Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your wonderful, generous, kind welcome.
And it is so good to be here at rediscover here in Exeter and ten years in the making this trip. We were here 16 years ago, but so good. We planned to be here about ten years ago and that trip was put on hold and here we are at just the right time and part of what I want to here today I think you'll understand as I share the rest of the journey. But Amy, why don't you introduce us and our family?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: We've got a photo of our, well, Atomaria. I have a croaky kiwi accent, so I hope you can understand me, but I say Atomaria Etefano or Ehu Karaichi. And that means good morning to my family in Christ. And isn't it wonderful that we can be on the other side of the world and still be worshipping Jesus together? It's so beautiful. So that's in our native language, which is our Maori language in todayo. But I just want to introduce you to our family that we've left behind. The first time. They were happy to see us because I think we're halfway through our trip and they know we're coming home. So Rosie is our eldest and she's 14 and then Josiah is eleven and little Zoe is eight. So we send our greetings.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Okay, I'm going to get you.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Amy's going to come up in a moment. I'm going to get her started and then she's going to come and tag team. She's going to bring the best bit and I'll get her started. So why don't we just open in prayer first? Father, we thank you for your word, Lord. Your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Father, we thank you that we can walk in relationship with you because you lead us through your word, Lord. Speak to us today, Lord, for every person walking through a trial, for every person waiting for a miracle, God, I pray that today would be an anchoring of our faith, that today would be a day where we say, I'll keep walking or I'll keep standing or I'll keep fighting. We thank you, God. You are with us. We thank you for your beautiful presence here in this place today. We honor you with our attention and our focus.
We give you everything in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. As I said, a real privilege to be here this morning. We've been a few days here in Exeter. I got to watch the mighty Exeter City play yesterday.
Unfortunately, a great goal by the other team with an assist from the referee. I'll just say that was my interpretation of the goal anyway. But it was great to be here and just connect with you guys. Today we're actually off to Liverpool.
I'm going to divide the room right now. I am a Liverpool fan, have been all of my life, and I have tickets for a game at Anfield. I'm not sure to live up to the hype of Exodus City, but I'm sure it'll be all right.
Hey, this morning I want to bring a message called when miracles meet. When miracles meet, we're going to look at two miracles that take place in the gospel of Luke and we're going to see that even though these two people may or may not have known each other, God chose in the course of history, in the biblical narrative, to bring these two stories together. And there was a period of time, a distance between these miracles. But God brought the finality of the miracle together in one place. If you got a Bible, please feel free to read from Luke, chapter eight, verses 40 to 56. Otherwise you can follow on the screen behind me. Let's read together. Everyone had been waiting for Jesus, and when he came back, a crowd was there to welcome him. Just then, the man in charge of the synagogue came and knelt down in front of Jesus. His name was Gyrus, and he begged Jesus to come to his home because his twelve year old child was dying. She was his only daughter. While Jesus was on his way, people were crowding all around him, and the crowd was a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. She had spent everything she had on doctors, but none of them could make her well. As soon as she came up behind Jesus and barely touched his clothes, her bleeding stopped. Who touched me? Jesus asked. Well, everyone was denying it. Peter said, master, the people are crowding all around and pushing you from every side. But Jesus answered, someone touched me because I felt power go out of me. The woman knew that she could not hide, so she came trembling. And now, down in front of Jesus, she told everyone why she had touched him and that she had been healed at once. Jesus said to the woman, you are now well because of your faith. May God give you peace. While Jesus was speaking, someone came from Gyrus'home and said, your daughter has died. Why bother the teacher anymore? When Jesus heard this, he told Jairus, don't worry, have faith and your daughter will get well. Jesus went into the house, but he did not let anyone else go with him except Peter, John, James, and the girl's father and mother, everyone was crying and weeping for the girl, but Jesus said, the child isn't dead. She is just asleep. The people laughed at him because they knew she was dead. Jesus took hold of a girl's hand and said, child, get up. She came back to life and got right up. Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were surprised, but Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.
Have you ever heard the phrase, children should be seen and not heard?
Now, as a parent, when we can't hear our children, it's not good.
Silence is not golden. In that moment, silence is suspicious.
Can any parents testify to that? It's like you're hearing the chatter and the noise and the activity, and then all of a sudden, it goes quiet.
