Faith and Miracles

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FAITH IN WHAT?


"And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." (James 5:15-16)


"Have faith," people will often say when troubles come along, even people who don't claim to follow Jesus Christ. Billy Joel once crooned about "keeping the faith" complete with a music video. Faith is popular.

When people tell us to have "faith" though, we ought to ask, "Faith in what? Faith in God? Faith in the good nature of the universe? Faith in our own karma? [By the way, in what bank is karma held, and who are the tellers?] We need to make sure we are building our faith on the right foundation.

We do want to see miracles. We want to pray for Grandma's crippling arthritis or cancer and see her healed; we don't want her suffering. We want to pray for healing and freedom and see them - mercifully, beautifully - take place.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." (John 14:12)

But, does God even want to heal Grandma? What if my faith isn't strong enough, or her faith isn't strong enough? In what exactly are we supposed to be having faith? How do we walk arm in arm with Jesus and do the "greater things" that he promised?

We want the power of God to work through us to open the eyes of the blind and free people from oppressive suffering. If God also wants to heal them, why don't we see more miracles around us?

This article will explore the issue of faith and some of the simple errors that we make, errors that get in the way of our prayers.

Mistake #1: Forgetting Who God Is
"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24)

Too often when we pray, we consider God incorrectly. We come to Him with incorrect assumptions about who He is. If we think deep inside, "Oh, God doesn't want to heal Grandma," then how can we pray for her in faith? When we pray, it is vitally important that we approach God according to what is true about Him.

God is alive and He still does miracles: We can declare this with confidence by His constant work in our lives and the lives of countless people we meet through our ministry. Jesus Christ is alive and working in the world today! We know multitudes of people who have been healed and freed, cleansed and miraculously given provision. We know the daily guidance He gives us and the miracles we ourselves see. Precious people around the world can testify to the power of Jesus still at work today.

God is a God of Truth: When He says something, we can trust Him. He loves us to trust Him!

"God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" (Numbers 23:19)

"Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God." (James 2:23)

God pays attention to everything: He sees us and all the details of our lives. He knows what is going on with us.

"Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows." (Luke 12:6)

God loves us extravagantly: One of the greatest insults we can give God is to suggest that He doesn't love us. His love is so massive and deep and constant that when we catch just a whiff of it, it blows us over. He loves us with great patience, with long-suffering as He deals with our sin and foolishness and doubt and fear. He moves constantly in our lives to bring us into an ever deeper, truer, more pure relationship with Him. He doesn't always do things the easy way, the way we often want Him to. He does things the right way - the way that will last.

"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:4-7)

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38)

When He doesn't heal Grandma, and she feels like she doesn't have enough faith and that God doesn't love her, what do we say to her? In the leading of the Spirit, we need to put our arms around her as Jesus would, and we need to tell her, "Grandma, God does love you. Don't be afraid. He loves you magnificently, and He longs for you to know His love. Trust Him. He's very willing to take care of you in every way. It's going to be okay. Trust Him." He may still heal her, but whether He does or not, He absolutely loves Grandma. As Job said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," (Job 13:15).

If we are going to approach God, we absolutely need to approach Him in the truth of who He is. That's where faith starts.

"Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich [man] glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise loving, kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD." (Jeremiah 9:23-24)


A MUSTARD SEED AND AN EMPTY FRIDGE


Sheri Munson gazed into her refrigerator. She saw a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda, a bottle of ancient mustard, and some very old packets of soy sauce. The barren cupboards held a can of pumpkin and the last cup of a bag of rice. That was basically it.

Sheri had five children to feed. As she stared into her empty cupboards, she said, "Okay Lord. I'm going to trust you. You've brought me this far. I can't believe you're going to let me fall off a cliff now. You said you would be my husband. Please provide for us..."

There are times in our lives when we need miracles to take place. Even among Christians, though, there's often a sense that God is no longer in the miracle business. Many people complain that God doesn't answer prayers. At least, if He answers, He says, "No," a lot. If God is not a liar and He loves us, then, why doesn't He answer our prayers? What are we doing wrong? Do we just not have enough faith?

