Would you like to experience a miracle in your life?
Well if someone's offering you a miracle you're hardly likely to say no!
But do you actively seek miracles, do you acknowledge miracles?
Do you accept the existence of the supernatural?
If the answer to those questions is no then how do you expect to receive a miracle in your life?
If you are someone who doesn't believe in the endless possibilities that living in harmony with the miracle that is our Saviour Jesus Christ can bring to you, then it is not impossible, but certainly less likely, that you will experience something miraculous in your life.
Or, even if you do have faith, perhaps you don't consider yourself to be walking in the Power of God. There are many reasons that Christians are unable to unleash the awesome power that has been bestowed on us as children of the Living God. Doubt and unbelief would definitely be top of the list. If you don't believe that something is possible then the chances are, it won't be, not for you anyway.
Then again, perhaps you are someone who is constantly wowed by God and witnesses miracles every day, or perhaps you see miracles all around you as you admire the beauty of God's creation.
I only need to look out of my window into my Dad's green and lush garden to feel an overwhelming sense of joy and wonder at the magnificence of God's creation. He didn't just create you and me, which is in itself a great miracle, He created everything; the velvet grass, the swaying trees, the daisies that bounce in the breeze, the spider, the ant, the birds flying high in the sky. If that isn't a miracle then I don't know what is....
Look in the mirror, watch yourself breathing in and out, listen to the sound of your heart beating. You are real! A living, breathing miracle, the proof that God exists.
The miracle of creation is not to be underestimated. After all, could you do it? I don't think so.
For generations man has tried to replicate life; robots, clones, cyborgs; you name it, they've tried it and the results are more than worrying. But the keyword here is "replicate", to recreate creation or life, whatever you choose to call it, is impossible. God has created something totally unique. It cannot be recreated, it already exists.
At this point some of you may start mumbling about the creation theory and claiming to believe in Darwin's view that we descend from monkeys. Well, before you go down that route I would like to defend Charles Darwin who has been seriously misrepresented throughout history for his research comparing us to primate monkeys.
It is a fact that there are some obvious similar characteristics between homo sapiens (humans) and primate monkeys. One often overlooked similarity is the inability by both species to produce vitamin c due to a vital enzyme being "switched off" at some point in the early stages of existence. Apart from guinea pigs, humans and apes are the only mammals not to produce their own source of vitamin c.
Although, due to a set of mainly physical characteristics, Darwin did include humans in the same classification group (Homininae) as apes who shared the same traits as us, he did not invent the classification. The classification was used in existing scientific research pre-dating Darwin and it is important to note that classifications are merely a set of characteristics that are shared within a group.
If, as we believe, God created all things, then as I said above when admiring the miracle of creation, He also created monkeys, whales, lions, crocodiles, birds, goats, horses and indeed all the other creatures that walk, slither, crawl or swim their way around our beautiful planet.
So, if we all come from God then we all share the same common ancestor, God is the Father of all creation. If I and my cousin have the same grandfather this does not mean that we both were born of my aunt does it?
A leaf and a branch look totally different and have very unique functions as parts of the tree and yet, they share a common trunk, a universal root; God is our trunk, our root and everything comes from Him.
And if you believe and trust in Him, scripture continually reassures us that we will receive our miracle.
| "Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them." Mark 11:24 Due to my own decidedly ungodly supernatural experiences of life prior to my Salvation, I was much more open to the idea of God as a supernatural entity than most people. The existence of a divine power of healing and deliverance seemed perfectly possible to my mind, it just hadn't been a part of my life and I had no idea how to change this as I was in a very dark place spiritually.
The first time I recognised God's miraculous healing power in my life was on Tuesday
4th February 2014. I remember this day so well because it was the day that I
was baptised by the Holy Spirit.
At
the time I had no idea what this even meant, all I know was that whatever
happened to me that evening was the most incredible feeling that I had ever
experienced in my whole life.
