DIVINE INTERVENTIONS: Miracles in Advance

In this episode of the DoorWays® Ministry Network podcast, Ric Shields discusses the concept of faith and divine interventions, emphasizing that faith stands alone without formulas. He shares personal stories of miraculous events in his life, illustrating the power of faith in God's faithfulness. Shields recounts his son's recovery from a severe illness and a miraculous financial provision during a time of need, highlighting the importance of trusting in God's plans and purposes. He concludes with a reflection on Ephesians 3:20-21, affirming that God's faithfulness and grace have been evident throughout his life, encouraging listeners to find the same assurance in their own lives.

Transcript

TOPIC: DIVINE INTERVENTIONS - Miracles in Advance
S3, E47


Ric Shields (00:00):

Faith has no formulas. It stands alone. The early reformers of the church said it like this in Latin, sola fidelis. In English it means "faith alone." No additives, purely organic if you will. When we're talking about divine interventions, faith in and of itself is enough.

(00:29):

You're listening to the DoorWays® Ministry Network podcast. My name is Ric Shields. Thank you for joining me today.

(00:35):

For the past few weeks, we've been discussing "Divine Interventions." We've heard amazing stories of healing and protection, provision, and direction. I've really been encouraged by hearing these stories and I hope you have been too.

(00:48):

I'm an auditory processor. I like to think out loud about ideas with others. That doesn't mean I've made a decision about something. It just means I want to hear what others think. I want to get their input and see if there's a better way to manage a situation or develop whatever it is they may be considering.

(01:05):

Shortly after we began the current series on "Divine Interventions," I started talking out loud about who we could interview or what stories we should hear, and that's when our daughter, Tara, said, "Dad, you should talk about miracles in advance." She was referring to a sermon I preached years ago when she was a kid, but she loved that sermon.

(01:23):

Well, I won't preach the sermon per se, but miracles in advance is about real stories that have happened in our family and in our home. So let me set the stage with a couple of thoughts.

(01:35):

First, our family has come to understand that the greatest kind of faith we can have is our faith in God's faithfulness. Maybe you've heard it said, I've heard it, "We need to have faith in our faith." No, we don't. That idea cannot be substantiated anywhere in the scriptures. I'm not sure if it rises to the level of heresy, but I'll tell you that does not hold water.

(02:00):

Our faith is to be firmly planted in God's faithfulness. See, our faith can wax and wane. The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 2:13, he said, "If we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot disown himself." His faithfulness does not change, even though ours may. We try our best to not be presumptuous about how God will answer prayer. We've come to realize that God is very willing to intervene in our situations and circumstances, but he is not one to be confined in a box and while we may be the beneficiary of a divine intervention, we are not the sole reason he acts.

(02:42):

So why do I say that? The apostle Paul writes in Philippians 2:13. He said, "It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." We could also say it like this. "God Is at work in us bringing about His purposes for our lives." When a miracle serves his good purpose, he will act on our behalf because the purpose behind a miracle is that it brings glory to God and encourages the body of Christ.

(03:13):

So that's first of all, we believe in having faith in God's faithfulness. Second, in Ephesians 3:20-21. Paul writes, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever." If Paul was writing today, he may write something like this. "I have learned to trust God in ways bigger than I can even conceive. He has always been like this and he will never change." So, in a nutshell, what Paul has said in the early part of this verse is that God knows our needs before we do.

(03:59):

God had a plan of salvation available for us before we even knew we were dead in our sins and transgressors of God's law. I mean that is so very much like God to have a way prepared for us before we ever even knew we needed it. In the Old Testament, Isaiah wrote, "And it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer. And while they're speaking, I will hear." How cool is that! God knows what I need way before I do.

(04:27):

So basically, do I believe God still does miracles or divine interventions today? Yes, I certainly do. And while we may be the beneficiaries of his work in our lives or in our situations, the purpose of his work is to display his glory and majesty and power and to encourage the body of Christ. Believe it or not, it is not all about us though we may share the benefits of his work.

(04:51):

I also wanted to mention that one should never see the experience of someone else as a formula for you to get what they've received. That didn't work so well for the disciples. When they tried to cast a demon from a young boy, they did everything they'd seen Jesus do and the boy was still possessed. They apparently followed Jesus' example like it was an exact science. Listen to what they said. "Why could 'we,' Why could we not cast it out?" It sounds like they were having that little problem of having faith in their faith.