Our daughter, when she was five years old, well, younger than that, it would have been two, three. Everything went quiet. One day we went to find her, and she was emptying the contents of a nappy. Right across.
We have things back home called a glory box, where you store your treasured possessions. So Amy had been given that for her 21st birthday. And Rosie was painting a beautiful tone of brown across this glory box.
We gave it a clean as best we could. And guess who's getting a special gift for her 21st birthday, passed down as an ialuma.
But, you know, when Jesus entered the scene in history, children and women didn't hold a place of importance in society.
I saw one study that only half of the women in the Bible were even named. Many were just described as a woman, the woman. And together, another study says that there were 1456 words between them. That's all the words spoken by women in the Bible. Of all the words that are recorded now I know for my daughter Rosie, that's just the words she uses. Between 830 and 09:00 at night, she's got lots of words to share.
There was even a prayer that was prayed, thank God. The men would pray, thank God I wasn't made a woman.
Jesus lived in a religious setting where women were excluded from synagogue worship, restricted to a spectator role. They weren't allowed to go beyond the court of the woman. In fact, they were told they couldn't even touch the scripture lest they defile it.
And yet Jesus walks in. Jesus tackles the society injustice. His disciples were shocked to find him speaking to a woman at the well.
And yet that was the very entry of the gospel to the samaritan people.
It was woman he chose to reveal himself to first. After the resurrection, Jesus was a champion of women and children.
The disciples were trying to manage Jesus. Don't you love the way they tried to do that, managing Jesus? The children wanted to hang out with Jesus. Why wouldn't they?
The safest man they would have ever met, the one that would love them in such a great way that they had never experienced before, and they would have wanted to hang out. I think everywhere that jesus went, the children would have been, I just want to be close. But the disciples wanted to manage Jesus'time and said, no, the master is busy. Jesus says, no, let them come to me.
And he went a step further and said, in fact, the kingdom belongs to people who have the spirit in the heart of a child like this.
So while the disciples were shooing them away, jesus was saying, no, let the children come.
Jesus measured men and women by the inequalities of the heart, not by the potential unfortunate nature of their birth as to which gender they appeared as. And he affirmed women and children by his manner, by his example, and by his teaching. And here we have in the story a woman and a young child in the need of a miracle while a nation watches on with interest.
I've got three thoughts this morning. I'm going to bring one, and Amy's going to bring one, and then I'll bring it to a close this morning. But the first thought this morning is that Jesus is always on time for his miracles.
Now, note my wording his miracle, because sometimes I feel like I'd like to be in charge of the outcome of the miracles that I'm believing for God. It would be really convenient if you could answer my prayer today, or even yesterday would have been better.
Anyone guilty of just trying to control the outcome of the miracle, it's human nature, isn't it? To desire that something would change on my tombs. And yet, if it's God's miracle, there's an ability for us to release, to let go, to surrender, to even walk in the pain and the disappointment, trusting that God is working even in the middle of it all.
Have you noticed that Jesus didn't tend to be in much of a hurry? I don't recall seeing any passages of scripture where Jesus ran.
He just walked. He moved at the pace that he needed to move. His friend Lazarus dies or gets sick, a good friend would go and visit him, right? Go visit him in hospital, pray for him, minister to him. No, not Jesus.
He was on mission. He was doing what he was called to do. And then Lazarus dies.
So, of course, Jesus would attend the, no, no. He waited a day. And in fact, he waited a few days to the point where it was like, behold, he thinketh death, kind of because legally Lazarus had to be dead in the jewish law, so that passing of the three days would then allow it to be a miracle because otherwise he could have just been asleep.
And so Jesus comes to Lazarus at just the right time and says, come forth, come out.
Jesus is not bound by our schedule.
He's always on time for his miracle. You know, the older I get, the more comfortable I am with the wait.
You would think that I've only got so many years left that I would get impatient. But there is something that's stirred within me, there's something that's growing within me. I hope it's a maturity in my faith that says God, if I'm doing everything you've asked me to, then that will be enough.
And I'll step when I need to and I'll pray when I need to and I'll fast when I need to. And when I sense God moving me, I will take that next step. But if the miracle has not yet come, and I believe it's coming, I'm okay with that.
