Yes, God Does Miracles: Remarkable Stories of God's Power

By John Langer

Does God do miracles today? John Langer says a big "Yes!"

"A very personal account of God's presence and intervention in the daily

life and walk of the author. Rather than the extraordinary and rare, they

are seen as routine for those who trust in the One who supplies all our

needs." -Stephen Knoble, former mi

• Language: English
• Publisher: River Birch Press
• Release date: Jun 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951561413

John Langer

John's passion is sharing Jesus with others. He has spoken in front of thousands and to just one. His desire for others to know God is infectious and has drawn those he fellowships with to want a deeper relationship with God. May this book do that for you and may God's blessing be with you always.

Book preview

THE BEGINNING

As we begin this new adventure, God reminded me of His sovereignty and majesty in all that transpires as we walk with Him.

This book is about miracles that I have seen myself or have heard in the direct testimony of others. God still does what He has done in the past as recorded in His Word.

Yes, God still does miracles—not just the over-the-top ones, but also the everyday miracles that get us through the day so that we can start anew in the morning. You will read of miracles that seem so simple that we often miss them and some that will make you once again, as in my last book, ask, Is this possibly true? All these stories that I have witnessed are true as are the testimonies of miracles that others have shared with me.

Let’s start by asking God to show you clearly what He wants you to know from Him in reading these pages. May your mind be clear to hear the lessons He wants you to learn so that you may have a greater understanding of how great our God truly is.

Miracles

Miracles, miracles, and many more miracles. How do I begin to write about them when I have seen thousands of them if not more through the years? And as I think about it, you too have probably seen many miracles in your lifetime yet may not have recognized many of them.

You will hear of a man losing his breath and God giving it back. You will hear of the consequences of not listening to God and the miracle of forgiveness. There will be times where you will likely say, I never thought of that as a miracle before. And the list will build of the miracles you see each and every day.

I want to start with a miracle that at first it may not seem like a miracle at all, but you will understand better when you hear the whole story. When God does things in our lives, sometimes it is only later when we see why He did them and the blessing that came from them.

This particular miracle I experienced came from hearing the sound of my wife snoring. Now that in and of itself would not be something you would want to hear, but there is a story behind it.

One day my wife scratched her eye and by late that evening, it didn’t seem to be getting much better. She thought of going to the hospital but decided it could wait until morning.

As we crawled into bed, her eye began to hurt worse, even with using eye drops. After about a half hour she said she would be okay and told me to get some sleep since I was going to have a long day ahead of me. I finally dozed off and after a while Jill tapped on my shoulder to wake me up and asked me to pray for her eye.

Wow, how did I fail to pray for my wife earlier? I thought. Boy did I feel dumb not starting with prayer. My wife asked because she knows what I have experienced and seen what has happened as I have sought God out in prayer. Often He says, Yes, I will do this.

So after trying everything else we could think of, I began to pray. With tears streaming down my face, I sought God’s healing touch on my wife’s eye. To our surprise once again God said, Yes, I will do this.

We both sat in silence and with reverence to the Great Physician who decided to heal my wife. After a prayer of thanksgiving, my wife drifted off to sleep. Soon she was in a deep sleep and it was then that I heard her soundly snoring.

Earlier that day God said to me that some things that I disliked I would actually appreciate someday. This made no sense to me, but now it did. You see as I lay in bed listening to the snoring, I began to smile because it was now music to my ears. Jill had gone from being in intense pain to snoring in just a matter of minutes, and the sound of her snoring gave me a satisfaction that she could now sleep.

God told me to remember this lesson. The snoring, which would have ordinarily been something I would be complaining about or at least struggling through, turned out to be a blessing that night.

It was a miracle and it changed how I think of frustrations or little things that used to bother me. God has allowed me to understand that what we struggle with sometimes can actually be a blessing when we see them through Christ-like eyes. I had seen one of the things I dislike most, turn into a melody that brought great joy to my heart.

I was humbled greatly that day because not only did God have the answer to my prayer and meet that need, but He showed me again that my vision is often clouded. What I see may not be the view that God sees. I could look in a mirror and see myself one way, but God sees the true picture and knows what I can be with Him leading me.

I thought I hated snoring, but God showed me I could love it. It is like the view of our enemies that God says to love. We are to look at them as Christ does. Christ laid down His life that all would come to Him, yet we often look at our enemies as just that, our enemies.

Our eyes are skewed and we cannot see clearly what we could be seeing if we saw as God sees. He sees broken vessels who need Him and does everything He can to get them to want Him.

There are scripture passages that speak of our once being enemies of God, and yet even in that state, think of what He did for us. These verses let us know how God sees us even when we may not see that same thing from our view.

For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Romans 5:10-11).

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant (Colossians 1:21-23).

Think about that. Even while we were God’s enemies, He saw the need to save us and did so through His Son. How much are we willing to do for God?

When we see through His eyes, we can see that snoring can be good, and that our lives have hope in the One who saved us. With God’s help we will be able to see what He sees, so that we can have peace in our hearts no matter what we are looking at.

