Running the Race

I’ve experienced two special people leaving this world for heaven in less than a month. One had a massive heart failure and the other a rare cancer. Both had numerous people praying for healing and yet both left this life much too young. Both lived lives that influenced hundreds of people and did so with great passion for Jesus. One I knew for only a year and the other for almost two decades.

In their absence we experience loss, grief, questions, desires to speak with them, to see them, to have them experience more life with us. My thoughts flit and float between memories, desires, emotions, and questions. Emerging from all of these is a desire to be proactive in honoring them. I want to pull on the wealth of their contributions to me and live it to the fullest.

A common saying in the Church today is to make one person’s ceiling another person’s floor. To take all that is learned and gained from the life we are honoring, whether they have gone on before us or not, and use it as a launching point to go farther. If they accessed 10% of the treasures of heaven, go for 30% so that the next person can launch from 30% towards 50%. In honoring, we take our spiritual inheritance and we expand it throughout our lifetime so that the inheritance we give is greater than the one we received. This is true stewardship.

This may seem impossible when the life was lived so fully. But I think that those we are missing would want us not to set their level of maturity in Christ as our goal. Instead they would want us to believe that that has already been deposited into us by them so that we could go so much farther. Every father or mother wants their child to go beyond them, and we honor them by doing so.

The key is that we do not do so by our own strength for we will wear ourselves out in a week if not sooner. Our strength comes from the same source as their strength, and that is in Christ. We go farther by resting in Christ. We live by the strength of Christ in us, not by our flesh, but by His Spirit. We find our hope, our joy, and our peace in Christ for this is how we honor those who have gone before us.

In so doing, I want to be careful to not determine truth by experiences, but to view experiences through the lens of truth, which are the eyes of Jesus. Jesus told us we are to pray that the reality of heaven be made present upon the earth. That is the mission of the Christian life to bring heaven to earth. Thus, I want to walk in boldness to not set those experiences as a stopping point, but instead a launching pad to grab hold of those truths of heaven and pull them to earth.

In the spirit of honoring, I want to go after healing more. I don’t have the answers as to why healing doesn't happen sometimes, but I do know that in Jesus I can find the keys to the Kingdom. I will trust in the goodness of God. I will remember that for the believer, death is swallowed up in victory. I will remember the lives lived and the lessons learned, but I will not memorialize them into the past, but pull them with me into my future as I grow in Christ. Those I influence, those I lead, those I teach will be learning also from those I learned from as I honor them by continuing to move forward.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Hebrews 12:1-2a

  

This post is in honor of:

         Pastor Rob Stevenson of Acts 2 Church

         Sharon Shirrell (Remnant Ministries) 

A Healed Heel

All last week I had this pain in the heel of my right foot. It plagued me. I was limping around attempting to keep my weight off the heel and yet it hurt whether I was sitting still or walking around. By Sunday morning the pain was at its worst. I was limping worse than I had all week and was uncertain as to if I would be much help setting up the space we rent for church. We started the morning off, before setup, with a time of prayer. My husband asked Jesus to heal my aching foot. I didn’t think much of it at the time; my concentration was on my pain more than on praying.

We began to start the set up process and I tentatively began to do my usual tasks. In about ten minutes I was walking from one room to the next and it suddenly came to my attention that I wasn’t limping. I stopped and walked around, testing out my foot and realized I had no pain whatsoever. I, who believe in miracles, was still skeptical that it was totally gone and thought maybe it was a temporary relief of some kind. I went throughout the day with no pain, into the next day with no pain, and even went to the gym last night and did a mile on the treadmill with no pain. Now on the third day, there is still no hint of a problem with my foot.

Testimony of Two Miracles

Yesterday I witnessed two miracles. One woman in our church had been suffering with a sore ankle from a pinched nerve. Her doctor had just told her she was going to need surgery to correct the problem. My husband prayed for her ankle and she felt warmth and tingles spread up her leg to her knee. She said it was beginning to feel better, about 20% she said. He prayed again and she smiled and said she again felt warmth and tingles in her leg and reported the pain was 80% gone. He prayed once more and she joyfully reported 100% pain free and demonstrated by jumping up and down on her foot. We told her to be sure to return to her doctor to have him check her out to be certain the problem is fixed.

About a half an hour later my husband and I were talking with his mother about the several miracles concerning her right hand which had been injured 31 years ago. Her hand had been accidentally shot off 31 years prior and reattached without a wrist as the wrist was completely shattered. The doctor had told her that she would never have wrist movement again. However, she had soon recovered wrist movement one day at a church meeting many years ago. The doctor was baffled and said she indeed had wrist movement where there should be none. She retold us this story. And then she was talking about how a year ago she regained movement in the joints in her fingers on that hand while watching a DVD by a minister giving testimonies of many healings. She hadn’t been able to individually move her fingers in 30 years; she could only move the four fingers as a unit and use the thumb with the four fingers to grasp things. Not anymore. She has very good mobility. Still due to the removal of her wrist 31 years ago her right arm was approximately 1 and ½ inches shorter than her left arm; a visible difference that also impaired her balance.

My husband asked her if she wanted God to lengthen it to be even with the other arm. We have never done this before. We have only heard stories of God growing out an appendage. She said yes. She extended both arms out and laid her hands on top of my husband’s open hands. We could see the shortness of the left compared to the right. We kept our eyes open as my husband spoke to her arm to grow in Jesus name. We watched as it grew approximately an inch and a half before our very eyes to match the other hand. We were all jubilantly excited. She said she had felt a gentle pulling in her arm as it took place. She ran around showing the other people in the church still fellowshipping after the meeting. When she returned home she showed her husband and other family members who knew her right arm had been shorter than the left arm for 31 years. Lots of people know it was short and all whom she shows are amazed to see the equal length of her arms. There had been no pain associated with the shortness, God in His good pleasure and loving kindness restored the length.

