Lady comes to preacher and says, 'My calves hurt, why don't you pray for me'.
The preacher says, "Why do you wear 8 inch high healed shoes?"
That's a made-up scenario, but it's a practical illustration. If someone's legs hurt, and he's been standing up for 18 hours, doe she need a miracle, or does he need to sit down. Paul told Timothy to take some wine for his stomach's sake. Some people use that as some sort of evidence that miracles were ceasing. That's a rather weak argument.
We need to realize that the apostles were human beings who believed God. Peter was able to walk on water while he believed. He doubted and he sank. So they probably didn't just do miracles like Superman automatically flies and uses x-ray vision. Maybe they did just declare people healed on the spot through the moving of the Spirit, or just because they believed God.
But I notice that Peter knelt down and prayed before raising Dorcas from the dead. Raising someone from the dead can have some implications. Can you imagine if Dorcas' husband had just hurried up and married her sister or something because his wife was gone and he had some kids or grandkids in the house to take care of, he needed a wife, and she needed a husband? (Romantic story, I know. This is totally hypothetical.) Then, if Peter came along, and raised Dorcas, they'd have to sort that out. I don't think that had happened. But maybe Peter was praying for the will of God on this, and leading from the Spirit. Or maybe his prayer had to do with strengthening his own faith.
Paul saw that the lame man in Lystra had the faith to be healed before telling him to stand up.
Paul got sick fairly early on in his ministry, at least by Acts 16. When Paul first went to the Galatians, he wrote in Galatians, that he had an infirmity. He said they would have given him their own eyes. So he may have had an eye illness at that point. This was early, probably the churches mentioned in Acts 14. If not then, Paul was in Galatia by Acts 16. he did many great miracles after that. It doesn't make sense to say that Paul's ability to do miracles dried up because of cessationism in Galatia, because he did many great miracles after that. Yet people will use the same argument about Timothy, when it isn't all that clear that he was actually sick at the time, and Paul was giving him some practical advice. Maybe Paul was commenting more on tee-totalerism than his health per se.
