Portion adapted from Life Resurrected, Extraordinary Miracles through Ordinary People by Jesse Birkey. Get the paperback or ebook version at www.reflectministry.com or on Amazon here.
A couple of weeks later came my second opportunity to step out in faith. I was just sitting down for lunch when the station tones rang signaling an emergency. We were dispatched to a drowning with CPR in progress. The call was not in our immediate area, and it took us about ten minutes to get to the scene. The rescue team that normally handled that area was busy with another emergency.
As we sped to the scene, I quietly prayed against death and asked God for a miracle, but with the extended response time I wasn’t expecting one. Even though I had seen God raise the dead there was still unbelief in my heart. I thought that maybe it was a one- time thing. I was beginning to understand that God is who He says He is but with only one experience my confidence was pretty shaky. I heard that terrible voice in my ear saying, “God may have done it once but He won’t do it again. Don’t even bother praying.”
When I first saw the woman, I thought,“Lord, this is a big one.” She looked awful. She reminded me of the story of Lazarus being dead for days. The woman’s husband had found her in the pool and didn’t know how long she had been there. She was pale and very cold. She had been under water for a significant amount of time. I was having trouble looking past what my eyes saw in the natural, and it was stunting my faith. I didn’t think there was any hope at all.
We hooked the woman up to the heart monitor, and it confirmed death by showing a flat line. When a person’s heart stops beating, there are different rhythms we can see on the heart monitor. A flat line is the worst one possible. It’s so bad that, when we see it, we don’t even try to shock the heart because it won’t respond to that kind of treatment.
It’s unsettling how doubt in the ability of God to work miracles slides in so easily. So many times what we see and know in the natural can destroy our faith in God’s supernatural ability. I had said many times before that nothing is too big for God, but when faced with this seemingly hopeless situation I thought, “This is too big.” But as I was getting the IV supplies out to try my best, I heard the soft voice of the Holy Spirit say, “Just wait and see what I can do.” It was as if the voice brought a wave of peace and faith. It was enough to uncover some hope in the power of God. I took a moment to quietly pray against death and ask God to heal the woman. There was a lot of commotion around me so I don’t think anyone heard me pray. Even though I had heard the soft voice of God I still felt like I was running on faith fumes. I could only half-heartedly check for a pulse. I almost fell over backwards in surprise when a soft thud hit my fingers. I looked at my partner and said in shock, “I have a pulse.” He looked at me in disbelief and said, “What?” We worked very quickly getting her ready for transport to the hospital. By the time we got the woman into a hospital room, all of her vital signs were normal and I was still trying to wrap my mind around what had just happened.
I was beginning to understand something important. God has a habit of making the impossible completely possible. God was beginning to stack up some incredible testimonies in my life and as a result, a foundation of faith was being built in my heart. My position that God can do anything was moving from just an intellectual principle to a heart principle, and it was changing my life. I was seeing His hand in ways I never thought I would.
Jesse and Kara Birkey
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