Without weakening in his faith, (Abraham) faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old— and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise (of God to give him a son), but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.
Romans 4:19-21 (NIV)
My name is Colin and like Abraham, I was as good as dead. But . . .
God gave me a son!
I hold a miracle from God in my arms every day. There is no medical explanation for why my son is here on earth with us now. In 1991, long before our son was born, my wife and I had just had our first natural child, Chelsea, who added to my wife’s first daughter Amanda, made up our family. I had been a Christian for a little over one year and was in a Christian band. Much of my time was committed to music. I had just started my first full-time job, purchased a house and bought a new car. The loans made things very tight financially, causing a great strain on our marriage and family. I decided that having any more kids would be totally out of the question. I really didn't understand the point of having kids anyway—they just seemed to steal precious chunks of my personal time that could be better spent achieving my goals. My wife Lori wanted kids and didn’t agree with my way of thinking, but she eventually came around to it.
So there I was praying many times over that we would never have any more kids. I knew from the Bible and from experience that, as Jesus said in John 16:23, if we obey His commandments, whatever we ask the Father in Jesus’ name He will give us. I actually prayed harder and more sincerely about this issue than almost anything else in my life. I had great confidence that God would keep His end of the deal. As a matter of fact, since the first day I turned away from sin, believed in Him, and asked Him for the Holy Spirit, He had always kept His promises to me and the Holy Spirit had been leading, teaching, comforting, and talking to me faithfully. Often the Holy Spirit would tell me things about the future and warn me when I was about to make a wrong move. Sometimes, however, wanting my own way I would ignore His voice.
At this time in our life my wife had decided to discontinue birth control and I had been thinking about getting a vasectomy. One night while in bed, the Holy Spirit specifically warned me to refrain from “marital activity” which could result in an unwanted pregnancy, but I decided to take my chances. As a result, after two missed periods, we realized that Lori was pregnant.
Lori was nervous and I was horrified! I didn’t know what to do. I knew I had disobeyed, but I also knew that God was a great forgiver so I hoped He could and would redeem my mistake. Even though I was convinced that abortion was wrong I still had the understanding that God had tried to prevent this pregnancy by warning me. So I decided to pray and leave it in God’s hands. I prayed harder and more sincerely than ever that God would take back the spirit of this baby and do with it what seemed best to Him. While I prayed, the Holy Spirit told me to go home and talk to Lori, explaining to her that the Lord would receive back the spirit of this baby.
I went home, we talked, and she agreed. Before we went to bed that night we prayed. About four hours later, Lori woke up with cramps and bleeding which ended the pregnancy. I was ecstatic and very relieved. I thanked God for understanding and caring enough to do this extraordinary favor for me. (To me, at this point in my life, this was one way of God showing His love to me.) Immediately after this, out of fear, I went to a hospital in
About five years later, my family and I relocated to the state of
In the Bible, Malachi prophesied that in the last days God would “turn the hearts of the Fathers back to their children” Malachi 4:6. My own heart had done a 180-degree turn. The only problem was that now I found myself with a great desire for another child, and I had made that desire impossible to fulfill. I wanted to multiply this great blessing, the blessing of raising a child to know God and to find a personal relationship with Him. I had ruined my chances with an operation five years before, acting out of the fear I then had. The torment I experienced now, however, was much greater. I became very depressed. Now that I was learning with God how to be a good father, tragically, I had quit too soon! I was desperate! I thought surely there must be an answer.
I started researching my medical alternatives. After talking to doctors around the country, I found that the cost for a vasectomy-reversal was between $5,000 and $12,000. (And its success rate was only around 30 %!) We started saving for an operation I and had saved almost $2,500 when I began feeling uncomfortable about spending thousands of dollars for a procedure with such a low success rate. But then I got an idea!
"If God does the operation,” I realized, “it will have a 100% rate of success, and it will be free!”
This sounded like a much better option to me. I remembered how God had helped me in times of crisis in the past, His miracles recorded in the Bible, and the miracles I had witnessed in my life as a believer. I told many people at our church my story, and I asked them to pray for me and with me.
Lori, by this time, really wanted to get things rolling. She often asked me to have the operation as soon as possible. We began to plan towards December, 1997, but, once again, the Lord spoke to me: “Don’t do anything until February!” In October of that year, we traveled to the
At one point in the meeting, they encouraged each of us to pray individually for a personal miracle. I asked Jesus to forgive me for making decisions out of fear in the past; for deciding what I wanted and not asking Him what He wanted me to do first. I told Him that if He would give me a reverse-vasectomy, I would tell everyone He wanted me to about it and I would tell about them about His son, Jesus. I prayed that He would ignore my prayers in the past of asking for no more children, and I asked Him fervently to “reconnect” me. Lori, meanwhile, (unknown to me) was praying for the same thing. Suddenly, I felt this pulling, achy, sharp pain in the specific area of my body we were both praying about! It was as if an invisible force was performing a quick opeation on me. It hurt and was quite uncomfortable. Immediately after this Lord then spoke to me again and said, “I'm going to begin showing you things coming in the church and in the world".