There is a release of the pressure when we trust God that his miracles will arrive at the right time. What I love is that in the story we see a number appear, the number twelve, a woman with an issue of blood. For twelve years now, when that issue of blood, that continual bleeding which would have left her exhausted, not only exhausted, but ostracized from community because the nature of her disease and her condition meant that she was unclean, not just unclean once a month, but unclean consistently, that she would have been an outcast.
When that condition began, this young girl was born.
Twelve years passed as this woman exhausted all of her resources at the hardest point of her journey. She was just so desperate.
And then this young child, in the space of a moment, a miracle takes place that was twelve years in the making.
Why the number twelve? What's significant about the number twelve? Well, if you look at the number twelve in the Bible, we see the twelve tribes of Israel. We see it as an establishment of government. It's a perfect number, like a number of completion. Is it possible that God was doing a work within the people of Israel? Was it possible that he was saying, I want to bring this nation to a place of unity, I want to bring this nation together where there is an understanding that men, women and children hold value.
And wouldn't that just be God to take twelve years to make something take place?
And that's the God we serve. God is not in a hurry, and so we shouldn't be either. Now, I'm not saying that we're not going to have feelings and emotions and pain and disappointment as we're waiting on our miracle, but if we can trust that God is with us in that waiting, we will make it through.
The girl had to die and then be resurrected to life by Jesus. A woman had to suffer for twelve years through this condition of this continuous flow of blood. Both considered unclean, both considered outcasts. A dead body you couldn't touch. A woman with the issue of blood you couldn't touch. Not welcome, not accepted. And yet Jesus says, I will work a miracle in both of their lives.
I remember Amy and I, we had quite a journey to have children.
Look, we got married young. She was the first person I dated. We did everything right by the book, the holy book.
We did it right. And so we thought, well, let's have children now. We decided on a time because that would be the right time. It wasn't, apparently.
And we went through year after year after year. I remember counting the number 44. That's how many times I remembered and realized that we were not parents again. And then another month again, another month again, another month again. We were children's pastors, leading a children's ministry of hundreds of children. And these children were now growing up and they were the age of the years that we had been trying. And I would often find Amy home after our Sunday services, multiple services, and she'd be just crying on the bed, longing to be a mum. This deep desire within us. And yet the miracle didn't come when we wanted it. God had another plan, and he was working that plan out. Now we see it on the other side of it now, and it is beautiful and powerful. But 16 years ago, we came over here and we ministered in three or four churches. And we were preaching about the fact that we didn't even know whether we would have children.
We were preaching in the middle of our pain, because it's really easy when you hear the miracle of somebody else and you go, yeah, well, you've got your miracle, I haven't. And so we decided we would preach through the pain.
You know what we need to praise through the pain when we hurt the most. Don't withdraw from God. Press in, lay ourselves on the ground, do the carpet time with God, wet the floor with your tears if that's what it takes. And press through the pain. And we worship while we wait.
We worship while we don't have the answer.
And you know what? It's actually okay to shake your fist at God. He's not upset by that. God's not moved by our emotion in the sense that we're going to offend him.
If you're feeling that, can I suggest just turn that into prayer? You look at the book of psalms, that's all it is. God, my enemies, I hate them. Would you strike their jaw? We just turn that into a prayer.
Not asking God to do that. But you know what?
When our emotions come out as prayer and it's lifted to God, it's an offering, it's a sacrifice that we bring to God and he receives that. He hears it. But in the middle of our personal struggle, we decided to lift our voices in faith to believe for that miracle. But in his timing, I'm going to ask Amy now to come and share second thought this morning.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Well, our second thought, I'm so croaky, but I really want to be here. I want to be here because, you know, when you have a story and you have a testimony of what God's done, it's like, I want to be here. So our faith moves the hand of God. That's our second thought. This morning I was thinking, did this woman, did this little girl, did they know each other? Did their families know each other? Probably not. But what we do know is that this woman, after twelve years of bleeding, like she had had enough, she was done, she was desperate.
And I don't know if she was like, this is my last chance of hope. But she was in her unclean condition. And in those days, as Mike said, the cultural, the religious standards, she was not allowed to touch anybody. But after twelve years, the Bible says that she had tried everything, she had spent all the money that she had on doctors and she broke all protocol, right? She broke all protocol to believe for her miracle. And she thought, if I can just touch Jesus, I can be healed. And that's what she did and she believed. And I just wonder if there's people here this morning that God is stirring your faith to believe again, to hope again, to not to give up. Because our faith can move the hand of God. It says in this story, in Luke 847, she told everyone why she had touched him, Jesus, and that she had been healed at once. And she gave her testimony. And I think that is so powerful. I think this can be an encouragement to us all to share what God has done. If he does a miracle in our lives, we need to share our testimony. It says in revelation that we overcome by the blood of the lamb. That is what Jesus has done. He's died and he rose again. And the word of our testimony and our testimony is powerful. You know, the hope that we carry is for more than just us, because it's for the people that we don't even know are in our future that need to hear our story.