Four
days previously I had started to have very bad back pain when I stood up after
sitting for any length of time. On Tuesday 4th February I went to our
church for the usual discussion group "Majlis" that I had started
attending two weeks earlier. After the discussion finished I could hardly
stand because of the intense pain in my back. Seeing my discomfort our
Pastor, Basie, and my dear friend Zurika offered to pray for healing for my
back. I agreed and felt a huge sense of calm immediately. When they started to pray I felt the sensation of something breaking over my head and pouring through my hair.
As they continued praying I felt an indescribable feeling like hot ice filling me, moving slowly
through every fibre of my being, from my head to my toes. It was like
every single bit of pain vanished from my body, I literally felt like I had a
new body. And that wasn't even the best bit. I felt the
most utopic feeling of sheer joy, something I had never felt in my entire
life. It was as if the troubles of my life had just simply disappeared.
Since that time I have witnessed many more miraculous events in my life as well as recognising how I had been saved by God's power several times throughout my life as I found myself in death defying situations. But let's save those for another day! Probably one of the most remarkable and to some folk, most unbelievable miracle would be the miracle of raising the dead to life. Even as a believer you may be thinking that it was all very well for Jesus and the apostles to do this but we don't have this power nowadays. Well, you would be very much mistaken. Here is an astounding article that I read about a heart surgeon raising someone from the dead. "We quickly rushed the gentleman down to the intensive care unit, and the hospital was by now buzzing about the fact that a dead man had been brought back to life. After a couple of days he woke up. He had an amazing story to tell after I had asked him, 'Where have you been and where were you on that day that you had that massive heart attack? You were gone and we prayed you back to life in Jesus name.'" Dan Wooding/TN (July 18, 2007) (MIAMI, FL) The audience of 120 doctors from 50 countries sat in stunned silence as a renowned heart doctor produced evidence of how, after he had prayed for a patient who had died and was being prepared for the morgue, was brought back to life after prayer. Dr. Chauncey W. Crandall IV, who serves at the Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, made his dramatic presentation on Friday, July 13th at the 4th Annual World Christian Doctors Network Conference in Miami, Florida. He produced dramatic evidence that was shown on the screen and then, afterwards, agreed to tell the story to Assist News Service in an interview with Dan Wooding. The following is the interview as conducted by Dan: Dr. Crandall began by saying that the dramatic incident took place almost a year ago in West Palm Beach, Florida. "We had a fifty-three year old man who came to the emergency room with a massive heart attack and actually his heart had stopped," he said. "The medical people had worked on him for over forty minutes in the emergency room and then declared him dead. "They called me in to evaluate the patient towards the end of his treatment where they had unsuccessfully tried to revive him. The nurse was preparing his body to be taken down to the morgue when the Holy Spirit told me to 'turn around and pray for that man.' When the Holy Spirit talks to you, you have to respond. It's sometimes a quiet voice and this was a quiet voice and to honor the Lord I did turn around and I went to the side of that stretcher where his body was being prepared. "There was no life in the man. His face and feet and arms were completely black with death and I sat next to his body and I prayed, 'Lord, Father; how am I going to pray for this man? He's dead. What can I do?' All of a sudden, these words came out of my mouth, 'Father, God, I cry out for the soul of this man if he does not know You as his Lord and Savior, please raise him from the dead right now in Jesus name. "It was amazing as a couple minutes later, we were looking at the monitor and all of a sudden a heart beat showed up. It was a perfect beat; a normal beat; and then after a couple more minutes, he started moving and then his fingers were moving and then his toes began moving and then he started mumbling words. "There was a nurse in the room, she wasn't a Believer, and she screamed out and said 'Doctor Crandall, what have you done to this patient?' And I said, 'All I've done is cry out for his soul in Jesus name.' "We quickly rushed the gentleman down to the intensive care unit, and the hospital was by now buzzing about the fact that a dead man had been brought back to life. After a couple of days he woke up. He had an amazing story to tell after I had asked him, 'Where have you been and where were you on that day that you had that massive heart attack? You were gone and we prayed you back to life in Jesus name.' "He said, 'Doctor Crandall, it's the most amazing thing. I was in a dark room and there was no light. It was complete darkness and I felt I was in a casket and I kept repeating that I was so disappointed.' He said the disappointment came from the fact that none of his