(05:24):

We can't hope to replicate something that worked before. If it worked for them or if it worked then shouldn't it work now? Well, it didn't work for Moses when the wandering Israelites wanted water in the desert. The first time in Exodus 17 got instructed Moses to strike the rock with his staff and water came gushing out. The second time, in Numbers 20, God told Moses to speak to the rock. But what did Moses do? Well, he did what he'd done before. He pulled out his staff and gave the rock a good whack and nothing happened. So, he hit it again, and after the second time, water poured out. But Moses had apparently not listened to all of what God instructed him, or he just decided to do what had worked before. Either way, in the end, God considered it to be disobedience and there was a price to be paid for that.

(06:16):

Faith has no formulas. It stands alone. The early reformers of the church said it like this in Latin, "sola fidelis." In English it means "faith alone." No additives, purely organic if you will. When we're talking about divine interventions, faith in and of itself is enough.

(06:37):

So just to recap, God still does miracles, I believe, to display his glory. I believe God knows your situation better than you do, and I also believe faith has no formulas.

(06:49):

So, here's my first story.

(06:52):

We had been married almost three years. When our first child, Travis, was born he captured our hearts. We committed to being the best parents we knew how to be. But when he was six months old, something went crazy wrong. It started out as thrush it's an oral fungal infection common to infants. He didn't respond well to the medication and then blood work showed a really troubling sign. Essentially, he had no white cells to fend off an infection. Our doctor assumed he may have leukemia or some other serious disease, and we started the journey of the longest six months of our lives Along the way, we were told by a pediatric hematologist that "kids with this condition will usually just wither up and die in six months."

(07:34):

Well, that wasn't much help. There were multiple clinic and hospital visits. There were a lot of tests with a lot of needles. The poor kid screamed whenever he saw someone with a lab coat or a clinic jacket nearby, not necessarily at a hospital or clinic. Even at the store, if he saw somebody in a lab coat or a clinic jacket, man, he was going crazy.

(07:54):

But it all changed. One night in August, seven months after it all began. At the conclusion of a Sunday night service, I swooped him up from Sheila's arms and I went down and knelt at a pew. I will tell you where it's at - three rows from the front on the left side of the auditorium.

(08:08):

It wasn't that my faith was so great. The truth is that we are exhausted in every way we were spent financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually. The kid was constantly sick. There was nothing left, nothing more that we could do, and there was only one thing that remained. In one way or another, God would hear my prayer and do whatever he was going to do. That was the only thing that was left. As I knelt there I prayed, "God, this is no life for a child. So I give him to you. If his death will bring you glory and honor, then take his life and I'll give you praise. On the other hand, if his living will bring you glory and honor, then I promise to be the best father I know possible and I will give you praise. But whether he lives or whether he dies, I will praise you God."

(08:51):

Now I felt somewhat like Abraham with a knife ready to take his son Isaac's life on Mount Mariah. I didn't have a knife, but I felt like my prayer was more deadly than life giving. When I opened my eyes, I honestly believed Travis would be taking his final breath. I thought God was going to take his life, but that's not what happened.

(09:15):

From that night forward, Travis recovered. The phantom fevers that had plagued us for months stopped. The mysterious illnesses stopped. It was really truly a miracle. That's not to say he's never had another illness. He got chicken pox really bad. He's had colds and flu and even got COVID, but he's otherwise healthy. To this day, I think it's fair to say that God provided a miracle that I had never imagined. The truth is my imagination had him dying in my arms. God's miraculous intervention had him alive and well instead.

(09:50):

A few months later, a ministry team well known in the upper Midwest and led by Lowell and Connie Lundstrom visited our small town of Worthington, Minnesota. Their advanced team had called our church office one day and asked that I lead the congregational singing at their event. And man, I happily accepted their invitation.

(10:09):

When they showed up, probably a week later, our high school gymnasium was filled with hundreds of people from the surrounding area. As I took to the stage, I gave my best song leading performance secretly hoping they would tap me on the shoulder and asked me to join their team and lead songs wherever they went. It didn't happen, but I was still honored to help.

(10:33):

After completing my song leading assignment at the rally, I left the platform to look for a seat. There were only a few seats that were available and they were in the top row of the bleachers at the rear of the gymnasium. As I got seated on the bleacher, Lowell Lundstrom came to the podium to tell the crowd of incredible opportunities for ministry in the days ahead. They'd received invitations from schools and prisons and for city and area wide events, and these were all in addition to the growing outreach available to them through radio and television.

