Have you ever stood on the shore of a great vast ocean and watched the waves come crashing in one after the other, relentless, powerful, governed by a force you cannot see, but you know is there? You feel the spray on your face. You hear the thunder in your ears, and you know that you know you are in the presence of something immense, something far greater than yourself.

Many of you have come here tonight, and you’ve brought your own vast oceans with you … oceans of trouble, oceans of sickness, oceans of heartache that just keep rolling in, wave after weary wave, and in the quiet of your soul, you’ve whispered a prayer. You’ve looked up towards the heavens, and you’ve said, “Oh God, if You would just, if You would just perform a miracle for me, just stop this one wave.”

I understand that cry. I have heard it in a thousand tear-stained prayers. But tonight, I want to talk to you about what that wave really is, because, my friend, you and I have been taught to think of a miracle as some kind of divine interruption, as if God looking down from a distance sees our trouble and suddenly decides to break His own rules, to reach down and press the pause button on nature just for a moment, just to make things easier for us.

We see it as a suspension, a divine loophole, a magician’s trick played out on the stage of our lives. But oh, that is such a small, such a limited view of the glory and the power of the living God. A miracle is not God breaking the rules. A miracle is God fulfilling the highest rule, the rule of His love, the rule of His purpose for your eternal soul.

You see, a miracle is never an end in itself. It is never just about a body being healed. As glorious as that is, it is never just about a circumstance being changed. No, a miracle is always, always, always about revelation. It is God revealing a piece of His heart to you. It is the Holy Spirit pulling back the curtain just for a moment and showing you the reality of the Kingdom that is standing all around you right here, right now.

Think of it: when a man who has never walked suddenly leaps to his feet, what is revealed? It reveals that the God we serve has power over atrophy, over decay, over the very bonds that hold a body captive. When a fever vanishes in an instant, what is revealed? It reveals that the Christ Who spoke to the winds and the waves is still speaking to the very storms that rage within ourselves.

The miracle is the signpost, but the destination is the heart of God. It is the Holy Spirit shouting through the material world. Do you see? Do you see how much He loves you? Do you see the authority He holds? Do you see that He is here?

Let me take you back to that sea I spoke of. Imagine the disciples in that boat tossed by the storm, fearing for their very lives, and then they see Him. They see Him walking on the water. Now, was that a suspension of the law of gravity? Perhaps, but to see it as only that is to miss the entire point. The miracle wasn’t that a man defied physics. The miracle was that the Creator of physics was revealing His absolute lordship over every single one of His creation’s rules. The water was not holding Him up. His Word was holding the waters down.

In that moment, what was revealed? His sovereignty was revealed. His presence in their storm was revealed. His divine nature was revealed. The miracle was the message, “I Am.” … and because “I Am,” you do not need to be afraid. This is why when we focus only on the magic trick of the miracle, we can so easily become discouraged when the specific outcome we pray for does not come to pass. We think God has failed. We think the miracle didn’t happen.

But oh, the Holy Spirit is always, always at work. His primary work, His greatest work is not to give us a comfortable journey, but to reveal the Father to us so that we might have a relationship with Him that will last for all eternity.

Sometimes the greatest miracle occurs not when the storm is calmed, but when a human heart in the very midst of the howling wind finds a peace that passes all understanding. That is the Holy Spirit’s masterpiece. That is the miracle of a heart transformed, a soul set free from fear even while the waves are still high.

So when you pray for a miracle, do not pray for a magician. Do not pray for a rule breaker. Pray for the Holy Spirit to come. Pray for the active, powerful, loving presence of God to move into your situation and reveal something of Jesus to you that you have never seen before. For when you see Him, truly see Him for Who He is, everything else, the storm, the sickness, the fear begins to lose its power over you.

The miracle is that you come to know the miracle worker, for you see, I don’t believe in miracles because I have seen a few. I believe in miracles because I believe in the Holy Spirit. You know, it’s one thing to look up at the stars on a clear night and say, “I believe God created all of this.”