And how much faith do we need?
It's not as much as you think. I think God was so gracious to me. There were times where I cannot do another mother's day, like, I can't go to another baby shower. But then there were times where he would stir my faith. And he's like, I'm going to give you the strength. I'm going to help you to make meals for new mums in our facility where we worked as children's pastors. He's like, I'm going to help you redecorate the nursery. And I did it through tears. And I was like, lord, I know one day I'm going to come back to this nursery and I'm going to nurse our babies. And it was stirring faith in my heart. God can do the miraculous with the very little that we have to offer. And I want to share a story that is about 17 years ago.
So we pastor in Elam church and in the Elam movement in New Zealand, all the ladies gather together and we have a conference. It's called replenish. And I don't remember really what the lady spoke about, but I do remember that she wanted to pray for women who were having struggling to get pregnant, who were struggling to have a family. And she said, please come down the front.
I would love to pray for you, but in that moment, I was desperate and I broke all service protocol. Like, if you know me, I would never normally do this, but I just didn't run down the front. I ran up on stage.
She thought, this crazy Kiwi lady, she was so kind and she was so gracious to me and she prayed for me and she prophesied these words and she said, God wants to give you children, but it's not going to be the normal way. God wants to give you children, but it's not going to be the normal way. But your story will bring life and hope and breakthrough to others. And I was like, yes, Lord. I just treasured those words in my heart as well as a scripture that I really felt God had given us in psalm 113, verse nine that says he will settle the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children where she will praise him. And so in that moment, I took a step of faith. And I just want to encourage you that God can move through even just the small acts of faith. Be obedient to him. Be obedient. Praise while you're waiting. Worship him while you're waiting. And when he stirs your heart, our faith can move the heart of.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Amazing. Amazing.
We're up at about two this morning, and Amy was coughing and spluttering away.
And she said, I want to be there. I want to be there. So thanks, babe. So I appreciate your courage to be here today as well. The third thought, and I just bring this to a close, and at some point I'm sure the team will join me and I'm sure we'll carry on with a little bit of worship. But the third thought this morning is my miracle sometimes connects with yours.
We are a body.
The body has different parts and different functions.
But we don't live in isolation. We don't live in this place of it's just about me.
Our lives, our miracles often intersect.
And while we think we're waiting for our miracle, God's saying, just hold on because you have no idea what's about to come. But you'll be surprised and you'll be blessed. And you and those who you will connect with will give praise and thanks to God. And we have seen that time and time again. And our story has been one of that, where our miracle met another.
We don't know whether, as Amy said, whether this woman and this girl, whether they even knew each other. Maybe they bumped into each other in town, but there is no sense of connection within the story, in the narrative. But here they are, twelve years, one needing a miracle immediately. This young child that all of a sudden dies. But then this woman who's suffered for twelve years, the gap. But Jesus knew that that twelve year mark was important. And we see this. We see the weight we see in scripture, the amount of women that were barren. And then God bought a breakthrough. We see Hannah, who, having offered Samuel to the Lord, brings him to the temple in a nation that needed to hear the clear, pure voice of God heard it through Samuel that stopped hearing him properly. It was tainted by sin and by disobedience. And Samuel, as a child, utters those words, speak, lord, your servant is listening. At just the right time. The nation of Israel needed it. The nation of Israel had to wait 400 years for the king to arrive from Malachi to Matthew. And yet Mary, who was too young, went to her cousin, who was too old.
And their miracles met. And as their miracles met, they felt the child leap within the womb.
Your miracle might connect to my miracle. And God gets all the glory and praise because it's his miracle. And we don't always know know. Amy shared that the speaker at the conference said, you will have children, but not in the normal way. Can I tell you, there was nothing normal about the journey for us to have children.
