Miracles Today

I was sitting in service last night as altar ministry was going on and the Lord spoke to my heart "The reason why people don't pray for the sick is because they don't believe that I heal."

I was somewhat taken back at what the Lord had spoken to my heart. Then I began to think of all of the times that I felt like I should/could pray for someone to be healed, but in the back of my mind always remained a question...."What if I pray and nothing happens? I don't want to make God look bad." So instead of bringing solution to the problem (which is what we are called to do as Christ followers) I in turn just tell them how to deal with the situation.

Now don't get me wrong I have seen many miracles since being in ministry. I have with my eyes seen cancerous tumors shrivel before my eyes as prayer was taking place. I have seen the look of joy come upon the face of a person that just heard noise for the first time. Even with seeing all of this I know that the power of God is real and for today....yet why do we hesitate to pray for the sick?

Unbelief.

Pastor Thomas Kudjoe is my Pastor's Son in the faith. Pastor Thomas lives in Ghana Africa and he has seen three people raised from the dead, kids totally healed of autism in services and many more miracles. I asked him why does he think he sees those miracles and so many Americans have never seen those things happen. His response was easy. "We believe the Bible. We know that Jesus Words are true. We don't read the Bible for information we read it for a revelation."

I sat there listening to Pastor Thomas words and I felt so convicted in my heart of how many times I have let the Word of God only be information that I know in my head but not a revelation out of my heart that spurs action.

The Word of God is solid about healing from the Old Testament all the way through the New. God loves to see His people healed. I know what you are thinking: "Yes Crystal God does heal but only if it is His will." Let's look at that shall we?

Matthew 6:9-13

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
¹³ And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

We all know this prayer right? Let's look at verse ten Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let's just think for just a second what they are saying is that we are going to have an invasion of heaven on earth. God's will is what is happening in heaven wouldn't you agree? Now think with me is there sickness in heaven? Is there cancer in heaven? Is there lack of money in heaven? You are thinking: "Of course not because it is heaven!" Wait a minute Jesus gave us this prayer so we can see an invasion of heaven on earth. So that means that whatever is happening in heaven WE are to enforce that principal on earth and it shall be done.

Psalm 103:3 Who forgives ALL your sins and heals ALL your diseases

Let's define ALL:

* the whole amount, quantity, or extent of

* as much as possible

* the whole number or sum of

So do you believe Jesus has forgiven ALL your sins? If you believe that we must believe the second part of this verse as well. Just as he forgives ALL your sins, He has also healed ALL your diseases. God is able.

I know there are a lot of people that don't believe that healing is for today. Truth is we try to make excuses for why we haven't seen it instead of confronting the unbelief that is within our hearts. God's will is to heal every time no matter what....Why don't we always see the fullness of that...That is for God to reveal to us one day in heaven, but for right now I am to do what he has told us todo and that is to lay hands on the sick and see them recover.

Now back to the service last night when the Lord spoke to me.... I opened my eyes and one of our students was standing there. He is an all-star athlete for our high school football team. I asked him what did he need. He replied "I need prayer for my back to be healed." I layer hands on his back and could feel the power of God go into his back and knew that he received his healing. I finished praying for him and then asked him if he felt any better then when he had asked for prayer. He replied and said "Well it only hurts when I do certain things." I then told him "Well do the certain things." He gave me a puzzled look and reluctantly said "ok".

He did the first thing that would have normally brought great pain and had a look of shock as there was NO PAIN....Then from doing that I told him do something else...He bent over and touched his toes. He comes up with watery eyes and says "There is NO PAIN!" He begins to tell me how he injured his back during football season and was going to have to go thru extensive physical rehab to get his back well. In that he would miss the sport that he loved most and that is baseball. This isn't the first healing I have seen like this. There has been so many more. Each one moves my heart to think that we serve a God that cares about everything that we need. He is so faithful. He loves to heal His people.

God is faithful every time...All we have to do is respond to the opportunities that are presented to us.

Some things are left as mysteries...

One thing about being a pastor is you get to be with people on their most joyful events. Weddings, births of babies, salvation's, healings etc. These are all times that are wonderful to share with people. Moments that impact you and they give such a sense of fulfilment like none other.

When Mrs. Dodie Osteen was at our church a few months ago she used this scripture...

The secret things belong to the Lord

Deut. 29:29

It so stood out to me. Why for some reason we as christians we feel as though we have to have the reasons of why behind everything that happens. It is as though that now that we are believers that we can now tell anyone and everything why things are happening in their life. No one ever calls for counseling to ask why they are falling in love and getting married. No one calls for counsel when the experience the joy of a new baby in their arms. The good things in life we never question. We grab hold of them as though they were always meant to be part of us.