It’s a wonderful thing to believe. It’s a truth that can fill you with awe. But I must ask you tonight, do you believe that the same God Who set those stars in their place is just as actively, personally, and powerfully involved in the world right now? Or do you believe that He simply lit the fuse of creation, stepped back, and has been watching from a distance ever since?

So many people have a faith that lives in the past tense. They believe in the God of the Bible, but they struggle to believe that God is in this room right here, right now. They can accept the miracles then, but they question the miracles now, and I tell you, the great divide between a historical faith and a living, breathing, miracle-working faith, is the person of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not a vague ethereal force. He is not an ET. He is not a bolt of heavenly electricity that God shoots down every now and then to startle us. Oh, no. The Holy Spirit is God Himself, the third person of the Trinity, present with us, active among us, moving upon us. He is the executive arm of the Godhead on earth. He is the active agent of the Father’s will, and the Son’s redeeming love.

From the very beginning, we see Him. In the first verse of Genesis, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. He was not distant. He was not passive. He was hovering, brooding, moving, vibrating with creative energy, waiting for the word to be spoken so He could bring it to pass. He was the divine artist, poised with the brush, ready to splash the canvas of nothingness with the colors of everything.

When God said, “Let there be light,” it was the Holy Spirit Who brought that light blazing into existence. This is the same Spirit Who came upon the judges and the kings of old. This is the same Spirit Who anointed a young shepherd boy named David; and the Bible says that from that day forward, he became a new man, a mighty king.

This is the same Spirit who overshadowed a young virgin from Nazareth, and the eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and this is the very same Spirit.

Listen to me now. This is the very same Spirit Who descended upon the Lord Jesus like a dove at His baptism. The fullness of God was in Christ. Yes, but He walked this earth and performed His miracles as a man anointed by the Holy Spirit.

Do you see the pattern? The Holy Spirit is God’s personal presence in the affairs of humanity. He is not a force to be harnessed. He is a person to be known. He has a mind. He has a will. He has emotions. He can be grieved. He can be quenched; and oh, He can be welcome.

This is why believing in the Holy Spirit changes everything. To believe in the Holy Spirit is to believe that God did not abandon us. After Jesus ascended into Heaven, He did not leave us as orphans. He sent another. He sent the Holy Spirit to be our comforter, our advocate, our helper, our stand-beside-as-one. This Helper is not here merely to give us a warm fuzzy feeling inside during a hymn. He is here to do the works of Jesus. He is here to continue the ministry of the Messiah. He is the power of God in action.

When a prayer is answered, it is the Holy Spirit moving upon the circumstances. When a word of knowledge is given, it is the Holy Spirit revealing the secrets of the heart. When a broken body is made whole, it is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, flowing into withered limbs and diseased tissue and speaking life where there was only death. He is the operator. He is the divine physician. He is the miracle worker.

We so often pray, “God, if You are there, please do something.” … And all the while, the Holy Spirit is standing right here in this very room, and His power pulsating with the same creative energy that formed the worlds, waiting for us to recognize Him, to yield to Him, to believe in Him.

The problem is not a lack of God’s power in the world. The problem is our failure to recognize and cooperate with the active, present, powerful agent of that power Who has already been given to us.

You would not set in a dark room begging for light while ignoring the lamp plugged into the wall with a switch right by your hand. Yet so many children of God live in spiritual and practical darkness, begging for a miracle, all the while ignoring the person of the Holy Spirit Who has been given to them as the unbreakable connection to the dynamo of Heaven’s power.

So I ask you again, “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Do you believe that the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead is not a legend, not a theological concept, but a living active person Who dwells within the heart of every believer, and Who moves with sovereign freedom throughout this world?

Do you believe that He is right here now in this auditorium, ready to perform the impossible? For you see, the reason I can stand here and tell you with absolute certainty that I believe in miracles is not because of any power of my own, but because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I believe in the Holy Spirit.

I want you to think for a moment about the most beautiful, the most powerful thing you have ever seen in all of God’s creation. Perhaps you thought of a majestic mountain capped with snow, standing silent and strong against the sky. Or maybe you thought of the vast endless ocean with its depths and its mysteries. Or a brilliant sunset that paints the heavens in colors no artist could ever hope to replicate.

