There was a young man, recently saved, who was a part of our church up in Weaverville. He worked in the logging industry and, one Saturday, he went back to a work site to do some cleanup. Normally there would’ve been a whole crew working alongside him, but on that day, only one other man was clearing with him. As they were working together, a branch suddenly broke off and burst through the cab of the machinery he was operating. The log caught him just under the chin, pinning his neck against the cab and cutting off all oxygen to his brain. Unfortunately, neither man had brought a chainsaw, so his coworker had to race off to get one in order to free his friend. When he returned to the logging site, the young man’s head was nearly black from lack of oxygen. Finally, his coworker was able to free him and rush him to the hospital in Weaverville. Once there, he was pronounced dead on arrival.
His parents, distraught over the news, transported their son’s body down to Redding to get a second opinion from a larger hospital. The Redding hospital put him on life support, but they confirmed that all vital signs were gone. The family invited me to pray, so I drove down to Redding to be with them. When I got into the room, he lay lifeless on the bed, connected to a tangle of tubes and wires.
Two weeks earlier, a prophet had come to town and had called this young man out of the congregation, declaring the call of God on his life. And now, he lay strapped to the hospital bed with no signs of life. I stood next to him and put my hand on his arm. I called his name and said, “You’re going to be OK, because the Lord said that He’s called you to be an evangelist.” Trying to recall every detail, I quoted as best as I could from the word that the prophet had released, declaring the word of the Lord over this man’s life. When I was through, I sang a song of praise to the Lord, thanked the nurses for letting me come in to pray on a Saturday night, and went home.
The next morning, I received a phone call that the young man was sitting up in bed, completely fine.
Discussion about this post