What is a miracle?
Happy Sunday!
Today was a day that I will remember for a long time. We started a new series in our second service titled “Great Questions.” Today’s bottom line was, “When bad things happen, Jesus knows and cares.” We talked about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and the timeline of his illness, death, and resurrection. We picked this series a week and a half ago and didn’t know what the worship team had planned for our church service today. In the second service, it is all of the grade 5–8 students, and we have been really working on making the service engaging, fun, and student-led, etc. The students are starting to get more confident in leading worship, and today was a beautiful picture of their confidence, but also of the miracle we got to witness here on earth. I will need to give you a little backstory to make today’s update make sense.
Almost a year ago, one of our children became very ill. If you follow Heart for Africa or Janine Maxwell on social media, you probably saw many updates about our sweet Jude. He became so sick, forgot names, and cried through the night, terrified by visions of monsters. He couldn’t walk, speak, or even bathe himself. The doctors found some brain shrinkage and told the team at Project Canaan that there was nothing more they could do for him. BUT GOD WASN’T FINISHED WITH JUDE. After much prayer, the team decided to bring him home to Project Canaan to be surrounded by love, prayer, and his twin brother, James. And then the miracle happened. Jude slowly came back to life. He gained weight, started moving his fingers, started to recognize faces, and over time he began to walk and talk again. Jude has made a full recovery and is a testimony to God’s healing power. The Heart for Africa team sent out an email in December with the story written above to celebrate and thank their donors for their generosity in helping the mission care for and be a part of these stories of healing.
Today, Jude was the special choir/worship leader during our time of worship. He got up in front of 100+ people, greeted everyone, and asked us all to stand and join him in worship. He led us in the song “Withholding Nothing” by William McDowell. Here are the lyrics to the song:
I surrender all to you
Everything I give to you
Withholding nothing
Withholding nothing
I give myself away
I give myself away
We say yes
We say yes
Lord, we say yes
I give myself away so you can use me
I give myself away so you can use me
Then our pastor preached the message on Lazarus, and then I got to wrap up the message by asking the kids what a miracle is. One kid came up to the microphone and said, “Something that is not possible in our own strength or that doesn’t make sense.” I then asked the room, “Has anyone ever seen a miracle with their own eyes?” and only a few people raised their hands. I called Jude up to the front to stand with me and reminded them of his sickness and how God healed him, and then told them that today they are looking at a real-life miracle. Their eyes got big, and they were amazed. This is why I feel called to be here: to help these kids see God at work in their lives and the lives of those around them. It was such an amazing morning, and I just wish you were all here to see and witness what God allows me to be a part of on a daily basis. They aren’t all as beautiful and easy as this morning was, but there is beauty all around; you just have to look for it.
It is because of the generosity of so many of you that I am able to come alongside the team here to encourage, equip, teach, and lead so that the faith of the next generation will become personal and they will know Jesus personally as their Savior. Some days the road ahead seems too hard and too heavy, but I know that God has gone before me and will give me what I need to get through each and every assignment He puts in front of me.