A christian blog with a decidedly biblical perspective on the world and events around us. Look around, read, enjoy and feel free to comment. Interesting story, send us the info via our contact page. Subscribe by clicking here.
Subscribe to RSS
MIRACLES PART VIII: THROUGH THE CYCLONE AND TORNADO
Last week we told about Bryce Gaudian’s experience with a storm in the Drake Passage. This week we have two more storms in which God’s hand is clearly visible in providing protection – in one case, before thousands of witnesses.
The Columbus Day Storm of 1962
On October 12, 1962, the Pacific Northwest experienced arguably the most severe extratropical storm of the century. The Heuval family of Brush Prairie, Washington recalls this infamous cyclone and God’s protection in the middle of it.
The storm hit only a few days after Jim Heuval’s sixth birthday, and he remembers that Mr. Christianson let their class out early. He skipped home happily in the swirling leaves to find that most of the rest of the family was home early that day too - Mom and Dad, Jim’s sisters Helen, Ruth and Nancy as well as his brother Bill. As Jim watched through the single pane windows; the trees in the woods below the house swayed in the ever increasing winds.
Bill Heuval remembers that day vividly. He was older, and at age 11 he had to ride the bus home from school. “I remember a tree had fallen down across the road,” Bill said, “and some woman came out screaming that a tree had fallen on her house and she was afraid there would be an electrical fire.” When he finally got home from school, Bill’s mother sent him down to the field to get a calf and put it in the barn, and on the way down he’d put his arms out and let the wind blow him across the field. “I was just having fun,” Bill said.
Back in the house, the black phone rang. The boys’ older brother Victor needed a ride home from a logging camp high up in the Cascade Mountains. Jim told us, “Minutes later, Dad was driving our Studebaker Scotsman with me as his sole passenger. Little did we realize, we were driving through one of the strongest storms to assail the Pacific Northwest in the 20th Century.”
To reach Victor, Jim’s father John Heuval had to drive across the Yale Bridge, a 300-foot steel span suspended from two 88 foot high towers 50 feet above the Lewis River. “I most vividly remember this portion of our journey,” Jim said, because the Yale Bridge, “was visibly rolling and swaying in the wind.” Yet, the Studebaker Scotsman made it across.
It was dark when they arrived at Victor’s boarding house. The three of them still had to turn around and drive back to the farm, a circuitous route through the howl of hurricane force winds, often through roadside fields to avoid fallen trees and power lines, taking care not to re-cross the Yale Bridge.
Back at the house, Bill remembers, “The house was shaking like a son of a gun, and the wind picked up gravel off the driveway and shattered the window on the front door of the house. I remember we were praying that God would keep the house on its foundations.” The old farmhouse they lived in was more than 80-years-old and had never been properly attached to its rock foundation. “The farmhouse was just resting on rock; there was no concrete … no hold down straps, that’s for sure,” Bill said. “I remember being on the floor praying and praying.”
God answered those prayers in tangible ways. When Dad, Jim and Victor got home, the entire outside of the house was visibly swaying with each gust of the deafening wind. Inside, the house, though, there was no movement. Jim said, “Dad parked close to the front door and carried me into the eerily swaying house. Inside, I could still hear loud cries of wind sweeping up the side of the hill and slamming the side of the house, yet there was no interior movement of the walls - no vibration, nothing!”
When the storm was over, the Heuval family learned that their next-door neighbors’ entire garage had been picked up, carried 100 feet, and dumped over upside down in their front yard. The biggest fir tree on the Heuval land had been blown over, and they’d lost three huge locust trees around their house too. Yet, the Heuval farmhouse resting on its rock foundation hadn’t lost a shingle. “God miraculously kept the house on its foundations, and no trees fell on the house,” Bill said. “Most importantly,” said Jim, “God had protected us all.”
The 1999 Oshkosh Tornado:
Thousands of Pathfinder campers gathered for the annual worldwide Pathfinder Camporee in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in early August 1999. Laurian Garletts volunteered as one of the camp leaders that year, and she remembers that there were, “bazillions of kids.” There was also a terrible storm brewing. Lauren said:
“The tornado warnings kept going off, and we kept asking, ‘Do we need to take shelter?’ Which, there was no shelter because we were all in tents in a big field. The leaders were all trying to figure out what to do.”
Kathryn Styer was 15-years-old at the time, and she said, “I was deathly afraid of tornadoes.” She had always hated storms as a child because she feared there would be a tornado. Perhaps her phobia was influenced by The Wizard of Oz. “My mom loves that movie,” Kathryn said.
The storm that day in 1999 made a large impression on Kathryn. “There were tornado threats. I remember we were waiting to go to sleep in our tents, and we heard the sirens. The adults were worried, and we all got out and prayed. I was terrified, but I really felt peaceful praying, and I felt like God was going to protect us.”
In Laurian’s prayer group, she told everybody, “I think we should be praising God, like in the Bible. We should be praising God in advance for protection.” All the groups had formed prayer circles all around the camp.
Finally, somebody decided the campers should head for the airplane hangar near the airfield, but Laurian was skeptical, “I was thinking, ‘Oh great. Now instead of having tent pegs flying at us, we’ll have huge I-beams landing on us.’”
