Lindsay Rouse

21D Fishers – Day 7: Miracles

During these 21 days of prayer we all have different things on our prayer list and what we are interceding for: our lost sheep loved ones, jobs and co-workers, spiritual attacks, physical healings.  These all have a common outcome that we need a miracle!

Did you know that our Heavenly Father is in the business of miracles?  It’s not just what He does but it’s a characteristic of who He is.  So tonight, I hope and am confidently expecting our faith to increase as we boldly approach the Lord’s throne seeking these miracles from our miracle-working Father.

Before we do that I want to share with you a few stories and a few nuggets of revelation the Lord gave me during my last couple seasons of 21 Days of Prayer.

November of 2016, I was battling a bad case of bursitis in my shoulder that had progressively gotten worse over a few months.  I went to the doctor and they gave me a cortisone shot.  Things felt better for about a month and then the pain started coming back almost worse than before.  I was almost at the point of going back to the doctor in January when I entered into a 21 Day Prayer and Fasting season.  I truly believed in my heart that during this season I would receive the healing I needed for my shoulder.  We were about 2 weeks in and I noticed the pain wasn’t there anymore and I had almost full mobility in my shoulder.  I am still pain free today and have not had any issues since then and our miracle-working Father gets ALL the credit!!

Fast forward to August of 2017 and we entered another season of 21 Days of Prayer.  I was so expectant and wanted to see someone in my life be physically healed so that they could experience the power of God like I had.  One of my friends had injured their shoulder working out and almost couldn’t perform the functions of their job.  I found out about this on a Wednesday and immediately began interceding for them during my prayer time.  Within 10 days they had almost full functionality back and had no issues doing their job.  Praise God!!

If you know anything about muscle injuries, which was the issue in both stories, they can take weeks and months to heal with intense physical therapy.  We saw almost immediate healing with minimal modern medicine!  The Lord is so so good!!

As I was praying for my friend’s healing, the Lord gave me some revelation about the manifestation of miracles.

He took me to 2 Kings 5:1-14.

The king of Aram had great admiration for Naaman, the commander of his army, because through him the Lord had given Aram great victories. But though Naaman was a mighty warrior, he suffered from leprosy.[a]

2 At this time Aramean raiders had invaded the land of Israel, and among their captives was a young girl who had been given to Naaman’s wife as a maid. 3 One day the girl said to her mistress, “I wish my master would go to see the prophet in Samaria. He would heal him of his leprosy.”

4 So Naaman told the king what the young girl from Israel had said. 5 “Go and visit the prophet,” the king of Aram told him. “I will send a letter of introduction for you to take to the king of Israel.” So Naaman started out, carrying as gifts 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold,[b] and ten sets of clothing. 6 The letter to the king of Israel said: “With this letter I present my servant Naaman. I want you to heal him of his leprosy.”

7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes in dismay and said, “Am I God, that I can give life and take it away? Why is this man asking me to heal someone with leprosy? I can see that he’s just trying to pick a fight with me.”

8 But when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes in dismay, he sent this message to him: “Why are you so upset? Send Naaman to me, and he will learn that there is a true prophet here in Israel.”

9 So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and waited at the door of Elisha’s house.10 But Elisha sent a messenger out to him with this message: “Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be healed of your leprosy.”

11 But Naaman became angry and stalked away. “I thought he would certainly come out to meet me!” he said. “I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the Lord his God and heal me! 12 Aren’t the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than any of the rivers of Israel? Why shouldn’t I wash in them and be healed?” So Naaman turned and went away in a rage.

13 But his officers tried to reason with him and said, “Sir,[c] if the prophet had told you to do something very difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? So you should certainly obey him when he says simply, ‘Go and wash and be cured!’” 14 So Naaman went down to the Jordan River and dipped himself seven times, as the man of God had instructed him. And his skin became as healthy as the skin of a young child, and he was healed!

Through this passage, the Lord showed me that there are 3 important parts to the manifestation of a miracle.

  • Bold Faith
    • We need to have child-like or bold faith that nothing is impossible for God to perform the miracle.
    • We have to want to be healed.
    • We can’t put God in a box.
    • We need to believe deep down in our heart where it is almost instinct rather than talking ourselves into having faith.
    • Or maybe we are still working on increasing our faith and we need someone to stand in the gap for us with their bold faith like Naaman’s officers did for him.
  • Act of Obedience
    • We usually have to take a step showing that we are willing to receive the healing or the miracle.
    • It humbles us before the Lord.
    • Today, this is usually in the form of modern medicine – going to the doctor for medicine, going through physical therapy, etc.
    • I’m not sure there was anything super spiritual about dipping in the Jordan River 7 times except that it was an act of obedience that Naaman was asked to do to prove he was ready to receive the miracle.
  • Supernatural Power of God
    • This pretty much is self-explanatory.

Once we fulfill our part in this miracle-working process, we create an environment where we invite the Spirit of God to move and we allow God to freely use His supernatural power to heal and perform the miracle.