12. God speaks to us thru signs and wonders.

God may elect at any time to speak to His believers thru signs and wonders that He will create by which for them to believe more strongly in Him. Signs and wonders are only for believers and they accompany the correct preaching and teaching of God's Word.

Mark 16:20b - ..the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

Like sign posts on a road they can become remembrance points in our lives to remind us of His directions to us for some of our affairs. The following testimonies about signs and wonders from God are in that vein.


Marriage within God's will.

This is a story about a prophetic sign God that gave to one of the brethren in our home fellowship when he was struggling over marrying within God's will.

One evening a few of the brethren and I were driving on a toll road just outside of Chicago coming back from a fruitful ministry in southern Wisconsin. One of the brothers was contemplating marriage to a girl who did not believe in Jesus as her personal Savior. So he asked us whether he should marry her unsaved and then work on her salvation or whether he should wait until she was saved before he married her.

We discussed the pros and the cons of unequal yoking for a while then we all prayed together for guidance. Just as we opened our eyes, we found ourselves driving up to a huge roadside commercial billboard that was emblazoned with lights that announced in the darkness -

ZENITH - THE QUALITY GOES IN BEFORE THE NAME GOES ON!

Immediately it entered my mind and I told him that I felt that this billboard was a sign from God to him.

Habakkuk 2:2 - "Write my answer on a billboard, large and clear, so that anyone can read it at a glance...(the Living Bible)

I felt that we had been guided by God to see this message as applying to his situation, just after we prayed about the matter.

Hebrews 4:12 - for the word of God is living and active...

I felt that God was speaking a word right to him thru the billboard, telling him that in order for him to have a zenith marriage, a really top quality marriage, he should first make sure that the girl was saved before he married her, whereby she would assume his name!

Habakkuk 2:2 - Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run.
This vision-message is a witness - pointing to what's coming... (the Message Bible).

I also told him that I felt that the billboard's bright lights were a sign that when he did this, he'd have a wonderful marriage in the darkness of so many bad marriages occurring in our times.

He looked with huge eyes at that sign and he heard my interpretation of it and he knew in his heart that this was a prophetic word to him from God and that my interpretation of it was right. But he still struggled because he wanted to get married to her as soon as possible in order to vent his incessant passions.

Habakkuk 2:3 - It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie.
If it seems slow in coming, just wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time (the Message Bible).

He knew in his heart and was convicted that he was being called by God to wait for Him to do His saving work with her, even though it might be a painful, long wait for him. Finally, he quit struggling against the message and agreed that he would wait for her salvation to happen first, before proposing marriage to her.


As he confessed this, I felt moved to expound to him that sometimes Jesus, as the master fisherman, uses an attractive man or woman as bait to allure a potential mate into their salvation. He uses that unsaved person's unfulfilled desires which are pressing upon them (just as they are upon the saved person), to cause him or her to really listen to the gospel message coming forth from that strongly desired but resistant, potential Christian mate.

God then led me to go on and mention to him that on the other hand, He may want to use some other minister to do the job of leading that unbeliever to Christ, while the saved potential mate stonewalls and suffers and waits, because any suffering on the part of one of the Father's dear children moves strongly upon Him to deliver that child from it.


Forgiveness

Here's another example of a wonderful message from God given in a sign that could be read on the run...

One day I was very upset with myself because I had accidentally betrayed a confidence with my uncontrolled mouth. Ever since I was a young person I had always talked too much and over the years as a Christian I felt that I had been getting this problem under control. But this night, as I drove along, I was under great conviction about this still recurring flaw and I was bawling like a baby before the Lord about it and its consequences. Suddenly a car pulled right in front of me and my tear filled eyes fell upon its license plate which said -

IEXCUSU

At the sight of those words and the realization that they were a sign to me, sent from God; a prophetic word by which He was reassuring me and comforting me, all of my tears of repentance turned into tears of joy.

Then I began praising God for this wonderful message of forgiveness to me in my heartfelt distress. I also began pondering and then marveling at all that He had to do in order to to put that particular car with that particular license plate right in front of me at that particular moment! Truly this sign on the run was a wonder for me to behold!


