Guys, this month my thoughts have been going back to the topic of brokenness and trials with the release of God’s glory. In the last two years, I have seen more miracles through my life than even before. I want to explain how it happened, and how times of frustration and apparent failure actually formed something in me which led to this release of God’s power.

In Rio de Janeiro my wife and I faced very trying circumstances, and God taught me about Evergreen Life. I wrote a book and blog post about it. Eternal life is not only life forever, but it is also evergreen, meaning it flourishes in every season and circumstance. Evergreen life springs from the seed of God’s word. But there is a process called “stratification” that the seed goes through in able to be able to germinate. It includes extreme heat or cold. In fact, some evergreen seeds will never germinate unless they go through fire!

Jesus himself was tried and broken. The Bible says he prayed with loud cries and supplications! Jesus was a grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died. Wheat is threshed. Olives are crushed to make olive oil. It is often the pressure and trial that releases the life God has planted in us. Paul the apostle experienced the same, saying that we share in Christ’s sufferings so that we share in his glory, and that he was always being given over to death so that Christ’s life would be revealed in him, and so that he would no longer trust in himself but it God who raises the dead.

I want to show you some of the wonderful miracles that happened in the last month and explain what the release of God’s power was like, and has been like in these and so many other miracles. There are trials that come from external circumstances such as we faced in Rio de Janeiro. However, there is also a cry of the soul and brokenness that is formed by God’s promises!

A Blind Eye Opened, a Hernia Closed, and More!

There were many healings and deliverances in the last month, but here are some highlights. The videos are in Portuguese but I was able to add English subtitles.

I met this guy a few months earlier, walking in pain and limping near my house. He had been stabbed with a knife in his torso and in his eye, and lost his vision. I prayed for him, and most of the pain left, but his eye was still not seeing the first time I prayed.

This month a new Christian at our men’s group received deliverance, and I went to deliver a Bible to him the next day. I don’t know if it was a word of knowledge or just me wanting to pray for someone, but as I came back I felt I should go in the opposite direction where some people were instead of turning to go home. I met the same guy I had prayed for months before, but in a very different neighborhood where he was now living. God touched him and his wife, the rest of the pain left, and his vision returned in the eye that had been stabbed! He told me that he couldn’t see anything before that, but when he looked with his other eye he saw a double image!

This man at the recovery house had a painful hernia. When I first prayed for him, he felt all the pain leave. The area got hot and he felt something moving and pulling inside his body. The hernia seemed smaller but was still there. For two weeks after that, he only felt a little pain once in a while, but not like before. Then I visited and prayed again. This time he felt heat and the hernia completely disappeared so he could no longer find it! He recorded his testimony four days later when I visited with the Mova-se missions group!

Much more happened as well. A couple from my city was traveling in the south of Brazil and asked for prayer for a friend who had multiple health issues. They were in the car together when I called to pray for her, and the reception dropped in the middle of the call. But I found out later that even the guy who was driving felt his whole body catch on fire with God’s glory, his wife also felt God’s power on her hands, and the lady felt power going through her. She had been losing her vision, but it was completely restored. She hadn’t even told us about a recent surgery on her ankle, but after we prayed she found that the full range of motion was restored! She’d had the surgery only about a week before, and the doctors expected it to take months of physical therapy for her to be able to move her ankle normally again!

Yesterday’s Bread isn’t Enough!

Soon after these wild miracles and many other healings and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, I had the day off of work and went to and pray for a guy who had graduated from the recovery program and recently gotten married. He’d suddenly gotten a rare infection and gone paralyzed. The movement in one leg eventually came back, but the other was still paralyzed. Because of that, he was also unable to work, so I used some donations to bring a bunch of rice, beans, chicken, and other food staples for the family.

Someone contacted me to see if I could pray for a certain young lady who had cancer all through her body and it wasn’t responding to chemotherapy. So I agreed to go there first. This was right in the wake of some amazing miracles of cancer healed. Just the month before I’d heard the report of a lady who had 8 tumors and they were all gone when she got tested the week after we prayed for her. The young lady’s body was swollen and bruised. There was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. I saw a vision of the girl who invited me laying her hand on the belly, and the young lady felt heat coming from the girl’s hand. Still, there was no overwhelming manifestation like I’d seen so many times in the previous weeks of the person’s whole body getting hot. She still felt where the tumors were. Of course, we stand in faith. I told the family about the blind eye opening and the hernia disappearing the second time we prayed, and encouraged them with other testimonies. But I really felt my need for the Lord! There was a struggle in my heart. As wonderful as the previous testimonies were, I needed fresh bread today!