These are glorious things. They speak of the power and the creativity of our God. But I want to propose to you tonight that there is something in all of God’s universe that is more majestic, more mysterious, and more miraculous than any mountain, any ocean, or any starry host. It is the human heart. Now, I can almost hear some of you thinking … “The heart? But the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The heart is where the pain is. The heart is where the bitterness lives. The heart is where fear has made its home.” ... And you would be right.

In its state, the human heart is a fortress of self, locked and barred from the inside, cold and hard as stone. But that is precisely why the transformation of a human heart is the greatest miracle the Holy Spirit will ever perform.

You see, it is one thing for God, Who spoke the universe into existence, to command a fever to leave. It is a glorious thing. It is another thing for him to command a withered arm to be made whole. It is a wonderful thing. But listen to me, for God to take a heart that is twisted by sin, calloused by pain, and hardened by pride; a heart that is actively and willfully turned against Him, and to make it new, to make it soft, to make it clean, to make it love what it once hated and hate what it once loved. That is a creative act that dwarfs the making of a million galaxies.

The forming of a star requires only his command. The transformation of a heart required the blood of His own Son. This is the miracle that is available to every single person in this room regardless of your circumstance.

You may have come here tonight praying for a physical healing. God knows your body. He loves your body, and He is able to heal it in an instant. But, oh my friend, if your body is healed tonight and your heart remains unchanged, what have you gained? You would have a temporary house in order while the eternal tenant inside is still lost in darkness. But if the Holy Spirit moves upon your heart tonight, if He breathes life into your Spirit, if He shatters the chains of guilt and shame, if He melts the ice of bitterness and fills you with a love for the Lord Jesus that you have never known before, then you have received a miracle that death itself cannot touch.

Think of the man who has been an alcoholic for thirty years. He has tried everything: the clinics, the promises, the willpower, and it has all ended in the same despair. And then one night, the Holy Spirit moves upon him. There is no flash of light, no thunderclap, but something shifts inside. A hope that wasn’t there before flickers to life. A strength that is not his own rises up within him. The craving that owned him loses its power. That is not willpower. That is a miracle. It is the Holy Spirit creating a new man from the inside out.

Think of the woman whose life has been defined by a grief so profound she thought she would never smile again. The sorrow was a physical weight upon her chest, a constant companion in the empty house.

Then in a quiet moment, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, comes. He doesn’t erase the memory. He does something more miraculous. He pours the balm of Heaven into the wound. He brings a piece that makes no earthly sense. He turns the memory from a source of piercing pain to a place of sacred tender hope. That is not forgetfulness. That is a miracle. It is the resurrection power of Jesus applied to a broken heart.

This is the miracle that underpins all others. This is the foundation. When the Holy Spirit does this work in a human heart, He is preparing a vessel. He is cleaning a temple. He is making a home for Himself; and a heart that is indwelt by the Holy Spirit becomes a conduit for every other kind of miracle.

A healed body is a wonderful testimony, but a transformed life is an eternal one. A changed circumstance can be attributed to luck or chance by a skeptical world, but a changed character, a life turned from selfishness to selfless love, a soul delivered from hatred to forgiveness … there is no explanation for that outside of a supernatural creative miracle-working God.

So tonight, as we believe for every manner of miracle in this place, I want you to first and foremost believe for this one. Open your heart to Him. The Holy Spirit is not standing at a distance waiting for you to clean yourself up. He is standing at the door of your heart, that place of your deepest wounds, your most stubborn habits, your secret shames; and He is asking you to let Him in. He alone can take the stone and make it flesh. He alone can bring life from that which is dead.

You can live your entire life without seeing a physical miracle, but I promise you, no one who has ever encountered the miracle of a transformed heart has ever for a single moment doubted the active, loving and miracle-working power of the Holy Spirit.