First of all, God does answer prayers. He answers prayers all the time. Sometimes He doesn't do exactly what we want Him to do in our timing. He does things His way in His timing. But, we also make some errors in the way we pray, and we need to understand those errors so that we can pray in the kind of faith that God honors.

Mistake #2 - Putting Faith in Faith
We often make the mistake of putting faith in faith itself. Our faith isn't supposed to be in how great our faith is. Our faith isn't in us, it's in God.

In Matthew 17:20, Jesus said, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

A mustard seed is small, the smallest of seeds. The point is, our faith doesn't have to be huge. It just has to be. We need to stop being afraid and doubting, thinking our faith is too small. We need to trust our God that He can take our small faith offering, and He can work with it.

Example - Filling A Fridge
Sheri Munson stared into her empty refrigerator in Rathdrum, Idaho that autumn afternoon in 1997 and told the Lord simply, "I trust You." That was it. That was her great display of faith.

Regardless of the magnitude of Sheri's faith, God moved.
"I had to pick up my son Tyler from the bus station in Spokane," Sheri told us. Tyler was 17 and a big eater, and there was no food in the house for the four kids already at home. What's more, Sheri had no money for gas to drive to get Tyler.

"So, I asked my 9-year-old, Max, for the four dollars he had. He said, 'Mom! I wanted to buy jerky with that four dollars!' I said, 'Max, I have to have gas. We'll buy jerky with one dollar, and with three dollars I can get enough gas to get to the bus station.'" So, Max sacrificed his three bucks.

Just before she left to get Tyler, Sheri's friend Kathy Spackman called and invited Sheri and the kids to come to a barbeque – and not a barbeque in three weeks, a barbeque that evening. "Can I bring something?" Sheri asked, (having nothing to bring but a bowl of rice). "No," Kathy said. "Just come!" That was a relief. At least Tyler would have something to eat when he got in!

Then, they lost the three dollars. When Sheri and Max got to the gas station, the money set aside for gas was missing. They looked all over the car for it. "Finally, we just went in to get Max's one dollar's worth of jerky," Sheri sad. That was it. They had nothing left. Sheri didn't want to think about how they were going to go pick up Tyler.

When they came out, though, twenty dollars had appeared on the front seat. "I started crying," Sheri said. "Max said, 'Mom. It's okay. Don't cry. It's a miracle. Let's buy gas!'" So, they put ten dollars into the gas tank. Off they headed to get Tyler and go to the barbeque.

Tyler ate at Kathy Spackman's gathering as only a growing young man can. It was the only meal Sheri had to offer her son. After the meal, though, Kathy approached Sheri and asked her to PLEASE take some of the leftovers home with her. There was so much food, Kathy told Sheri, and the food would just go to waste if she and the boys didn't take it. "There were steaks!" Sheri told us, "And chicken and salads and potatoes and corn on the cob. There was so much food! They just loaded my car up."

On top of the leftover food, a man at the barbeque had a truck full of bread from the bread store. Normally he got the old bread to feed to his pigs, but the store had just gotten a truckload of fresh bread in and had taken perfectly good bread off the shelves to give to him. He asked Sheri if she wanted any. Sheri told us, "So, then we got bread and doughnuts and little wheat rolls and pastries – all kinds of bread – and put them in the car too."

"Wow Mom," Max said. "God is sure a good shopper with just three bucks!"

"Then we got home," Sheri said, "and there was a ham the kids' father had sent us. And somebody had left us a box of oranges and a box of apples. I still don't know who left the apples and the oranges. And a voice whispered in my heart, 'See, I can take care of you.'"

That wasn't the end of it. The next day, Sheri's friend Cheryl called and said, "Hey, Sheri. We had a moving sale, and I have all this food I couldn't sell that I don't want to move it to the new house. Would you like some of it?" It turned out that Cheryl had an extensive pantry. "There was peanut butter and packages of oatmeal and canned food and dried food and, there was just so much!" Sheri exclaimed.

