When her father is struck by a falling tree and lies in a coma, Ellie wants nothing more than to heal him. He’d taught her some of the woodsy healing arts, and she sets out to try them first on a seemingly stillborn puppy, then on her helpless father, and on an injured neighbor everyone thinks is a witch.
If you’re like me most days, you don’t ask God for miracles.You don’t expect them, and they don’t happen.
My arthritis flares up. I mutter and take an aspirin. A lymph node feels enlarged. I make a note to ask the doctor about it. I need to avoid eating wheat, or my digestion is interrupted. And so on.
I went to an amazing Global Awakening prayer conference just recently in Orlando. I and others laid hands on a woman and prayed for her back, injured in an accident. She pitched forward suddenly from the waist and then straightened. She had felt the vertebrae in her back realigning, she said. She could bend and twist without pain now. So cool. Thank you, God!
It’s a funny thing about miracles. You need to ask for them. If you don’t, they don’t happen. If you do, maybe they happen, maybe they don’t. It’s all up to God, whose ways are higher than our ways and whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
It’s a funny thing about miracles. You need to ask for them. If you don’t, they don’t happen. If you do, maybe they happen, maybe they don’t. It’s all up to God, whose ways are higher than our ways and whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
A youtube video from a CBS News report shows (after an ad) the story of a handicapped teen in North Carolina who got pneumonia. The girl had been on a ventilator for weeks, and doctors agreed she had no chance of recovery. Her parents reluctantly agreed to remove life support. That was done. The agonizing wait began.
I suffer from a back that occasionally goes “out,” meaning I bend in some direction, and things go sproing. With the help of a chiropractor it usually takes three or four weeks before I can feel normal again. This happens every couple of years.
Last fall, it happened again. I was bending over and twisting, and sproing, there it went. It hurt to move, but move I had to do to live my life. I went to the chiropractor, and she did some adjusting and so on, but it was going to be the usual recovery period, I could tell.
I met with my regular prayer partner, Jennifer. Jennifer and I often lay on a hand and pray for healing.
My sense of smell had been on the way out for maybe 20 years, and had finally totally absented itself for about three years. My mother had had the same problem. I just figured it was genetic and lived with it. Never thought to ask anyone to pray about it.
Members of the youth group at Bethel Church in Redding, California (near the Oregon border) trekked downstate to Disney Land. Their purpose wasn’t fun, but to find other kids to pray for for healing.
It was the summer of 2006. A blind man, a Muslim, asked an American woman in Mozambique for money. She prayed for him, but he wasn’t healed. So she gave him some money and suggested he come to the church service on Sunday. He came and brought a friend, also blind, also Muslim.
My friend N. returned to the St. Louis area to live with her mother, following divorce. She was despondent. In fact, she spent a year “in bed”–not going out, not communicating with anyone, oppressed by darkness.
Things did not get better when we went to the orthopedic doctor . She looked at it and x-rayed. She told us that we were going to have to schedule surgery next time that we came in to see her. I asked if she was sure, she nodded her head; yes these kinds of injuries culminate in surgery. She gave him a brace with instructions to be careful, to not jump etc.
Phyllis Wheeler, a very dear friend, called me and told me about a lady coming to her church. That woman went on missions to poor countries and tremendous miracles were happening for those people; blind see, lame walk, etc.