As I said, we just thought it would happen. Just, let's have kids. Great. This seems like a good month. In nine months time, it would be really convenient to have that child. And we'd seen all of our friends just plan their children. In fact, some of them said, I'd like to have a boy, followed by two girls and then another boy. And they had it because God gave it to them. I'm like, that's not fair, because that's not our story.
But then the speaker said, but your journey will bring life and hope and breakthrough for others.
So, years later, through the miracle of IVF, ours was an unusual and a strange journey, and we walked through all the moral and ethical dilemmas, and we found peace together as a couple. To be able to walk through that journey, through the miracle of IVF. We had our beautiful daughter Rosie.
Around about that time, I wrote a book called the Rose Princess and the Special Gift.
And in a moment, I'll share about that, a story that was.
I wrote it because Rosie was our only embryo. We thought maybe she is our only child.
Three years later, we went back to do another cycle of IVF, and we had Josiah, our middle boy, and with it were three embryos that we were planning to go back and have the third and fourth and fifth. That was the deal we made with God. God, whatever you give us, we will use these children and we will bring these children into life and do everything we can.
And so, as we were in the month, about to go back and have our third child through IVF, hopefully praying, believing we fall pregnant naturally.
First time ever without Zoe.
And in the middle of that pregnancy, Amy had horrific insomnia, went into severe depression to the point where we were almost taken out of ministry. It was like I was talking to my pastor, say, I don't know whether we can do this.
I don't know whether we, together as a couple, will have the strength to do this and praise God. His response was, you just take care of you. You're Amy.
And we were in the process of moving from one church to another in a new season where God had clearly called us, and yet we found ourselves in this incredibly horrific season of starting with a new church, with having to meet people. And Amy just didn't want to see anybody as she was walking through this. And yet, when Zoe came, God brought a turnaround. And Amy's whole story and journey through mental health is a whole nother sermon that maybe you'll hear one day. The power of God's ability to bring breakthrough into our lives.
But you know what? We faced a little dilemma, because we realized that we wouldn't really be able to have any kids beyond here because of what Amy had gone through. And three was. We felt like that was our complete number and that those three embryos. What do we do with that?
We said that we would receive every gift that we were given from God.
Now, remember, I said I wrote a book three years earlier called the Rose Princess and the special gift. The summary of the story is the king gives a package of gifts to his daughter, the rose princess.
There's three gifts inside.
You see where this is going.
As she goes out, she sees people along the way. She sees a farmer who. He's working away in the hot field, and she gives the hat as a gift to the farmer. She's a young boy that's dropped the master's eggs, and so gives this bag of money that was one of the gifts, and gives it to the boy. And then this woman had lost her glasses, and so she gives the glasses, and she gets back to the castle, and the king says, where are the gifts I gave you?
To which the rose princess responds, I gave them away to people who needed them more than me.
So three years earlier, I wrote a story about three special gifts.
We were now in this position. What do we do with these three special gifts?
And God said, you give them away.
And so we're sitting in the counselor's office.
Strange that you have to go through five counseling sessions to give children away, but you don't have to attend a single counseling session to take a life away.
That's an interesting thought.
But here we are sitting in this office, and she says, you seem really calm about potentially donating your embryos to another couple.
And then in that moment, I realized that I'd written myself a prophetic book three years earlier, that I would one day give these children away.
And so Amy's father in law.
Sorry, my father in law, Amy's dad, was chatting one day with this couple and overshared, which is quite natural for him at times, and said, amy and Mike have these embryos that they don't know quite what to do with. It's like thanks, father in law. Thanks, Garth. It's brilliant.
And this woman was sitting in the van, and just within that week, she was involved in children's ministry and was going through the deep pain of infertility. They couldn't have kids as a couple, so she was working with kids, and she kind of put herself out there on know, one of those moments, just like, this is hard. This is so.
So Garth shares the story, and in her spirit, she says, I'll have them.
And she got them. That's our story.
The next step was we connected. We had a conversation, and we realized that there was a compatibility, that their heart, their desire and what we wanted. So we actually initiated it with each other.
And God, through his incredible, miraculous power, has given us a complicated extended family. Would you like to see them?
So, obviously, Amy and I, our oldest, Rosie, Josiah, and the Addie desktop.
Highest in the tree is our Zoe. She's our eight year old. And then we have Anna and Kyle, the parents of our two embryos.
Got Aisha, who they're holding, and Tasia look a little bit like our kids, eh?
