God can and often doesn't.



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 I'm almost always uncomfortable when I hear someone state that God told them something.  Not in the general sense of God told them that obedience is better than sacrifice or that heaven is beautiful.  It's the specific statements that make me cringe.  The person who looks at a pregnant woman and states that God has revealed the baby's gender.  The one who responds to a request for prayer with a word of knowledge that God will perform the desired miracle.
Those are the ones.  Because not everyone who makes such statements really has a word from the Lord.
What happens when the prophesied son is born a girl?  When the proclaimed healing never happens?  Does anyone go back to ask the person...what do you say now?
We love to be on the side of the miracle-maker but we need to grow up enough to speak the words of our Savior...not my will but thine.  How much courage and anointing would it take to hold the hand of the worried husband and say, "God told me he's going to take your beloved to heaven instead of healing her."
You don't hear that too often.
I don't claim the gift of prophecy but I do have the gift of discernment.  It's a burden and an honor; one I am certainly not worthy to bear.  It's not bound by the status of my relationship with God, because God himself is not limited by my faithfulness.  Like all gifts of the Lord, it is by the will of Him that we live and move and have our being. That said, in prayer, I have moments of knowledge deep in my soul.  I have experienced countless turning points when I've been in prayer over time when I knew...the miracle wasn't coming. Miracles are minority outcomes.  That's not small faith talking, that's reality.  In truth, it takes bigger faith to worship the God whose will does not submit to ours.  It's a truer love that says to Christ, "I'm disappointed, angry and broken that you could have spared me this and didn't.  Yet, I love you, I serve you, I even thank you."  If everything counted on praying harder for the guaranteed outcome, that would be mean.  It would place greater power in our mortal hands than we are fit to wield.  Yes, we pray.  We pray for the miracle, for the answer, for the secret to be revealed.  At least I do.
When we, in our zeal to speak faith, speak wrongly; we hurt the hearer.  We state by the power of the blood of Jesus that someone will be healed of cancer and the person passes.  What becomes of the vulnerable and desperate loved ones who wrapped their hope around the promise of a man.  God forgive us, should that moment of zeal create a chasm between the Lord and the one who believed in the promised miracle.  God help us, should our words stem the flow of healing and strength flowing from the throne because we've convinced people they don't need it since, any minute now, Lazarus will rise. 
Let's grow up beyond faith measured in miracles only.  This I say as someone who believes in miracles and has experienced them first hand over and over.  Yes, I ask for God to do the impossible.  I believe in his ability.  I also think it is impossible that birds should fly or the sun should rise or that the love of Jesus is greater than my sin...so why not cancer healed or health restored?  Of course!
It is the one who is like Jacob wrestling with the angel who finds the miracle of peace.  It is in the darkest night insisting, "I will not let go until you bless me," and then living with the limp of God's will that the soul finally awakens to cry "Hallelujah!"
My God, my God...you are truly my portion.  There is no pain that cannot be healed by your hand over my brokenness.  Help us, help us, help us.
Make us into people who do not need to promise earthly miracles in order to speak of miraculous things.