"EXPECT MIRACLES!"--By Father David       7-4-75       MO--DFO NO.717

© July 1978, by the Family of Love, CP 748, 00100 Roma, Italia.

       1. WHEN YOU'RE WEAK, THEN YOU'RE STRONG, BECAUSE HIS STRENGTH COMES IN. (2Cor.12:10.) Without the Lord as in the world, when people's bodies get down, weak in health, it drags their spirit down so they can even commit suicide because they get so depressed and discouraged. Your physical weakness has a tendency to make your own spirit weak because it puts you in a position of less resistance to the Devil's attacks.

       2. THE DEVIL HITS YOU WHEN YOU'RE DOWN. He deals dirty blows and works in the dirtiest possible way to fight. So that's why the Lord says, "When the Enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall raise up a standard against him." (Isa.59:19.) Because when you're down, the Lord comes to your rescue, or you might not even be here.

       3. SO YOU CAN'T THINK EVERY ATTACK OF THE ENEMY IS NECESSARILY YOUR OWN FAULT. Sometimes we invite attack by letting our resistance get down and our bodies run down and weakened. You in this way really lay yourself open for attack because that's when he likes to attack when you're at your weakest.

       4. SO IN A WAY IT'S PARTIALLY OUR OWN FAULT, but on the other hand it's not always necessarily directly the fault of any great sin or weakness or not staying as close to the Lord as we should.

       5. REMEMBER, JESUS WAS EVEN CARRIED OUT INTO THE DESERT AND TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL HIMSELF and even His physical body was allowed to the be put under the power of the Devil for a short time. Imagine! The Devil was allowed to carry His physical body around and really test Him, attack Him! But under the attack He never yielded but resisted the Enemy with the Word of God and refused to yield, until the Enemy saw Jesus wasn't going to give up, and them he quit.

       6. IT WAS THE TESTING TIME BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF JESUS' MINISTRY and was preceded by 40 days of fasting and prayer and lasted three days and three nights! We know Jesus was perfect and didn't bring these things on Himself by sin. The Lord even allows these things as tests to strengthen our faith.

       7. WITH GRANDMOTHER there was never a time that she was to give her testimony of how she was miraculously healed from almost total paralysis that she didn't go through a terrible test and attack of the Enemy.

       8. ALWAYS ON THE LAST NIGHT OF HER MEETINGS SHE WOULD GIVE HER TESTIMONY of healing and salvation, and that life story was one of the most powerful things she had to give and won many souls and inspired so much faith in people.

       9. YET I HARDLY REMEMBER A TIME WHEN HE DIDN'T TRY TO KILL HER OFF JUST BEFORE SHE WAS TO GIVE IT. She'd either get down terribly sick or break her glasses or fall and hurt herself or something. The Devil really cut loose on all sides to try and stop her, but she used to say it was for this reason.

       10. IT REMINDS ME OF HOW THE LORD LETS THE DEVIL DO SOME THINGS TO YOU TO HUMBLE YOU, and then later does some things to see if you're still humble. And Mother used to say, "It's the witness the Devil fears," and you can't give that kind of witness and testimony unless you live it and are practicing it.

       11. SO THE LORD WOULD ALLOW HER TO BE TESTED before each time so she'd still have the testimony. One time, only about a year after she had been saved and healed, as she was sitting on the platform waiting to give her testimony, all of a sudden she felt the paralysis strike again, and suddenly she couldn't move her legs!

       12. SHE WAS TOTALLY PARALYSED FOR A MOMENT and glued to her chair and couldn't budge, and she thought, "Lord, what is this? What in the world is the matter?" Immediately the Lord gave her the answer in a very strange Scripture, "It is lying vanities" (Ps.31:6; Jonah 2:8). So she said,

       13. "OH, YOU MEAN THIS IS A LIE OF THE DEVIL?--He's trying to make me believe I'm paralysed, but it's not really true!" She said later, "If I'd believed and accepted the Devil's lie, I'd probably be paralysed to this day!" But she rebuked the Devil again, and just then they announced her name and she shot out of the chair had into the pulpit and gave her testimony in greater power then she'd ever done before!

       14. MY MOTHER HAD ALREADY LEARNED THAT THE ENEMY DOES NOT GIVE UP EASILY, after having been in bed for five years and being so miraculously healed instantaneously. When she found she was healed and called for help to sit up in her bed, which she had not been able to do for five years, the doctor gave orders to the nurse to:

       15. "HOLD HER DOWN! IT'S THE DEATH WALK!" Mother said, "Listen, you get out of God's way!" and she got the Hawaiian maid to help her sit up. She had been unconscious much of five years and not even been turned on her side, or her heart would gradually stop beating.

       16. NOW ALL OF A SUDDEN SHE WAS GOING TO SIT UP! That of course was a real step of faith! If there had been nothing wrong with her at all, to suddenly sit up after five years in bed, that would have been a tremendous strain on her heart!