family, friends or colleagues, had come to visit him. Then he told me, 'All of a sudden, these men came in and they wrapped me up and they threw me in the trash.' "Dan, he was in hell that day and as he told me that story, I cried out, 'Lord, this gentleman needs to accept You as Lord and Savior.' I then explained the salvation message to this man as he sat in that bed and I held his hand and I cried out, 'Father God, in the name of Jesus, I pray that this man accepts you as his Lord and Savior right here in the intensive care unit.' He held out his hand and accepted Christ as his Savior with tears rolling down from his eyes and now he's a child of God. "I told him, 'You never have to be thrown in the trash into total darkness now. The life of Christ is in you and the light of the kingdom of Heaven is on you now." I asked Dr. Crandall if there had been any brain damage to the patient. "No there was no brain damage at all; his brain was completely normal," he said. "I was most concerned about his hands because his fingers were completely black and he had some numbness in his fingers and his feet, but now that is totally resolved." I asked Dr. Crandall if he could give the name of the man and he said he couldn't as the patient had requested that it would not be revealed. "All I can say is that he was fifty-three years old and he was a car mechanic," he said. "He had a family who were Believers, but he left them twenty years ago because he didn't believe in the Lord. His family continued to pray for twenty years for his salvation, and his ex-wife was on her hands and knees praying for the salvation of her ex-husband, who came to know the Lord that day." I then asked the doctor if he had seen other similar miracles in his practice. "I've been witness to three cases of people being raised from the dead," he said. "One other case was when another patient came to the hospital with a massive heart attack. It was on the very day that I received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and I'd been praying for weeks that I would receive this mighty baptism that the Lord can give us. We were working on this patient that came in again with a massive heart attack and who didn't survive in the operating room. "All of a sudden, that Baptism of the Holy Spirit hit me and I started speaking in a spiritual language and crying over this patient who, in the operating room theater, had passed away. And then, within five or ten minutes, the heartbeat came back and life came back to this patient. Once again, the nurses who are not Believers looked at me as if to say, 'There goes Doctor Crandall on another case'." I concluded the interview by asking Dr. Crandall what he would like to say to doctors who do not believe in supernatural healing. "I would just like to say to my colleagues and physicians out there, that the Lord is real. We've seen many miracles and we pray for our patients daily. There is not one week that goes by that we don't see a mighty miracle in our office. The people need this; they need the power of Christ in their life and they need the power of Christ for healing. "I would just encourage my fellow doctors to get involved in a church, meet with a minister, and attend a healing service run by people that believe in the power of Jesus Christ. We love our colleagues in medicine 'we pray for them'." How amazing!! What an amazing testimony of faith for the medical profession. Please share this with as many doctors as you can so that more souls can be raised to life. Dear Lord, We know that through you all things are possible. You are a God of endless possibilities, miraculous healing and abiding love for your children. We confess our doubt and unbelief in the power vested in us through Jesus' perfect sacrifice on the cross and ask that you remove such thoughts and renew our minds. We pray that you will give us the mind of Christ so that we can walk in your power, so that we can overcome the world as you have overcome it. Forgive us for not trusting you in all things, for only you have the power to save, only you have the power to deliver us from our enemies and to heal the sick, but you have given this same power to me through our Saviour Jesus Christ who died on the cross so that you will live in me and I in you. Thank you Lord for the miraculous work you have done in my life. For your outstretched arm which snatched me from the jaws of death so many times. For carrying me through even though I did not recognise you, for raising me up even when I turned my back on you. I give you all the glory Lord, for the miracle which is my life which I surrender to you in Jesus name. I pray for all those in the medical profession who have the opportunity to heal the sick and raise the dead to life. Send your Holy Spirit on them so that they are convicted of your supernatural power and can begin to work miracles in your Holy Name. I pray for our spiritual leaders, elders, worship leaders and pastors who play such a crucial role in bringing us into God's presence and praying for the Holy Spirit to fill us with all power, hope and love, to show us the way, the truth and the life, to convict us of our sin and to give us a heart for worship and a spirit of faith. In Jesus' Name, Amen |
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