I want you to get as excited as I am about who the REAL Jesus is! Being a believer longer than most of you, I’ve experienced many problems, such as cancer, and have spent a year in prison for the Gospel – but in all my life GOD HAS NEVER FAILED ME ONCE! HE has ALWAYS answered my prayers! There is no one like Him! If you knew MY Jesus, you would become so enthusiastic, so full of the power of the Holy Spirit that the whole world would want to know YOUR Jesus! Enthusiasm is extremely infectious!
Some find it difficult to accept miracles and healings, they want the Gospel without. Let me ask you a question. Which is the bigger miracle, to see an alcoholic, drug addict or murderer instantly forgiven and delivered or to see a broken leg instantly healed, a blind person reading the Bible and a paralytic getting out of a wheelchair? How can you really believe in an instant conversion and yet not an instant healing without limiting God’s power?
While I was holding crusades in Russia, October 1998, a man came into one of the meetings, who had been badly burned. Three months before, a container of boiling tar had exploded, the tar engulfing his legs. He stood in front of me still in agony, this was Russia and it had taken too long to get to hospital, even then the lack of medical equipment and supplies meant that little had been done to help him. What a challenge, what can your God do for such an extreme case? He told us that to remove the tar, they had ‘cut the meat off his legs’. I just reached out and touched his pain-racked body, ‘In the Name of Jesus I command the pain and injury to go!’ That’s all, but immediately the pain went! He came back the next night to say that the pain had not returned, he had slept for the first time in three months and the ‘meat was growing back on his legs’. He was so excited, he grabbed the microphone and told everyone, ‘It’s real, this Jesus is real, my legs are a miracle! This is not religion or psychology; Jesus is the real thing!’ I could have wept for joy – with these kind of miracles the world would believe on Him! No wonder when God sent Jesus into the world it was the miracles He used to convince the unbelieving Jews! This is why I get so excited, I don’t just ‘believe’, I KNOW Jesus!
Often in a crowd of several thousand people I tell them that my God is alive and will work MIRACLES NOW! However, this takes not only faith, but courage. In one crusade in a football stadium in Kherson, a large city in southern Ukraine, there was little faith in the thousands of unbelievers in the crowd. What could I do to prove that the God of the Bible is alive and has power and can work miracles today? I had called the people to repent and thousands had responded, but it now needed a big demonstration to prove the truth of God’s Word. I asked for only people with broken arms and legs to come to the platform. Eleven came forward, every one with broken bones. This was not easy, I could only do it because I was under a powerful anointing from the Holy Spirit – if I was wrong, how could I continue the crusade, I would be laughed at. But I know HIM, and surprisingly, God loves a challenge! God loved it when David challenged Goliath, when Elijah called down fire on Mount Carmel. God is not afraid... I laid my hands on all eleven. What does the Bible say in Mark 16? – These signs will follow those who believe, they will put their hands on the eleven people with broken arms and legs... and what will happen? They will be healed! I know what the Bible says, I know God has the power and I know HIM!
I asked the Holy Spirit to work a miracle and exalt the Name of Jesus so that everyone in the stadium would know that this was not me but the Lord Himself. I became excited because HE HEALED THEM ALL – instantly, in front of the crowd, just as it was in Jesus’ day and just like the Acts of the Apostles – only it happened HERE and NOW! Not past but present, not abstract but reality, not words but actions! This is why I speak with confidence, as the apostle said, ‘I KNOW in whom I have believed!’
On another occasion I knew in my spirit that the people did not really believe so when one woman came in the crowd for healing, I looked at her and asked, ‘Do you believe?’ and she said, ‘Oh I believe, I believe!’ But I knew she didn’t, so I asked her, ‘What do you believe?’ She was shocked because I questioned her! She said, ‘I believe everything!’ That meant that she believed in flying saucers, religion, witchcraft and even the devil, but she did not know God!
This is the real problem, that people don’t KNOW God! In Romans 10:13 it says, whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved, but how can they call on a God they do not BELIEVE in?
That woman I was talking to was religious but didn’t really believe! ‘Having religion’ doesn’t make you a believer. There is only ONE WAY you can REALLY believe, it’s if you KNOW WHO GOD IS! You can learn every word in the Bible – you can know everything about religion – but if you don’t know God, it means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Faith is more than knowing the Bible, it is knowing THE GOD OF THE BIBLE, HAVING A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
If you could know Jesus like this, absolutely nothing is impossible! My Jesus heals the sick, mends broken bones and specialises in the things no human doctor can do. That prisoner in Siberia – who else could forgive his sin and change his life? What an exciting God! A God of miracles, a God of power and authority! A God who changes people’s lives! I want you to experience His forgiveness as you come to Him now, approach Him personally as a friend! But ask His forgiveness for all your sin, then accept it by faith... in Him alone!