What exactly did Jesus mean when he said, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” (John 14:12-14) Does this mean we should expect as true followers of Christ to perform miracles, healing, and all sorts of other things, just like Jesus?
This promise was given in the context of announcing the coming Holy Spirit. When Jesus became a man, He set aside His Godly powers and voluntarily limited His abilities to only those things that a man could do. That was one of the points of the temptation wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11). Satan tried to get Him to pick up His Godly powers again by creating bread from stones and jumping off the pinnacle of the Temple, but that would have violated His mission. He had to become a man to save mankind.
All of His miracles were performed through the power of the Holy Spirit. When He said that anyone who has faith in Him could do the same things He had been doing, He meant that the power of the Holy Spirit would henceforth be made available to all believers. When combined with sufficient faith, this power would result in miracles just like those He had performed.
Some say this power was taken from the Church after the New Testament was completed, because with the written word we would no longer need miracles to bring others to faith in the Lord.
But the fact is that believers have been performing miracles in the Lord’s name throughout the Church Age. And by many accounts there are more miracles being performed around the world today than there were in the early days of the Church.