They faced real danger. The tornado was heading straight for the camp, and if it had hit, it would have ripped right through thousands campers. Instead, the tornado that had been heading toward them split in half and missed the camp altogether.
“It was the big news that week,” Laurian said. “The tornado came right at our camp, then split and went around and joined again on the other side. The satellites picked it up, and for the next few days the news kept replaying the satellite imagery over and over. We couldn’t see it from the center of the camp – the camp was huge - but there was devastation all around us. ”
Kathryn said, “After the threat passed, the next morning when we woke up they told us what had happened. It was amazing. ”
We asked, “Were you ever afraid of tornadoes after that?”
“No,” Kathryn said. “I wasn’t. It’s also a story that I can share with people who may not know God, because even if I don’t say that God did it, it’s just obvious.”
No matter what storm we are facing in our lives, we know that God is able to protect us through it and bring us safely to the other side. As Jesus said in John 16:33, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” God never said our lives would be storm-free, but He did promise He would never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).
LIVING FOSSILS KICK AT EVOLUTION - (Print)
In 1938, men fishing off the east coast of South Africa caught a peculiar fish that was identified as a coelacanth (”SEE-la-canth”). This find shocked the paleontological world, because the coelacanth was a fish thought to have died out with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago. Additional specimens of coelacanth have since been found in the waters of the Comoros, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar. It is one of many “Lazarus taxa” – creatures once thought to be extinct, only to be “resurrected” by appearing as real living, breathing organisms long after having disappeared from the fossil record.
Darwinian evolution depends on the idea that life on earth has changed over the years due to natural selection and the survival of the fittest species. When the environment changes, those species that are best able to adapt to the new climate or habitat do so, and the rest die out. Darwin presented evolutionary change as a gradual series of steps in which one set of creatures slowly changed into another set of creatures, leaving millions of extinct things streaming behind.
There turned out to be a problem with Darwin’s phyletic gradualism, though; it wasn’t supported by the fossil record. Darwin expected that as paleontologists dug up more fossils, they would find a lineup of gradually changing forms to support his theory. The thousands of gradual intermediate forms were not found, though. Even the horse series and whale series, pointed to as evidence for the evolution of these creatures, have serious weaknesses.
To deal with the massive gaps in the evolutionary fossil record, in 1972 Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge proposed the punctuated equilibria theory. They argued that evolution didn’t occur gradually the way Darwin thought it did, but in spurts. Gould and Eldredge made the case that species remained unchanged for long periods of time, but evolved rapidly when some stress in the environment forced adaptation. Rather than presenting a smooth, continuous, gradual change over millions of years, which the fossil record did not support, they argued evolution had occurred in spurts of change, with species splitting up to form new species. Since these changes were rare and since fossilization was a relatively rare phenomenon, evolutionists should expect gaps in the fossil record, they said.
Regardless of whether Gould and Eldredge’s argument withstands scrutiny, these two contrasting views of the way that evolution works have something in common; they expect species to change. When certain creatures show up, looking basically the same as their ancient fossilized ancestors allegedly buried millions of years ago, it causes puzzlement. First, if these species did not die out, why do they not appear in the more recent fossil record? Also, if they were the successful versions of the species, why do they look so much like their petrified grandparents, who notably did not survive?
Coelocanth is an oddity. These bizarre, oily, foul-tasting fish look much as they did when they were buried in rock layers eons ago. They are not alone, either. Other living fossils include the Monoplacophora, a class of mollusks that were found off of Costa Rica in 1952 after having been thought extinct for the past 380 million years. The Laotian Rock Rat was found in 1996 after having been thought “dead” for 11 million years. The ant genus Gracilidris was found in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina even though it had been allegedly extinct for more than 15 million years. And if you want to purchase your very own living fossil, Beds & Borders Nursery in Parrish, Florida has Wollemi pines for sale. A hiker named David Noble found a stand of these of trees in Wollemi National Park near Sydney, Australia in 1994. In the wild they are still one of the rarest plants in the world.
Fossils like this, as well as the Metasequoia, the Nightcap Oak, the Chacoan Peccary (a pig) or Mountain Pygmy Possum were all once thought to have died out millions of years ago, only to be “surprise!” found alive and well after all, relatively unchanged from the way their family members looked before they were locked in stone.
The coelocanth also demonstrates the danger of paleontologists’ making assumptions about the internal organs or DNA of creatures based on their skeletons. Prior to its being found alive, the coelocanth had been considered a link between fish and land animals. Paleontologists had suggested that the swim bladder of the coelocanth had turned into a lung which allowed it to breathe when it crawled out onto land. When a living coelocanth swim bladder was examined, though, it ruined that idea. The swim bladder was thin and filled with fat and in no position to act like a lung, no matter how much the paleontologists wanted the coelocanth’s lobed fins to act like crawling arms.
Have certain species changed over time? Certainly they have. There were once marmot-like gophers with horns and giant sloths as large as VW busses. Yet, the gophers were still gophers and the sloths were still sloths, and on the whole were not so different from the same creatures we see today. Rather than showing a convenient series of evolutionary steps, the fossil record continually shows specific groups of creatures that display wide variety within their groupings, but do not demonstrate much evidence of having changed into something else.