Deliverance and Freedom

This is a major testimony of a convergence of many signs and wonders that were in the spirit of Moses in Egypt sent to announce the deliverance of an entire fellowship from personal and financial bondage!

A new apostle of whom I know was married to a woman who went to church and to Bible studies with him for a year or so. But after she confessed to him that she felt the call from God to tithe, she then resisted that call, hardened her heart and abandoned all of their Bible studies together and her church attendance.

She claimed to be a Christian herself just as he was, but insisted that she wanted to just stay a normal Catholic (which she claimed was a nationality, not just a religion). She wanted to be able to smoke and drink and have good times with her friends and keep all of their money for her own purposes.


I Timothy 6:10 - for the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith...


So it wasn't long before the devil had her mocking and ridiculing him about his continued growing faith in the Word of God. She said that she felt that he was going way off the deep end with his Biblical religion. She said this because, he had confided to her about his apostolic calling and how he was experiencing many of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit and a whole variety of signs and wonders. The devil now firmly ensconced within her snidely asked him which apostle he felt that he was; Peter, Paul, James or John?

This couple had been struggling financially for a long time and they were just beginning to prosper in their business. So she did not want to give away any of their new-found prosperity into tithing. Therefore, in order to continue to justify herself and fight off God's call to her, she would constantly negate any and all of her husband's testimonies of God's workings in his life by attributing them to pure coincidence or to his imagination or to chance.

When someone she knew very well had a doctor certified healing from cancer right after that person had prayed for a healing with her husband, she said to him that he just got lucky?!? So her hardened heart just kept getting harder and harder towards him and towards God.

One day she encountered a Catholic priest who, upon hearing her complaint about him, told her that he had ministered for years in a religious psychiatric institution and that he had seen much of this kind of apostle-delusion and that it was invariably incurable. He informed her that, from what she was telling him, he felt that her husband was probably going into this same kind of delusional psychosis.So she latched onto that opinion to further justify herself against him and then she secretly began divorce proceedings.

In the meantime, his life with her just got more and more difficult and bitter, which led him to pray long and hard for God to improve their situation and show him how best to deal with her until things did get better.


Ecclesiastes 7:26a - ...more bitter than death is the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains.


One day a freak hailstorm hit their neighborhood and big hailstones shattered all of the front windows in their house. She told him that she was at home alone when it happened and the shattering windows frightened her so badly that she hid behind the sofa in terror until the storm passed!

Next, a small plague of fruit flies which she could not eradicate infested their kitchen for a while. After that he came upon about 20 or so small dead frog carcasses on the floor in his daughter's bedroom! When he showed them to his wife and asked her where these could have come from she told him that unbeknownst to him their daughter had bought some tadpoles. She said that the child probably forgot about them and they must have grown big enough to jump out of their bowl and die from starvation right there on the bedroom floor.

Then God gave him a revelation that these unique events were signs to him telling him that his wife had entered into the pharaoh spirit of hardheartedness and stubbornness. He also felt God telling him to not entertain any bitterness towards her over her resistance to Him but that humility was the way for him to deal with her pharaoh spirit, just as Moses had humility towards the Egyptian Pharaoh and it led to Israel's deliverance.

Numbers 12:3 - Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man on the face of the earth.

One evening shortly thereafter, a windy autumn rain storm hit the area. This apostle was fellowshipping in an old, drafty house with his small and impoverished church group. They were engaging in a prayer session seeking financial help from God to pay the electric bill so that the house's electricity could be turned back on (after being shut off all summer for lack of funds). The gas bill had been paid and gas was available on their stove but the city inspectors said that it was against the law to heat a house from the stoves burners. So, after a few warnings, they said they'd be back to condemn the house the very next day, if its forced air heater's electric fan was not working, so that the heater could function to warm the house instead of the stove.

During the events leading up to this potentially disastrous day a prophet in the group had been given the verse...

Romans 8:1 - There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.


