I have a meager education. I went to college, but spent more time in the student center playing euchre and drinking .25 cent beers than attending class. A lot of people could out maneuver me in an argument. A lot of people could come at me with intellectual debates about God and ask me questions I couldn’t answer. But nothing can sway my belief in God because of I’ve had experiences that prove otherwise.
- I grew up with a Dad who was an alcoholic. My entire life until I was 15, my Dad drank. He went to work every day, and then stopped at the bar on the way home and drank until he either passed out, or had to be escorted home by his friend the chief of police. My mom was a devout Christian. We prayed for my Dad on my knees by my bedside nightly. He got angry about our prayers and told my Mom to “keep her prayers off of him.” he was distant and crabby and kids in my neighborhood weren’t allowed to play at my house because a mean drunk lived there. One Easter, Mom and I got up to go to church and my dad was sitting in the living room in his suit. My mom said her initial thought was “Where is Jack going to go drinking on Easter Sunday morning?” She assumed he was dressed to go to the bar. She asked where he was going and he said “To church with you.” I can’t say why. I don’t know why after us praying for a decade he randomly decided to go to church. But, he did. And when they asked who wanted to give their life to Jesus, my Dad leapt out of his seat and wept his way down the aisle. He became a new man that day. He never took another drink. He never went to AA or rehab, he said God delivered him from the desire to drink. He stopped smoking and swearing, too. He started...talking to me. He never graduated from high school and didn’t read well. He took night classes, learned to read and went to Bible college. He became a pastor and worked as a chaplain in a Children’s psychiatric hospital ministering to kids that had substance abuse issues. The list of charities he worked with and for are countless. When he died 6 years ago, people I never knew wrote Mom and I letters “Your Dad saved my life.” - the same dad I grew up with that was a scary drunk that the neighbors feared. The people who knew my Dad before he got saved could not believe he had become a pastor. The people that knew my dad after he got saved saw him as a hero and a saint and could not believe he used to be a drunk. He didn’t even look the same. If I showed you a pre-God photo and a post-God photo of my Dad, you would think it was two different men. This was not an act of willpower on my Dad’s part. It was divine intervention.
There is a story in the Bible in John chapter 9. A man who was blind from birth was healed by Jesus. People challenged him and argued with him about laws Jesus broke, etc – the guy said (paraphrased)
“I don’t know if Jesus is a sinner, all I know is I was blind and now I can see.”
- When people try to convince me there is no God, I say:
"My dad was a drunk and then he wasn’t."
2. There is a guy I work with named Richard. Richard has a beautiful singing voice and sings at weddings and at various events. But we’ve been sad, because Richard has a brain tumor and has been suffering seizures and was in very bad shape. Last month, Richard sang at an event I was at – one of the pastors at the event said “As some of you know, Richard is battling cancer and he has a brain tumor and he was up all night puking but he still came and sang for us today.” Everyone clapped. Someone yelled “Can we pray for him?” Sure – the guy said. So, the 100+ people in the room walked up and laid their hands on him and prayed. We got the word last week that when he went to his medical check up – the doctors were shocked to discover his golf ball size tumor is gone. Vanished.
Richard had a tumor and now he doesn’t.
3. My friend Ken was a drummer in a local band. My friends and I were little teenaged groupies and went to see them play everyplace they went. He was totally healthy and strong, but one day – he starting getting weird tingling in his limbs. He was diagnosed with MS (or some other muscle disease I can’t recall for sure). I watched him go from whole healthy hot young drummer to crippled. He was in a wheelchair and was expected to be completely immobile within the year. He still had use of his arms at that point and was playing at our church one night. He had gotten so bad the other band members had to pick him up and set him behind his drums. We had a guest speaker that night who saw this and he said “Can I pray for this young man?” and he did – he put his hands on Ken and asked God for a miracle. I felt the power of God move through the room and through my body. My hands are shaking and my eyes are tearing up while I write this. 10 seconds later, Ken got up and walked away from the drums, completely healed in an instant. I saw him deteriorate over two years time and I saw him completely healed in 10 seconds.
I told this story to someone recently and they said “Yeah, well how is he NOW? For all you know, he relapsed a year later.” I didn’t know the answer to that because I lost touch with him. SO, I recently tracked him down on Facebook and said “You probably don’t remember me but...” - but he did remember me, and that night. He said God totally healed him that night and he never had another problem in his life. That was 35 years ago.
Ken was crippled and then he wasn’t.
I have lots of stories like this, I’ve had years of witnessing the miracle of changed lives like my Dad and people who were given death sentences but didn’t die. I don’t know why bad things happen and I can’t answer every argument anyone throws at me, but I know Jack, Richard and Ken’s lives were changed. That’s all the proof I need. - Tammy Lou Waite
2. There is a guy I work with named Richard. Richard has a beautiful singing voice and sings at weddings and at various events. But we’ve been sad, because Richard has a brain tumor and has been suffering seizures and was in very bad shape. Last month, Richard sang at an event I was at – one of the pastors at the event said “As some of you know, Richard is battling cancer and he has a brain tumor and he was up all night puking but he still came and sang for us today.” Everyone clapped. Someone yelled “Can we pray for him?” Sure – the guy said. So, the 100+ people in the room walked up and laid their hands on him and prayed. We got the word last week that when he went to his medical check up – the doctors were shocked to discover his golf ball size tumor is gone. Vanished.
Richard had a tumor and now he doesn’t.
3. My friend Ken was a drummer in a local band. My friends and I were little teenaged groupies and went to see them play everyplace they went. He was totally healthy and strong, but one day – he starting getting weird tingling in his limbs. He was diagnosed with MS (or some other muscle disease I can’t recall for sure). I watched him go from whole healthy hot young drummer to crippled. He was in a wheelchair and was expected to be completely immobile within the year. He still had use of his arms at that point and was playing at our church one night. He had gotten so bad the other band members had to pick him up and set him behind his drums. We had a guest speaker that night who saw this and he said “Can I pray for this young man?” and he did – he put his hands on Ken and asked God for a miracle. I felt the power of God move through the room and through my body. My hands are shaking and my eyes are tearing up while I write this. 10 seconds later, Ken got up and walked away from the drums, completely healed in an instant. I saw him deteriorate over two years time and I saw him completely healed in 10 seconds.
I told this story to someone recently and they said “Yeah, well how is he NOW? For all you know, he relapsed a year later.” I didn’t know the answer to that because I lost touch with him. SO, I recently tracked him down on Facebook and said “You probably don’t remember me but...” - but he did remember me, and that night. He said God totally healed him that night and he never had another problem in his life. That was 35 years ago.
Ken was crippled and then he wasn’t.
I have lots of stories like this, I’ve had years of witnessing the miracle of changed lives like my Dad and people who were given death sentences but didn’t die. I don’t know why bad things happen and I can’t answer every argument anyone throws at me, but I know Jack, Richard and Ken’s lives were changed. That’s all the proof I need. - Tammy Lou Waite
- Tamilu © October, 2010
Follow me on Twitter @tamilu40
