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If the timing isn’t God’s, it can’t be a miracle. These are true stories, all.
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Hockey Baby
It was the late 80’s, and Sharon & I were living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I had signed up for a conversational French class, held in the evenings at Mount Royal College, a tech school. All adults in the class, I befriended a couple students that first night, one being a pretty blond woman in her late 20’s named Linda. Linda Bullard. She and her husband were fairly new to Calgary.
Over the weekend after that first class, it came to me that a Mike Bullard had recently been traded to the Calgary Flames from the Pittsburg Penguins. When I asked Linda at the next class where she and her husband had come from, she answered, “Pittsburgh,” and I thought, “Bingo!”
We became better friends during that class, Linda not knowing anyone else in town. I was able to share the gospel of Jesus Christ on several occasions, and she was interested. Toward the end of the semester, she confided in me that she and her husband had not been able to get pregnant, though they had been trying for over 8 years.
Now I happened to have a pretty good track record when it came to praying for successful pregnancies and births. So I told Linda that I’d be glad to pray for her, but she had better be serious about getting pregnant, because if I prayed, she was going to be having a baby. She assured me she was serious, and so I prayed.
That was one of the last times I saw her. The hockey season ended shortly after (I think Calgary beat Montreal for the Stanley Cup that year), and Mike Bullard was traded away to another team.
During the next hockey season, I was watching a home game on TV. The Flames were playing the team that Mike had been traded to. It was 9-10 months since I’d prayed for Linda. During the first intermission, between the first and second periods of play, Mike was interviewed by the announcers, because of his past connection with Calgary. He was pretty excited, and wanted to announce to the whole world the recent birth of their new daughter!
Praise the Lord.
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ISJIAS is a Foreign Tongue
I’d been in Norway for less than 6 months, in the winter of 1980. I lived with Carl Morten in an apartment at 33 Thorvald Meyersgate in Oslo, where we had home bible fellowships. Carl Morten worked at an ocean shipping company, in charge of the ticker tape (this was pre-computer), or communications, office.
One evening Carl Morten’s mother, who spoke no English, came to the fellowship, which was a surprise. She was really very skeptical of this Christian thing her son was involved with. I taught in English, and Carl Morten translated for his mother throughout the fellowship.
Afterward, as people were sitting around, talking and drinking coffee, Carl Morten came up to me and said that his mother would like to be prayed for. She apparently had a problem with her “isjias.” I had no idea what that meant and Carl Morten did not know the English word. He said it had something to do with the back. I said, “Sure I’ll pray for your mom.”
With his mom sitting on a chair, and Carl Morten sitting beside her, I got on my knees before her, laid my right hand on her left knee and began to pray. I prayed for her isjias, not having any idea what it was, and then I prayed for the pain in her chest; why, I don’t know. While I was praying, she began to cry.
After I was done praying, Carl Morten spoke with and comforted his mother for a couple of minutes and then turned to me. He said that his mother’s isjias was all better after I prayed (turns out isjias is sciatica). But that wasn’t why his mom was crying. It seems that she had had a pain in her chest which had been getting worse and worse over the last several weeks, but that she had been afraid to ask me to pray for it. Nevertheless, while I was praying for her, and though she did not understand a word of what I was saying, the pain in her chest had simply disappeared, and that is why and when she began crying.
Praise the Lord.
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Spirits in the Night
Though she lived with her mom in Maryland, Melanie had met my family before. After taking a Bible class together in Kansas the summer before, she had come home to Wisconsin with me and spent a week or so, getting to know my mom and siblings (who lived in the Madison area), as well as my dad & his wife, who lived outside of Janesville in the boonies.
Now we were in the same leadership training program with this Christian group we were involved with, in Emporia, Kansas, and she spent the Christmas vacation of 1976 with me and my mom and siblings. During the break, we went and visited my dad. He and his wife and her children lived in the country in the hills outside of Janesville in a beautiful home. We visited into the evening, planning on spending the night.
About 9pm or so, Melanie became quite irritated and upset, for no apparent reason. She was so uneasy, that she began to cry. I had no idea what was going on. She’d met my dad & his family before, and really liked them. So this present state she was in was quite out of the ordinary. I suggested we go outside for a walk.
It was a beautiful winter evening. The stars filled the sky. There were only one or two lights on outside, one on the house, which sat at the edge of the woods on the side of a hill, and one on the barn which was 100′ feet away, on the other side of the circular gravel drive. We got to the drive and I suggested that we pray.
Standing with my hands on her shoulders, my forehead against hers, my back to the house and my eyes closed, I began to pray. I prayed that God’s peace would fill her and rule in her heart. I prayed some other things, I can’t remember exactly what; and then, while I was praying I suddenly got this vehement urge. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I prayed, without pause from the calm, quiet prayer I had been praying in, in a suddenly commanding and loud voice, “…….and I command those spirits to leave the house in the name of Jesus Christ!”