"The best part of it," Sheri told us, "Was when Tyler said, 'You know, Mom. You're poor, but whenever I come to see you, I always eat really well!'"

On Saturday, Sheri had simply told the Lord, "I trust You," while facing an empty refrigerator and empty cupboards and kids to feed. By Sunday, her cupboards were full, her refrigerator was full and her freezer was full. Her faith wasn't in how good she was or in how much faith she had. She just trusted God not to drop her. She hadn't told people she needed help, but God knew, and God provided for her - pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing.

When we come to God, we must approach Him in Truth, trusting Him and trusting His character. We need to put our faith in His goodness and not our own. That's the beginning of the kind of faith that can move mountains, or fill refrigerators.


EVEN OUR HAIRS - HAMSTER TIME


"Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows." (Luke 12:6)

In the above example, we learned about the abundant provision God gave a woman with five children to feed. When we hear those sorts of stories, we're grateful for God's coming through in times of great need. However, we don't always think that God is willing to take care of us in the "small" things too, things that maybe not all people will recognize as important.

Fear and doubt edge into our prayer-lives in a variety of ways.

Mistake #3: Thinking Our Request Is Unimportant
We sometimes get the idea that God is only interested in really huge problems. We say, yes, God even cares about the sparrows, but we don't really believe it. We forget that a thousand years to God is as a day, and a day is as a thousand years, and our very hairs are numbered. Every detail about us is important to God. Every detail. Here are two similar stories that demonstrate the care God has for even the animals.

Chipper
The Frattarola family of Martinsburg, West Virginia had a 13-year-old boxer-malamute mix named Chipper. He was a faithful old family dog, and like old dogs do, he became seriously ill. He lost his eyesight and most of his hearing as well. "He would stumble along the wall at the edge of the room in order to keep track of where he was going," John Frattarola told us. He got so bad he couldn't even get up anymore. One morning the family woke up and found that Chipper had vomited bile all over himself the floor. They had to clean him up. He'd had tumors and seizures. The poor old dog was at the end of it.

Ursula Frattarola told us, "We had a family meeting and talked about maybe putting him down, but our daughter Giovanna told us that if we did that, she wouldn't ever talk to us again." Giovanna suggested they set up a hospice for Chipper, like they had for Grandma. So, the family set up a hospice for Chipper in the kitchen, and the dog spent most of his time under the kitchen table. "We sprayed his mouth with water, the whole thing," Ursula related.

The family prayed for Chipper, and they brought it to their church and the church body prayed for Chipper. Everybody loved this dog. "He was a neat old dog," John said. "He would come to every prayer meeting and Bible study as soon as they started, and he would just lay quietly throughout the whole thing."

Over the next couple of days, the Frattarolas expected Chipper to die. Giovanna continued to care for her dog. John at one point prayed that God would either heal Chipper or let him die. Then, he just prayed that God heal Chipper. One morning, John went downstairs to check on him, thinking he would find the poor old dog dead.

John told us, "He was lying under the table, very weak. When we came down to check on him, we squatted down to look at him under the table, and he lifted his head up and turned and looked right at us. He hadn't done that for a good week and a half, maybe two weeks. The vet had said he probably had a tumor, but there was no more sign of anything wrong." Still very weak, Chipper struggled to get up, but then headed straight over to the door to go outside.

Ursula fed Chipper chicken broth and rice and some bits of chicken, and after a couple of days, "he was just like he'd always been." He was able to jog old-dog fashioned around the back yard.

Ursula said, "I asked the Lord, when it is his time to die, please let him go in his sleep. Don't make him go through this again." A few months later, on June 12th, 2002, they found Chipper in his bed. He had died peacefully in the night. "It really taught us a lot about how God cares about even the animals - and a child's love for an animal," Ursula said.