And then there was a third embryo that they put back in and didn't make it. Sadly, I did a reprint of the book, the Rose princess, new illustrations. In fact, the first time I did the book, it was an absolute failure. We lost about 15,000. I said, I'll never do a kid's book ever again. Tick that box, bucket list. I've done a kid's book. It failed miserably, so I was never going to do it again. And then I really felt to go again. Now, before they put the third embryo back in, we didn't know. So we were putting the book to. And on one of the pages, there's a little stamp, a little seal from the king. It's got a t for Tasia, an a for Asia. And we didn't know what would happen with the third embryo. And so I just create a little love heart, as we put it to print. We didn't realize that would be immortalized all of history as this love heart of this child that is in God's hands. But we would never get to meet them at this place.
I share the story, and we share the story to say that 16 years ago, we were in the deepest, darkest pain.
Everything else in our life was going well. Ministry was flourishing. We're seeing kids come to faith. We're seeing incredible moves of God. Kids praying for their friends and peers and seeing them healed. But the pain that we felt in the middle of that was horrible.
And I don't know where you're at. I don't know where your journey's at, but there's a good chance that within this room, there's people who are walking a similar journey to us. But maybe your journey is not infertility.
Maybe your journey is a relationship that has been estranged for years.
Maybe it's a sickness, an illness that you have been enduring the pain and you've been going through this, and what you're carrying is this desperate longing, and you've even got a promise from God for that restoration.
Now, I'm not saying that today you receive prayer and you'll get your miracle, because I remember I came to this point in my relationship with God where I spent so many hours on the floor crying and weeping and saying, God, if we never have kids, I'll still serve you. I'll still love you with all of my heart.
And some of you might know the Pete's Kevin and Margaret Pete, amazing couple. But they were not able to have kids.
Their story was one that was a challenge.
And I remember I came to this point and we'd never met them before, and I came to this point, it's like, God, I will serve you, whatever. Whenever I will raise kids that are not my own, I will do all of that.
And then Kevin and Margaret turn up the next week at church and share their story of not having kids. I'm like, really? I prayed it, but did I really mean it?
It's like I was firm on that decision. Something had shifted in my spirit. I would serve the Lord no matter what.
You know, what happened next? Nothing.
It was years before that miracle came. But something inside of me had shifted. And I'm praying and believing that maybe someone gets their miracle today. But if you don't get your miracle today, there is something that's anchored, a hope that will reside within you, that if the promise is there, God will fulfill it at exactly the right time.
I wonder whether we could stand and maybe the team can join.
It'd be an absolute privilege and an honor at some point to pray for you. I know the ministry team would love to pray and believe with you and stand with you with your miracle.
But I wonder if that's you. I wonder if you're holding on, you're waiting, you're believing, you're hoping for that miracle.
Would you be bold enough to just raise your hand and say, yeah, that's me. Yeah. Look at that. Hands all around. Hands all around. Yeah.
You know, I love. I love the body of Christ, I love the fact that we don't hold a single answer ourselves, but together God will use us. Would you just keep your hand raised? Because as we begin to play, and I would encourage you, as we've done, we've already prayed for people this morning, but let's go again.
Let's go and get close and connect with that person and pray for them. If you specifically want ministry, it would be an honor to do that with you today.
But maybe just as we begin to worship, would we gather around those believing, waiting for their miracle, that you would have courage and strength to hold on in the difficult time?
We believe in a God that can and he will. But like Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego, even if he does not, my faith is secure. Not bowing down, not taking a backward step. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, you are a good and mighty God. You are so faithful, you are so generous and kind.
And God, every heart that has responded with a hand raised to say, I'm in the middle of my trial, I'm in the middle of the pain and even the disappointment, broken relationships, God, whatever it is that that hand represents, you are a God of the miraculous. But God, these miracles are your miracles in your time. And so God, today we stand and we bring that faith, that little bit of faith that might move the hand of God, but we trust God that you are with us. You are Emmanuel, God with us. And it's not by power or by might, it's not by our human effort, but by your spirit that the miraculous will take place.
If that's you, you are believing for a miracle, a breakthrough from God. As your hand is raised, would you lift your voice as a prayer and invite God to strengthen your heart, to give you courage to face those dark days, to walk through those darkest valleys? Because God is with you. He will never leave you. He will never forsake.
