When I’m anxious, something that infuses me with hope is to read back over some of the many, many times God has brought us through scary or uncertain circumstances. Each story becomes a stone I can use to fell fear.

I thought maybe if you could use some comfort, reading my list with me might make you feel better, and get your mind thinking of your own list.

Sometimes God rescues by fixing everything with a grand miracle; other times He offers evidence of His Presence.

Most often, He speaks to us in wisdom and truth with words that could only have originated outside ourselves, but His Voice is always and only love.

If you want to hear Him, you have to learn to listen with your whole self, not just your ears, and to be willing to hear Him speak through anything and anyone He has created. To have “ears to hear” simply means to pay careful attention and listen with your spirit.

So, here are some times I’ve experienced God’s realness in my life:

1 ~ My brother was born so prematurely the nurses advised my mother not to even give him a name. My family prayed for him. Mama named him Amos, and he is a healthy, strong, 39-year-old civil engineer.

2 ~ In the weeks leading up to my great-grandfather passing away, he described hearing happy children calling his name. I believe the door to Heaven was opening for him, and he could hear clearly what he could not see.

3 ~ I sustained injuries from a car wreck that doctors said would keep me hospitalized for weeks. My family prayed for me. Although I didn’t remember saying it later, I woke and told a nurse I would be leaving the following Wednesday. My internal injuries healed faster than what was thought possible, and I was released in a wheelchair after only 9 days, on a Wednesday.

4 ~ In the emergency room just after the car wreck, a male nurse remained at the foot of my bed while everyone else hurried to save me. The whole time, he assured me with his smile I would be fine. When I asked for him later so I could thank him, the staff insisted no one that fit his description worked there.  

5 ~ In college I was dating someone I should not have been. Mama was praying for me. One day at the mall, a white-haired stranger seated herself next to me in the food court. She said very little, but before walking away she said, “You need to get as far away from that young man as you can, and soon,” even though I had not shared any details with her about my life. Also, her last name was the same as the name of his street.

 6 ~ My husband and I could not afford our initial fertility treatments, so we asked God to help us. Our water heater flooded our house, and the insurance money was enough to replace our carpets and pay for a whole round of treatments.

7 ~ My mother had migraines daily for the past 30 years. Although we had prayed about it for years, last year she prayed for herself and announced emphatically that God had heard her. Soon, she was hospitalized for severe, life-threatening symptoms that remained a mystery to even her very wise doctor. After a week, she was released, healed of migraines.

8 ~  While praying with a friend, asking God to provide money to help a homeless person we had met, the phone rang. It was someone from church, and he said, “I think God just told me to call you and give you money. Do you need money?”

9 ~ A university counselor made a mistake that forced me to miss a very difficult required master’s level course. It set me back several semesters, but I asked God to make something good come of it. When time rolled around for me to take it, it was offered online for the very first time.

10 ~ My friend’s neighborhood flooded last year, with some homes suffering up to 8 inches of water. Before being evacuated by boat, she stood in her living room and prayed. In faith, she declared that her house belonged to God, not to the rain, and she wrote Isaiah 43:2 on her chalk board. The water stopped inches from her front door. Not one drop came inside.

11 ~ When my daughter was a baby, she would lie on her back and interact with something she saw, not on the ceiling, but through it. She would point and clap and say, “Tweet-tweets!” I believe she saw angels.

12 ~ I happened across an update that had just been posted by a woman who runs an orphanage in Yei, Sudan asking for urgent prayer. Violent rebels were approaching. Her next update was to report the rebels surrounded the orphanage just outside its walls, but after firing their weapons into the air and shouting threats, they became confused and went away without incident.

13 ~ My daughter was a picky eater. She wanted to eat only Cheez-Its and chicken, so I asked God to help her crave nutritious food. Within a week she was eating peanut butter sandwiches on wheat bread and her new favorite food was roasted broccoli.

14 ~ I needed eye glasses, but was told our vision insurance had expired years earlier. As I waited for the woman at the optometrist’s office to calculate my expense, I prayed. She returned with news that she had made a mistake; my insurance carrier had simply changed.

15 ~ A young family living in a motel requested work to earn 4 days’ worth of rent money. Without it, they would be homeless. I posted the request, and givers provided work, cash, and encouragement. But then a friend I hadn’t seen in ages offered to anonymously pay the entire amount, for free. He shared with me that, as a child, he and his mom had been in the same situation. That’s why he wanted to help. When he asked for the family’s address so he could deliver the money, I texted it to him. The cursor blinked a few times before he replied, “That’s where my mom and I lived.”

16 ~ My mother found a young girl lying in the middle of a road near her house in the country. There is normally no cell phone service on that road, but when she tried to call my dad for help, the signal worked.

17 ~ Against medical advice, my 87-year-old grandmother elected to have knee surgery. She was warned she might not wake from the anesthesia. We prayed, and she came through just fine.

18 ~ When my brother and his friends were feeding a community of homeless people, a favorite food was the homemade cookies. Although there was only 1 pan of cookies and we passed them out in stacks of four, the cookies never ran out.

19 ~ My family prayed for me before a routine gall bladder surgery. Because of the surgery, it was discovered I had Stage III ovarian cancer. Without this procedure, the disease would have grown silently, undetected. My family and community prayed for me, and I am healed.

20 ~ After learning I was sick, Daddy walked across his pasture to the brook and collected 5 smooth stones, just like the story of David & Goliath. He wrote out the story by hand and gave it to me, along with the 5 stones. None of us knew it yet, but I would end up having a total of 5 surgeries. For the 5th and final surgery, I arrived to have my chemo port removed and shared the story of the stones with the hospital staff. One after another, they asked me to repeat the story to anyone who entered the room. Finally it was time for the surgery to begin, and from beneath the sterile blue paper I heard a young man say, “Hello, Mrs. Gist. My name is David. I’ll be your surgeon today.”

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There are other, more intimate times God’s Presence was unmistakable to me, but those are harder to put into words.

You can make of these stories what you want to, but when we choose to see God everywhere and are grateful to Him for all the good things in our lives, faith breathes new life into us. We are never alone, never powerless, and hope obliterates fear.

What is a time you saw God at work in your life, or a time when He showed up in a way that was precious and special to you? I would love to read about it.  

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Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God,

because God is love.

~ 1 John 4:7-8

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So faith comes from hearing,

and hearing through the word of Christ.

~ Romans 10:17