Then there are the parts in life that just make no sense. Let me prelude this with I don't want to hear your "doctrine" or your "theology". If we all got real real we would say there are things that happen in life that don't make sense. They cut us to the very core of our being. We can't wrap our mind around the why and the why not.

These are the challenging parts of being a pastor. When the bad things in life happen the first question is always "why them" or "why me?" This my friends is hard. If all of us got real real in the world we would all say we have been that person on multiple occasions.

Today I found myself going about my daily life when I got some bad news about someone I knew. They were in a life or death situation. Tonight we found out that the outcome to that wasn't good. Everything in me darkened. Sadness loomed where I was. All of a sudden now the breaths I was taken were worth more money then what I have. I all of a sudden had so many questions of why.

Then in a moment I heard Mrs. Dodie Osteen say..."The secret things belong to the Lord. Sometimes we don't have the answers, and we don't have to. We just have to trust God and know one day we will understand."

How faithful God is to give me a word like that months ago that I can now draw upon while I sit on my couch and think about this person's life. That word is life to me right now. I know in the next few days we will be asked a lot of questions as to why this happened. What relief from pressure to know I am not required to give the answer. It isn't because God needed another angel (He has plenty after all He is God). It isn't because this person sinned (we all do don't we). I can just reply that the secret things really do belong to the Lord. This is one of those secret things.....

In a world that always has to have an answer to everything. It is nice to know that to somethings there are no answers. There are no words. There are no explinations. With that I can hang my heart my trust and my whole being upon the Lord and know that He knows the answers in this. I don't have to.

I hope this blessed you. It did me....

Fight the good fight!

1 Timothy 1:18-19 Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith.

1 Timothy 6: 11-12 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses

Paul is trying to get something across to us in these two verses.....

FIGHT

Life is a fight. Fight for what God wants for you in your life and against what the enemy wants to do to keep you from God's plan.

This week has been a huge fight for me. I guess I have been fighting discouragement a lot this week. Sometimes it is really easy to look at what is going wrong and not what is going right.

Bryan (my hubby) has been youth pastoring for 9 years now. There has been a lot of kids come through our youth group in those 9 years. Each kid that we have had we have loved them like they were one of our own children. We pour into them the whole time they are in youth...then there comes a time where they have to choose what kind of life they are going to live.

For the first time ever we had youth tell us that they didn't want to go to camp this year. That really broke my heart. You see last year we had it prophesied that we would have a youth group of 1,200 youth. Since then our youth have over doubled in size. So when this happened it really broke my heart. On top of all that we have several youth that have just totally walked away from the Lord this year......This breaks both of our hearts.

So long story short we reached out to several youth that said they didn't want to go to camp 4 of them changed their mind and are now going to come. This made me so happy.

I then thought about this verse. You see we are supposed to fight. Paul tells us to never give up. Lay hold of the words that have been spoken. It is all about our faith at these points. We can't give up. The worst thing we can do is lay down and stop. Paul also says the there are ones that have given up and shipwrecked their faith. How true that is those people are all around us all of the time.

About two years ago the Lord had shown me that I had focused too much on the youth and people that walked away from God, and not focusing on the ones that have been changed.

You see I know that all of you are not youth pastor's. You have different problems. Maybe marriage, children, finances, depression, health or whatever it is that you are batteling. I just want to encourage you to FIGHT. Don't ever give up. Don't ever let the enemy make you think that you are not gaining ground. I love what it says in Ephesians "having done all else stand and stand therefore"

Girls you stand in the face of your problems and know that God is on your side you stand and stand tall and watch God do BIG things on your behalf. Don't ever let the enemy make you think what you are doing is for nothing.

You see I know the visions in my heart. I see my husband preaching to hundreds of youth although we only have around 25 right now. I see kids coming up and getting delivered from drugs when my husband prays for them. Even though right now some of our youth are addicted to drugs. I see myself preaching to hundreds of women...even though the biggest I have preached at is around 80 ladies thus far. You see you have to go with the what you see in your heart.

Because on the great side since I have been in ministry I have seen so many youth saved, radically delivered, lives healed, marriages totally restored. So the enemy still has a few. I am just believing God that those kids (who most aren't kids anymore) are going to come back as the protical son did.

Fight girls fight, with everything you have. Your miracle may be closer than you thought. Never give up!! When I look at these pictures I don't just see people I see people that God has changed their lives forever! I know that some of them I am still believing God that their lives will be changed. I just stand on the word & know that they too will be changed it is just a matter of time!