I believe in miracles. More precisely, I believe that God works miracles today because I have experienced them in my life.
Miracles pose a problem for comfortable Christianity. They require faith. Faith in the sense of taking a risk. Faith in the sense of pushing off into the unknown, realizing that if God does not come through for you, then you are sunk, done, in trouble.
Those who have seen God perform such miracles know two things.
First, you venture out in faith because you know it is the only way for you to obey Jesus, not because it sounds cool or would give you a neat story to tell others. Rather, you are convinced that not venturing out into the unknown would be disobedient. Somehow or another you simply know that the Lord has told you, “Get going.”
Second, since faith is always a risk – if nothing is ever put at risk, then I am not living by faith – miracles arise from acts of self-denial. The faithful disciple walks a sometimes crazy-looking path that frequently turns us
away from security, away from safety, away from comfort, away from things we have always wanted. Miracles can only happen for those willing to embrace insecurity, discomfort, loss, and sometimes danger in the cause of following Jesus.
So, I have decided to continue my autobiographical account of self-denial by sharing a few miracle stories. By sharing these stories, I hope to praise God for the great things He has done in my life. I also hope to enlist my readers in praising the Lord by venturing out yourselves, taking faithful risks through your own obedient acts of self-denial, acts that will demonstrate God’s faithfulness in your lives, too.
Towards the end of my studies at Regent College (check out my earlier posts here and here that bring us to this point) I arrived at the conviction that
Jesus was calling me to study for my Ph.D. at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. (I will tell that story another day.)
The main obstacle to this plan was our complete lack of money. Graduate studies overseas would be expensive. What to do? Reason told us drop the idea like a hot potato because it was simply ridiculous. You can’t shove a square peg into a round hole, and you can’t do expensive things without money.
Fortunately, I have never been particularly fond of the idea of limiting myself to a “realistic life.” In fact, for many years I have regularly recited to myself a little mantra that I came up with – I will only deal with what is real in order to strive for God’s ideal. (Yes, I wish I had more opportunities to preach in African-American churches.)
So, Terry and I began to pray, asking for guidance in two areas. One, did the Lord really want us to go to Scotland, or was it just my own idea? Two, if we were supposed to go to Scotland, how would we get there? We didn’t have any savings and getting enough money in loans was impossible for us back then. What were we to do?
Terry and I decided to set out a “fleece,” not unlike the Old Testament story of Gideon in Judges 6:36-40. (Whenever I tell this story to young people, I always insist that they not make this a common practice. It is not a normative way to pray, but it worked for me, so it is part of my Christian story.)
We began to pray for the money we needed. Except, we were always praying for money, money to pay the bills, to buy groceries, you name it. How would Scotland money look any different from our regular money miracles? We finally decided to pray for lots of money in a short period of time. We looked into the cost of airline tickets for our family of 4 and decided to ask God for enough cash to buy them. That would get the ball rolling. As I recall, 4 tickets were about $2,000 in those days.
We further decided that we would not share this particular prayer request with anybody, not with friends, our Bible study group or church. It was between us and the Lord. So, we prayed daily that if this cockamamie idea was, in fact, God’s will for our lives, then He would give us $2,000 dollars in big donations within 4 weeks. If this didn’t happen, then we knew it was not God’s plan for us, and we would pursue something else.
Before the first week was over, I opened our post office box in downtown Blaine, Washington one afternoon and saw a large, white envelope looking as pregnant as a white envelope could possibly look. I opened it up to find $1,000 in cash. To this day, we do not know the identity of our generous benefactor. But that’s OK because the Lord Jesus knows exactly who it is, and their reward is waiting from them in heaven.
I ran home, showed the envelope to Terry, and we thanked the Lord for His wonderful generosity. It was a large donation in a short period of time, no doubt. But I also reminded Jesus that if he wanted us to go to Aberdeen, he had only answered half our prayer. We still needed an additional $1,000 within the next 3 weeks.
We continued to pray for guidance.
To make a long story short, before the month was over we received 2 additional, large gifts from out-of-state friends that brought the total amount to $2,500. It certainly appeared to be a clear answer to our prayers. So, the decision was made. We were moving to Scotland!
