Miracles do not happen! There are some sports fans who would highly disagree.

When I was a child, I followed baseball. Bobby Richardson was from my hometown of Sumter, SC, and was a player for the New York Yankees. Richardson was on the Yankees’ roster from 1955-1966. During that period, the Yankees won several World Series. In one of those series, Bobby Richardson was outstanding. He hit a grand slam in one game, and he won the MVP and was the only player to ever win that award while being on the losing team. As kids in a small town, Bobby Richardson was our hero, and he was the talk at the school lunch table.

There was a lot of talk about another team from New York, and that team was the Mets. The Mets were established in 1962, and there is no nice way to say it. They were awful! They were mocked and the brunt of many jokes. Their record was abysmal, and that is a generous way of saying it.

In 1969, when I was a senior in high school, people were still laughing at the Mets. As they began that season, no one gave them any hope of being successful. Before 1969 the Mets had never had a winning season. In what was considered one of the biggest upsets in baseball history, the young Mets team rallied behind manager Gil Hodges and star pitcher Tom Seaver to produce a winning season and to win the World Series. That team became known as “The Miracle Mets.”

Just ask Mets’ fans. Miracles do happen!

There are many in the Christian Church who teach that miracles do not happen today. The cessation of miracles is the theological view—known as cessationism—that miraculous sign gifts like healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues stopped operating after the death of the first-century apostles and the completion of the New Testament.

I go on record right now as saying I highly disagree with cessationism. While I do not believe that we command God to change every situation because we said so, I know that God still does miracles. I have seen God do miracles in myself, my family, and in many others.

I could write many paragraphs about the miracles I have experienced personally and about the miracles I have seen in the lives of others. Let me just cite one of those that I know to be true.

One of my friends who is married to a pastor was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent surgery, chemo, and radiation. At the end of the treatment, the doctors gave her a grim diagnosis and said there was no hope. It was a devastating blow.

Those of us who still believed in miracles began to ask God for a healing miracle. He is a merciful God. When my friend went back for a checkup six months later, there was no sign of cancer. NO SIGN. Twenty years later, there is still no sign of cancer in her body.

Yes, He is a God who still does miracles. I have seen financial miracles, physical miracles, spiritual miracles, and marriage miracles.

To say that miracles do not happen is, in my opinion, an unwarranted dogmatic view. I do not claim to know why God does the miraculous in some situations and not in others. That is God’s business. I trust Him either way.

I will continue to ask God to intervene in situations where miracles are needed. Why? Because miracles do happen—even after the 1969 World Series.

“Through faith in the name of Jesus, this man was healed—and you know how crippled he was before. Faith in Jesus’ name has healed him before your very eyes.” – Acts 3:16 NLT