The Lord’s prayer says “Give us this day our daily bread,” and Jesus spoke of healing as the children’s bread. The manna in the Old Testament was only good for that day! Even with all the Lord has done in the past, today is a new day, and I need God’s help today! It’s like that song, “I need you more…more than yesterday. I need you more…more than words can say.”

Actually, in the middle of writing this post, I just listened to this song and started sobbing. Some people might think of this topic of brokenness as heavy. Really, having your heart in that place of weeping before the Lord is like heaven on earth! There is nothing heavy about being broken before the Lord, although there is sometimes suffering on the way to getting to that place!

Brokenness isn’t always about going through hard external circumstances. I recently read the “Panoramic Seer” by Dr. James Maloney. Lately, I’ve watched a few videos of him ministering as well. He sees what the Lord is doing and it releases God’s power for miracles. I often experience the same, but not usually with the detail and abundance of that he does! He also has multiple testimonies of body parts being restored. Anyways, he talked about brokenness in one chapter of his book. He wrote of brokenness in the context of spending time quietly in the Lord’s presence and waiting on the Lord. In my experience, that is part of the value of fasting. We cultivate and rest our hearts in dependence on Jesus! It’s hard to just wait on God! It takes humility.

God’s Promises Leading Us To Brokenness

I’ve experienced more of the overwhelming release of God’s Spirit through my life in the last few years than ever before, and you guys have been reading just the highlights of what the Lord is doing. I feel like these many miracles and signs have much to do with a deep brokenness and cry that was formed in my heart through God’s promises.

What do I mean? I am speaking of both prophetic words over my life, many that I received when I was a teenager, and promises of scripture. Scripture opens our eyes to what is possible for us in Christ and prophecy from the Lord plants something in our heart. God is a God of the impossible and He is glorified by doing through us that which is humanly impossible. God’s promise to Abraham seemed impossible, and there was quite a long waiting period. I believe it produced brokenness in him, but it was a brokenness that kept growing stronger in faith because even as it seemed more and more impossible, he turned in trust to the Lord. Joseph’s promise also took decades to be fulfilled, and much of the time the circumstances seemed exactly the opposite.

What kinds of promises? They include promises of scripture related to faith and ministering healing and deliverance. When you don’t see happen what you know scripture says is God’s will, you can either harden your heart or let this produce a brokenness in you that says “Holy Spirit, I need you! What am I missing?” They also include personal promises and dreams confirmed by prophecy, related to taking the gospel to the unreached and rescuing children. The seed of promises that I have not yet seen fulfilled has produced a brokenness in my heart that says “Help Holy Spirit!” Knowing your need for the Lord is humility, and God gives grace, meaning power, to the humble.

Even my past experiences of seeing what the Lord has done, and other people’s testimonies, create a brokenness in me for the current situation. I’ve seen the Lord totally remove the cancer from people’s bodies. It’s not all right for that to be just a memory from the past! We need the Lord to renew His works today and for the situation in front of us now! And how can I read testimonies of revival from the past and be content without that in my time, where I live, now?

God’s Love Producing Brokenness

Musclebuilders become strong by pushing their limits until their muscles literally tear. But they grow back stronger. In the same way, God’s promises challenge us like a heavy weight that we can’t lift, because they are just too impossible for us to fulfill by ourselves. We need the Holy Spirit! And like a musclebuilder grows stronger by tearing his muscles, we grow strong in the Lord as we fail in our own strength and learn to totally rely on the Holy Spirit. The promise creates a cry which creates brokenness which allows God’s power to flow.

God’s love for others also produces brokenness. Have you ever wept because you just needed to see God’s deliverance in someone’s life? God’s power is released to save and rescue people when our hearts are broken for them. Jesus was broken for love and God’s power flowed unto salvation!

I may have recently seen many wonderful works of the Holy Spirit, but it is often easy for a shell to start to form on my heart if I get weighed down with the cares of life. This is hard to explain or describe, but I can feel it and it hinders the flow of God’s power. That was what I was dealing with that day when I went to pray for the lady with cancer and the guy with paralysis. It’s important to cultivate communion with the Lord and not let a hard shell form that hinders the flow of heaven’s rivers through our lives.

In the testimonies above about the blind eye being opened and the hernia healed, both people were touched by the Lord the first time I prayed. But there was something that happened between the first time and the second time, so that there was an overwhelming release of God’s spirit the second time that opened the blind eye and made the hernia totally disappear. What was it? I knew what God could do, and although I was thankful that most of the pain left, I wasn’t satisfied with only halfway! I knew God wanted to do more! That created a brokenness and a cry in my heart to the Lord concerning the situation. And I prayed again!

I recently watched this very special meeting with Jesus Encounter Ministries in Birmingham and I saw how the Holy Spirit was breaking people’s hearts. I believe you’ll be blessed by watching it!