Barney the Hamster
"We had just moved back to Ohio," Juanita Middlebrook, mother of three, told us, "and we'd had to leave our German Shepherd behind. Bill and I had told the boys we'd get them another dog, but the place where we moved didn't have a fenced-in yard. So, we gave our middle son Scott a hamster."

They all enjoyed Barney the Hamster.



The Middlebrooks kept Barney's cage down in the basement. The basement had rooms, but they were unfinished. Winter set in and mice became a serious problem. Bill Middlebrook asked a neighbor what to do about the mice, and the neighbor suggested getting d-Con. So, Bill put d-Con in the basement for the mice.

Of course, Barney got out, as hamsters do, and he disappeared. One day, Juanita went into a storeroom, and she saw Barney. At first she was glad, but she quickly grew concerned. "He tried to bite me," Juanita said. "He was weaving back and forth. One eye was bulging out and one was sunken in, and he was weaving back and forth. It was obvious he'd gotten into the d-Con." Bill was going to just put Barney out in the field, but they decided instead they would tell the boys the truth.

Bill and Juanita went upstairs and got Tim (9), Scott (8) and Phil (4) and took them downstairs to see poor Barney. Bill said, "I'm sorry, but Barney is going to die, guys. There's nothing we can do." Scott said, "Can't we pray for him?"

"So," Juanita said, "We joined hands and prayed." The whole family stood in the basement holding hands and the little boys prayed in faith for their hamster.

The next morning Bill went downstairs, expecting the hamster to be dead. Instead, Barney the Hamster was running around in his box, as healthy as could be.

"It wasn't our faith," Juanita said. "It was the boys' faith." Those little boys didn't think a hamster was too small a thing for God, and God healed Barney.

It is easy for us to think that our problems are not important enough to worry God with, as though He has only a limited number of interventions he can offer the human race. "Whoops. You used up your last prayer for the year on that empty gas tank. Sorry." No, God has no quota. He has no limits, and He cares even about our pets.

When we are struggling through something major, something massive, and we feel as though God isn't even paying attention, we need to know our feelings are wrong. God is paying attention, and every detail matters to Him. The God who started the spinning of the most massive galaxies is the same God who placed the little bitty ribosomes in our cells. Nothing is too small for Him. Nothing is unimportant to Him.

Jesus told his disciples, "But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows." (Luke 12:6)

Sparrows...or hamsters.


EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED


In 1933, when education guru John Dewey and 33 others signed the Humanist Manifesto, they were casting off what they saw as the outdated chains of established religion. They were forming a religion of their own, one in which man made the ultimate determinations of good and bad, right and wrong. While there have always been atheists and there have always been "religious" people who were ignorant of God's ways, the humanists made a religion of it. They boldly proclaimed that they did not recognize God (or His laws) and took the position that they were capable of using their human reason and intellect to determine morality.

With a sweep of their wrists, the humanists dismissed thousands of years of human religious history and decided that they knew better. There is no God, they said. They assumed that all religion is merely the result of the cultural evolution of the human species. They embraced the view that all life on earth is the result of a continuous process of biological evolution.

Institutions of higher learning are now the churches of humanism, and while Westerners are permitted to keep their religions in the name of religious tolerance, those who actually believe that God is real and intervenes in human lives are no longer considered intellectually respectable. 

Even the Christians in Western culture are slow to expect miracles. It's too often (even unconsciously) assumed that God is far away and silent if He exists at all. If we want to see God do miracles, we need to believe God is both alive and willing to do the things we ask Him to do.

Expecting The Unexpected
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 decided to get more relaxed as well. She 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.

Supernatural Protection
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!' I …I do always wear my seatbelt now."

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 took Hilary and Brian and Amy to the nearest hospital, then helped them get rides back home over the mountains to the Seattle area.

Supernatural Healing
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."

People are mistaken when they believe God is no longer in the miracle business. We regularly hear of miracles experienced by normal people, people whom God has touched and protected in powerful ways. We're not done yet telling about them. God 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 working through His Son in us.