Related Links:
• What About The Evolution Of The Horse - CARM
• Ernst: Florida Is Home For Living Fossil No. 17718 - Sarasota Herald Tribune
• Creation or Evolution: Living Fossils - DocStoc.com
• Scientists Listen For Sign Of Sturgeon In River - The Augusta Chronicle
• Ecologists Receive Mixed News from Fossil Record - Science Daily
• Whale Evolution: Another Whopper - Apologetics Press
• Topical Study: Creation-Evolution - Koinonia House
Jesus Christ spent his days teaching and healing people, and even feeding people miraculously. His authority did not stop there, though. During a fierce storm on the Seat of Galilee, when the disciples feared the boat would capsize, they woke Jesus up from his nap in the bottom of the boat. Mark 4:39 tells us that Jesus stood and said, “Peace. Be still.” Instantly the storm ceased. He then reproved the disciples for their lack of faith. There should be no wonder there; of course God has authority even over the weather - and Jesus can still calm storms today. The following is the first of two different stories we have to share about God’s hand in protecting His children even in the fiercest of weather.
The Drake Passage
In March of 1980, Bryce Gaudian was on the US Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea on an Operation Deep Freeze mission to Antarctica. The ship was crossing the Drake Passage to go to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the entire world, to pick up some N.O.A.A. scientists to take them back down to Antarctica to study penguin rookeries. The Pacific and the Atlantic meet at the Drake Passage, and it’s historically known for being a stormy region.
On that trip, Bryce said, “We hit a doozy of a storm.” The storm lasted three days with 40-foot seas, and after three days in a ship with everything closed up, the air got foul. “The ship rolled to and fro, sideways and front ways, and waves are crashing,” Bryce said. “It was an awful storm, and seasickness is such a terrible phenomenon to the body. It’s horrible. You just feel forsaken.”
After three days of this, Bryce decided he really needed to petition God on behalf of the ship:
“I felt a necessity to go outside to pray. I worked my way to the fantail of the ship, the back of the ship. I looked out the porthole, and I saw a coil of wire, and I reasoned that I could hold on to it. As the ship rolled from side to side, I could see the sky was dark with storm clouds. It was a dark stormy sky on both sides of the ship. I said a short prayer, Lord, ‘I’m out here in the middle of nowhere, but I know that because you created me, you care for me, and a lot of us on the ship are hurting a lot right now. I know that you calmed the sea for the disciples, and I pray that you would calm the ocean for us too.’
“I opened my eyes after saying this short prayer, and the ship rolled to my left, and out of a previously dark stormy sky, I saw an enormous double rainbow, and the ship rolled to my right, and there were these beaming streams of light coming through the dark clouds. And I knew, I had an absolute peace in my heart, that God had heard my prayer and I knew that God cared about me in the middle of nowhere. So I went back into the ship and told my friends that God had heard my prayer. And it was just a couple of hours later that the previously stormy seas were calmed to glass. And we had no more storms the 8000 miles back home to our home port of Pier 36 in Seattle. ”
Bryce has since experienced many examples of the power of God working in his life and in the lives of the people around him. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on a ranch in Wyoming or in the middle of a big city,” he said, “there’s nowhere on the planet that God can’t hear you from. It affirmed in me forever that God hears us, He cares about us, and He can take care of us no matter where we are. Like the Psalm says, ‘If I go to the depths , You are there. ‘ Even in the Drake Passage, God heard me.”
[To be continued next week "The Columbus Day storm."]
What a difference a sad event in someone’s life makes.
GEORGE CARLIN (His wife recently died…)
Isn’t it amazing that George Carlin - comedian of the 70’s and 80’s - could write something so very eloquent…and so very appropriate.
A Message by George Carlin:
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things.
We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete…
Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.
Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn’t cost a cent.
Remember, to say, ‘I love you’ to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.
Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
[At their request, we have not included the last names of the two soldiers interviewed for this article.]
Our military personnel in the Middle East face daily dangers from roadside bombs and enemy fire. Not only do we support our soldiers to do their jobs, but we also recognize the absolute importance of praying for these courageous people who are placing their lives on the line to serve America. Many people in the military can testify about God’s faithfulness to answer those prayers with great protection in the midst of serious jeopardy. This is just one story that two Green Berets had to share.
On January 28, 2007, a group of US Special Forces soldiers, along with the Iraqi Special Forces they had trained, were getting ready to leave the Iraqi city of Najaf. Sergeant First Class Donny told us, “We were just about to head out when we got a call asking if we could help the mayor get out of this little firefight he was in.”
Ready to help, they drove down to the troubled spot and spent the next three to four hours fighting until they had successfully rescued the major of Najaf. When that mission had been accomplished, they returned to their Najaf operating base “and got plussed up with ammo and food and gas.”
Staff Sergeant Tyler told us, “We’re thinking, ‘That was bad.’ Dude. That wasn’t even the beginning of it. It just got worse and worse and worse.”
