A Miracle: God being God
From time to time, I find myself among the multitudinous number of skeptics and cynics who call themselves Christian. If I'm in the midst of an intensely stressful or discouraging phase of life, or encountering seemingly irreconcilable inconsistencies in the Bible, I can find myself questioning God. "What kind of God would make life so hard? What kind of God would make the transmission, translation, and interpretation of His Word (which we are supposed to thoroughly know and understand) so monumentally difficult?" And then I get these wake up calls--these glimpses of His sovereign radiance--that steal my breath and leave me dumbfounded.
Do you believe in miracles? I mean, every moment of every day and every breath that you and I breathe is a magnificent miracle! But do you believe in the kind that are not mundane from an ordinary human perspective? My friends who serve as missionaries on an Island in the Indian Ocean sent me an email this afternoon that testified to God's sovereign omnipotence. If you're in need of some serious encouragement or even a soup bowl of humility for your cynical soul, read the letter, below.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
We were just preparing to send out a prayer request for our friend. Here is her story.
Stephanie is one of the group that has helped us establish the YWAM base here on Mauritius. She is a young girl of 24 and has had intermittent health problems over the last year. She kept passing out for no reason and they couldn't find the cause. Last week they finally realized by doing some tests on her heart that her main artery was completely blocked and probably had been since she was very young. Her heart had adjusted to this problem and used lesser vessels to work around the main blockage. Once they had determined the problem over 15 specialists were flown into our island to look at her case and possibly perform surgery on her heart to fix the blockage problem. Unfortunately after they looked at her test results they informed her last friday that if they did surgery this week as planned that she would not make it through. Her heart had been too damaged by all the years of going around the blockage. Their assessment was with such a weak heart she might have a month or two to live. Yesterday Stephanie experienced some major problems as she could not move her left side of her body. She could not move her left arm or leg.
As I said, we were preparing to send you this news so you could pray for Stephanie, until we just heard about how God stepped in.
Today Stephanie got up and felt well. Her left side was working and she felt good for once. The doctors brought her in for some more testing. When they looked at the results they couldn't believe it. They reran the tests two more times before they finally came to the conclusion that there was no more blockage in her heart. We were told that the "Doctors are going nuts trying to understand what happened." Her heart is now functioning like it should with no blockages noticeable. We don't have the same problem the doctors are experiencing. We know what has happened and we celebrate the greatness of our God. We see the touch of His hand everyday and are in awe of Him.
Stephanie is scheduled to give her testimony at the coffee shop "cabaret" night we are doing at the YWAM house on Friday evening. I will try to pass along any more information about her story as I actually hear it from her view.
Praise the Lord, because he is a healing God. We are rejoicing along with Stephanie and her family and friends.
Do you believe in miracles? I mean, every moment of every day and every breath that you and I breathe is a magnificent miracle! But do you believe in the kind that are not mundane from an ordinary human perspective? My friends who serve as missionaries on an Island in the Indian Ocean sent me an email this afternoon that testified to God's sovereign omnipotence. If you're in need of some serious encouragement or even a soup bowl of humility for your cynical soul, read the letter, below.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
We were just preparing to send out a prayer request for our friend. Here is her story.
Stephanie is one of the group that has helped us establish the YWAM base here on Mauritius. She is a young girl of 24 and has had intermittent health problems over the last year. She kept passing out for no reason and they couldn't find the cause. Last week they finally realized by doing some tests on her heart that her main artery was completely blocked and probably had been since she was very young. Her heart had adjusted to this problem and used lesser vessels to work around the main blockage. Once they had determined the problem over 15 specialists were flown into our island to look at her case and possibly perform surgery on her heart to fix the blockage problem. Unfortunately after they looked at her test results they informed her last friday that if they did surgery this week as planned that she would not make it through. Her heart had been too damaged by all the years of going around the blockage. Their assessment was with such a weak heart she might have a month or two to live. Yesterday Stephanie experienced some major problems as she could not move her left side of her body. She could not move her left arm or leg.
As I said, we were preparing to send you this news so you could pray for Stephanie, until we just heard about how God stepped in.
Today Stephanie got up and felt well. Her left side was working and she felt good for once. The doctors brought her in for some more testing. When they looked at the results they couldn't believe it. They reran the tests two more times before they finally came to the conclusion that there was no more blockage in her heart. We were told that the "Doctors are going nuts trying to understand what happened." Her heart is now functioning like it should with no blockages noticeable. We don't have the same problem the doctors are experiencing. We know what has happened and we celebrate the greatness of our God. We see the touch of His hand everyday and are in awe of Him.
Stephanie is scheduled to give her testimony at the coffee shop "cabaret" night we are doing at the YWAM house on Friday evening. I will try to pass along any more information about her story as I actually hear it from her view.
Praise the Lord, because he is a healing God. We are rejoicing along with Stephanie and her family and friends.
Great post. That's a perfect blog, and a great encouragement.
ReplyDeleteIt saddens me every time I hear a Western Christian talk about miracles being only in the past. I think the main reason for this is that we have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, so to speak, and establish a life and culture of self-sufficiency. God tends to work most in the places where he feels the most needed. I know that sounds crude, but ask any missionary in a poor culture, and they'll tell you about dozens of miracles... in a place where people have nothing left but God.
ReplyDeleteClearly our Father is judicious with his miracles, and doesn't enjoy wasting them on people who don't ask for them, and will probably just explain them away anyway.
Exactly!
ReplyDelete