The whole fellowship had confirmed this verse's quickening within each of them as applying to the forthcoming day's home condemnation. So prayers of belief and faith in that verse's validity for their situation ensued.


Suddenly someone noticed that 2 of the wallpapered walls in the main room were almost entirely glossing over with roof leak water from the rainstorm. As one of their prophets saw it, he exclaimed, "Walls of water! I believe that God is using these wet walls to signal us that tomorrow we'll all be delivered from our problems, just as Israel was!"


Well, the next morning the renter of the house was unexpectedly handed a few hundred dollars! It came as a loan from a person who had refused to lend any money to him before, but who that morning had a change of heart and brought the loan to him. It was more than enough cash to pay the electric bill, which he immediately did!


He came back home with the paid receipt just as the city inspectors arrived. So he showed them this document which said the electric would be turned on that day (which it was). This receipt stopped the inspector's condemnation so just as the word of knowledge said - there was no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus!

What money was left also tided him over until the court settlement check that he was expecting any day, came in (and from which the loan was easily and quickly repaid).

That same morning, this apostle's fully backslidden (at best) wife drove over to further disrespect him and after she left, her car's brakes failed and totally immobilized her car, leaving her stranded on the highway. He found out about it later that day and this was interpreted as a sign from the Lord telling him that just as God knocked off the wheels of the Egyptian Pharaoh's army chariots when they went between the walls of water, He had similarly done that to her car's wheels for coming by the holy place where He had formed the wallpapered walls of water.

Ecclesiastes 7:26b, (a) - One who is pleasing to the Lord will be freed from (the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains)


Right after that, the divorce proceedings from her (which that apostle knew nothing about) came up for trial. When he got over his surprise and initial hurt as he was notified of the proceedings, he felt moved by God to not attend them nor contest the divorce in any way. So during the court proceedings, he was freed by the judge from his marriage to his now demonic wife but without their home or their business which were both in her name alone and all of which she had requested in the divorce suit.

Because he did not attend she won the divorce and both of these properties by default. He had put both of them exclusively into her name because he loved her and if he died, he wanted her to have both of them without having to go thru state probate. So, even though she was killing him out of her life with this divorce and he was hurt terribly by it, he still loved her greatly and he still wanted her to be happy and to have the house and the business in spite of everything. Therefore, in his heart he approved of all of his loss that God permitted to occur.


John 15:13 - Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

But to her chagrin, on one item the judge did rule unexpectedly in his favor. That was to give him all of his IRA retirement money which they had been saving and which, in her now ravenous, devilish greed, she was trying to keep for herself!

With those unanticipated and greatly appreciated funds combined with the other brother's anticipated settlement funds (which he soon received), this small fellowship pulled entirely out of all of their financial distress. Between both of these monetary miracles they had enough money to buy a full ensemble of musical instruments and recording equipment for their music ministry for which they had been praying. They also had enough left over for a six month deposit on a new, modern, well heated, rental townhouse big enough for the apostle and the hosting family to live in!

Opening the Bible to the page

Many Christians have testified to opening to the exact page in the Bible which contained a verse or a passage that directly spoke to them on a matter in their life. The most famous of these that I know of is the testimony of the World War I American hero, Sergeant York. He had His Bible open when he was praying and the wind blew its pages until it stopped on a page with a verse that answered his question to God about whether or not he should go to war.

So here is my testimony about just such an event...

One evening, just after I had just finished reading the whole Bible for the first time, I got into a conversation about it with a Catholic relative of mine. In the course of our conversation I mentioned to her how surprised I was to read that God had moved 2 of His prophets walk around naked, as a testimony against Israel and Judah. To this she responded, "I read my Bible all of the time and I've never read anything like that in there. You must be nuts!"

Well, I just happened to have a brand new copy of the Good News Bible with me, so I pulled it out and told her I'd try to find the verse. Of course, she smugly stated that I'd never find it because it wasn't there!

So I pulled off its cellophane wrapping and flipped it open towards the middle where the prophetic books are located.

Then I looked at the page that I happened to open to and in shock I exclaimed, "Look, it's right here on this page (Isaiah 20:1)! I opened right to the page! Can you believe that! 1200+ pages in this brand spanking new Bible and I just happened to open it right to the exact page! This is a miracle! God opened it to this page for me because I didn't really know where to find it. So, now do you believe it's in your Bible?"

She was embarrassed in front of the whole family, but she stubbornly stuck to her guns by trying to close the subject with, "I know that that verse is not in my Catholic Bible!" So I let her off the hook by responding, "When you go home, look up Isaiah chapter 20, verse 1, in your Catholic Bible and see if it's not there!" Of course, she's never told me whether she did this or not and I've never asked.

Proverbs 9:8 - So don't waste your time on a scoffer; all you'll get for your pains is abuse.

The outcome of a Christian's Dissipations

This is a testimony of how living and active even a very small, obscure passage in the Word of God can really be!

There was an occasion where some of the brothers in the fellowship and I were visiting my relative at a drug abuse program and ministering the gospel to all of those whom we met there. As we hopped into my van to leave, an old man came up to us and asked us for a ride to a suburb over 50 miles away. He said that he had no money and that he had no way to get home.

Well, I had a full tank of gas and we all had the rest of the afternoon free so we talked it over amongst ourselves and agreed to take him there. During the ride we preached to him about salvation and he assured us that he had already received the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior many, many years ago. Then he told us that he was in reduced circumstances and he could only get short-lasting part time jobs or occasional odd jobs. He said that he went to church regularly but he was always broke so he had to live with one of his relatives to whom we were taking him. We then asked him why he thought that God was not letting him prosper?

Sheepishly, he responded that he'd probably never get ahead because he was a habitual frequenter of prostitutes. We asked him how he could do that as a Christian and why he didn't stop it and just look for a wife of his own? He then confessed that he probably would never do that because no matter how many times he repented of it, there was just something about the working girls that got to him on and every time he had any money at all, he was compelled to run right over to one and give it to her for her services.

Of course we then counseled him to seek addiction help from a church counselor or his minister.

As we finished this discussion we arrived at the place to which he was going. So we let him out and told him that we'd be praying for him. He thanked us for that and then asked if we had any food in the van because he was hungry and he didn't think there was any food where he was going.

Well, we were all broke but I had purchased a loaf of bread earlier for my house with my last couple of dollars and that's all that we had with us. So I offered it to him and he took it gratefully and left.

The next day I happened to read the following verse...

Proverbs 6:26 - For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread!

Truly, even this small passage in the word of God was living and active in this case, wasn't it?

Here's another testimony that is similar in nature.

Again, some of the brethren and I were driving in my van. This time we had a new convert on board whom we were carrying to one of our meetings. As we came to a stop sign there was a very pretty girl standing on the corner. This new convert was sitting in the front passenger seat so he noticed her first as we pulled up to the corner and he said, "Hey, look at that cutie!" Then, as we stopped at the crossing, she saw him and she smiled and called to him and beckoned him alluringly by posing and crooking her finger, signaling him to get out of the van and join her.

At that he exclaimed, "Do you see that! She wants me! That pretty thing wants me!" to which I felt led to respond, "But so does God! The question now is which one do you want, He who created that cutie or her, one of his creations?" So he looked at her and then he looked at me and then he looked at her again, to which she then made an exaggerated kiss gesture at him and mouthed, "Come here!" while still wiggling her finger.

"God Almighty she's a doll and she wants me!" he blurted out struggling with the temptation. I felt led to go on, "Then maybe I should just drop you off here so she can have you. But if I do, just remember this, that very God Almighty that you just mentioned in your excitement only reaches out so much to each person and if you leave now you may never be given another chance from Him to come back to Him! That girl could actually be Satan standing right there, using her beauty to lure you right now into eternal damnation!"

He struggled for a moment longer and then finally decided to stick with us and said,"Ah, let's just go!" As we drove off, in my rear view mirror I could see the devil making sure that she showed that she was not too pleased by disgustedly waving him off. But thank God that this young man made the right choice!

Proverbs 9:13 - 18 - A prostitute is loud and brash...she stands at the street corners of the city, whispering to men going by..."Come home with me," she urges simpletons, "Stolen melons are the sweetest; stolen apples taste best!"

But they don't realize that her former guests are now citizens of hell!(the Living Bible)


Again, here in this event, the Word of God was living and active.


Giving the Lord His due

One day one of my younger relatives mentioned to me how he had just purchased a speed boat and how he was going to spend his summer weekends on it. Suspecting that he was backslidden, I then asked him when he was going to go to be able to go church if all of his weekends were so occupied? He replied that he didn't feel that he needed to go to church.


So I then pointed out to him that it seemed to me that in the Bible the Lord asks His true believers to give Him at least a seventh of their time and a tenth of their money. He responded that he didn't think that my beliefs applied to him. So I let the conversation end on that note.

That weekend he got into a boating accident and his new boat was completely ruined! Some drunk in a bigger boat rammed his boat in a spot that made it irreparable. When he told me about it I suggested that maybe he was mistaken about churching and tithing and perhaps the Lord was using this loss to get him to reconsider his beliefs. He responded smugly that he hadn't lost anything because his boat insurance was going to totally replace it, so he didn't see this event as any reason to reconsider his beliefs.

A couple of weeks later he received his new boat and went off again on Friday for another of his boating weekends. A few hours later he came back thoroughly disgruntled. When he encountered me he bitterly snarled, "The Lord got His tithe!" and he stormed away from me.

It seems that as he was driving to the river with his boat cover wadded up inside his boat, a passing smart aleck motorist must have flipped a lit cigarette into it and that set it afire! When he noticed the smoke in his rear-view mirror he pulled right over, just happening to stop right in front of a church. So he ran to the church door for help but the old maintenance man there said that he could not help him.

My relative saw a fire extinguisher hanging there on a wall of the church but the maintenance guy would not let him use it. He would only let him use the phone to call the fire department which he did but by the time they arrived, the boat was utterly destroyed.

So when he told me the whole story later I mentioned to him that when we are not doing that which we know that we should be doing with God, we can lose some of our protection from evil and this can result in these kinds of bad things occurring.

Demonic Truck Driver

One of the men in the first church that I attended upon my conversion to Christ told me this story of his conversion.

Late one night after he'd been on a drunken binge for over a week, he was driving his tractor trailer on an interstate in a very remote area in one of the northwest states. As he proceeded in this dark, barren area he approached another tractor trailer. So he went to pass it and as he did so he looked over to wave to its driver.

To his utter horror there was a huge, terribly ugly frog driving that truck and leering at him!

In shock he finished passing it, trembling uncontrollably yet not really believing what he'd just seen. Then it sped up and began to pass him. He looked over again at the driver and sure enough, there was that horrible, ugly, evil frog leering at him. So he slowed down to let it go by but it slowed down right with him, scaring him immeasurably.

For quite a few miles he could not shake it. It just stayed right even with him no matter how he drove with its demon driver learing evilly at him. Now he was in abject terror. He began to feel like maybe he had died and gone to hell! So he began to think of his dissipated life and how it had led to this terrifying experience.

After about a half an hour, which felt like a lifetime to him, he saw a motel sign off of the road to the right so he exited right to it. Fortunately, the other truck was in the left lane so it just kept on going. When he parked, he grabbed his gun from the truck just in case it came after him and he took a room there.

When he entered the room, there was a Gideon Bible sitting out on the dresser. Well, he said that he grabbed it and began reading it and praying and repenting like crazy and begging God to save him! He said that he never wanted to see that horrible frog ever again and he knew right then and there that he needed Jesus Christ in his life from then on in order to forever avoid it.

If you think about the timing and manifestation of all of these signs and wonders for a while, you will begin to realize and then believe that these things could not be just coincidental! And to further inspire you, I will be putting up many, many more of these kinds of testimonies here as they come back to mind. So, please come back to this entry occasionally to read the new testimonies that I'll be tacking into it.

Thank you and may God richly bless you.