The second time they tried to get ready to leave, they got a second call, “Hey, we got an Army bird down,” and they went back out to rescue a downed US helicopter, hoping the personnel on board were still alive. “It was kind of weird, with fires coming from all over the place, people taking pot shots from alleys or berms. The desert’s kind of crazy,” Donny told us.
Tyler said, “Then we picked a route, and it just happened that that route went through the center of the Heaven’s Army. And right there is the 12th Imam surrounded by all his people.”
They had decided they’d drive around a big berm and out to the helicopter crash site. “We had to drive between two berms,” Donny said, “That’s not good – it’s a perfect place for an ambush.” There didn’t appear to be any other route to the helicopter, so the train of trucks carrying fewer than 100 US and Iraqi soldiers began to drive right between the two berms. As soon as they did, men later identified as the Army of Heaven Muslim cult poured up to the top of the berms and began shooting down at them from only 15-20 feet away.
“They used the berm as cover and started shooting at us, basically at point blank range,” Donny said. “I was inside the Humvee behind bullet-proof glass, but the guys like Tyler in the back of the truck, they were only protected on the sides - the back was open and totally exposed.”
Tyler later found out that his sister and father and brother all had sudden urges to pray for him that day. “I was walking through the front door,” his sister told us, “and I thought, ‘Wow, Tyler really could die.’ So I stopped and prayed for him and his team members right then. Then I went on with my day.”
The ambush was serious. “We were fish in a barrel,” Donny said. “They had a little mini-city they were building there, and we drove right into the middle of that hornet’s nest.”
“But you guys didn’t get shot?” we asked.
“It’s so weird, I didn’t get a scratch,” Tyler said. “Not a single scratch. And this is like, you put your finger up in the air, and it gets shot off. It was unbelievable fury! Unbelievable fury! The Imam’s guys were so close we could reach out and touch them. I was definitely red most of the time on my ammo.”
“Can you believe that?” Donny said, “That’s God.”
Fewer than 100 US and Iraqi soldiers were attacked by an army of 600-1000 fighters who believed their leader was the Muslim Messiah.
“These guys were high,” Donny said. “I’m looking directly into these guys’ eyes through my bullet-proof window, and they were high.”
One by one the US trucks drove through that ambush, and Donny was afraid the enemy would shoot out their tires and overrun them. Instead, one by one the trucks all made it through and they were able to drive far enough to turn around and get into a good position to battle back. They battled until nightfall, waiting until it was dark enough to check out the burning, charred helicopter.
Donny said, “We’re not the ones who did the battle damage assessment, but there were over 300 we killed, you know, between us and calling in fire, and 300-400 more were arrested.”
In contrast, the US side lost two Iraqis during the fight. Tyler grieved over the two Iraqis, men that he had trained. Not a single American was seriously injured.
“Generally, if you set up an ambush,” Donny pointed out, “you should kill somebody. I’m not saying they were bad, because it was a pretty good ambush, but we had God.”
Tyler said, “After a battle like that, you don’t know what to say to your guys - to the Iraqis we had trained - to motivate them to continue fighting. After a fight like that, even though we won, it was a hard, hard win. You don’t know what to say to them. But, every single one of them, down to the new 18-year-olds, they all came back the next day. Because they can quit if they want - it would be hard to keep them from running off. But, they didn’t. It really speaks volumes of them. I’ll never again doubt the abilities of the Iraqis to fight.
The Army later learned that the Soldiers of Heaven had been intending to attack Najaf the next day on the climax of the annual Shiite celebration of Ashura. They intended to massacre the clerical leadership, take charge of Najaf, and declare their leader the 12th Imam. The US soldiers’ route between the wrong two berms ended all of that.
Tyler said, “Afterward, when it was all done, Donny looked at me and said, ‘We need to pray,’ and I said, ‘Roger that.’ We got down on our knees and thanked God.”
Related Links:
• US, Iraqi Forces Kill 250 Militants In Najaf [Incorrectly says two Americans were killed] - The Age (AU)
• Soldiers of Heaven - Wikipedia
MIRACLES PART V: EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED - (Print)
Hilary (Roberts) Jones reclined her seat on the passenger side of Brian Reed’s car to relax as Brian started to drive over the mountains. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1993, and Hilary, Brian and Hilary’s friend Amy drove through the snowy night to get back to school at Northwest College in Kirkland, Washington. It was a dark, quiet drive, with snow beginning to fall as they drove down I-90 past Ellensburg. On the radio, they listened to Jack Hayford preach about expecting the unexpected – about expecting miracles.
In the back seat, Amy took off her seatbelt to relax and get some sleep on the long drive over Snoqualmie Pass. Hilary said, “I had just leaned my seat back when we hit a patch of ice and the car started to swerve. Then we hit the side of the road, and the car jumped and rolled. I yelled, ‘Jesus please save us!’ while the car rolled over.” As the roof of the car caved in, Hilary’s head swung up and cracked into it.
In the back seat, Amy didn’t shout for help. She told us, “I just thought, ‘Darn. We’re going to go off the road. It’s going to take a long time to get back to school, and I’m not going to get my sociology paper done.’” As soon as the car began to roll, though, Amy began to tumble in the back seat because she had no seatbelt on.