       17. SO WHILE SITTING THERE ON THE BED SHE SUDDENLY HAD A LUNG HEMORRHAGE through the mouth and keeled over on the bed unconscious and woke up in a pool of blood! She said, "Lord, what is the matter? I thought I was healed! Why did I have this terrible hemorrhage?"

       18. IMMEDIATELY A SCRIPTURE CAME TO HER. Although she was pretty ignorant of anything like healing, but because she did have a knowledge of the Word, the Lord could answer her with Scripture, and two Scriptures came to her, one to show her why:

       19. "THE ENEMY GOES ABOUT AS A ROARING LION SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR!" (1Pet.5:8.) The Lord was telling her the Enemy was fighting her. But the other Scripture was for her encouragement:

       20. "WHEN THE ENEMY COMES IN LIKE A FLOOD, THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD WILL RAISE UP A STANDARD AGAINST HIM!" (Isa.59:19.) Then she realised she should directly rebuke the Enemy. And then another verse came, "Resist the Enemy and he will flee from you." (James 4:7.)

       21. AND SO THEN SHE BEGAN TO REALLY FIGHT THE ENEMY! She knew very little about these things, so it was really the Spirit of God. So the victory didn't come without a real test and an attack of the Enemy, even after she was healed. So when my Dad came home she finally got up without his help and walked unaided for the first time out of bed in years!

       22. THE LORD TESTS US TO GET AN EVEN GREATER VICTORY OUT OF SEEMING DEFEAT, because it causes us to draw closer to God and cry out to Him and really seek the Lord. Otherwise we have a tendency to just rock along. It causes us to rely more on the Lord.

       23. WHEN YOU FINALLY GET THE VICTORY OVER THE ENEMY, the Lord can come through in full sway. What the Enemy ignores and tries to help you forget so you won't claim the Lord's help is:

       24. "WHEN I'M WEAK, THEN I'M STRING, FOR HIS STRENGTH IS MADE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS." (2Cor.12:9,10.) I've known many times when I was weakest in the flesh that I was strongest in the Spirit because I just had to completely throw myself on the Lord. You don't know how you're going to make it, but He can make it for you. Amen!

       25. ONCE I HAD AN INTERESTING DREAM: Maria and I and another member or two of the Family were sitting in an old-fashioned lobby of this old hotel writing letters at the desks and reading, etc. But apparently we'd struck up a conversation with the young blond-headed desk clerk, a sweet boy in his late 20s.

       26. WE WERE WITNESSING to him about the Lord and love but he seemed a little disillusioned and skeptical, like so many young people today, a little soured on life and fed up, bored, not really sure there was such a thing as love. So I said,

       27. "WELL OF COURSE THERE IS LOVE! What everybody needs is love," and I looked him straight in the eyes and said, "You need love just like everybody else." And he looked rather embarrassed and said, "Yes, I guess I do. I wish you'd come home and talk to my wife. She needs love, too."

       28. IT WAS AS THOUGH HE'D FINALLY FOUND WHAT HE WAS LOOKING FOR and he wanted to share it with his loved ones. So we went to his house, and as we walked through his yard he apologised for all the junk lying around. There was a pile of wooden logs and odds and ends of furniture and bric-a-brac piled here and there. He said,

       29. "I'M SORRY, BUT YOU KNOW HOW YOU ACCUMULATE THINGS." I said, "Well, that's the way it is when you're building a home. It seems you never get done, and it takes so much of your time." I was sort of trying to ease his embarrassment, but it was like he was ashamed of the fact that so much of his time was absorbed with home-making and wasted on things, like so many people today.

       30. IT'S FUNNY HOW WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT LOVE AND THE LORD and the real values of life, people begin to realise how worthless everything else is and what a waste of time it is. So we walked into his house, kind of a large old-fashioned house, and were standing in the big old living room. He was talking about how he hoped we could help his wife with the Lord's love that were talking about.

       31. SUDDENLY A STAIRWAY DOOR ON THE RIGHT OPENED about half way and I could see the back and head of this young girl, apparently his wife, in a silk dressing gown and fairly short dark curly hair backing into the room almost as though she were surprised and embarrassed at being caught unprepared by guests and not properly dressed to greet them.

       32. I HAD THE IMPRESSION SHE'D PLANNED TO TRY TO SLIP THROUGH THE ROOM UNSEEN IF POSSIBLE. But as I saw her trying to slip through the door I said, to sort of ease the tension and cover up the embarrassment of all of us,

       33. "EVERY HEAVENLY LITTLE HOME HAS TO HAVE AN ANGEL, and this must be yours!" We all sort of smiled and laughed as it sort of broke the ice, and she saw that she was caught. So she turned around toward us and smiled, and we were absolutely stunned!

