Contending for More
God delivering me from Covid seems to have been the turning point in my recovery. Not only was I spared the harder aspects of the sickness like sore throat, fluid in the lungs, ect. But once the symptoms of fever and body aches lifted, I began to start to sleep deeply for 8 hours at a time.
This was a huge deal because sleep is a very important
aspect of healing. My lack of sleep was
such an issue that my nurse had even suggested that I get back on narcotics so
that I could sleep. At least until my
foot had healed some.
I was weary of this advice but it turned out that I didn’t need
to take it because I now began to sleep deeply every night.
Along with that – and probably connected to it – my pain
level started to reduce in my foot. I
began to taper of my medicine and was eventually completely off all pain
medicine by mid to late September.
All of these things together brought me into a place in my mind
where I started to seek God for more.
Not only that I would keep my toe, but that my toe would have full
mobility and that it wouldn’t need a steel rod.
I was somewhat hesitant to do this because I was totally
content with having a steel rod in my toe and being able to do something with
it. God didn’t owe me anything. I’m a sinner to deserves Hell for
eternity. But I believe in a God who can
do the impossible and I felt emboldened to pursue that reality following the
breakthroughs I had just started to enjoy.
I texted my friend Prince about this because I knew him to
be a man of faith who believed in miracles.
So, we bought monk costumes, put them on and headed to the
festival. When we got to the festival we
started to realize that many were treating us respectfully – like we really
were monks. That seemed strange to us
until we realized that the brewery we were in was having its alcohol provided
for it by real monks. It was at that
moment that we realized that we had mistakenly confused real monks with irreverent
drunkards and that we were in fact the sacrilegious ones who had dressed up
like monks in a crowd full of Catholics!
Well this was a bit awkward, but we just decided to go with
it and see what happened. Many people
who we talked to actually thought we were monks and we made sure to tell them that
we weren’t but that we loved the monks and were doing this out of honor and respect
(though I’m not sure how that would have made any sense to them). I think if the music and the atmosphere hadn’t
been so loud we might have gotten more sideways looks but I did manage to get a
strange look from a guy when I told him I had a couple of kids. I sure hope that there isn’t an actual monk
in that monastery who looks like me or that could be quite the scandal 😊.
But God did some extraordinary things that day. The prophetic seemed to flow so easily. Towards the end I was talking with a guy and
told him that I saw an image of an airplane and asked him if he was a
pilot. He said that he was and actually
bought beers for both of us and had a conversation about God with us and his
friend. Few things are cooler than when
the Lord opens up the secrets of the hearts of men and it was wild to see how
God somehow honored our zeal for His Name even when we had our facts wrong.
Those were good times, and it was a say day when Prince and
his wife Sidney moved away.
~
I had told Prince about everything I was going through on
September 12th, and it was around then that I began to pursue the
possibility of an even better toe by faith.
The next night while I was walking, I felt something that really stirred my
faith. I texted this to Price as well.
I was very encouraged. In less than 7 days I was headed back to the doctor. I still had the pins in my toes, but I was aware of the God who was carrying me through this and who would bring me all the way through.
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