Hilary said, “While we were rolling, I pictured in my mind’s eye two angels spinning around Amy as she flew up in the car. I think they kept her in the car because she could have easily gone through the back window. ”
“That’s what the police officer told me too,” Amy said. “He asked Hilary if she was wearing her seatbelt, and she said, ‘Yes.’ He asked Brian if he was wearing his seatbelt, and he said, ‘Yes.’ Then he asked me, and I said, ‘No, sir.’ And he shouted, ‘What! Don’t you know you could have been flung from the vehicle! You could have been killed!’ Then he gave Brian a ticket for driving too fast for the weather conditions, but he didn’t give me a ticket. I …I do always wear my seatbelt now though.”
The car had come to a stop upright. The roof above Hilary’s head had been badly crushed in, but because she had been reclined when the rollover took place, her head swung up into the dented roof rather than being directly smashed. Still, while Amy suffered no harm, Hilary’s head and neck and back were painfully injured.
“I remember looking through the cracked windshield and feeling this huge despair and isolation,” Hilary said. “And then God gave me peace all of a sudden. Unexplainable peace. I was praying in the spirit, and it was like I was speaking right to God and He was speaking to me, and He was just pouring peace into me. All Amy said during the accident was ‘Ouch’ because she’d hit her face against the ceiling. Brian wasn’t hurt either. He had glass in his shoes, but he didn’t have a single scratch on him.”
Two young Central Washington University students named Orrin and ____ took Hilary and Brian and Amy to the nearest hospital, then helped them get rides back home over the mountains to the Seattle area.
Hilary’s neck and back continued to hurt her. “Back at school,” she said, “I was in excruciating pain with my back. I had to take a pillow with me to class.”
Amy remembers, “I would joke with her, and she’d say, ‘Haha..owww… don’t make me laugh’ because she hurt so much.”
Two days after the accident, Hilary wandered down to the cafeteria to eat, still in pain and hardly able to raise her head. She saw her friend and fellow Idahoan John Vincent, and went up to him. “I said, ‘John, would you pray for me? My back really hurts.’ John said, ‘Sure!’ So, he prayed for me, and as he prayed, I felt this tingle go through my back and up my spine, and the pain just went away. I told John, ‘I don’t feel any pain anymore.’”
For several minutes, Hilary walked around, testing it out, making sure that she was really healed. “Then I got excited and started telling everybody.”
Amy recalled, “I was standing by the Pecota Center, and Hilary comes bouncing up to me. She said, ‘Make me laugh,’ and I said, ‘What? Oh! You’re healed?’ She said, ‘Yeah!’ It was obvious that something big had happened, because that morning Hilary had been grumpily carrying her pillow everywhere, and now she was standing there all bubbly with a huge grin on her face.’”
Did Hilary’s back bother her after that? “No,” she told us. “I was just fine.”
For five weeks we have passed on miracles experienced by normal people, people whom God has touched and protected in powerful ways. But, we’re not done yet. And neither is God. He is still doing miracles, healing and protecting and speaking into human lives. What’s more, Jesus promised that we would do greater things than he did because he went to the Father (John 14:2). Let us continue to expect great things of God through His Son.
On a Sunday morning in early 2008, Bill Courtemanche knelt at the altar of his church in Hedgesville, WV, frustrated over the suffering around him. The church was still grieving over a 36-year-old wife and mother in the church who had died of cancer. Bill knelt and asked God, “Lord, what is going on? Why do we have all this suffering? Do you even hear our prayers?”
Bill had struggled with alcoholism early in his adulthood, but in 1984 he had rededicated his life to the Lord and had been sober ever since. He believed that his faith had grown strong over the years, but now he was struggling with what seemed like God’s lack of action in the middle of great need. Things kept going wrong, and it seemed as though God had gone silent.
The fact was that Bill couldn’t hear very well anyway. In 1992, Bill had worked as an undercover drug task force officer. One night during a drug raid, a gun went off near his ear, and the concussion of the shot permanently damaged his hearing. His left ear became completely deaf, and he lost 40 percent of the hearing in his right ear. For the next 17 years, Bill lived in a world of muffled noises. He learned to lip read, but he told us his deafness, “really irritated my wife. She kept bugging me to get a hearing aid.” Still, he grew used to living with a lot of silence.
That day in 2008, as Bill knelt at the altar pouring out his heart before God, he suddenly felt a terrible burning in his ears. “I felt like my head was on fire, like it was about to explode. My ears were burning up, and I felt really ill. So, I went home after church and lay down.” He slept that afternoon, and when he woke up he felt much better. The burning and nausea were gone. Then he noticed something strange. After 17 years, he was able to hear out of both his ears. “It was bizarre,” he said. “I would hear things. I went to an audiologist, and he said, there’s nothing wrong with your ears.’”
Bill grinned, “I always justified it as God’s saying, ‘Can you hear Me now?’ ”
That was just the first miracle.
On a Thursday night, Bill got a call that his mother had been found dead on her bathroom floor. The paramedics had arrived and worked on her and decided to take her to Uniontown Hospital, where her heart stopped beating again. At that point they put Bill’s mother on life support.