       34. HER FACE WAS JUST ONE HORRIBLE MASS OF TERRIBLE ACNE like small black boils or something all over her face and cheeks and forehead, so that this otherwise pretty girl in her mid-twenties was an absolute mess!--So that now she was even more embarrassed at our obvious awe at her terrible facial condition. She apologised and said,

       35. "I'M SORRY, BUT I'VE HAD THIS FOR A LONG TIME AND NOTHING SEEMS TO HELP." But I said, "Well, the Lord can help and nothing is impossible with the Lord. He can do greater things even than that. You just need to believe in Him and trust Him and pray for it."

       36. BUT SHE ACTED RATHER HOPELESS like she didn't feel there was anything that would ever be able to help her. But her husband seemed to have real faith and faith in us and faith in the Lord's power to answer prayer. So he said,

       37. "YES, YES, PLEASE DO PRAY FOR HER, WILL YOU?" So I walked up to her, facing her, and laid my hands on both sides of her face and prayed for her, very earnestly asking the Lord to rebuke the Enemy and deliver her and heal her, praying very earnestly for her because I felt this would be a real testimony to the young man and encourage his faith in all we'd been witnessing to him about.

       38. WHEN I'D FINISHED PRAYING AS I TOOK MY HANDS AWAY FROM HER FACE IT WAS ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY CLEAN AND PERFECTLY WHOLE--JUST BEAUTIFUL. We were all amazed, praising the Lord and thanking the Lord for His faithfulness and His healing of this young girl as a testimony and witness to His power, particularly to the young man! But apparently she was so discouraged that she still wasn't convinced, so she said rather despairingly,

       39. "WELL, IT'LL PROBABLY COME BACK.--IT ALWAYS DOES." But I rebuked her for her doubts and told her she should thank the Lord and have more faith and it wouldn't come back any more because the Lord had healed her, but she still seemed to have a "Well-I-hope-so-but-I'm-not-too-sure attitude."

       40. BUT THE YOUNG MAN WAS ELATED! He was absolutely thrilled to pieces, and he was chiding her for her unbelief and thanking us profusely, and he was just radiant with faith, just eagerly hanging onto every word we had to say and eating it all up a real hungry sheep and begging us not to go, pleading that we would even stay at his home--either that or he wanted to come with us.

       41. YOU KNOW HOW THEY ARE WHEN THEY'RE REALLY SOLD! He was ready to forsake all and leave everything and just follow, but she still seemed to be rather doubtful about it all and a little worried about his attitude, the change in him. You know how they are when one receives it and the other doesn't. So I said,

       42. "BUT LOOK! LOOK AT YOUR FACE! It's perfectly clear and clean now! There's not a boil or splotch or pimple on it! How could you not believe?" But she said, "Well, we'll wait and see." So I was telling them that we had to go, we must leave.

       43. SHE SEEMED TO BE RATHER RELIEVED THAT WE WERE LEAVING, but he seemed to be saddened by his wife's unbelief and unhappy about out departure, as though he was wondering, "Well, what am I going to do now? Where does this leave me?"

       44. SO THAT HE LOOKED LIKE HE WAS TORN BETWEEN THE TWO, concern for his wife and yet he had a yearning to go with us, a decision that so many have to make when the one receives it and the other doesn't and at that moment I woke up!

       45. AMONGST OTHER LESSONS, I THINK LEARNED FROM THE DREAM ABOUT FAITHFULNESS IN WITNESSING. The Lord will always be faithful and follow through and do His part. Then again, the usual results that it brings as far as those who want to follow and those who don't, and the conflict of choice that this also precipitates, the crises and the problems which arise in winning disciples.

       46. BUT OF COURSE THE THING THAT IMPRESSED ME THE MOST IN THIS DREAM WAS THE OUTSTANDING MIRACLE OF HEALING which we should have more of and have more faith for, and which we would have if we'd be faithful and simply believe, trust God and pray for people as we should and expect miracles as a sign and testimony to encourage faith.

       47. THE ONLY REASON WE DON'T HAVE MORE MIRACLES LIKE THAT IS THAT WE JUST DON'T BELIEVE GOD as we should and don't challenge the Enemy, rebuke the Devil and expect God to answer! If we would, we'd have a lot more miracles like that! I remember just feeling ashamed that we don't trust God more and expect more miracles like that!--Amen? PTL! God bless us with more faith!

       48. THE LORD HAS CERTAINLY PROVEN AGAIN HIS MIRACLE-WORKING POWER in my own recent healing in answer to your persevering prayer and fasting for my recovery, and my own determination to fight the Enemy and stay here for your sakes! PTL!

       49. AND WE AND JESUS WON! PTL! He still does miracles! I was more dead than alive, but here I am today much more alive than dead! PTL! Expect miracles!--And in Jesus name you'll get them!--Amen! "Believe and ye shall receive!" (Mark 11:24.) God bless and keep you! We love you!

       EXPECT MIRACLES!

       
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family