Does your faith need strengthening? Are you confused and wondering if Jesus Christ is really "The Way, the Truth, and the Life?" "Fight for Your Faith" is a blog filled with interesting and thought provoking articles to help you find the answers you are seeking. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." In Jeremiah we read, "Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall seek for Me with all your heart." These articles and videos will help you in your search for the Truth.
I just think there is a balance in everything. We can pray and expect miracles, but if not....We have seen a lot of healings and miracles in our lifetime and walk with the Lord. If those suffering some chronic disease like Parkinson don't get healed immediately, how are they going to feel. I just think they could get discouraged.
Life is a battle. It's not easy. We should be walking in victory, but often we are struggling. What are we going to do? We're going to smile through our tears. We're going to pick up our cross, whatever it may be, and run the race with patience looking unto Jesus. We're going to draw nigh to Him in faith, and that drawing is what is going to transform us. Spending time in prayer, isn't for God's benefit, but for ours. We are transformed in those moments of quiet prayer and reflection. Prayer is for the transforming of our character more than for the answering of our requests. That's what I think.
Let's pray over everyone that needs it. Let's lay hands, anoint with oil, petition or declare. Just the fact that we spend the time and show the concern for those that are sick and struggling may be an encouragement to them and their faith will be activated and God will heal. But if He doesn't heal at the moment, it could be he is working a bigger miracle in their hearts and in the hearts and lives of those around them. Who knows the wonderous ways of God. His ways are past finding out. There's no perfect formular.
Jordan Peterson's wife got healed by praying the rosary with a friend daily and doing the stations of the cross. She ended up renewing her Catholic faith and her intellectual husband had to acknowledge something had happened. How can we understand the ways of God. We can pray to remove the mountains and cast them into the sea, but I haven't heard or seen of any physical mountains being removed, or any trees being plucked up, or any one walking on water. In some dire situation it very well might happen and God may do those types of miracles. Maybe the greater things ye shall do is not in the area of healing, though it could be.
Maybe it's in the area of getting out the message, like the Chosen production, or Mel Gibson's films on Jesus. Maybe during those 3 and 1/2 years of persecution in great Tribulation God's grace will manifest and we will see even greater miracles and healings and walking on water, and mountains moving, and trees being plucked up. But even if we don't, we will not bow down to the idols of this world. We will sing in the face of the difficulties and rejoice that we are counted worthy to suffer shame and persecution for His name.
Let's stir up our faith and expect miracles like the faith healers proclaim and trust that God will bring the results He desires in His time and place. God is sovereign. He is still on the throne and prayer changes things.
A couple of months ago, I read through the book of Matthew and had my viewpoint on faith refreshed. Several stories stood out to me in such a dynamic way, including the story where Jesus is asked by a father to heal his dying daughter,1 Jesus’ encounter with two blind men that begged Him to heal them,2 and Jesus’ meeting with a Canaanite woman who sought healing for her daughter.3 It was as if I was reading them for the first time. In reading these stories, I noticed a common thread.
In each account, individuals were begging Jesus for healing either for themselves or for their child. They were saying, “Have mercy on us!” In other words, “Sympathize with us and heal us because You can.” But in each situation Jesus turns around and puts the ball right back in their court by telling them that He didn’t heal them because He could, but He healed them because they believed He could.
I like the story of the blind men in particular. In this story, the whole time these blind men are crying out “Have mercy, have mercy.” And when Jesus does address them, what does He say? “Do you believe that I can do this?”4 He didn’t want to heal them out of pity, it seems. He wanted to heal them because of their faith; He wanted them to know that. When He asked the magic question, they got the point. Yes, they believed He could do it. And because they believed, He healed. As simple as that.
That made me look at the story of the Canaanite woman differently. Jesus responded to her request for healing by saying that He had been sent to the lost children of Israel, and it wasn’t right to “take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs,”5 telling her that she was not fit to eat at the master’s table. But in reading this again, I wondered, Was He putting her down, or rather, was He giving her an opportunity to prove to Him that she had faith, an opportunity to gain a great reward for having faith at that critical moment?