“She was an elderly person who had just had a heart attack and was dead. I don’t know why they put her on life support. They life-flighted her to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which was a screw up because they aren’t supposed to transport people on life support.”
Even though his mother was technically brain dead, Bill spent the whole evening sitting beside her, praying for her and reading to her, “and doing the things you do when you don’t know what to do.” He went down to the chapel the next morning, and a chaplain came in. The chaplain approached Bill, who explained the dilemma he felt he was in. He did not want to remove the life support and let his mother die, but she was only “alive” because she was hooked to machines. “I was troubled,” Bill said, “His answer to me was that life support machines are man-made and only God can terminate a life. If she was meant to go Home, she’d die, and if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t.” So, they set a time on Saturday to remove the life support, and Bill’s brothers and sisters went in to say goodbye.
About 11:30 on Saturday morning, Bill entered the hospital room in order to have the machines removed. He told us:
“I was told to kiss her on the head and kiss her goodbye. When I did, she woke up! It freaked everybody out. The doctor there said he’d been up there for 15 years as the head of the cardiology unit. He said literally, ‘It’s a miracle, she’s supposed to be dead.’ The funny part of it was, I was talking to her that afternoon and she told me, ‘You know the most annoying thing? You know how hard it is to sleep when somebody sits there all night reading to you?’ Here’s a woman who has no brain activity hearing everything that I’m reading to her. She was out of the hospital two weeks later.”
The Apostle Paul described the curious mixture of struggle and victory in the Christian life when he said, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed,” (2Cor 4:8-9). We may feel sometimes that God has abandoned us, but He has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5). God loves us so deeply, so truly, so completely, that He gave His Son to die for us. He would not pay that great price just to drop us. As we celebrate Passover Week and Resurrection Sunday, may we thank our Savior in the truest way possible. May we believe Him when He says He loves us and trust Him enough to put our lives fully in His hands. Perhaps when we get there, we’ll find we’re better able to hear Him after all.
Related Links:
• Trusting God in the Face of Impossibilities: Part 1 - Koinonia House
• Trusting God in the Face of Impossibilities: Part 2 - Koinonia House
• How Can We Prove that God Loves Us? - Koinonia House
People suffer from terrible pain and illnesses all the time and, and despite modern medicine the problems often linger for years without true healing or relief. While some sufferers never get better, others experience immediate physical healing through the touch of God. The reasons for God’s healing one person and not another are often mysterious, but we do know that God is faithful, and there are cases when God has not healed people the first time they received prayer, but did heal them later. In other cases, the healing might have little to do with the knowledge of the person who was healed, but everything to do with God’s working through His people for His purposes.
Kelli Thomas: Our office manager’s husband, Jim Mader, witnessed the healing of Kelli Thomas, a woman whose knee had been severely injured in a motorcycle accident. The cartilage had been torn and she lived in constant pain. “She walked in that day with her husband,” Jim said, “and she was noticeably limping into church. After the service I asked her what was wrong. She said, ‘I have this knee that’s been damaged.’ I said, ‘Can we lay hands on you and pray for your knee?’ So, she came up and sat down in one of the chairs in the first row, and Randy Hess and I prayed over her knee. We anointed her with oil and prayed a short prayer that God would bring healing to her knee. All of a sudden she starts bawling. She said, ‘I feel something in my knee.’ I asked her if she could stand up. So, she hopped up, and then she started crying really hard saying, ‘There’s no pain.’ Her husband Chuck’s eyes were as big as saucers. She said, ‘I’m healed. I’m healed.’ And she walked out of church that day with no limp.”
Amy Joy Hess has her own story to tell about Kelli Thomas’ knee. “It was funny,” she told us. “Kelli was walking into church a couple of weeks after that, and she said, ‘You know, sometimes when I’m at work I still limp, but it’s not because I’m in pain, it’s just because I’m used to limping.’” Amy Joy smiled, “You know, I prayed for Kelli’s knee on the 4th of July a couple of months before she was healed. I prayed for her and nothing happened. I guess God just has a timing about these things.”
Amy Joy Hess: Amy Joy herself had also been instantly healed – from a herniated belly button she’d been born with. Her mother, Sherrill told us, “It was huge on this little six pound baby’s tummy. It stuck out and looked swollen and almost ready to pop, about the size of those bouncy balls you play jacks with.” Sherrill would wrap the baby’s stomach with soft cloth to protect the herniated navel and to keep it from chafing. For some reason, doctors had said they would not be able to operate on it until the child was five.
“One day when she was about a month old, I laid her down for a nap,” Sherrill said, “which was amazing because she insisted on being held all the time. While she slept, I rushed to do some ironing, and in the middle of it my mother-in-law calls. She said, ‘I’ve been watching the 700 Club, and they said there’s a baby whose herniated belly button has just been healed. Go look at Amy.’ So, I went in, and her little belly button was just as nice and small and normal as could be. She never had another problem with it. I took her to the doctor and he said, ‘Yep. It’s better. She won’t need surgery.’”
We asked Amy Joy’s father, Carl, about it. He said, “Yeah, when I went to work she had a herniated belly button, and when I came home it was normal.”