There is a question that lingers in the back of so many hearts, a quiet, unspoken whisper that I have seen in the eyes of thousands. It is a question born not of doubt, but of a deep aching desire. The question is: this is the miraculous only for the special ones, for the great evangelists, the spiritual giants, the ones who seem to walk in a different atmosphere than the rest of us.

Is the Holy Spirit a river that flows only through certain anointed channels while the rest of us watch from the dry banks, hoping for a drop to splash our way? Oh, my dear friend, if you have ever felt that, I have a word from the Lord for you tonight. A word that will set your heart on fire with holy expectation. The Holy Spirit in all His infinite creative power does not bypass humanity to accomplish the divine. No, He invites humanity to participate in it.

He chooses the most ordinary, the most common, the most unlikely vessels and fills them with His extraordinary purpose. Your simple, willing, obedient heart is the Holy Spirit’s preferred medium for His miraculous work.

We read the Scriptures and we see it everywhere. He did not drop manna from Heaven without the faithful daily gathering of His people. He did not part the waters of the Jordan without the priests first stepping their feet into the current. He did not bring down the walls of Jericho without the people first raising a shout. He did not multiply the loaves and the fishes without a young boy first handing over his meager lunch. He did not turn the water into wine without the servants first filling the pots to the brim with water.

Do you see the pattern? God provides the miracle, but He almost always asks for our hands to do the ordinary simple practical thing first. Your obedience is the bucket that draws water from the well of His limitless power.

You see, we have this idea that a miracle is something that happens to us while we remain passive spectators. We want to sit in our seat and have the glory of God descend and fix everything without any response from us. But that is not the way of the Holy Spirit. He is a gentleman. He works in cooperation with a yielded will. He speaks to your spirit and then He waits for your feet to move. He places a burden of prayer upon you, and then He waits for your knees to bend. He puts a word of encouragement on your lips for someone else, and then that few dollars in your pocket that you feel compelled to give to someone in need, even when your own budget is tight, that is the Holy Spirit.

When you obey that gentle prompting, something miraculous happens. You are no longer just you. You become the hands of Jesus extended. You become the voice of Jesus speaking. You become the compassion of Jesus made flesh once more. Your ordinary act of “I will go; I will pray; I will give,” becomes the point of contact for the Holy Spirit’s extraordinary power.

You are not the source of the miracle. Never that. But you become the pipeline. You become the vessel. Think of a simple water hose. It is just rubber and brass. It has no water of its own. It cannot create a single drop. But when it is connected to the vast supply of the reservoir and when the valve is turned, life-giving water flows through it to a parched garden. The hose does not boast of the water. It simply yields to the flow and the garden is refreshed. You are that hose. Your obedience is the connection.

The Holy Spirit is the limitless flow of the living water. A dry, thirsty, dying world is the garden waiting to be touched. This is for you. This is not just for the person on this platform. This is for the mother at home washing dishes who feels an urge to pray for her neighbor. This is for the businessman in his office who feels a compassion for a struggling colleague. This is for the teenager in the school hallway who has the courage to speak a word of kindness to the outcast.

In that moment of simple faithful obedience, you are partnering with the God of the universe. You are cooperating with the miracle worker. You are saying, “Holy Spirit, I don’t have much, but what I have, I yield to You. Use my hands. Use my voice. Use [my mind, my body, my love.]*

  *Tape gap, editor's guess in brackets based on similar Kuhlman sermons

And I tell you, the miracles that happen in the quiet, unseen places, the reconciled relationship, the hope restored, the burden lifted. These are just as glorious, just as divine as any dramatic healing you will ever see. They are the miracles born not of a spotlight, but of a surrendered life.

So do not ever believe the lie that you are too ordinary, too broken, too weak to be used by God. “His strength is made perfect in weakness.” His glory shines brightest through cracked pots. All He is looking for is a heart that says, “Yes,” a will that says, “I will obey,” a life that is willing to be the simple common vessel through which the extraordinary river of His Spirit can flow.

For when you understand that your ordinary obedience is the channel for His extraordinary power, you will never again wonder if you can believe in miracles because you will know that you are living in the midst of one. For I believe in miracles because I believe in the Holy Spirit.

