I Saw an Amazing Thing Today

USGN Article - February 2001

Terry & Barbi Franklin

Written by Terry Franklin

A dear friend of ours, Dr. Bill Trapp, pastor of Woodmont Baptist Church in Florence, Alabama has been ill with Lou Gehrig's Disease for the last couple of years.  His church believes in the power of God.... and the miraculous.  They have fasted and prayed for months,  believing that the Name of Jesus is above this awful disease.  E‑Mail, phone calls, and conversation have constantly revolved around God's ability to heal Bill.

Healings from around the world...even within their own community were evidence of God's miraculous power.

But God didn't do it the way we had thought...or hoped.  

We sang at Bill's funeral yesterday.  It was a celebration of God's work through this great man.  Some were disillusioned ‑‑ particularly some of the young people.  They were looking for a miracle.  But it never came.  

No one can deny that the early church had seen miracles:  Prison bars opening,  the dead raised --  some had even seen the Resurrection.

After a few years the event we now call the Dispersion took place.  Those same individuals who had seen God “move mountains” now felt as if a mountain of injustice was falling in on them.  Believers were beaten and killed, families separated; many lost their homes...all the while praying for deliverance.  It never came.

But out of that tragedy God “took” the church to other countries as folks fled the persecution.  The church actually grew under these dire circumstances!  God had a better plan.

Does God still heal the sick?  You bet.  Should we keep praying and believing?  You bet.  But it’s not as simple as “speak the word” and,  boom! — it happens.  Sometimes yes, but not always.  Our God is not a “genie-in-a-bottle.”

I’m going to be watching to see what God does through this.  Something tells me that,  out of the 1300 people at Bill’s funeral, surely there will be more than one or two that will pick up the blood-stained banner of the cross from the battlefield of sorrow, and lift it high.

Isn’t God amazing?

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