God demonstrates His Power through the storms of your life. The Bible says, in the darkest hour of the night, in the time of your greatest need, when you think that you are alone, that nobody can help or deliver you, its exactly at that moment when Jesus will come. In the darkness, Jesus will show Himself and He will begin to speak to you. This is wonderful, if you will come to Jesus, the moment you step out of that boat a miracle will happen and the storm will be gone. You are going to be walking on the water; you will be able to do something impossible!
When I think of the number of troubles I have had – being in a communist prison for a year, having cancer twice, having gunmen sent on three occasions to shoot me – God uses every circumstance to His glory, He uses the problems and the difficulties in our lives to convince us miraculously! I've proved that life with Christ is an unfolding adventure. I would rather be in a storm with Jesus than live at peace without Him.
I was healed from throat cancer forty years ago, but I was sick for three months before I came to the spiritual place with God where the miracle happened – three months in spiritual growth, followed by a sudden revelation – an explosion – and in that moment the healing was instantaneous! When I was in a communist prison thirty years ago for Bible smuggling, I was almost one year in the prison, believing that God would work the miracle to get me out – but that year was the best year of my life! Yes, I was separated from my wife and my children, my youngest daughter was only three years old – but I grew all the time in my experience with God! It was a testing of my faith, but God when did it, it was sudden, a big miracle! I travelled the world for two years afterwards, talking about that miracle. I preached to more than a million people, sometimes ten thousand at a time – a quarter of a million came to Christ because of that testimony! But the miracle took one year of prayer. I’m a coward and from the first day I cried, ‘Oh God get me out!’ In the early days I thought that they would torture me, then simply throw me out of the country – but God didn’t get me out!
However, if He had answered my first prayers and released me from the prison within one or two days, what would have happened? Suppose God had organised things ‘extremely well’ and got me out of prison really quickly – I would not be evangelising in Russia the way I do now, I would not have the ministry I have today. The longer I stayed in the prison, the bigger the miracle became – in the end it was the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who came to Czechoslovakia, just to get me out! I was not thrown out of the ‘back door’! I was released in a blaze of publicity! That’s God! But the whole miracle took one year to prepare. I didn’t let go of God even in the darkest days of despair – I knew, I believed – but it hurt and it was hard. If only you could know how bad those days I spent in prison were!
It’s the same with you. Hold on. Don’t let go of God! God WILL do it! If it takes three months, three years, God WILL do it.
And if you doubt, don’t feel that God will abandon you because of this. Let me encourage you. About three weeks before I was released from the prison (and God had told me the exact day I would get out of the prison), all the pressure in there got so much, I had a heart attack. They took me to the prison hospital and gave me an ECG. They had no medicine, so they just sent me back to my cell, and I cried out, ‘Oh God, why have I had a heart attack? I’m not believing! If I really believed that I was coming out in three weeks, I wouldn’t be having a heart attack, I’d be dancing for joy! Oh God, I’ve let go of my faith! Oh God, forgive me!’ And God did! Three weeks later, I came out!
God understands. We’re human! Only God is divine! We’re going to fail sometimes, even I fail God, I’m not a ‘holy man’ – but I do trust God, and I love God. God looks on your heart.
Only the blood of Christ can set you free from the devil. If you are believing for healing, for yourself or others, healing is part of the atonement of Christ. Matthew 8:16-17 says that Jesus healed all that were sick in order that the words of the prophet Isaiah would be fulfilled, ‘He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses’ (Isaiah 53:4).
We don’t live in a perfect world, but in a sinful world. Let me ask this question, is every single believer living without any sin? Let’s be truthful – we do fail God – even Paul said, ‘The good things I would do, I don’t do, and the bad things I don’t want to do, I do!’ Yes, there is forgiveness through the Blood of Christ, that is why John said to the believers, ‘I write unto you that you sin not, but if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father’ (1 John 2:1).