He didn’t answer her request right away. He had her persist and prove that she had faith in Him before He granted her what she asked. Afterwards He told her, “You have great faith!”6 And at that moment, her daughter was healed.
In another story in Matthew 17, Jesus rescues the disciples from their failed healing attempt and explains why they couldn’t do the miracle. He said, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, `Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”7
I love how Jesus makes it so simple. It was just a matter of faith. Did they believe not only that God could heal the boy, but more importantly that when they prayed, God would hear them, and answer their prayer? They knew Jesus could do it, but did they know that they too could do it?
He also gave them a size comparison—faith as tiny as a mustard seed is potent enough to receive a mammoth miracle. Think about that.
Jesus also said, “According to your faith will it be done to you.”8 In other words, “If you have the faith for it, you will have it.” Quite a promise.
All this talk of faith can make faith seem nebulous, like, “What is it exactly?” Here’s a simple definition of faith that works for me: Faith is knowing God can and will act according to His will.
After I read these accounts from Matthew, it made me stop and ask myself if there were any prayers I was praying that I didn’t really have faith for the answers. Was I expecting less from God than He was able to give? Was I confining Him to a tiny work space because of my tiny faith?—Joykie Walters Faith for miracles
It took a miracle to put the stars in place. It took a miracle to hang the world in space. But when He saved my soul, Cleansed and made me whole, It took a miracle of love and grace. —John W. Peterson
Listen to Martha Reed Galvin interpret the song below:
I cannot understand how anyone cannot believe in miracles, when the Bible contains so many accounts of miracles. Of course, you meet some intellectuals who contend that the miracles recorded in the Bible either never happened or can be explained scientifically, or if they did happen, such miracles are impossible today. Well, those miracles did happen just like the Bible says they did, and in every case it took two elements: the power of God and someone’s faith. The power of God hasn’t changed, so you can expect to see miracles today.
Faith in the Bible creates faith in the miraculous. The Bible not only reveals the acts of the supernatural God, but it also imparts faith to anyone who reads it with an open heart.9 The Bible has a miraculous, transforming effect on our lives, and that gives us faith for other miracles. Faith in God and His Son Jesus Christ, faith in the Christ of the Bible, makes for faith in our everyday lives. That’s because real faith believes in the changeless Christ and His power.
Shortly before His crucifixion, Jesus promised, “He who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.”10 Then after His resurrection, when He appeared to His disciples, He said that signs (miracles) would follow those who believed in Him, and miracles did follow.11
It wasn’t long before others were saying of the first Christians, “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”12 Those first followers and the ones who were to come had such confidence that the supernatural power of God was at their command that they dared to challenge the mighty Roman Empire and shook it to its very foundations.
If Jesus is “the same yesterday, today, and forever,”13 why is it so hard to believe that He, in answer to prayer, can do the same kinds of miracles today? Wherever you find real faith manifested, you will find miracles. If you live in His Word, if you dig out His promises and build your faith on them, if you trust Him to keep His word even when it seems impossible, you’ll see God at work in the realm of the supernatural.
“With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.”14
It’s been my practice for many years, whenever some desperate need arose, to trust God to work a miracle. I didn’t always get the miracle I was praying for, but He did send answers to prayer many more times than He kept me waiting or said no.
His compassion and love for you, His willingness to come to your rescue in times of need, and His faithfulness to His promises are just the same today. He longs to see faith and meet your needs.
The next time you are facing an impossible situation or need, claim this promise in utter confidence: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”15 His power is the same today, and God is still on the throne, and prayer changes things!—Virginia Brandt Berg
Published on Anchor October 2020. Read by Reuben Ruchevsky.