CHILDLIKE FAITH

Years ago I was shown a miracle that others didn’t see was a miracle until it was complete. It was during the years I was teaching a Sunday School class at my church.

At the beginning of the summer, after some thought about prayer and how I could best teach these young people its importance, I set out to make a prayer chart.

Each week I would ask the kids to share their prayer requests and I would write them down on the chart. After everyone was done, I told the kids we would lift them up to God and He would answer them. This went on for the entire summer; when it was over, there were more than one hundred requests. Some were small and some were big.

We had ones like Mom was sick this week or something along those lines, but others seemed much tougher for God to answer. One child prayed that his father would quit smoking and another said his grandma and grandpa were divorcing, and he wanted them to stay together.

We began to accumulate an incredible list of requests. It seemed quite impossible to me that they would ever or even likely be done. Each week I would ask for an update, and I wrote down the result. If we needed to keep praying we did, and at the end of the summer, we would take a look at the results.

On the last Sunday of August when school was about to begin, I found myself staring at the chart before my children arrived at class. As I went through the list of prayers, one by one I saw a pattern.

There was no way that this could be right so I continued reading. While I was tallying up the score, some of the kids began to arrive and they too were standing and staring at the chart. As streams of tears began to fall down my face, one of the children noticed and asked why I was crying.

I told him to look at the chart—God had said yes to every single thing we prayed for! I was standing there in awe of God, but also with a doubt in my mind that this was even remotely possible.

The reply from the class was precious. They said almost in unison, You said God would answer our prayers, John, and He did. Why are you surprised? Didn’t you tell us God would answer them all?

Then I began to sob. They had more faith than I did. I spoke the truth to them, and they accepted it and prayed expecting God to answer. All I could do was agree with them that God did hear our prayers and answered each one. This was a time for me to see what God meant by childlike faith. I was lacking faith, but they had an abundance of it.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me (Matthew 18:1-5).

Those children that summer accepted the truth and prayed, expecting God to come through with their requests each week so the next week they came with more requests expecting that they also would be answered.

I was given a view that summer of what it is like to look through the eyes of a child. When my kids were small, they looked to me for their food, their needs, and the love they craved. My wife and I were the ones they turned to for all their needs, and we supplied them as best we knew how. They didn’t question our love for them—they just knew we were there for them.

As we get older and our requests seem bigger, I find myself doubting at times God is going to come through, yet time and time again He does. I seem to forget that because the huge problem before me blinds me to see what God wants me to see.

He never left me, nor left me with a problem that He can’t handle. It is just the view I have and my lack of faith that causes me to stumble. If only I could harness childlike faith every time a problem arises!

God speaks of faith and what we could do if we could only trust Him as a child trusts. If only we could see as a child sees and understand that the Father has our best interests in mind. We should not only believe it to be so, but do what scripture tells us to do.

He replied, Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you (Matthew 17:20).

He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you (Luke 17:6).

CALLING US HOME

This chapter isn’t about heaven but about our temporary home. Sometimes God moves us from place to place and sometimes He lets us take root in one setting for a long time. This chapter is about a plan God had for my wife and I that we didn’t completely understand until God fully revealed it to us.

When I went on a mission trip to Nepal, I was drawn very close to the Creator. He placed on my heart to go there, and a friend confirmed it in a letter I received the same day. That letter had been written weeks earlier and sent from Nepal, and I received it the day God told me I would be going there.

After I went to Nepal, God said I would be going to a different place and it would be another long trip. The first trip I had gone on to Texas was fourteen days with travel, while the one to Nepal was several weeks. Then God sent me to Burkina Faso in West Africa, and the list seemed to be growing.

When I got back from Africa, God said He was going to be sending me to more and more places. This was about the time my parents were preparing for retirement, and Jill and I would have no one to run the store if we were away.

I asked God what to do and heard nothing. I began to seek Him for an answer and fasted also to know what I was to do. Then one day God confirmed our call to missions by another invitation and another and another.

At that point it looked impossible for us to be able to keep the store, so I told my wife that I felt we would need to sell the store and prepare for more mission work. She agreed.

The next day my son James, who would be finishing up college the next year, called and said he wanted to share something with me. He said he had been talking with his fiancé and praying about where they should work and live, and felt God was telling them to come home to Gettysburg and run the store so Jill and I could do missions.

Wow! was the word that came out of my mouth. You see God knew how I loved working at the store and was seeing if I were willing to give it up for His plan. When I said I would sell it, He let me keep it.

That helped me realize that there was nothing I would hold back from my heavenly Father and that He would be able to move me about more easily now with my son working at the store.

This one act solidified my relationship with God even more. I was able to see He wasn’t a Person who just takes away things we love to give us what He wants. He sees what our desires are and when they are not against His plan, He gives us the ability to enjoy life at times in a comfortable way.

I have found that my home is a place where I can get reenergized and draw closer to God. I have a room where I spend many hours and see the relationship with Him grow because of the hours there praying, reading His Word, and listening for His instructions.

This plan that God gave my son and daughter-in-law was very important when once again I look back and see why God did this for us. If we would have sold the store, we would have had time to go and do what God had in mind, but