(11:04):

The offering given that night would help make it possible for them to accept those invitations and develop materials necessary to help make their team more effective. So then, ushers scattered throughout the auditorium and distributed envelopes for the offering. I was delighted and reluctant. Both the delight or the happiness was due to my having been an important part of that evening's rally. I mean, I was part of the ministry team that night. How could I not want to give an offering? But my reluctance to receive an envelope was a different story. I was an associate pastor in a small church and small churches typically pay small salaries, and our church was no exception. I had no money. Not only did I have no money in my wallet, but there was no money in our bank account. Remember I mentioned earlier our son Travis had been ill when he was six months old. Two weeks in the hospital, including a few days in ICU, were followed by multiple visits to the doctor and several trips to the emergency room at the local hospital.

(12:06):

We had health insurance, but we also had deductibles. And while more than a year had passed, there was barely enough money to get by and there was never more than enough. And I felt like a failure as a provider for my family. Sheila, my wife, and Travis were also in the audience. I could see them sitting in their chairs in the floor from where I was sitting in the upper level of the bleachers. Sheila received an envelope, but I know her situation was the same as mine. She didn't have any money in her purse. Neither of us was capable of giving anything. The evangelist asked us to bow our heads while he prayed for the Lord to bless the offering that evening. He didn't prolong the prayer. He didn't try to make people feel guilty for not giving. He didn't have to. I already felt badly enough.

(12:54):

I mean it was in my heart to give, but it was not within my ability. So, I did something I'd never done before. Something never even suggested to me. I prayed, "Lord, I don't have any money to give. Sheila doesn't have any money to give either. If I had something to give, I would give it. All I can do is open this envelope, pray and speak a blessing into it. That's all I have. I hope you'll receive it from my heart."

(13:20):

I opened my eyes, brought the envelope toward my mouth, pulled back the flap in order to speak my blessing into it, but I never had a chance to breathe a word because inside the envelope was a $20 bill, legal tender with a familiar picture of Andrew Jackson on the front. Admittedly <laugh>, I was tempted to accept God's provision for my need. It appeared that he wanted to bless me even more than I wanted to bless the evangelist. The Lord had heard my heart. Here's the proof. He knew I was telling the truth. I could take the money, be grateful and have a story to tell too, but it was a fleeting thought. After all, I had just told the Lord that if I had something to give, I would give it. One moment, I had nothing. The next moment I had a $20 bill.

(14:10):

So before temptation could sneak up on me, well, it already snuck up on me, but <laugh> before it really got bad, I sealed shut the envelope with the money in it, turned it over and wrote, "Ric Shields, 609 Burlington Avenue, Worthington, Minnesota 56187," in the donor information box and seconds later, I dropped the envelope into the bucket, passed around by the ushers. The deed was done. No way to change my mind and keep the money.

(14:39):

Now there is a simple, logical explanation to what happened or how that happened. And isn't that how it is with miracles? We just can't accept them. Somehow, we just have to make sense of them or get it figured out. Probably during an earlier rally, someone put a $20 bill into an envelope and didn't mark their name on it. Their gift would be anonymous. Only God would know. They neither needed nor wanted an acknowledgement of their gift. The envelope was received in that evening's offering where the ushers separated it for counting checks, cash, coin, and envelopes. And apparently unmarked envelopes were assumed to be unused and could be reused in subsequent rallies. So prior to the meeting in our small town that night, the ushers were given stacks of unmarked envelopes to distribute to people throughout the auditorium, and among the hundreds of envelopes distributed that night, there was at least one with a $20 bill inside unaccounted for from an earlier rally.

(15:39):

And that one envelope, which could have been received by anyone, made its way into the upper rows of the bleachers at the back of the auditorium to the left of the stage. And that one envelope came to me before I even prayed my desperate prayer. I didn't give someone else's offering. That night I gave a miracle gift, one given to me a miracle that made it possible for me to have something to give.

(16:03):

It's been nearly 45 years ago that I was a student at Oral Roberts University. One morning after her devotions and just before leaving for work, Sheila came to me with a really serious look in her face. "While I was praying," she told me, "I sensed the Lord tell me that we should give $5 to Eric and Kathryn." Well, this is our babysitter who probably deserved much more than $5.

(16:27):

Now to most people, this would be no big revelation, but our situation was different. If indeed God was speaking, he was not being very nice to us. This was Monday. All we had was $5 and we wouldn't receive our next paycheck from Sheila's job until that Friday. Meanwhile, we needed gas in the car so Sheila could drive the car to work. There was no bus or other transportation available. We had dirty clothes that needed to go to the laundromat and we were out of milk for our son. This was the last $5 we had. On the other hand, there was no way that $5 was going to stretch for everything we needed. We could either buy gas for the car or we could do some laundry and buy milk, but $5 wouldn't do it all.

