I overheard a conversation between co-workers today. One was telling the other how he doesn’t believe in the bible or God or “anything like that.” I teared up and my heart hurt.
I sat there and listened—broken by his words. I want to tell him how Jesus can solve the anger I see him carrying. I want to tell him Jesus can heal the troubles in his life, Jesus can help with his stress, I want to tell him Jesus is REAL and I have proof in my own life that HE IS REAL, GOD IS REAL, and the BIBLE IS TRUE.
I have so many supernatural examples in my life in which I have come to God and HE PROVIDED in bizarre ways.
The time we didn’t have enough money to meet our budget. We either tithed or met our budget—we had no way to do both. We prayed, felt God calling us to be obedient to his will of tithing and as a result we were short $180 to meet our bills that month, we were going to have to use our credit card to make ends meet. We had been debt free for a long time and we knew pulling that card out was going to start a spiral effect, trying to pay the balance off the next month out of that budget, and so forth. As we handed off our tithe check we prayed and thanked God for his provision. The end of that same week we received a check in the mail for guess what, $180! It was refund for a medical bill we had paid nearly six months earlier and the hospital billing found the error in over-payment and sent us a refund. We met our budget and remained debt free. You may say coincidence, but I can’t.
Jesus is real, God is real, the bible is truth.
Or the time I was begging God for a child through years of infertility and he “spoke” to me—it was a random thought that I knew wasn’t my own—the thought was I had to do something, something that made zero sense to my struggle of infertility.
I shrugged it off for months and thought, “that wasn’t God, it was weird to have that thought but it wasn’t God.” That thought never left me and finally I conceded and took care of what was asked of me, when I did, that was the month I became pregnant. After years of trying, physician intervention, and the doctor saying, “I think we need to give up.” I did what God asked of me and we conceived a child. Jesus is real, God is real, the bible is truth.
I was in my first trimester with my second child and I could barely stand, I was constantly spinning, miserably sick, unable to eat, barely able to take care of myself, much less my daughter, much less go on a family vacation. I had been sick for weeks. We had a beach vacation planned, it was our last vacation as a family of three, and our daughter’s first beach trip. I wanted so desperately for it to be special for HER, not for me, but for her. To make those precious memories before our lives forever changed to a family of four.
I prayed to God and asked him, “please heal me of my sickness, please just for the trip, I will take it all back upon me after, allow me to be well so I can serve my family well on this trip.”
When we arrived at the beach I felt brand new. I played, ate, and felt amazing for those days.
We drove home and within minutes of being home my body was flooded with sickness, debilitating all day sickness that lasted for several weeks to come. But God gave me that vacation time to serve and enjoy my family. He gave us the precious memories we needed. I asked and he provided. Jesus is real, God is real, the bible is truth.
Or when we were told without a doubt our baby would have a cleft palate. We were shown that black hole where the roof of her mouth should be on ultrasound not once but twice. God never let me have peace with her diagnosis so I never stopped praying for her healing until the moment she was born and the neonatologist yelled out, “Her palate is intact, her palate is intact.” Jesus is real, God is real, the bible is truth.
Once my husband and I had a fight. A huge disagreement. At the end no one conceded and I didn’t know how we were going to find a way to agree. We went to bed angry with our back to one another. The tension was so thick. I prayed there silently. I prayed, “God I surrender my marriage to you, I surrender it to your hands because I don’t know how we will pass this disagreement.” I asked God, “Please let my husband and I bend to YOUR will not our will for this situation.” My final prayer that night was, “God I don’t know how to take the next step into your will, please let my husband be willing to take a step into your will, please let him reach out to me.” My words were between me and God, my husband could not hear.
Moments after my prayer my husband literally reached out to me. He turned over towards me and placed his hand on my back, he said he loved me more than anything and he would not let this break us, he said we will seek God’s answer together. God allowed my prayers to reach the Holy spirit in my husband that night. Our bond was not shattered but renewed.
Jesus is real, God is real, the bible is truth.
I have a condition I don’t talk openly about. I have severe spinal issues. I don’t speak about it because I don’t like pity, I don’t like people constantly asking if I am ok, so I just keep it to myself. I have degenerative disk disease, I have moderate spinal stenosis, and I have severe spinal arthritis.
This has been going on since my late twenties. I have had one spinal surgery so far. I had my most recent MRI two months before becoming pregnant with my sweet 18 month old. At that MRI reading my neurosurgeon said, “Congratulations you do not have any new herniated disks, but you do have the spine of a women in her sixties.”
I was 34 when he said that.
I have days I am pretty good, but most days my husband has to get me out of bed. I am physically unable to do it on my own. My husband travels for work, when he is out of town I have to sleep on the playroom couch so I can roll to the floor in the mornings to then pull up using arm strength to a kneeling then eventually a standing position. It’s not easy.
Nearly every night when I try to get up off the furniture I scream in pain, the pain feels like electric shocks running through my back and down my hip. It is so terrible that at home I usually sit in the floor so I can use my kneel to standing method—so I don’t have to use my back to get up. I don’t talk about it, but it’s hard and there are days it really sucks.
I have prayed for God to heal me and he hasn’t and I have peace with that.
BUT
This past June I was taking a trip without my husband for the first time. The months leading up the trip my husband kept bugging me to tell the women on this trip about my condition. He kept saying, “Who is going to get you out of bed, what are people going to think if you are sitting and try to get up and you scream in pain?” He kept on and on but I knew God planned this trip. God brought this trip to my feet and he was going to take care of me.
My faith in God’s provision of this trip never wavered. As the trip drew closer my husband BEGGED me to tell at least one person, to find a partner to help me if I needed help and to be honest I was too embarrassed, so I said nothing to no one. Instead I prayed.
I told God that if his plan was not to heal me permanently, I understood.
But to please heal me for this trip, please take away my pain, let me have the ability to get up and move around without help, please just for this trip. Friends, from the time I stepped foot on that plane until the night I returned I was PAIN FREE. I got out of bed on my own with ease, I sat and stood and moved around as if I had no spinal issues at all.
The first night back home my pain returned and the next morning like usual my husband had to come to my side of the bed to get me up in the morning. God took my pain away EXACTLY how I asked him to. I can’t explain it any other way. Jesus is real, God is real, the bible is truth.
I don’t know why God allowed me to suffer infertility for so long before telling me a simple way out. I don’t know why I suffered for weeks—after our vacation—with sickness or why my back is not permanently healed when God has the capability to heal me completely.
I don’t have the answers for his will, he is God, I am not. He sees the long term plan and I only see the sun rise and set for one day at a time. But what I do know…
Jesus is real, God is real, the bible is truth.
I have no other way to explain the events above or the other dozen examples I have of God meeting me to the exact place I called him.
Story by Stacey of Faithfully Failing.
Photo from that precious beach trip.