There is a silence that falls in a room after a prayer has gone [forth]. It seems unanswered. It is a heavy silence, a sacred silence. It is the silence of a mother sitting by a hospital bed, watching the clock tick past the hour the doctor said was critical. It is the silence of a husband holding the hand that no longer squeezes back. It is the silence of a dream that has been prayed over for years, now lying in ashes at your feet. And in that silence, the enemy of your soul whispers a single devastating question, “Where is your God now?”

If you have known that silence, if you are living in that silence even tonight, then what I am about to say is for you. It is the very heart of what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. We have been talking about the Holy Spirit as the active miracle-working God among us, and He is. But if our belief in the miraculous is founded only on the miracles we see, then it is a house built on sand. It will not survive the first storm of disappointment. It will crumble in the face of that terrible holy silence. But what if? What if the Heaven answered?

Prayer is not a sign of the Holy Spirit’s absence, but the arena of His deepest, most mysterious work. What if His “no” is not a failure of His power, but the application of a wisdom so profound, so far beyond our own that we cannot comprehend its loving purpose? What if the miracle we are praying for with all our hearts in the grand design of a God Who sees the end from the beginning is actually a lesser thing than what He intends to do in us and for us through the waiting, through the suffering, even through the death of that very prayer.

The Holy Spirit is not a celestial vending machine. We do not insert the coin of our faith and demand the candy bar of our choice. He is a person, a wise, loving, sovereign person; and a true relationship with a person involves trust. Not just trust that they will give us what we want, but trust that their heart for us is good, even when their actions confuse us.

I have stood with saints of God who prayed with a faith that could move mountains, and yet the mountain of sickness was not moved. I have seen them buried, and I have stood by their gravesides and witnessed something that defies all human explanation. I have seen a glory on the faces of their loved ones that was not there before. I have seen a faith refined in the fires of grief that has become pure gold. A faith that says, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

That is a miracle. That is a miracle of the highest order. It is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit alone. No human being can manufacture a peace that passes understanding in the midst of shattering loss. No one can conjure up a hope that anchors deep within the veil when the storms of life have torn every anchor loose. That is the supernatural work of the Comforter.

He does not always calm the storm, but He always, always calms the child in the storm. When the apostle Paul begged the Lord three times to remove his thorn in the flesh, what was the answer? It was not the healing he desperately sought. The answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”

The miracle was not the removal of the thorn, but the revelation of a grace so sufficient that Paul could then say, “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” The Holy Spirit was teaching him. And He is teaching us that the ultimate goal is not our comfort, but Christ’s power being made manifest in our lives.

Sometimes His power is displayed most brilliantly not in a dramatic healing, but in a sustained endurance, not in a deliverance from the fire, but in a presence in the fire that leaves us without the smell of smoke on our garments.

This does not negate our belief in healing. It does not cancel our faith in the miraculous. It deepens it. It moves our faith from a fragile trust in a specific outcome to an unshakable trust in a sovereign person.

We are not called to believe in miracles. We are called to believe in the God of miracles. Sometimes the most profound demonstration of His deity is His refusal to be commanded by our limited earthly perspective. So if you are in that place of silence tonight, I am not going to tell you to simply have more faith. I am going to ask you to shift the object of your faith. Place your faith not in the miracle you desire, but in the Miracle-Worker you serve.

Trust the heart of the Holy Spirit even when you cannot trace His hand. For He is with you in that silence. He is groaning with you with utterances that cannot be expressed. He is holding you even when you cannot feel His arms. He is doing a work in the deep hidden places of your spirit that is so precious, so eternal that one day you will look back on this very night, this very pain, and you will say, “He was there, and His ‘no’ was the most painful, most loving gift He could have ever given me.”

For our faith is not the miracle that we see with our eyes, but in the Holy Spirit, Who we know in our hearts. And that is why even in the silence, I can tell you with a peace that is not my own that I believe in miracles because I believe in the Holy Spirit.

