The miracles of Jesus are more than evidence of divine power — did you know he performed many of them that he didn’t have to? He could have made his point with one resurrection, one healing, one display of power over nature. But he didn’t. He kept going — touching lepers, raising grieving mothers’ sons, paying a disciple’s tax bill with a coin from a fish’s mouth. And I think that tells us something important that the intellectual arguments for miracles often don’t quite reach.
The question of whether miracles are possible is a real question, and it deserves a real answer. But there’s another question underneath it — one that’s a little more personal. Not just can God do miracles, but would he bother? Not just for humanity in the abstract, but for you specifically, in your specific mess, on a Tuesday when everything feels too hard.
What the miracles of Jesus were actually for
In this episode of Barriers to Belief, Carey and I talk through the miracles of Jesus — what they were, why they happened, and what the skeptic’s objections miss. One of the things that struck me in preparing for that conversation was how intentional Jesus was. He didn’t just do impressive things. Every miracle had a purpose. They demonstrated his authority. They confirmed that his message was worth taking seriously. But here’s what I think gets overlooked: they also demonstrated that individual people matter to him.
Think about the widow of Nain. Jesus was walking through town. There was a funeral procession. He didn’t have to stop. There was no theological debate to resolve, no crowd waiting to be convinced. There was just a woman who had lost her son — and she was a widow, which meant she had lost everything. And Jesus was moved with compassion. He raised her son and gave him back to her. Not as a grand theological statement. Just because she was heartbroken, and he saw it, and he cared.
The miracles Jesus didn’t have to do
That pattern shows up again and again. The coin in the fish’s mouth — paid Peter’s taxes, which were brutal under Roman rule. The water into wine at the wedding at Cana — spared a bride and groom from social embarrassment in a culture where hospitality was everything. These weren’t grand demonstrations of cosmic power. They were acts of kindness to real people in ordinary, human moments.
Carey made a point in our conversation that I keep coming back to: the Gospels tell us that the record of what Jesus did isn’t even complete. There was way more that wasn’t written down. So what we have is a sample. And even in that sample, there’s a consistent thread — Jesus showing up for people in their specific pain, meeting them where they actually were.
That’s not the God a lot of people are afraid they’ll find if they look too closely. The God they’re bracing for is distant, rule-focused, impossible to satisfy. But that’s not who shows up in the miracle accounts. Who shows up is someone who notices the widow, who keeps the wedding from being ruined, who heals without being asked.
Why this matters if you’re struggling to feel connected to God
A lot of people I talk with have what I’d call an intellectual faith — they believe the arguments, they accept the evidence, they hold the right theological positions. But underneath that, there’s this quiet fear that it might not be personal. That God exists and is good in general, but that the warmth doesn’t quite extend to them. That they’re too messy, too doubting, too much.
The miracles of Jesus push back on that. Not because they prove a philosophical point, but because they show us who he is. He noticed the widow no one else stopped for. He touched the people no one else would touch — the ones with running sores, with demons, with diseases that made them social outcasts. He got right in there with them.
If you’ve been holding God at arm’s length because you’re not sure he’d want to close the distance, these stories are worth sitting with. Not as proof texts. Just as pictures of who Jesus actually is.
Watch the full conversation on miracles of Jesus
In this episode, Carey and I dig into the intellectual side too — David Hume’s famous objection that miracles violate natural law, why that argument misunderstands what miracles are, and why granting even Genesis 1:1 changes the whole conversation. If you’ve ever felt a little embarrassed about believing in miracles, or you have a friend who pushes back on that, this one is for you.
Watch Episode 2 of Series 2 of Barriers to Belief:
If you’ve been wanting to work through questions like these — not just intellectually, but in a way that actually moves the needle for you personally — I’d love to help. That’s exactly what coaching and our classes are designed for.
Written by Kristen Davis, Ph.D. | Founder, DoubtLess Faith