This is an eyewitness account of the power of God working through ordinary Christians today. This seems extraordinary, but compared to the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament, it isn’t out of the ordinary. I have heard hundred of modern testimonies of miraculous healings of all kinds. I am excited to be seeing them with my own eyes now!

It's Supernatural

I have just spent four days at a healing conference where I witnessed many miracles and many tangible experiences of God’s presence. I also heard hundreds of eye witness testimonies of miracles happening around the world including the United States. God is undeniably pouring out His love upon people across the world. He is working through His followers just as He did in the early disciples of Jesus. Biblical miracles are being experienced today. They never stopped being experienced. There are so many historical records of the power of God in all the great revivals of history around the world.

I speak so much on cerebral defenses of the truth of Jesus Christ. However, if all I ever did is present an intellectual belief system I would never paint the full picture of the reality of heaven available to us today. God is not merely a matter of the mind to answer the big philosophical questions of life. If that was all there was to it, what would be the point.

The Kingdom of God is at hand. He is actively moving in the world today. I’ve seen His work. I’ve experienced His presence. I saw a three year old praying for the sick and them getting healed. I saw her pray for someone and the power of God flow over them. I saw children prophesying the things of God over people with great accuracy bringing life and healing to them. I had a woman I had never met prophesy over me so specifically exactly what I needed to hear from God about concerning an area of ministry. About 60-80 people were healed each night. Some had injuries for as long as 10 years and were healed miraculously.

One young man, a musician I know personally, was 50% deaf in one ear and his hearing was completely restored so much so that the noises around him was hurting his now sensitive hearing. Another man had partial paralysis on the left side of his body due to a stroke. Strength returned to him and his limp arm was restored and he could grip a man’s hand in a hand shake where before he could not. This man shared his testimony and demonstrated his returned mobility and strength before the church that knew him well and was jubilant at his healing.

God is restoring the gift of healing and the supernatural to the Church. If you have not seen such demonstrations of the reality of Jesus I believe you will one day soon. This is quickly changing from something common overseas and not so common in the States, to something common throughout the church at large. Don’t you think if most of the Christians you encountered loved like Jesus did and healed the sick and set people free from bondages and such that you would know that the Gospel we share is true? Would not that be proof? The day is fast approaching where this will be what the ministry of Christians will look like. The Bible says that the power of God must accompany the preaching of the Kingdom of God. It confirms the truth of the Kingdom when it is preached accompanied by the demonstration of the supernatural. This is normal Christianity. Normalcy is being restored.

I am reminded of the phrase in The Chronicles of Narnia when the spring was breaking forth through the winter and all the Narnians knew, “Aslan is on the move.” The Kingdom of God is breaking into the Kingdom of this world and we are seeing the God is on the move through His people.

Normal Christianity

I work on the fourth floor of an office building with old elevators in continual need of repair. The elevator doors rush open with a loud bang and one of them closes extremely slowly while the other has a tendency to close on you as you enter. As it passes each floor there you feel a disconcerting lurch of sorts and when you reach your floor there is a sudden jolt and grind. For years this has been a daily experience.

Several weeks ago, my husband and I stayed at a newly remodeled hotel and our room was on the tenth floor. We entered the elevator and selected floor 10. About 60 seconds passed in quiet stillness and I told my husband that the elevator must not be working as we weren’t moving yet. He pointed out the counter at the top of the doors to show me we were indeed traveling upwards and were nearing our exit. I was amazed.

I was using the nearly broken elevators as a standard instead of an elevator in working order. Therefore, I was amazed by something that should be normal.

Does this not happen with the Christian life? Do we not take what we have always known as a standard instead of using Christ as our standard?

I’ve observed that the common response regarding leading a supernatural life to be that it is something that’s not for everybody – it’s not normal Christianity. People see it as a lifestyle that is amazing, but not the standard. The standard has become what we see everyday and not what Jesus modeled it to be. We are to be imitators of Christ, are we not?

When I first starting learning about healings, miracles, and the like as being a part of normal Christianity, I resisted the idea because I thought those who lived that way had something special – something abnormal and I took aversion to being told that it should be normal in my life. I had grown up in the church; I knew what normal Christianity was all about. Or did I? Could it be that my standard was my experiences and not Jesus?

Just like the elevator story, I was measuring normalcy by the wrong standard. The standard should have been an elevator in good working order and not one that is constantly inept.

Jesus said to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cleanse lepers. Does that mean that He isn’t pleased with me because I don’t do that? No, absolutely not. I am made righteous by Him, not by the works that I do. But if I readjust my standard to be Him, He can enable me to do these and greater things because it is He that does them through me. If my eyes are on Him and I am seeking His Kingdom, I will begin to see the things He spoke of happening in my life. I will then be about my Father’s business. I will hear and see what He wants to do in people for my eyes are set on Him.

When Jesus approached the disciples’ boat walking on the water he called Peter to walk out to Him. Peter fixed his eyes on Christ and walked upon the water for His standard was not that everyone knows this is impossible, but His eyes were joined with Christ’s eyes. However, when he took His eyes off Christ he began to falter and sink, but he quickly fixed them back on Jesus.

Jesus has to be our standard. We can’t look at what everyone says is possible or impossible. It is written in Philippians 3:16 that, “I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.”