1 Matthew 9:18, 23–25. 2 Matthew 9:27–30. 3 Matthew 15:22–28. 4 Matthew 9:28. 5 Matthew 15:26 NIV. 6 Matthew 15:28. 7 Matthew 17:20 NIV. 8 Matthew 9:29 NIV. 9 Romans 10:17. 10 John 14:12. 11 Mark 16:17–18, 20. 12 Acts 17:6. 13 Hebrews 13:8. 14 Mark 10:27. 15 Romans 8:32.
In a survival story his doctors call extraordinary, a 22-month-old Pennsylvania boy whose lifeless body was pulled from an icy creek was revived after an hour and 41 minutes of CPR and has suffered virtually no lingering effects.
Gardell Martin came home from the hospital on Sunday, and his doctors said Thursday he has made a full recovery.
“It’s not only extraordinarily rare that we got the kid back, but what’s even more extraordinary is the rate at which he recovered and the completeness of his recovery,” said Dr. Frank Maffei, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Geisinger’s Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Danville. “The stars and moon aligned, and he had an angel on his shoulder.”
Gardell and two of his brothers had gone outside to play on March 11 when he fell into the stream that runs through their 5-acre property near Mifflinburg and was swept away by the fast-moving current.
His 7-year-old brother, Greg, ran into the house and screamed that he couldn’t find Gardell.
Their mother, Rose Martin, did a quick search of the property before realizing her young son had likely fallen into the creek, which was swollen because of melting snow. She called 911 while her two teenage daughters began walking downstream in a frantic search for the toddler.
A neighbor found Gardell nearly a quarter-mile away, caught up in a tree branch and water gushing around him.
An ambulance crew arrived moments later, found no pulse and began CPR. Resuscitation would continue, unbroken, for 101 minutes—in the ambulance, at a community hospital, aboard a medical helicopter and, finally, in the emergency room of Janet Weis, the pediatric wing of Geisinger Medical Center, where a team of some 30 doctors and nurses sprang into action.
Gardell’s body temperature was 77 degrees when he arrived, more than 20 degrees below normal. In this case, the boy’s profound hypothermia worked to his advantage, dramatically slowing his metabolism and giving his organs “some degree of protection from cardiac arrest,” Maffei said.
Knowing that, Maffei ordered CPR to continue while the team slowly warmed his body. At around 82 degrees, they detected a pulse.
Against all odds, his heart had restarted.
Hours later, Gardell regained consciousness—and his brain function was normal, stunning doctors.
“It was an act of God,” said his grateful mother, Rose Martin. “There is no doubt in my mind it’s a miracle. God had the right people in the right place at the right time and they all did a wonderful job.”
Dr. Richard Lambert, the attending physician in the pediatric intensive care unit, said Gardell belonged in a “rare, rare, extreme category for recovery.”
A week later, the medical team is still on a high. It “provides us with a smile on our face, knowing you were part of something this wonderful and amazing,” Lambert said.
Back at home, Gardell is walking—though he still needs to regain a bit of balance—and chattering away.
But not about his ordeal.
“It’s hard to tell how much he remembers or knows about what happened,” his mother said. “He can’t really tell us in that way.”
Carrie Dedrick, ChristianHeadlines.com, March 18, 2015
An Australian family call themselves “the luckiest people in the world” after their premature newborn son miraculously survived.
Kate Ogg gave birth to twins that were 14 months premature. The babies weighed only two pounds and doctors believed on baby, named Jamie, would not survive. Christian Today reports Ogg and her husband David wanted to hold their son before he died
“I saw him (Jamie) gasp but the doctor said it was no use. I took Jamie off the doctor, asked everyone to leave. He was cold and I just wanted him to be warm. I just wanted to cuddle him. I unwrapped him and ordered my husband to take his shirt off and climb into the bed,” Ogg said.
“I wanted to meet him, and to hold him, and for him to know us. We’d resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to lose him, and we were just trying to make the most of those last, precious moments.”
The baby was pronounced dead by doctors, but then started to gasp for air, and finally breathe. Jamie and his twin sister Emily are now healthy five-year-olds.
“If we had let the doctor walk out of the room with him, Jamie would have been dead,” Ogg said.
