in a couple of threads and I wonder how you define what a miracle is?

I think it would depend on the context.

In the context of more casual speech a "miracle" is anything particularly fortuitous. For example the other day I was cycling on a sweeping bend down a steep hill and briefly went off the road onto the gravel at about 35mph. I really thought I was about to go down hard but somehow managed to keep the bike upright. In casual speech that might be called a "miracle" but whether it was down to divine intervention or just instinct taking over to keep the bike upright is another matter. Personally I wouldn't use an example like that as "proof" of God's protection because countless people ride bikes every day and escape from potential scrapes.

In the context of providing something as "proof" that God exists and is directly involved with our lives it would want to be something that had no natural explanation (in fairness a vanishingly small probability will normally suffice), and as verifiable as possible. As a rule I don't like third-hand stories of something that happened to Someone Else, Somewhere Else. Stories like that are too convenient and generally offer no way of verifying whether they are true, embellished or fabricated. That's especially so when speakers seem to have a good list of miracles they've witnessed (or apparently performed) Somewhere Else but never seem to be able to repeat the trick here and now.

 

[psalms 91]

Therein is the problem, it isnt a trick and it isnt whoever God chooses to use and flow through, it is God Himself that performs the miiracle and if He chooses to use someone to do that then so be it but many times it does not involve any man, just God alone

 

[tango]

Therein is the problem, it isnt a trick and it isnt whoever God chooses to use and flow through, it is God Himself that performs the miiracle and if He chooses to use someone to do that then so be it but many times it does not involve any man, just God alone

Exactly, although when things are constantly presented as if miracles are available tonight to anyone who just comes forward in faith to claim it you'd struggle to draw the same conclusion from the teaching.

Sometimes God does work a miracle, sometimes he does not. We don't get to know why he does or why he doesn't, just that sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes people are miraculously healed, other times they die.