THE FIERY FURNACE


The story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego is one of the most fun miracles in the Old Testament. These three Hebrews stood up to King Nebuchadnezzar and were thrown into the furnace for it. They obeyed God and remained faithful to Him, trusting that God could marvelously, miraculously save them.

They didn't know exactly what was going to happen, though. They knew that God could save them. They didn't know if He would.

"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." (Daniel 3:16-18)


"But if not."
We are usually in that same boat. We believe that God can do anything. He can split the ocean and let escaping slaves walk through on dry land. He can provide money or food at the last moment to feed orphans. He can heal people from cancer and Alzheimer's and drug addiction. We know He can. We just don't know in our situation if He will. So, the question we asked at the beginning remains... in what, exactly, are we supposed to have faith? That God will do something? We don't know that. Then what?

Depending On God's Love
One of the biggest errors we make when we pray is that we really don't think that God WANTS to do what we ask. We have the idea that God wants us to go through this suffering for a reason. And perhaps He does. Maybe He's refining us through fire (1 Peter 1:6-7). Maybe He is teaching us to depend on Him and not our own strength. Then again, maybe He is perfectly willing to do what we ask. The bottom line of our fear is that we do not really believe God loves us.

And yet, believing in HIS LOVE may be the very key to our faith. We believe God exists. We believe He is powerful. Do we truly believe He loves us? If yes, then we can believe that His will is excellent. Then we can believe He wants to do the most excellent things in our lives, no matter what those things are.

Guess what!! God didn't let those young men perish! He protected them in the middle of the fire and they walked out unharmed and not even smelling of smoke!

Maybe... maybe God wants to do wonderful healing, protective things in our lives, but He's waiting until our understanding is correct. God our Father loves us so deeply and selflessly that He gave His precious Son for us. He would never pay that price for us and then drop us. When we pray, we need to pray with confidence in that love.

Example - Amy Joy
On November 27, 2010, Amy Joy Hess (one of our writers) piled wood and paper on the burn pile behind her house on her 4.5 acres. She had been renovating her house, and she piled scraps of lumber along with bags of papers she wanted to get rid of. She set the pile on fire, and as the flames rose, she realized she had forgotten to pay attention to the wind. The cold November wind whisked up ashy, burning papers and blew them into the woods near the burn pile. "I am such an idiot," Amy Joy told herself. She knew better than to light a fire when the wind was blowing.

"Dear Lord," Amy Joy prayed fearfully, "Please don't let the woods catch on fire. Please don't let the woods catch on fire." She begged God, "Please calm down the wind. Please calm it down." Nothing changed. The wind continued to blow orange flames toward the trees. Dry leaves at the base of the fire ignited, reminding Amy Joy of the thousands of dry oak leaves in the woods.

"Wait," Amy Joy said to herself, "I'm not praying right." She quit her frightened begging and began to remind herself of the truth. "Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me," she told herself.  "Jesus loves me." She felt her confidence in the love of God for her grow. The fear left.

"Jesus cared about me," Amy Joy told us. "He didn't want my woods to burn down. I knew He would keep me safe."
Then, full of confidence in God's love, Amy Joy spoke to the fire and wind, and she said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, calm down."

The change was immediate. "Instantly, the fire just 'whoosh!' went from lion-mode to kitten mode," Amy Joy said. "It didn't simply calm. It was like a giant hand pressed down, and it actually puffed out the sides. The flames relaxed, and there was no wind, and the fire became as docile as you could want. There was a soft blue flame in the middle of glowing red. I was like, 'WOW! Let's try that again!'"


Later on, when a few gusts of wind came through, Amy Joy grew worried again. "But, then I remembered that God was taking care of things, and I knew I was safe." The fire eventually burned out, and Amy Joy swears she will check for wind before lighting fires in the future.

When we pray, we need to rest in the belief that God desires to do wonderful things in our lives, and we need to trust in the work He is doing in us. Everyday need to we say, "Lord, we are Yours. Thank you so much for loving us. Please keep us in the cross hairs of Your will today, because we know Your will is good."

That's praying in Faith.

