By Evangelist John BJ Hall
I will answer your question after I tell you a story. It began one Monday morning in the spring of 1975. I woke up with chills and a high fever. We couldn’t believe the thermometer. According to it I had a 105+° temperature. My wife called the doctor and he said to go straight to the hospital.
We lived in a small town with no clinic or ambulance service. She put me and the children in the car and drove us nineteen miles to Craig General Hospital in Vinita, Oklahoma. The doctor was waiting for us when we arrived. They put me in a bed they had lined with a plastic sheet. Then they poured buckets of ice over my body to bring down the fever. I was in the hospital from Monday until Saturday but the doctors were not able to determine the cause of the fever. They were just as perplexed as to why the fever broke.
On the following Monday, my daughter woke up with a high fever. We rushed her to the hospital and once again the doctors could not determine the cause of this mysterious illness and high fever. Becky was released from the hospital with a clean bill of health on Saturday.
On the following Monday, my son woke up with a high fever. Again we rushed to the hospital. Unlike his sister and me, John did not improve through the week. On Saturday morning he was laying lifeless and turning blue. We could hear the nurses whispering in the hallway. It was not looking good for John. When people passed the door they would look down and shake their heads.
I sat beside his bed holding his hand under the oxygen tent. My precious wife and daughter were sitting together close by. I looked at her and said, “Honey, we have to give him to the Lord.”
She said, “I know” as tears flowed down.
At 11:00 AM, on Saturday, we bowed our heads and I voiced the prayer. “Lord, you gave us our little boy, and we are so thankful for the joy he has brought in our lives. Father, John is yours not ours. You can heal him, or you can take him according to your will.” I closed with, “We just ask that he not suffer. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.” We sat and waited for God to either heal him or take him.
At 12:00 PM, on the dot, John sat up in bed and cried out, “I’m Hungry!” We looked at him and he was sitting there with pink cheeks and a twinkle in his eye. His hot little hands were now cool; there was no evidence that he had even been sick. The nurses took away the oxygen tent and took his vitals. They watched him for a few hours and he got to go home that evening.
The events just described took place when I was pastor of First Baptist Church, Adair, Oklahoma. Our son was two years old and our daughter was three.
The church had poured out their prayers for us, as did churches around the country. God’s mighty hand showed up for a young preacher boy and his family. As a result of those three weeks in 1975 more people got to hear the message of God’s love and power. I was able to share of His grace not only in the Baptist churches, but also the Mennonite church west of town.
I received a call from one of the Mennonite elders who asked me to preach and share our story in a brush arbor meeting they were holding. I’m not sure how many lives were touched, but I know that people came to know the Lord as personal Savior and the church grew, due in part to these events.
My answer to the question, "Do Baptists believe in miracles?" is, "All of the Baptists I know believe the Bible. And the Bible tells us there are miracles."
The Apostle John said, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. (1 John 5:13-15 NASB)
My Prayer Room
This is a place of solitude.
A place where God and I may talk
And I can take an interlude
That helps me live, and talk the walk.
It is a place where love abounds
And fears meet their end in God’s peace.
A place where tears fall to the ground
And doubts are made to cease.
In my prayer room there’s a Bible
That’s open and ready to use.
And there’s an alter where I am liable
To bow, as prayer I choose.
Would you join me in my prayer room,
And make it your prayer room as well?
If so we can see God’s will bloom
And of His great love we can tell.
© Copyright 1998 by Passages Ministries. All rights reserved.
For permission to use this poem contact Passages Ministries.