(17:13):

But there was something more important going on that morning than milk or gas or laundry. Sheila rarely came to me and said, "I sensed the Lord tell me this, or I, I really believe the Lord spoke to me about that." This was a holy moment. I didn't want to do anything that might cause her to think I was questioning her ability to hear the Holy Spirit speak to her.

(17:35):

I replied, "Let's do it. Those five dollars aren't going to be enough for us anyway. We'll just have to believe the Lord is going to take care of us somehow."

(17:43):

That evening, in order to save the little bit of gas we had left in the car. We walked the 100 yards to the apartment of our friends. Since this idea had come to Sheila, it was up to her to take the lead on the presentation. And with a soft knock on the door, she closed her eyes and was rehearsing what to say. The door opened. It was Kathryn at the door, and Sheila got straight to the point. Holding the $5 bill in both hands, she said, "This is for you. I felt Jesus asked us to give this to you. We just want you to know that we love you."

(18:19):

I'll admit I felt a little silly and that's probably why I had Sheila do it instead of me. I imagine Kathryn having a perplexed look on her face and could hear her saying, "Five dollars? God had to speak to you to give us five dollars?" But that wasn't what she did at all. She was so gracious. A big smile spread across her face. Her arms opened wide to give Sheila a hug, and she offered a really genuine thank you.

(18:46):

The walk home felt different than when we traveled in the other direction. We felt relieved. We felt giddy. We'd done what God had impressed upon us to do. We gave them what little money we had and knew the Lord would bless them. They must have needed that $5 more than we did. It was like those $5 had become a burden that was lifted as soon as we gave it away. Now, either God would provide for us or he wouldn't, but it really didn't matter. Our hearts were filled with joy because we'd been obedient and had given what we had to help someone whose need was apparently bigger than our own."

(19:23):

The next day's mail, Tuesday, that would prove to be one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I instantly recognized the names on the first letter. They were a couple who had attended our church in Worthington. Inside the envelope was a $25 check with a brief note explaining they'd been meaning to send a gift to us for some time, but just never got around to it. She really hoped their gift would be of help to us.

(19:51):

Well, wow, what a day. I was shocked. They had never given us anything before. They'd never written to us. The $25 was going to be enough to cover all the things we needed actually. We needed some gas, didn't have to fill the tank, needed some gas. Gas was a lot cheaper then. We needed milk and we needed to do some laundry. They couldn't have written at a better time.

(20:12):

The next letter puzzled me. It was from a church in St. James, Minnesota. I'd driven through St. James several times, but I had never heard of or even seen the church. There was no letter in this envelope, but there was a check payable for $50, had my name spelled correctly too. There had been no mistake. This check was written specifically for me. It couldn't be for somebody else. It had my name on it. It was sent to my address. It was in my mailbox.

(20:40):

So, I held the two checks tightly in my hand and went to the telephone to call Sheila. "You're not going to believe this," I told her. "We Just got two checks in the mail. One is for $25 and the other is for $50. That one comes from a church I've never heard of in my life. Sheila, the Lord blessed us because of our obedience to give those $5 to Eric and Kathryn. If we hadn't done that, I don't think we would've received this money today."

(21:07):

The next evening, I went to church. Sheila stayed home <laugh> to do the laundry. I told our pastor the story who in turn asked me to share it with the congregation. And after the service, a woman I'd never met came to me and said, "I don't know your name, let alone how to spell it, but if you'll write it on this line, this check will cash for another $25." So, within 48 hours, God had provided more than we imagined. There was enough to fill our car's empty gas tank, buy milk for our little boy, and wash our dirty clothes. In addition, we set aside a gift as an offering of thanks to the Lord for his miraculous provision.

(21:47):

Let me share Ephesians 3:20121 with you one more time. The Apostle Paul wrote, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever."

(22:07):

This scripture, it's more than another beautiful or comforting passage for me and for my family. This is a testimony of our lives. That's not to say we've lived without trauma. That's not true. Disappointment or hardship, all of those things and more have visited us. Yet this is our confidence. God's faithfulness has been expressed to us over and over again. We have found his love is eternal, his mercies never fail, and his immeasurable grace has filled our lives and home. And I pray that you're finding the same for you and those you love.

(22:48):

Thanks for listening.