The next night at church Joyce Kelly, a prophetess from
Meanwhile, Christmas was quickly approaching. We were shopping for the kids when I saw a microscope and thought it would be a fun, educational gift. Lori couldn’t see the benefit in a microscope on Christmas morning, and so we moved on. As we shopped at a different store the next week, however, Lori noticed a microscope and this time she thought it would indeed be a good gift. We brought it home. Actually, I’m not sure whether we bought the microscope for the kids or me because I wanted to try it immediately! I looked at some insect legs and flower petals and hair and then suddenly got a wild idea. I thought I could do my own sperm test to see if God was answering our prayer! Lori wasn’t excited about the idea, but after much persuasion, she allowed me to put a sample on the flat slide (not intended for liquid) that had come with the microscope. It was hard to see it clearly, although we could make out some movement. What we needed, I told Lori, was the type of slide with a hollow center, specifically made for liquid samples. Lori had never seen and had no idea what I was talking about and still doubted that God would ever answer our prayer.
We had recently moved, and Lori had cleaned every inch of our new house the month before. But on the morning following our microscopic search she got the urge to vacuum a cupboard in the rec room. While doing so, she sucked up a small, completely dust covered, rectangular piece of glass onto the end of the vacuum hose. She brought it to me in the bathroom where just twelve hours earlier we were discussing our need for a specific liquid slide. She asked me what it was. I washed it off and, to our amazement; it was a microscope slide with a hollow center! “See, I told you God is answering our prayers,” I told her excitedly, “and this is another sign to confirm it!”
Using this newfound slide we looked at another sample, and there we saw thousands and thousands of little tadpole-like things swimming everywhere! I decided I should call my doctor in
We continued to pray for conception and Lori had begun thinking about baby names and was considering the name Samuel. She had been reading the Bible’s historical record of a woman named Hannah, which she felt beautifully, paralleled our story.
Once when they were at
Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord.
And she made this vow: "O Lord Almighty, if you will look down upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you. He will be yours for his entire lifetime, and as a sign that he has been dedicated to the Lord, his hair will never be cut."
As she was praying to the Lord, Eli watched her.
Seeing her lips moving but hearing no sound, he thought she had been drinking.
"Must you come here drunk?" he demanded. "Throw away your wine!"
"Oh no, sir!" she replied, "I'm not drunk! But I am very sad, and I was pouring out my heart to the Lord.
Please don't think I am a wicked woman! For I have been praying out of great anguish and sorrow."
"In that case," Eli said, "cheer up! May the God of
"Oh, thank you, sir!" she exclaimed. Then she went back and began to eat again, and she was no longer sad.
The entire family got up early the next morning and went to worship the Lord once more. Then they returned home to Ramah. When Elkanah slept with Hannah, the Lord remembered her request.
And in due time she gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, “I asked the Lord for him.”
2 Samuel 1:9-20
A couple of weeks later on January the 10th, I sat down to read the Bible. I put it on my lap, and it fell open to the book of Acts, chapter 13. The first words I saw were, “Samuel the prophet.” I said, “Lori! Something is definitely going on here! Let's go buy a pregnancy test!”
We went to K-Mart, bought a test kit, came home and discovered that, sure enough, Lori was pregnant! But Lori, bless her stubborn heart, doubted the accuracy of the test. So I “force fed” her a gallon of water and made her do a second test. She WAS pregnant!!! I was so excited, I felt like I couldn't stand it! Not only were we going to have another baby, but God had once again given us solid evidence that He is alive, loving, and caring!
I was ready to tell everyone. But being familiar with analytical pessimists, I knew how men’s unbelieving, skeptical minds work. Nevertheless, I wanted people (including my unbelieving relatives) to know what God had done and I did not want them believing that mother nature, science, or medical failure had blessed us with Sam! Despite the evidence of a successful vasectomy after my operation, I knew the skeptics would say, “Oh, the vasectomy failed” and many of them did! I realized then that the only way to overcome this argument would be for God to “disconnect” me.
I told my stepfather, who believed that the vasectomy had failed, that I was going to ask the Lord to reverse the operation once again. He replied, “I think that's asking a little too much from God!” I prayed anyway and asked God to undo what He had done for the sake of the skeptics. A short time later, I looked in the microscope and it was crystal clear! I checked five more times that month, and still found nothing. Then, just to make sure the microscope wasn't malfunctioning and to have documented medical proof, I went to the hospital and had a semen analysis done by a doctor. He could not find one sperm cell. (Click for copy of medical documentation)
On
I am so grateful and amazed that God fixed my mistakes, taught me how to be a son and a father, answered my prayers and received back the child I rejected, knowing that my heart would change and that I would ask for another in the future. This is just one of hundreds of supernatural experiences Lori and I have had since we gave our lives to Jesus Christ. My desire, more than anything I've written here, is that all people would, as me, be restored to a loving, secure relationship with our Creator through trusting and obeying His son Jesus.
Relationship is born in the heart of God who is the author of life and is all powerful. Religion is born in the mind of man and therefore has no real life or power. Being religious or being a “good” person cannot “pay’ the debt of our sins. God’s Son gave Himself as a ransom for us. He was crucified and rose from the dead with the promise that anyone who receives His free gift of salvation by faith alone, will rise to eternal life with God. But if we reject or ignore His gift, or try to earn God’s approval, we will die with the full guilt of our sins, and face God’s judgment. This will result in eternal damnation and separation from Him who so greatly loves us.
