The Miraculous

God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God was a miracle working God. He still is today!

I’ve been blessed to know many people who have experienced the miraculous of God personally.

A friend was welding under a truck when a piece of hot slag bounced into his ear.

When his ear was examined after, they saw a hole in his eardrum.

His mom described smelling the burning flesh “like the smell you smell during a branding”.

His father and uncle prayed over him right away, and when his ear got examined again, the eardrum was completely healed.

I should know. I hollered in his ear later to check it.

Another friend talks about his one-year-old falling out of a car and his head getting partially crushed by a tire. His son’s neck broke, his skull was fractured, and there was spinal fluid coming out of his nose. Worst yet, there was a blood clot forming on his brain. 

His face had swollen and his skin was full of abrasions.

Despite everything, my friend had perfect peace. While the doctors watched, he prayed over his son.

As they traveled north to take their son to a better hospital, my friend and his wife found perfect peace and faith together.

The couple stayed in the waiting room while the doctors examined their son. Several hours later, the doctors came back.

“Something happened between the other hospital and here,” the doctors said. “There’s no internal injuries.”

Except for the facial abrasions, he had been healed.

In the following days, the nurses watched as the face was healed dramatically from hour to hour. Within four days, the boy was completely healed from his exterior injuries as well.

Their son is now grown with six sons of his own.

I was in a car praying with a woman, racing down the road as I heard her gasping for breath. They finally took her to where a man of God was, and he put a hand on her and prayed over her, and she was able to breathe again.

I’ve seen God move in my own life, healing my body miraculously as well.

These are a few of many miracles I have heard of or experienced. These are not isolated incidents.

These are available for you, too! You need not to suffer or be burdened down by trials.

If it can happen to me or others, it can happen for you as well.

God’s miraculous power–and even more importantly, His great compassion–is available to everyone. Believe it!

Someone might ask: “well, how can I receive that miraculous power in my life?”

Jesus told many people that experienced this miraculous power: “your faith. Your faith has made you whole.”

Jesus is the Son of God. But even Jesus couldn’t work when there was no faith. In his hometown, they were ready to kill him. They were so familiar with Him, they were super offended with him.

“Who is this guy with all these high-falutin’ claims? We grew up with this guy. He’s nothing special.”

Mark 6:5 says: “and He could there do no mighty work…”

Jesus literally couldn’t.

So: faith, or expectation/confidence in God’s wonder-working power, is how to access it.

No matter if you lived in Bible times or modern times.

Faith is now. Faith is not a hope or a pipe-dream in the future. Faith is today.

How are you supposed to get faith?

Romans 10:17 says: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”.

Using that God-given faith, given to our spirits, we can access God’s miraculous power!

What more do you need?

God says: “But God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” Phillipians 4:19.

Peace, joy, love, miraculous healing, and much more are available for the taking.

These are all part of our inheritance in the kingdom of God.

It’s available RIGHT NOW.

“Let us come boldly before unto the throne room of grace…” Hebrews 4:16 says.

What stops you?

My brain has stopped me before. My brain wants to sit and ponder it, like that famous statue, “The Thinker”. I saw a meme about “The Thinker”.

It made me laugh. When I try thinking about it, I look constipated, too.

“Is that REALLY God’s will for me?”

Yes, it is. The Bible says: “...by His stripes, we are healed,” Isaiah 53:5.

“...I am the Lord that healeth thee,” Exodus 15:26.

“If you ask any thing in My Name, I will do it,” John 14:14.

“...by Whose stripes, ye were healed,” 1 Peter 2:24.

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want,” Psalm 23:1.

Still, my brain stops me to wonder about it. But that’s doubt. Doubt kills faith.

“...let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, drive with the wind and tossed,” James 1:6 says, then it says: “Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord”.

Doubt is an enemy that will rob you.

What else could stop you?

Someone might say: “I don’t want to look stupid. What if I call out to God for help and nothing happens?”

That’s fear.

Fear will block you from receiving as well.

Someone else might say: “I don’t believe in God’s miraculous. I don’t think that’s a thing.”

That’s unbelief. That’s straight from hell. That will rob you from God’s blessing quicker than anything.

These are spiritual enemies that war against our hearts.

Those are tools of satan. These demonic forces can even rob church-goers.

Because it’s spiritual–they go on under the surface, unseen.

Don’t let the devil rob you. Don’t agree with him.

Stand in faith! Agree with God.

When we line ourselves up with God–and come into unity and agreement with what God says, it gives God access to move Heaven upon earth.

Get ready! God will have access to move in your life in a mighty way–and pour out a blessing you cannot contain!!

A Sign From God

God’s had me take the most unusual jobs.

One of these jobs is holding a sign on a street corner, advertising for a local business, a seemingly mindless, demeaning job.

This is a unique journey God has me on, specifically tailored to where I was. Not everyone needs to hold a sign. But there is where God put me.

Now, being on the corner again reminds me of everything God has taught me in these thirteen years.

Being here reminds me of the breakings and dealings and victories that my obedience to God’s will has taught me.

I understand better why it’s so important to find God in the moment, because our moments become patterns, and our patterns become our life.

So much so, that as I pick up my sign and face the traffic coming from all directions again, it transports me back to all the experiences I have had doing this.

I began my journey into the high places of God thirteen years ago with a picture of what I was going to find.

All my efforts to accomplish my vision, my idea of how it should go, have mostly gotten in the way of God’s vision, God’s idea of how it should go.

This experience of holding a sign on a street corner was the perfect place for me to come to grips with the fact that I didn’t need everything else.

All that extra effort that kept my mind full, but my heart empty.

I wasn’t very good at it at first.

I kept wandering off, trying to find other things. I understood why so few stuck with God’s will. It is not easy for the flesh, nor does it make sense to the brain.

Following God’s will, whatever you do, is not easy for the flesh, nor does it make sense to the brain.

Those of us holding that sign, we thought maybe it was about us. We thought we were the main attraction.

So we performed tricks, showing off, thriving off people’s admiration.

But it was never about that.

God broke me of that over years as my pride and stupidity wore down my body, until my wrists would experience sudden pain in the middle of the night that was so intense, it would wake me up out of a dead sleep, and then gradually subside.

I stopped showing off during the day and the pain would leave.

Sometimes I would anyways, and it would almost immediately return.

God was dealing with me, waving a warning flag.

“Knock it off, John. It’s not about you. The spectacle of John is a distraction.”

Gradually, as I reluctantly let go of my circus moves, I started to see the people past my spinning sign.

Hungry. Tired. Listless. Teenagers, old folks, businessmen.

All kinds passed by, hundreds and thousands of them.

Gradually, I began to wonder how I could care for them.

So, on my sidewalk sanctuary, God started teaching me about prayer.

I doubted how effective prayer was, so God showed me it was, bringing people that testified of the effects of my prayers.

I made specific prayer requests, unaware of how God was going to meet them.

Then I watched as God used my simple obedience to answer those prayers for others, beyond my comprehension.

“God, give that hopelessly depressed person joy,” I prayed.

And later that same lady testified:

“I was driving and I was hopelessly depressed, and I saw a man holding a sign on a street corner on a grey, depressing day in the snow. It was the kind of day where EVERYONE was depressed, but he had joy! I realized that if he could have joy, I could, too!”

God taught me how to make my prayers more effective, teaching me to be still and wait on Him and only move as He moved me.

And, still, I was learning.

Learning how to respond to the people He brought to me, not dismissing the weirdos that approached me on the street, but continually learning how to let go of my understanding and be sensitive to His leading to speak His words.

All this time, it’s looked like I was working to help a business with their sales.

In reality, I was about my Heavenly Father’s business, learning how intercede and discern and speak to the people His heart was breaking for.

Not long before, I was chasing this idea of being a big businessman, with lots of things to do, lots of irons in the fire, filling my mind while my heart ran empty again.

So God had to take me back to the corner, crucifying my soulish efforts, my attempts to be somebody, back to the beginning.

Back to simplicity. Back to Him.

The many breakings of my self-righteousness and resentment came to light as I worked again with people who are different from me.

But as I picked up my cross again yet again on the street corner, I remembered none of it mattered.

Nothing mattered but Him and His voice.

Simplicity returned.

“Let your light shine,” God spoke to me this morning.

Thankfulness for all my breakings filled me today as I let my light shine on the corner. I poured out my thankfulness to Him, entering His presence.

Joy filled my heart again, joy simply to be in His presence.

On the corner again, I continued to stay sensitive to everyone God brought to me.

Instead of circus moves, I held my sign still so my sign could be clearly read by all and pointed the way to what it was all about—not me, not my moves, I was only a messenger.

As I ministered to God through my thankfulness and joy today on the corner, a truck pulled up beside me.

“I’m thankful you’re working and not begging,” the man told me, before handing me a $100 bill.

In his gesture, I felt God’s blessing, God ministering to me as I ministered to Him.

As I gratefully took the money, God spoke to me yet again.

I didn’t need to be a big businessman to find provision.

I simply needed to trust Him and stay in His Presence, following Him wherever He led me.

God has had me on the perfect school this whole time, far past my understanding, teaching me to bow, to make myself so little and insignificant.

To be just a sign waver, so I could decrease enough to give Him place.

I am still going through it, but I am so grateful.

I am in School, the School of Christ.

This is the obedience to God’s leading that brings forth the precious fruit of the earth.

Wherever you are, whatever God has you doing, He’s moving more powerfully through it than you realize.

I can truly see the reality of the verse: “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your heart.”

As you and I both continue to seek God in the individual classrooms He has us in, continuing to be whole-hearted and look through Heaven’s eyes, we see everything differently.

We can glimpse Heaven’s plans through the human toil.

Comprehending and tracking with His divine lessons through the experience makes everything worth it.

It’s a never ending schooling that becomes more amazing as it goes.