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Hi my name is Dean Smith, and in this podcast I am asking: Are you ready to cross over to the other side of faith?
But first let me tell you an interesting story involving the dramatic healing of Tony Yahle in West Carrollton, Ohio. It was so dramatic that the story was featured in several secular news sites including the New York Daily News, ABC News and WHIO TV.
In 2013, Melissa returned home and discovered her husband Tony unconscious. She immediately called for an ambulance and when it arrived, the medics found that Tony’s heart had actually stopped beating. The emergency crew was able to restart his heart and they rushed Tony to the nearest hospital, the Kettering Medical Centre.
Melissa then notified some Christian friends who met her at the hospital to pray for Tony.
What happened next shocked Dr Raja Nazir a cardiologist at the medical center. Nazir said:
“In the last 20 years, I’ve never seen anybody we pronounced dead …. and then for him to come back … I’ve never seen it. I’m calling it a miracle.”
So what happened?
Shortly after Tony arrived at the hospital, his heart stopped beating again and for the next 45 minutes the hospital’s medical staff desperately tried to restart Tony’s heart. But finally with no response, Nazir stopped the intervention and declared Tony officially dead.
But then an incredible thing happened. Shortly after they stopped resuscitating Tony, the Yahle’s, then 17 year old son, Lawrence, arrived at the hospital. Stunned by what he was witnessing, Lawrence turned and pointed at his father’s lifeless body and “shouted”:
“Dad, you are not going to die today.”
Though nothing immediately happened, it was actually Lawrence who noticed a few seconds later that his dad’s heart monitor had activated. Tony’s heart was pumping again. He was alive. The shocked medical staff rushed to Tony’s bed and five days later, Tony was out of the hospital miraculously healed.
In an interview with Whio TV, Melissa said:
“People can believe it or not, but God actually spoke to me and said, ‘If you have faith, it will be done.’ From that moment on, I never doubted.”
Oddly, this account has a strange connection to a story involving Jesus stopping a storm on the Sea of Galilee.
In Mark 4:35-42, we read that Jesus had just finished teaching a large crowd of people along the Sea of Galilee and turned to His disciples and said:
“Let’s cross over to the other side.”
Now to be fair, the disciples were probably thinking of this in a physical sense, you know rounding up some boats, but I wonder if Jesus was thinking of it as more of a spiritual crossing, where His disciples would cross over to the other side of faith.
As the disciples were slowly edging their way across the Sea of Galilee, they were hit by a massive storm that caused such high waves it was starting to swamp their boat.
But Jesus, who was exhausted from a day of teaching, had fallen asleep at the back of the boat.
Becoming increasingly concerned about the storm the disciples woke Jesus pleading for help.
Now when you think about it, they were doing what most Christians do today when we are encounter problems, we start praying, asking Jesus for help.
And Jesus heard the disciples’ plea, stood up, faced the storm and spoke the words:
Peace, be still.
With the blowing wind and raging water, I can imagine Jesus must have spoken these words with some force.
As soon a Christ shouted those words, the storm immediately subsided. It was an answer to prayer and the relieved disciples were undoubtedly patting themselves on the back for a job well done.
Yet, a few moments later, the Lord turned to the disciples and asked them why they were afraid and pointedly wondered:
Do you still have no faith?
The disciples were using Jesus’ faith to calm the storm instead of their own.
Jesus wanted the disciples to face the storm and speak to it and calm it themselves.
There is a lesson here. We need to start speaking faith against our obstacles. We need to take authority and make faith declarations against the problems we are facing.
There is power in words spoken in faith.
Jesus made a similar statement in Mark 11:23 when he said:
23 Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.
But there are two stages to this, first we need faith, and secondly we need to speak to our mountain. We can believe all we want, but if we don’t say “Be thrown into the sea” nothing happens.”
I hate to say this but faith without words is dead.
Like in the case of Tony, there was faith, but someone still needed to declare this healing.
So in closing I want to ask you a skill testing question how many times during His time on earth, did Jesus pray for the sick to be healed — 15, 48, 76?
Well if you chose any of those numbers you are wrong.
Jesus never prayed for anyone to be healed, He just commanded people to be healed and at other times the Lord just touched them, and they were healed.
It’s not that Jesus didn’t pray. Several times He prayed, but when it came to ministry He took authority healed the sick and commanded the demons to leave.
When Jesus sent out the disciples in Luke 9:1-2, the Lord didn’t send them out to pray for the sick, He sent them out to heal the sick.
Now it’s true when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the Lord briefly prayed thanking God that His Father heard him. Jesus didn’t ask God to heal Lazarus, the Lord thanked God that He heard Jesus’s words.
We are then told Jesus called out in a loud voice into the cave where Lazarus was buried. He wanted to make sure Lazarus’ lifeless body heard the Lord’s words because there is power in words spoken in faith.
Jesus shouted:
Lazarus COME Out.
And Lazarus was raised from the dead.
The same thing happened, when Peter encountered the lame man at the temple, he did not stop and pray for the lame man, The Apostle simply declared, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”
Peter had crossed over. On the boat crossing the sea of Galilee he was one of the disciples waking Jesus up to save them after they encountered a storm.
Now he was walking in faith and declaring healing with authority.
Look there is nothing wrong with praying for the sick. Asking Jesus to heal a person. In James 5, we are encouraged to pray for the sick.
But perhaps, Jesus wants you to cross over and understand your authority in God, and start proclaiming people’s healing.
There is power in words spoken in faith.
READ: Ohio man dies for 45 minutes then comes back to life: NYdailynews AND Ohio man declared dead, comes back to life/ABC News AND Son Commands his dead father to live, “flabbergasted” Doctor proclaims, “it’s a miracle/BCN AND West Carrollton man was dead for 45 minutes/WhioTV
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