A story worth retelling

Some of you may be aware that I had been invited as the Bible teacher at a conference in Montreal to leaders and workers in Christian camping ministries across Canada, in Australia and in Ukraine.  The theme was taken from the words of Jesus in John 14:6 “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No man comes to the Father but by Me.”  Considering Jesus had declared a total of seven “I AM” statements in the entire Gospel of John, this single explosive verse comprised three of them back-to-back.  The five messages I was asked to bring took three weeks to prepare, and at last, it was completed the week before I was to leave.  Everything seemed ready for the Lord to speak.  Then strange things began to happen.  It began two days before I was to leave.  The screen on the laptop that I was bringing to Montreal broke suddenly and inexplicably, rendering it unusable for the conference.  The disappointment was met with much prayer, and in the end, I found an older laptop that I quickly transferred all my work onto; the only downside was that the battery could not hold a charge, and I had to have it plugged in all the time.  One crisis averted, or so I thought.  I traveled to Montreal safely, and in the hotel room that night dutifully plugged in the laptop to ensure everything alright.  With a full charge on the battery and a functioning power cord, I set up the laptop to be used that morning.  That was when I discovered that the laptop was refusing to charge.  Four of the tech people on the team gathered around trying to figure it out, and none could discern the reason for the problem.  This was when we prayed for God’s grace as I watched the battery charge rapidly declining with each minute.  But the Lord would not be hindered.  If “renewing strength” in Isaiah 40:31 included battery power, then it was indeed “waiting upon God” that caused the sustaining of the laptop for the next 3 hours.  I ended the morning with a 2% charge remaining.  Like the servants who served water that turned into wine (John 2:9), no one but the tech team knew the impossible thing that God had done.  Then came the second miracle.  Since the charger to the laptop was so dated, no one had a similar charger to use as a substitute.  And I had 4 more messages to preach!  While hunting for another charger, one of the tech team found a power cord that would fit my charger (with a little wiggling).  Everyone shrugged and said, “Let’s give it a try.”  We watched in amazement as the laptop lit up, drinking in the power when we plugged it in.

It is easy to explain away what God does.  The boy’s surrender of two fish and five loaves must have shamed everyone to share their lunch, so the feeding of the 5,000 was quite explicable…except for the fact that there were 12 baskets of leftovers. The Israelites must have crossed the Red Sea at a part where it was discovered that the reeds could be so dense that the water was but 2 feet deep…except that it was impossible for thousands to have crossed over a two foot wide stretch that also drowned the Egyptian army.  Unbelief is not the lack of faith but the stanch belief that God cannot.  In the case of my Montreal assignment, it was God and not our technical genius that carried us through.  Waiting upon Him in prayer is all He calls us to do.  It is He who fights the unseen battle that we are unable to withstand.  It is He who shields us with protection against an enemy that we can never win.  He is the God of miracles.  As an epilogue to God’s doing, I returned home late on Thursday night with the testimony of numerous people who were blessed by the messages.  The next morning, I decided to plug in the cord that refused to work at the conference, thinking that I would throw it out thereafter.  Would it surprise you that it now worked like it did before I left?