But we only had enough money to buy the airline tickets, which we promptly did. We also needed money for tuition, living expenses once we arrived and, first of all, a student visa.
If there is one thing I have learned about following the Lord, it is to take the journey one step at a time. Rather than worry about tuition and living expenses, I tackled the visa issue first.
I sent a letter to the British embassy applying for my student visa. At that time, student visa applications required documentary proof of adequate funds for at least one year’s living expenses and tuition. We had no money at all. We hadn’t prayed for that much money yet. But, I figured since God was leading me to Scotland that I would mail in my application anyway.
Imagine my disappointment when my visa application was denied. How could that be?
There was only one thing to do. I needed to explain to the ambassador what was at stake. So, I sat down and wrote a letter to the embassy. I wish I had kept a copy for myself. Let me give you the gist of what I said. It went something like this: “Dear Mr. Ambassador, I am a Christian. I believe that Jesus is calling me to study in Scotland. I may not have all the necessary funds now, but I know that the Lord will not ask me to do something that He will not also finance. Don’t worry, the money will come as needed. If you continue to deny me the visa that I require, you will be standing in the way of God’s will for my life. I don’t think you want to do that. It never turns out well. Sincerely, David Crump”
Voila. Guess what. My next letter from the British embassy contained a student visa! Don’t tell me God doesn’t work miracles.
I could go on and on. For the next 3+ years we watched God perform one big miracle extravaganza. There are too many stories to tell here. I will only say that I was annually required to meet with British immigration officials when I applied for next year’s visa. I never had sufficient funds to meet their requirements. I never had a year’s worth of living expenses to prove that I would not be working illegally. With the exception of one year when I was awarded a national fellowship, I never possessed a year’s worth of tuition. All I could do was enter every interview believing that Jesus was giving me another opportunity to share the gospel with someone in the British immigration service. I would praise my Savior by sharing the latest miracle stories describing how the Lord Jesus continued to meet our needs.
For the next 3 years my interviews all went something like this:
Agent: Show me your papers, bank statements, etc. please.
Me: I put my papers on the table, such as they were.
Agent: Is this all?
Me: Yes. That’s all.
Agent: You don’t have enough money to live here for another year. What are you doing? What’s your plan? How will you survive?
Me: I am a Christian, and the Lord Jesus takes care of my family. We pray for what we need, and he gives it to us. I would then tell him a few of our most recent miracle stories to illustrate my case – and to praise the Lord.
At this point, the agent had every reason to withhold my visa, tell me that my time of study was over and then evict us from the country. But that never happened. Year after year I listened to an immigration official say something like this: “I have never heard anything like this before. But whatever you are doing seems to be working for you.”
He would then hand me my new visa and call for the next student.
Yes, I earned my Ph.D. from King’s College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. We enjoyed life in Scotland for slightly more than 3 years. The Lord kept all of his promises to us. I wish I could say that Terry and I floated from one miracle cloud to the next while living carefree, blissful lives. But I would be lying.
At times, those years also felt like God was putting us through a faith-meat-grinder. I am not a perfectly faithful person. We experienced some of the most stressful, worrying, difficult periods of our lives, times where we lived with tears, anxiety and headaches (literally). Our faith was tested in ways we never anticipated.
We learned firsthand that hardship is also a common feature of miracle stories. Since tests are an essential ingredient of God’s strategy for strengthening faith (James 1:2-8; Hebrews 12:7-11), and faithful risk-taking is essential to the appearance of miracles, few if any miracles will ever occur that fail to stretch our faith, seemingly to the breaking point.
Praying for miracles is not for the faint of heart. Obedient discipleship is not always a bed of roses. But oh, my goodness…nothing in this world could ever tempt me to trade in my front row seat to witnessing the awesome, unbelievable work of God, the overwhelming measure of His loving kindness, and His perfect faithfulness to someone like me.
P.S. Which also reminds me of this important lesson: faith has more to do with the decisions we make and how we act than it does with the way we feel.