The best thing I’ve ever done in my life was to admit that I was a sinner (I did not love unconditionally); admit that I could never live up to this standard, and to die to myself and let Jesus live through me to show me “the meaning of life.”
This story is not to exalt me, Lori, or our son, but to bring honor, praise and people to Jesus.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
Colossians1:16 –17
I am just grateful and amazed that God used me to reveal Himself as:
· the great redeemer, (one who fixes mistakes)
· the great Father, (who taught me how to be a son and a father)
· the unconditional lover, (who gave me the desires of my heart)
· the miracle worker
· the God who goes out of His way for the skeptics. (Un-hooked me)
With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
Matthew 19:25
Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.
For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.
What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying?
And if he should find it, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray.
Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
Matthew 18:10-14
My greatest desire is that all people would become as me, which is to repent (turn away) from the self-ruled life—the life in which man is the measure of all things and the captain of his own destiny. It is only through faith in Jesus Christ that we may find forgiveness for our sins and become obedient to the one true God, our Creator. At the end of Jesus’ ministry, in desperation he cried to the people, “At least believe because of the miracles you see me do!” But He
also told the story of Lazarus and the rich man.
At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores
and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried.
In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.
So he called to him, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.”
But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad
things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.
And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.”
And he said, “Then I beg you, Father, that you send him to my father’s house,
for I have five brothers, that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.”
But Abraham said, “They have the Law of Moses and the Prophets; let the hear them.”
But he said, “No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!”
But he said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.”
Luke 16:20-31 (NIV)
Man’s response to God’s love, forgiveness, and salvation is a personal choice. God will not force any man to receive it. The whole purpose of Jesus’ death on the cross was to pay the debt for our sins. And to restore us creatures back to a loving, secure relationship with our Creator.
So please believe, not only in His miracles but in every word He said in the Bible.
Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.
John
Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.
John 17:3 (NIV)
Do you have, or would you like to have, a relationship with this God of love and miracles?
Now that I have Samuel, I can’t imagine giving him up. But God did give up His Son for me. If He gave Jesus to win us to an eternal relationship with Himself, what makes us think He wouldn’t give me Samuel? What makes us think He wouldn’t forgive my past mistakes while He was at it? Couldn’t the same God Who made the universe and everything in it reverse a surgical procedure? Wouldn’t the God who gave me His Son also give me the desire of my heart? Taste and see that the Lord is good!
He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all — how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?
Romans
Questions to ask yourself:
1. Are you a sinner? (In other words, have you ever broken even one the Ten Commandments or failed to love God and all people unconditionally by your actions and words?)
2. Have you ever told a lie, white lie, or half-truth? What does that make you? (Answer: a liar)
3. Have you ever stolen anything even if it was small? What does that make you? (Answer: a thief)
4. Jesus said that if you so much as look at a woman (or man) with lust then you have committed adultery already with her (or him) in your heart. Have you ever done that? What does that make you? (Answer: an adulterer)
So then perhaps by your own admission, if you are honest, you’ve lied, stolen, and committed adultery in your heart and you have to face God on Judgment Day. And these are only three of the Ten. The Bible tells us that all people have sinned and fallen short of the glory and character of God and it also tells us that the wages of sin is spiritual death (hell). Your only hope is to bring your sins to the feet of a loving and merciful Savior!
5. Can you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for you and rose again?
6. Can you comprehend the fact that ten out of ten people die and that every breath you take could be your last? Your heart is the drumbeat of your own funeral march.
7. Are you ready to repent, ask forgiveness for your sins, and receive His help to live a godly life?
8. Will you surrender your life completely to Jesus Christ TODAY, realizing that tomorrow it may be too late?
If you answered yes to these questions, tell God that you are ready to receive the free gift of eternal life by trusting in His Son. Pray something like this:
Father God, I come to you in the name of your Son Jesus. I admit to you that up until this point in my life I’ve lived life ignoring you and going my own way. I admit that I am guilty of sins and have broken your law of love. Please forgive me. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness but because you are Love, I believe you paid for my sins by the death of your Son Jesus. And because you raised Him from the dead, you will also raise me from the dead to live forever in your kingdom created for those who choose unconditional love over selfishness. I understand that there’s nothing I can do to earn your love, forgiveness or eternal life, but you are giving me all of these as a free gift. I thank you for this and I ask you to work in me to help me become more like you every day. Please send your Holy Spirit into my heart. In Jesus name, Amen.
If you prayed this prayer and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and that God raised Him from the dead, God promises that you too will be saved and are forgiven for all of your sins. Romans 10:9
One of the best ways to learn more about God and get to know His character is to read the Bible, which He wrote by the Holy Spirit. Try starting in the book of John. Another way is to surround yourself with people who know Him better than you do, and a good way to do this is by becoming a part of a local church body of believers who love each other, teach the Bible, and believe everything it says by obeying it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and please send any questions or comments you have here:
