answered prayer

MEDICAL EMERGENCY: VISION OF HEAVEN AND HELL

Mark Ellis shares a good news story…

As a self-made man focused on providing an abundant lifestyle for his family, Jim Woodford had no place for God in his life.

However, Jim is married to a strong Christian, Lorraine, who prayed for him diligently, according to a report by CBN. ‘God please change his heart,’ she prayed. ‘Bring him to know Jesus Christ and just make a change in him and deal with this materialistic way.’

‘Break him or remake him’
Jim was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome at age 61, a rare, incurable autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system erroneously attacks the peripheral nerves and damages their myelin insulation.

The syndrome results in ‘unremitting, electrical current pain in every part of my body, accompanied with paralysing inability to move,’ Jim (right. Photo: CBN screenshot) told CBN. Lorraine saw changes in his personality as the condition worsened. ‘He was just getting to be a very angry person. The pain was just consuming him.’

Despite the ordeal, Jim refused to turn to God. At a certain point, Lorraine began to get impatient. She said, ‘God, I’ve been praying, but I haven’t seen any change. Maybe you just have to break him to remake him.’

In April 2014, Jim went to inspect a field he wanted to sell. To manage his pain that day, he had taken four times the normal dosage for his medication. As he sat in his truck, he felt a burning sensation in his legs.

‘Forgive me, God’

(more…)

RUNNING OUT OF FUEL IN A SNOWSTORM

(January 24, 2021) Mark Ellis shares how a snowstorm led to a pilot’s salvation…

‘I was a God mocker,’ says Mark Rose, founder of Genesis Alive, and author of Last of the Long Hunters, a story of the pilots who fly the Alaskan Arctic.

Raised in the secular Seventies, completely un-churched, he had no room for God until he ran out of fuel in an Alaskan storm, miles from his destination.

Rose learned to fly at 16, and by age 22 had become a bush pilot who helped take care of a fleet of helicopters that worked on the Alaska pipeline. ‘My ego meter was on 101,’ he admits.

Low on fuel
One day he flew some hunters to the upper part of a large river on the Arctic. But on his return flight, carrying one passenger, several things went wrong.

First, herds of caribou had moved in, covering his first and second choices for a landing spot. Then he began to run low on fuel, so he called ahead for a weather check at the small airport near Kotzebue, on the Baldwin Peninsula.

‘Come on in, the weather’s fine,’ the FAA flight service operator told him.

Rose decided to take the chance that his fuel would hold out, but then weather conditions changed dramatically. ‘I ran into a snowstorm at night, and I couldn’t see the terrain, so I had to follow the grey ribbon of river below.’ In the days before satellite weather imaging, the man had given him bad advice.

‘All my options were evaporating as fast as I could fly.’ (more…)

JESUS: FINDER OF GOGGLES LOST IN THE SEA

(September 10, 2020) Mark Ellis shares an encouraging testimony that reminds that Jesus even cares for ‘lost things’…

In scripture, Jesus tells parables about finding a lost coin, lost sheep, and a lost son.

My wife Sally has found it helpful to pray when somewhat mundane items like car keys or phones have been misplaced, and it seems the Holy Spirit always directs her to their location.

Faith challenged
But her faith was severely challenged recently on a family vacation in San Diego when she lost a pair of swim goggles about 25 yards off shore.

She came in and scanned the Pacific Ocean with a forlorn expression. ‘Why don’t you go out and look for them?’ her daughter-in-law, Rebecca asked.

‘No, that’s a big ocean out there. There’s no way. It’s a needle-in-a-haystack. If you lose something out there it’s gone,’ Sally said. She admitted later she had no faith whatsoever to find the goggles. All she saw was a giant ocean. Even worse, the goggles were dark-coloured and blended with the water and Sally didn’t know if the goggles could float.

An hour later, her son Sam was surfing in a completely different area from the one where his mother lost the goggles. He yelled at his brother, Nate: ‘Hey, Mom lost her goggles. See if you see them.’

Prayer for help
‘They could be at the bottom of the ocean,’ Sam thought to himself. ‘If they do float, maybe I’ll see them. But I would have to be real close, be right on top of them.’ He threw up a prayer to God, ‘Jesus, help me find them.’ (more…)

JESUS MIRACULOUSLY HEALED WOMAN’S ‘INCURABLE’ CANCER

(May 11, 2018) Mark Ellis shares…

She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow, which is considered incurable. But with Jesus-centred faith, prayer, and a powerful dream, God brought a miraculous healing that confounded her doctors.

‘They said I had three to five years to live,’ says Tecla Miceli. ‘It was dreadful and I was scared to death.’

Tecla grew up in Sicily and came to the USA as a 16-year-old with her parents. Fortunately the cancer was caught at an early stage. As she was opposed to chemotherapy doctors agreed to monitor the progression of the cancer with bone surveys and blood tests every 60 days.

‘The oncologist did a spinal and it came out at 17 blood plasma level and the threshold is 5,’ says Gary LaFerla who accompanied his mother to the doctor visits.

Alarming cancer cells increase
At 17%, doctors were willing to wait on the chemo. But after three years of monitoring Tecla, doctors noticed an alarming increase in cancer cells. ‘It was full blown cancer, at least 27% in her blood,’ Gary says.

Raised as a nominal Catholic, Tecla was born again through the influence of Gary and his sister Laura, who were involved at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California.

Nicky Cruz, the former gang member, was speaking when Tecla visited Calvary Chapel for the first time. Moved by his message, she felt compelled to go forward. (more…)

HANNAH’S SECRET

Maureen McQuillan(September 9, 2016) Maureen McQuillan encourages those heavy with heartache…

Something that I keep coming across is this…at some point even Christians, guys or gals, need a breakthrough in laying everything before God, knowing that he has heard their cry, knows the pain they’re carrying…and to then let go and fully trust him. (more…)

BIBLE HIDDEN UNDER FLOOR FOUND BY CHILDREN IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA

Mark Ellis

Mark Ellis brings an inspirational story of how God answered prayer in unexpected way:

Izabella grew up in communist Romania at a time when no one was allowed to go to church, have Bibles in their possession, or openly talk about God.

‘When I was seven and my brother was 10, we found a Bible hidden in the floor of our house. We didn’t know what it was,’ she said in a report by Samaritan’s Purse. (more…)