So where does this leave us if everything we have said is true? If the Holy Spirit is the active personal miracle-working God Who transforms hearts, Who partners with our obedience, and Whose wisdom transcends our deepest disappointments, then what does that mean for you and me tomorrow morning when we walk out of this place and back into a world that is desperate for a word of hope? It means that believing in the Holy Spirit is not a doctrine to be filed away in our minds. It is not a ticket to a one-time event. It is a call to a lifestyle, a miraculous lifestyle. It is an invitation to live with a different kind of breath in our lungs, a different kind of fire in our souls, a different kind of expectation in our hearts.

To believe in the Holy Spirit is to live with a divine anticipation. It is to wake up in the morning and not just wonder what the day will bring, but to wonder what God will do in the day. It is to pray over a seemingly hopeless situation, not with a sigh of resignation, but with a heart that is leaning forward, watching, waiting for the moment the Red Sea will part. It is to look at a person the world has written off and to see through the eyes of the Spirit not what they are, but what they could be when the breath of Heaven touches them.

This is what it means to be miracle-minded. It is not a denial of reality. Oh no, it is seeing a deeper reality. It is seeing the invisible. It is hearing the inaudible. It is believing that behind the grim headlines, behind the diagnosis, behind the broken relationship, there is another narrative being written by the finger of God. And we, because we have the Holy Spirit, are let in on the secret. We are the ones who get to declare the end of the story before the final chapter has been played out. We are the ones who can look at a valley of dry bones. And because the Spirit of God is upon us, we can prophesy to those bones and say, “Live, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”

This miraculous lifestyle is not lived in a stained glass bubble. It is lived on the front lines of a broken world. It is lived in the grocery store line when you feel a nudge to pray for the struggling young mother’s groceries behind you. That is a miracle of divine provision, and you get to be part of it. It is lived in your office when you have the courage to speak a word of peace into a conflict that is tearing a team apart. That is a miracle of reconciliation, and you get to be part of it.

It is lived on your knees in your living room praying for a neighbor you’ve never met and feeling the burden of the Holy Spirit for their soul. That is a miracle of intercession, and you are partnering with Heaven itself. That is a life of radical, courageous love.

The world knows how to love those who love them back, but the Holy Spirit empowers us to love the unlovely, to forgive the unforgivable, to hope for the hopeless. When you love someone who has deeply wounded you, that is not human sentiment. That is a miracle. When you extend kindness to someone who can do absolutely nothing for you in return, that is a miracle.

This love is the greatest evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and it is the most powerful miracle of all. It shatters strongholds that no argument could ever break. And this life is fueled by a hope that is not based on the stock market or on political polls or on the latest medical report.

It is a hope that is anchored in the character of God Who cannot lie, and in the power of a Spirit Who cannot fail. It is a hope that allows you to face a financial crisis and still have peace. It is a hope that allows you to receive bad news and still have a song in the night. It is a hope that stares into the face of death itself and smiles because it knows that death is not the end but the doorway to a greater life.

This is not a passive belief. It is an active, breathing, walking, talking partnership with the God of the universe. It means your life becomes a living testimony, a walking declaration that God is not dead, that He is not silent, that He is not absent. Your very existence becomes a sermon. Your peace in the storm preaches. Your joy and sorrow preaches. Your unwavering love in a hateful world preaches.

So I ask you tonight as you leave this place, will you live a miraculous life? Will you choose to see with the eyes of the Spirit? Will you choose to love with the heart of the Spirit? Will you choose to hope with the tenacity of the Spirit? Will you dare to believe that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is not only for you, but is in you, ready to flow through you to a world that is dying for a touch of the supernatural?

Do not simply believe that miracles can happen. Believe that they can happen through you. Believe that your ordinary life can become a canvas for the extraordinary brushstrokes of God. For the greatest miracle is not just what you see with your eyes, but the life you live by faith. And that is a life I know is possible because I believe in miracles, for I believe in the Holy Spirit.

"Weapon of Tongues", K Kuhlman

"Why we need tongues", K Kuhlman

"5 Things Tongues Do ", K Kuhlman

"Pray and Hear God", K Kuhlman

"Tongues 20 min/day", K Kuhlman

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