“Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” (Ps. 37:4 NLT)

Throughout this series, we have been looking at how God orchestrates miracles of health, funding, witnessing, salvation, etc. All these things could be placed in the category of “needs”. Are God’s miracles only for problems of this calibre? Or does He perform miracles not only for our needs, but also for our wants? Our pleasures? Our desires?

According to Ps. 37:4, He does! And last fall found us putting this to the test….

After our retirement, my husband and I have made a habit of heading south to avoid Canadian winters. The locals call it “snow birding”, and every time I board an airplane for warmer climates, I can’t help thinking about those Canada geese. As the winter of 2018 approached, however, and we found ourselves in the mist of the most stressful fall we had ever experienced, we began to question the wisdom of leaving the country for three months….

The sources of our stress were three-fold:

1. My health: While looking for the source of a strange pain in my side, unidentified spots were discovered on my liver, my kidneys and my bones. Being a breast-cancer survivor, this was more than a little worrisome…. How could we leave the country when I could be having a recurrence of cancer?

2. My mother’s health: My mother had suffered a heart attack in June of that year, and she was chronically tired. She was scheduled for an angiogram, and we were prepared that she might require open-heart surgery. To make things even more complicated, she began having rectal bleeding and her hemoglobin dropped to dangerously low levels. The specialist was pretty certain that she had colon cancer. How could I leave the country with my mother had colon cancer? How could I leave with her facing open-heart surgery?

3. The sale of our home: Our house had already been on the market for 6 months, and it hadn’t sold. How could we leave the country with this major change in our lives so up in the air?

The logical thing would have been to cancel our trip. We decided to pray about it, however, and ask God for wisdom. As we prayed, we received three different messages about miracles. Could it be that God would miraculously take away all three of our stresses so that we could go south–for our own pleasure?

We decided to take a step out in faith, and we bought our plane tickets.

Miracle #1 was soon in coming. My mother was scheduled for a colonoscopy. The results? Her colon was not only perfectly clear, but the bleeding had stopped and her hemoglobin was not just back to normal limits, but it was now high normal! A couple weeks later she underwent the angiogram. It was determined that she had two very blocked arteries. One was very small, and the other wasn’t an essential artery. The cardiac team felt the risk of heart attack or stroke during surgery, or even during stint insertion, were too high. They felt she needed to be managed with medication. And just to make things even better, it was discovered that her low energy was related to low thyroid. A few weeks on thyroid medication, and she was considered medically stable! Wait. God not only took away her cancer scare and the need for open heart surgery, but He also fixed her energy!

Miracle #2 took a bit more time. I was initially told that the MRI that would determine what was causing the spots in my abdomen wouldn’t be until after our return. Imagine my surprised delight when I got a call asking if I would like to come in on a cancellation in mid-December? I jumped at the chance. The results were in and I was able to see my family doctor just days before we were scheduled to leave. The spots were all benign cysts of one type or another. I had not had a re-emergence of cancer!

That only left us with one more problem: The sale of our house…. Would God come through? And even if He did come through and sell our home, how could we pack and move while we were away?

The fact that God had miraculously removed two of our major stresses, and that He had promised three miracles gave us hope. We decided to continue to take that step in faith, even though the date for our departure arrived without any sale of our home. Hum. Well, if God promised He would take care of it, we could only take Him at His word! And January 5 saw us boarding a plane for warmer climates…. God would come through. Somehow.

Join us next Monday for “The Miracle of the Sale of our House: There is ALWAYS Hope, Part 31”

In His love,
Lyn Chaffart

(To access the entire “There is ALWAYS Hope” devotional series, please click here.)