Amy Joy herself smiles over the whole thing. “You know,” she said, “It’s not cancer or leukemia or something really huge and horrible. It was what seemed like a little thing. I know my grandmother was a praying woman, and I just think it was neat that God let her know across the county that I was healed. I appreciate it, because it’s one of those things that is very hard to explain without God’s intervention. It wasn’t my power of positive thinking or some amazing self-healing thing. God just decided to heal my little belly button, and I am grateful for it to this day.”
Jim Mader said, “The thing that makes me sad is that these stories should be happening all the time in our lives.” Jim quoted John 21:25, saying, “As John said, there were ‘many other things which Jesus did…which if they should be written…the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.’ That means that the Gospel stories we have are just a fraction of the things Jesus did. I’m not talking about living from miracle to miracle, but just that those things should be commonplace because of the Spirit of God living in us and through us. That’s my hope.”
Chemical dependence tears apart the lives of millions of people every year. According to the Centers For Disease Control, alcohol induced the deaths of 22,073 Americans in 2006, not counting accidents or homicides. Drug addiction, both legal and illegal, also plagues millions. Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and a number of other multi-step self-help programs exist for those desperately seeking freedom from their addictions, but even with support systems and loved ones available to help, too many people continue to fall and return to their drug of choice. It could be said that a miracle has occurred any time somebody escapes an addiction. While some people struggle for years and years and never seem to find true victory, we will look at three men today whom God clearly and obviously set free, giving hope to countless others. No names have been changed.
Mark Boyle:
Mark’s father left the family when Mark was nine, leaving him without a positive male role model. As he grew into a teenager, Mark said, “I was fairly rudderless.” Despite having vowed to avoid drugs, he succumbed to peer-pressure in his late teens and began to experiment with marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and LSD. By the time he was 21, Mark told us, drugs “pretty much consumed my whole life.”
In 1984, though, at the age of 22, things changed for Mark. The friends that had been a negative influence on him began to move away. He was lonely and isolated and reaching the bottom. About that same time, a young lady named Alison began to tell him about Jesus. “I didn’t appreciate it at the time,” he said, but the seeds were being sown.
Mark told us, “One evening after I was done with work, while I was drinking and smoking pot like always, I was flipping through the channels and I stopped on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. Why would a guy who doesn’t want anything to do with God, who just wants to live his life partying, why would he stop on that channel?” Looking back, Mark said, he believes the Holy Spirit was getting his attention. The seed that had been planted was taking root.
“Pat Robertson was reading my mail. He was praying for lonely people caught in drugs and alcohol, saying, ‘God’s calling you.’” Right there, Mark prayed along with Robertson. He didn’t understand it all, but he believes the Holy Spirit was prompting him, letting him know that there was something better out there.
“So here comes the cool part. The following weekend, what did I do? I did what I’d normally do - go out to the bar and go dancing. I ordered a beer like normal, and when I took the first sip of it, it had the most awful, the most foul taste I’d ever tasted in my life. Right then I remembered that I’d prayed that God would take this desire away from me. And I knew that God was real and that he cared for me and had plans for me.”
Not only did God free Mark from his addiction to drugs and alcohol that week, but Mark ended up marrying Alison. Now, more than 25 years later, the two of them are preparing for the marriage of their oldest daughter.
Chuck Munson: Chuck began smoking in the Navy during the Vietnam Era, and he found it impossible to quit later on. Within five minutes of waking up in the morning he would have to have a cigarette. He would try to quit on Sundays, which were the calmest day of his week, but he could never make it past 1:00 pm, and he wouldn’t even bother trying the rest of the week. Chuck had plenty of will power and self discipline. He would eventually build his own business up from the ground and go on to be one of the most respected commercial real estate appraisers in the Seattle area. Walking away from cigarettes, though, was “like being chained, and it was impossible to break the chains. It was like walking into the La Brea Tar Pits,” he said.
One day in 1974, Chuck was at a Bible study in the office of Pastor Joe Harris at a small church in Bellingham, Washington. In the middle of a sentence, Pastor Joe stopped and said, “I feel like God has a mandate for somebody in this room.” He then went on with the study. Chuck said, “I’m sure that ten seconds later he’d forgotten he’d said anything, but I knew the meaning of what he said and who it was for and what it was about.” Earlier Chuck had been annoyed with himself, “because I knew that these cigarettes had become more important to me than God, and it wasn’t a good thing.”
Chuck went home after the Bible study, and before he went to bed he had a cigarette. The next morning he got up, and after five minutes he didn’t need a cigarette the way he normally did. Pretty soon it was 11:00 and then it was noon, and then it was 1:00, “and I had never made it past 1:00 before,” and then it was 2:00, and he still didn’t want to smoke. The next day passed and the next day, “and what had happened,” Chuck said, “is that God had given me freedom from a desire for cigarettes.”
About four months later, Chuck was in a lounge in Edmonds, Washington with his two brothers and his wife, all of whom smoked. His brother offered him a cigarette, and Chuck took it and put it in his mouth, “and inside me there welled up this feeling, like a silent roar. It was like somebody roared at me, and I felt like Somebody was very very angry at me. So, I took the cigarette out of my mouth and gave it back to my brother.”