"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:4-7)


BUT IF NOT


"But see, there's a problem when Grandma prays to be healed and she isn't healed. She thinks she doesn't have strong enough faith or that God doesn't love her. What about Grandma?" - An anonymous skeptic

"…Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." (Daniel 3:17-18)

There are many times in our lives when we say, "God, if You love me, You will do X, Y and Z." We mistakenly believe that if God doesn't answer our prayers the way we want, it's because He doesn't care about us. Remember the three young men faced with a fiery furnace; they did not know what God was going to do, but they trusted him anyway.

The Bible is very clear that God loves us (John 3:16, 1John 4:10, Jer 31:3, Rom 8:35-39). God's Word declares that He loves us more than we can possibly know, that He IS love (1 John 4:8). We can go to God with confidence in His love for us, ready for whatever glorious things He wanted to do in us and through us. That's the heart of God.

No matter what happens, we can still trust Him implicitly.

More Miracles
In January of 1992, Tony Darmanin went for a ride with Jeremy Benson in his sweet 1973 Chevy Nova hatchback. Jeremy and his father had spent a year fixing up that Nova for Jeremy's 16th birthday, and he loved it. Jeremy hadn‘t had his license long, though, and inexperienced teen boys with muscle cars generally spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

On a rainy winter evening, Tony Darmanin climbed into Jeremy's Nova with Brandon Wright and Billy Walters. As soon as Jeremy started up the engine and took off, Tony knew he was in trouble. They sped down North Shore Drive in Bellingham, Washington at speeds worthy of the car, but unwise considering the weather conditions. They came to a hairpin turn, Jeremy hit the brakes, and the car naturally hydroplaned on the wet pavement.

Tony said, "So, we're not slowing down, and now Jeremy can't steer." They shot off the cliff edge and flew through the dark night air. They should have all died.

A tree at the bottom of the 40-foot deep ravine helped save the young men's lives. The car smacked the tree, which changed their trajectory just enough to keep the car from landing upside down and crushing all its occupants. Instead, the Nova smashed nose-first into the ground.

Tony dangled in the back seat by his seatbelt. The hatchback had popped open and its cover had slammed down into his neck and back. His internal organs were gashed by the force of the seatbelt, and his ankle was injured. Tony only knew that he'd never felt that much pain in his life. Billy had cracked the windshield with his head and his brain had started to swell. (After temporary blindness, he would recover.)

Miraculously, Jeremy and Brandon climbed out unharmed and went for help.

Tony woke up outside of the car in the rain. He knew he had to get some help quickly, and he saw no friends around. He began to pull himself a little bit at a time out of that ravine in excruciating pain. As soon as he reached the top, flashlights shone in his face. People in a nearby house had seen the Nova's headlights fly off the cliff and had already called 9-1-1.

At The Hospital
Tony's mother Alice Darmanin raced to the trauma unit at St. Luke's Hospital ahead of the ambulance. When they brought in Tony on the gurney, she thought he was already dead.

"He wasn't moving and he was a grey color, and my heart just sunk. Of course they couldn't tell us anything. We sat there praying and praying, and the kids were calling everybody they knew to pray. We still didn't know anything about Anthony. Finally they told us that there was so much blood in the pictures they had taken, they couldn't could tell if it was his liver, his kidney or spleen that was bleeding.

They said , 'If he survives the next half hour we'll take another set of pictures.' I only heard the 'if he survives' part."

Instant Healing
Tony was conscious as the doctor probed his stomach and felt for damage and took him in to get a CAT scan. All he knew was that there was serious internal bleeding. "If you do not go into surgery in 15 minutes, you will die," the doctor told him. "Do we have your consent to take you to surgery?"

Tony gave the doctor permission to save his life while a sense of excitement filled him. In 15 minutes he could be standing in the presence of Jesus. If they did surgery and he got better, that was great, and if he died, he realized that was also great. Tony told us, "It makes you realize the significance of 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? [1Cor 15:55]'" Already his veins had started to collapse and he felt pins and needles through all of his extremities.

