Thank you all for your replies yesterday and your willingness to point toward your favorite devotions for the Day of Praise books. Here's one from June 29, 2012.
"Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, 'Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.' But Ahaz said, 'I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test.'" -
Isaiah 7:10-12
It was hard to believe it.
Even after I saw it with my very own eyes.
It's not that I don't believe that God can do miracles. It's just that, well, I've always believed (and seen daily) that God does miracles of the heart for others and for me. And I've always believed (and seen regularly) that God does miracles of the body for others.
As for miracles of the body for me, I just feel so blessed of heart that I've never really felt the need to ask God for my own miracle of the body.
So when the team of white-water rafting guides at JH Ranch asked if they could pray for my body when they learned of my back problems, I suppose that I was like Ahaz in today's Bible verse. The commonality is that God wanted to bless us both, and Ahaz and I said, "No, thanks, God."
And, to both of us, God said, "Excuse me?"
In Ahaz's case, God said, in chapter 7, that he was going to do the miracle anyway by way of the virgin birth of the Messiah. God said the Messiah would be born to a young girl. Being young, she was un-jaded; that is, she had not yet been made dull, apathetic, or cynical-by-experience to the possibility of a miracle connected to her body. And so it was with Mary, the young, virgin girl who bore our Lord Jesus in her womb.
In my case, God said that he was going to do the miracle anyway by way of four young, volunteer college students named, if my memory serves me correctly, Matt, Will, Luke, and John. The only thing that could've made the whole experience anymore surreal was if Will had been named Mark! (For those who may still be sleepy, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four Gospel writers.) I don't know, I'm thinking now that maybe there was an Adam too!
Bottom line was there were a bunch of young, un-jaded guys with Bible names,
who asked if they could pray for my back and for my daughter Calley-Taylor's foot, with which she's had broken-bone numbness problems for years. Their
hunch with my back was that I had a leg that was shorter than the other.
So they gathered Calley-Taylor, another guy with his broken ribs, and me into this circle of seven (which interestingly is the biblical number of wholeness, completion, and perfection). They prayed a short prayer.
Then the order becomes kind of fuzzy because I was blown away by what was
not fuzzy. I didn't ask the broken-ribs guy what happened for him because I was so blown away by what happened to Calley-Taylor and me.
They sat me down on the ground, showed us all how one of my legs was an inch or so shorter, asked a short, heartfelt prayer to God, shook my short leg, and, voila!, the short leg was longer, and I had instant relief in my back.
Then they touched Calley-Taylor's foot, asked a short, heartfelt prayer to God, and, voila!, she had feeling in her foot for the first time in years.
We all hugged. Calley-Taylor, the broken-ribs guy, and I got on the bus with the other fathers and daughters to go back to camp. The Bible-named, volunteer, college guys went back to the white-water rafts in the river. And that was that.
Make of it all what you will. But I'm sitting here on the floor, looking at two legs that are still the same length, and thinking about Calley-Taylor, who gets back today from a Mexico, house-building mission trip with sister Cassidy and 24 others from our church. And I'm betting her foot still feels great.
Because I've learned, like Ahaz of old hopefully did, to bet on God...with every part of life.
And God invites you to do the same!
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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