Who doesn't love a great God story, am I right? I know I do. As a friend of mine often says: "I'm just medieval enough to believe that God actually does stuff like this!" Another friend describes the manifest movement of God among us as the "whammo!" of God. Yes to all those things. I've experienced them, I hunger after them. I love it when God moves "in power". 

And yet…. (you had to know there was an "and yet" coming)

What's it all about, really? I know some of us remember the 90s. I remember being ring-side for the Toronto blessing. That whole season felt like there was almost a kind of fountainhead of God's power, bursting up through the floorboards of what was then the Toronto Airport Vineyard. Boom! Whammo!

I remember thinking something like "wow, this is favour, God must really like us right now". But you know what? The longer I've walked with Jesus, the less and less I'm convinced that those encounters were quite what I thought they were. I used to think they were signs that God was really happy with us. A sort of proof that we were in the center of God's will. 

I don't think that way anymore. Now, I believe that signs and wonders are a lot more than that. I believe there are seasons where we need them like we need bread and water. They are provisions on the long journey towards teleios (perfection/maturity). 

So do they function as well of proofs that God is happy with us, happy with the prayers we're praying and the lives we're living? Well…. let's see what the experience of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness have to say about it.