Even as they sent Tony in for a CAT scan, though, he knew people were praying for him. "I felt their prayers. It was the first time in my life where I could actually feel the prayers of people praying for me."

About 45 minutes after she'd first visited them, the doctor returned to the Darmanin family in the waiting room to give them the relieving and unexpected news that their son was okay. According to Alice: "All she says is, 'Do you want to see your son?' We walked back there and he's sitting up. The doctor said, 'I don't know what to tell you, but we don't know what happened. We don't know where the blood came from. We don't know where the blood went.' There was no blood. There were no wounds. She said, 'He has a very nasty crack on the back of his neck.' Actually, he should have died from that. The crack was on the hangman's vertebrae, and we were told only one in a thousand survives that."

The doctor kept Tony overnight, For the next few days Tony had some soreness, but that was it. He never had surgery.

Pain Remains
Tony noted: "But even though God did that miracle and healed my internal organs, for the past 18 years I have lived every day with pain in my back and neck from when the hatch slammed into me. I've gone to chiropractors, done physical therapy and deep tissue massage, and I'm still in constant pain.

"People tell me, 'You just don't have enough faith. If you had more faith God would have healed your whole body.' And I think, 'No… I have faith.' Or they say, 'You have unconfessed sin, that's why you're not healed,' and I think, 'No… I have my faults, but I don't have unconfessed sin.'

"No, this is what I've learned. I've learned that pain is not the enemy. I have learned that God has allowed me to have this pain for His reasons and for His purposes."

God's Love In Every Detail
A year later, Tony was at college living in the dorms when he ran out of all his toiletries at one time. "I squeezed out the last of my toothpaste. I used the very last of my shampoo and conditioner (yes, I condition) and even my deodorant had been completely used up. All on the same day."

Tony walked down to his bank to see if he could take out five dollars. When he checked the ATM, though, he had only $3.67 - too little to draw out on a Saturday afternoon.

"Well, Lord," Tony said, "If You don't want me to be stinky, please help me out here."

He walked back to the dorms. As he was heading to the door, his friend Margaret walked up to him with a paper bag in her arms. She said, "I don't want you to be offended, but while I was at the store shopping this morning, I really felt God wanted me to buy these things for you." Tony took the bag and looked inside. It held shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and deodorant.

"And after all these years," he said, "It still brings tears to my eyes. Because it told me that God really cared about me, even in the little things. And it wasn't that she gave me money. Anybody can hand you money. She handed me the very things I needed."

It's Not About Toughness
People often think that the proper response to pain is to be tough and pony up and push through it out of sheer determination. But, that's not the heart of God. Everything He does is for good, and He desires that we learn to completely depend on His love for us, no matter what things look like. He is willing to give us all we need, down to things as seemingly small as toothpaste. Almighty God who created the stars and calls them by name cares even for the sparrows.

"But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows." (Luke 12:7)

Tony said: "The fact is that God cares intimately about me and knows about the smallest details of my life, and yet He's allowed me to live with this pain for the past 18 years. It's not that He's doing these things - He didn't cause my suffering. But, He's allowed me to suffer pain. None of us escape it. It's part of the territory of being human. What God has promised is He'll never leave us. He'll never abandon us. And He'll never let us suffer more than He can carry us through. Some people ask why does a loving God allow pain? And I've learned that it's because of God's love that I can live through the pain."

Is suffering always God's plan? Of course not. Jesus had great compassion and healed people constantly, and he promised that we would do greater things than he did (John 14:12). God wants us to know Him and He wants to form us into the image of His Son (Rom 8:28-29). He wants us to trust that He loves us, and when we go to Him for help, to go boldly (Hebrews 4:16). And whatever happens, as the Hebrew children said before Nebuchadnezzar threw them into the fiery furnace, "But if not" - But if not, we will still trust Him, we will continue to follow Him alone. Whatever He decides, we need to have confidence that nothing is able to separate us from His great and perfect love.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-39)