My back was to the house, my eyes were completely closed, and as clear as clear could be, upon the utterance of that command, I saw 2 spirits fly out of that house and disappear. Two shapes in capsules of light, which did not illuminate anything around them, about the size of men, their shapes within those light capsules only partially visible, they flew out at a 45 degree angle, the one on top slightly ahead of the one below. Just like that! They were there, and then they were gone!
I don’t even remember if Melanie saw them, but she “felt” something when I spoke, and after that, Melanie was calm, blessed, happy and at peace. From then on we enjoyed the rest of our visit.
Praise the Lord!
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One more for the Road The Miracle of Corkscrew Mountain
Ram Falls! It was a beautiful spring day in Calgary, and I’d seen a picture of these lovely falls in the Rocky Mountains. So Sharon & I headed out mid-morning in my little rear-wheel drive Isuzu pickup truck.
What Ram Falls was supposed to look like.
The forestry trunk road started where the asphalt stopped. As soon as we left asphalt and got on the gravel, the plowing had stopped, and we were driving in ruts of deep, melting (what we call “rotten”) snow. We were in the foothills, and the forestry trunk roads had been cut in the forested wilderness as emergency access in order to fight forest fires.
I should have been smarter. But there was really no place to turn around. For 50 miles I drove, afraid to slow down lest we get stuck, expecting at any moment to bottom out on the deep snow. Often it appeared that a vehicle had simply scraped the snow level between the tire ruts. Often we saw tracks go off and down into the woods. How those vehicles got out I don’t know.
Forestry trunk road. Imagine 8 – 12 inches of melting snow!
Then we arrived at Corkscrew Mountain. Rounding a sharp curve to the right, with a 200 foot drop on the left, and a sheer cliff going up to the right, there was 100 yards of sheer ice in front of us, as the road tilted slightly downward. At the end of the ice, another 90 degree turn to the left. No anti-lock brakes, only furiously pumping the brakes. Too fast and we’d end up in the woods at the end of the 100 yards. Too much brake and we lose control. But we made it….somehow!
A few miles further, another S curve just like the last one, only longer. Start from a dead stop. Keep the speed as slow as possible, but unable to stop the inexorable acceleration. Brake until the truck starts slewing, then fight for control, all the while feeling like at the sharp turn coming at us all-too-quickly, there’s no way to avoid ending up stuck in the woods. But somehow, we did it!
50 miles from another person or vehicle. No cell phone. Dressed for a Sunday drive in our street clothes. If we got stuck, no way to walk out of there. We’d freeze, if not be eaten by grizzlies. 4 miles from the last S curve, we encountered a long half mile incline. STUCK halfway up. Can’t go up. Try to back up and start over, but the rear end wanted to slew around and down into the woods. After 90 minutes of the most intense driving I’ve ever been involved in, I turned off the truck and just sat there.
My vision bulged out and back, out and back. The adrenaline must have done that. All hope was lost. It was sunny, but getting later, and we were stuck in the Rockies, with no way out and no way to communicate with the outside world. This whole time, Sharon was a saint, saying little and praying a lot!
There was no wind. I rolled down the window, stared out at the beautiful, life-threatening woods, and screamed one long, anguished syllable. “G – O – D !!!!” And then silence. 10 seconds of silence. And then, a breeze. Gently, stronger, stronger, stronger….a wind…..then less, less, less, and….gone. That breeze started and stopped during a 15 second interval, and it carried the voice of God. “I am here.” And I knew we were okay. I just didn’t know how!
“Let air out of a rear tire.” The thought was spoken to me. So I let half the air out of the left rear tire. And the truck….climbed….the……hill! 3 miles further, another road came down to meet the one we were on, and it was plowed! We stopped and filled the tire via a pump I had, and drove the last 10 or 15 miles to Ram Falls………which was frozen!
When we got to Ram Falls, it was frozen!
One other family was there, driving a 1 ton 4-wheel drive vehicle. When they found out we’d come over Corkscrew Mountain, they pointed to our little pickup and said incredulously, “In that!??? Impossible….2 different 4-wheelers and a tow truck went off Corkscrew Mountain just last night.”
Praise the Lord!
I looked up online and here’s what someone wrote about driving Corkscrew Mountain in the winter. NOW they tell me!
“I wouldn’t dream of doing it without a 4×4. Maintenance standards are minimum and you could be sitting there a Looong time, if you have a problem. You haven’t lived dangerously till you’ve gone over Corkscrew mountain.”
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Other stories of miracles:
MMFN – The Man No One Knew
The Resurrection of Jesse James
The Miracle of the Norwegian Bus
Some More Miracles
And these miracles.