Chuck has never had a problem with cigarettes since, “and I think I would probably be dead now if I hadn’t stopped, the way I used to smoke.”
Randy Hess:
Randy suffered with both emotional and physical pain for much of his life. He had been sexually abused, and as a teenager he turned to illegal drugs for relief from the deep shame he felt. Throughout the next 15 years, he was also seriously injured in a series of accidents. Car accidents injured his back. A backhoe accident left his neck damaged. Two discs in his back were ruptured when a front end loader ran into him. He suffered from constant physical and emotional pain, even after giving his life to Christ.
In the summer of 1996, Randy was sitting on his front porch smoking a cigarette, and the Holy Spirit said, “What’s that in your hand?” Randy looked down and saw the cigarette, and he put it out. He never had the urge to smoke again. The next day, the power of the Holy Spirit covered him, freeing him from the shame he’d suffered for nearly 20 years. He felt the love of God like he never had before. He still had to endure the physical pain of his injuries, however, and for the next two-and-a-half years he continued to depend on prescription pain pills.
In 1998, Randy moved across the country, and in January 1999, his prescription refills ran out. He faced a decision. He would either have to find a new doctor and get new prescriptions or go without. “Lord,” he said with all his heart, “I don’t want to take drugs anymore.” During the next several months he felt his body grow stronger than it had been since he was a teenager. He was able to work hard and not suffer from horrible headaches and back pain. During the next several years he refused to even take an Advil, and he praised God for His goodness and power in his life.
Do some Christians continue to struggle with debilitating, embarrassing addictions? Yes. Do we always know why? No, we don’t. There are many variables involved, and in each situation we need the Spirit of God to lead us in how to confront the problem. What we do know is this: Christ came to set us free, and He is stronger than our worst habits and addictions. If we have any hope for true freedom, it is in total dependence on Him, moment by moment, day by day.
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” - John 8:36
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” - Romans 8:2
The largest wager we ultimately make regarding this issue is arguably the most important of our life.
As C.S. Lewis, the celebrated author, said about his decision to embrace religion:
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
“Consider the words of Blaise Pascal, the renowned French mathematician and philosopher who applied decision theory to the question of the existence of God.
The result was the famous Pascal’s Wager, which likens the matter to a yes/no bet – only instead of money; you are risking your eternal soul.
According to Pascal, there are two propositions: God exists, and God does not exist. [Notably, Pascal understood God as the Christian God depicted in the Bible, which provides some information about God, but attempts no proof of his existence.]
Pascal proposed that before placing your bet, you should consider the four possibilities:
1. If you choose to believe in God, and if God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
2. If you choose to believe in God, and if God doesn’t exist, your loss is finite and therefore negligible.
3. If you choose not to believe in God, and if God doesn’t exist, your gain is finite and therefore negligible.
4. If you choose not to believe in God, and if God exists, you will go to hell: your loss is infinite.
Pascal’s notes, which appear in his unfinished treatise ‘Pense`es, wrap it all up neatly:
“Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that HE IS.”
viagra and hearing loss Ed Treatment Natural Female use of viagra female version of viagra 761.
erectile dysfunction vacuums Cialis Dysfunction Erectile Levitra how to get viagra
herbal remedy for erectile dysfunction; Erectile Dysfunction Psychological Zocor erectile dysfunction zoloft erectile dysfunction 147.
robin williams viagra Viagra Spray "explore advances in male impotence treatments"
viagra perscription online Natural Remedy Erectile Dysfunction male hormone dhea impotence levels
will ferrell erectile dysfunction Viagra Perscription Online ed treatment with ginko
erectile dysfunction pills evaluated; On Viagra "non prescription viagra"
cialis viagra How To Buy Viagramale impotence age
Cigarette smoking and erectile dysfunction cigarette smoking causing male impotence 395. Impotence Viagra The latest treatment for ed topical ed treatment 237.
most effective ed treatment! Viagra 50 Mg actos erectile dysfunction
l dopa for male impotence! Buy Cheap Viagra erectile dysfunction and pravastatin;
male impotence pumps vacu Holistic Ed Treatment cost of viagra
female forcing male sexual impotence; Male Impotence Brochure actos erectile dysfunction
accounting treatment for sr ed Water Ed Treatment Male impotence due to surgery male impotence enema 629.
lamictal erectile dysfunction! Accounting Treatment Sr Ed Ias "buy viagra online"
problems with viagra, Viagra Cheap erectile dysfunction link suggest
"non prescription viagra" Viagra Uk viagra times;
viagra soft tabs? Ed Treatments erectile dysfunction ed treatment
u 3312 viagra cialis Male Impotence Advice yohimbie bark and male impotence
facts male impotence psychological effects
lexapro erectile dysfunction,
erectile dysfunction paypal, Zetia And Erectile Dysfunction straighttalk net erectile dysfunction review
male impotence and solutions? Make Your Own Viagra newest transdermal treatment for ed
tricor erectile dysfunction Hebal Ed Treatmenterectile dysfunction exercise
Viagra and alternatives viagra and blood pressure 767. How To Make Viagra how to take viagra
cialis medication erectile dysfunction Erectile Dysfunction Pills accupril and erectile dysfunction
Subscribe to RSS
