“Do you believe in miracles?!…YES!” – Al Michaels
Every time I see this quote it sends chills up my spine and I was still eleven years away from being born. The year was 1980 in Lake Placid, New York when the heavily regarded underdog USA hockey team defeated the USSR hockey team 4-3 in the semifinals in the Winter Olympics. It may seem like it was just another hockey game and it wasn’t even for the gold medal, but it meant so much more.
Relations between USA & USSR had been & were on thin ice (pun intended). The game was about politics, no, sports, no it was about humanity. The USA team was a bunch of college kids who at one point hated each other. The USSR national team was considered for decades to be the best hockey team in the world and no one could beat them…until one amazing day in February of 1980.
Kolkata (Day 1)
After arriving at our hostel in the middle of the night, I woke up from my nap to find myself reading the first six chapters of the book of Acts the following morning. Chapter 3 in particular grabbed my attention when Peter physically healed a lame beggar in front of the temple.
“Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God.” Acts 3:6-8
I didn’t really think anything of it other than it being something I believed in and it being really cool that Jesus entrusts us with His gifts. I had never seen physical healing like in Chapter 3 ever in my life before. Guess it was just a coincidence that I happened to read those chapters on my first morning in India.
After going to lunch and having the best Indian food I had ever had, one of the squad leaders, my team leader & I decided to explore the streets of Kolkata. We weren’t walking for more than ten minutes before we stumbled upon a 93 year old beggar in the streets. We began talking to him using broken english until we realized that a crowd of ten or so people formed around us. Some of the men in the crowd began helping to translate for us in our conversation with the beggar.
While we were talking to the beggar we ran to get him fresh bottled water along with a snack and prayed blessing over him. Shortly after our encounter with this human being, we were politely interrupted by one of the men who was helping us translate to the beggar. He wanted us to come to his laundry shop he owned down a side street alley full of tiny shops selling miscellaneous things.
After we arrived at his shop and created some small talk with his broken english we asked if he had any pain in his body. If he did, we asked if we could pray for healing in Jesus’ name so his pain would go away.
He had a strong pain on the bottom of his foot and it looked like something was lodged up inside it. We prayed twice in Jesus’ name for healing and for the pain to go away in His holy name. After the second time of prayer, the man checked his foot to see if there was any pain. He pressed on it with his hand and put some weight on his leg too. After he tested out the pain in his foot for his own, the look on the man’s face was as if he hit the jackpot at Dave & Buster’s.
He had no more pain on the bottom of his foot!
There were a few of his friends who were witness not to us healing this man, but rather Jesus healing him instead. We asked those who witnessed Jesus’ physical healing if anyone else had any pain in their body that would like to be healed. Multiple people with back, neck, leg and head pain began to circle around us wanting Jesus’ love and healing.
Over the course of the next hour or so, over 20 people were healed and many more who walked by in this tiny alley in downtown Kolkata were exposed to Jesus! Miracle? No, not even close! Today and what was still to come was ordinary in God’s eyes.
As we were leaving we told everyone around us in the alley that we would come back tomorrow at noon and encouraged them to bring their family members who want healing too!
Kolkata (Day 2)
When we showed up the next day around noon, we were greeted by many of the shop owners, workers, their families, and random strangers passing through on this little shopping alley. Some had been waiting there for us to arrive and others just happened to be there that day.
After we arrived to “Miracle Lane”, my teammates & I were being pulled in every direction…literally! Sometimes the citizens of Kolkata would pull us to the side and point to where the pain was on their body. Sometimes the locals would take us to their shops (also located on miracle lane) that they worked at/owned and have us pray for themselves or someone else there at the shop. In some cases, they actually just wanted us to pray blessing over their shop, which we definitely did in Jesus’ name. In addition, the locals began to invite us to their homes to pray for those who weren’t physically able to come.
First testimony of the day involved a middle age man who walked with significant pain in his knees and used a cane to support his weight as he walked. We prayed for his knees in Jesus’ name for total healing and rebuked all pain not just in his legs, but body as a whole.
After praying multiple times for this gentlemen, we walked around for a few moments without his cane, turn around to us and said that he was free from pain! This man had previously had knee pain for 28 years and Jesus healed him in a few minutes of prayer! I thought to myself that this is exactly what it means to see the Kingdom move!
Second testimony was a gentleman who took me to his small kiosk that sold lottery tickets closer to the main road. Once we arrived he asked how many lottery tickets I wanted? I was very confused and told him I didn’t have any money to win with, but that I wanted to pray for him and I would also pray for healing if he had any pain in his body.
He told me he had severe pain in his shoulder and could barely lift it above his head. I prayed for his shoulder the first time and he said “nothing happened”. So I prayed for him a second time and I asked him how his shoulder felt. He responded with “it feels a little better”. I prayed a third time for this man’s shoulder to be healed and for all pain to leave his body at once in the authority of Jesus Christ.
He lifted his arm above his head multiple times and told me “my shoulder is all clear from pain”. There were a handful of locals who witnessed Jesus’ healing and all quickly approached me to heal them of their physical pain and asked “how are you performing these miracles?” I explained to them that Jesus is the one who is healing you, NOT me and that I have no special powers.
Regardless of the circumstance or situation we made it a huge point to not just pray for them in Jesus’ name, but to explain to them that we did nothing! It was slightly difficult to explain to the those who were being healed and witnesses as well that yes we were laying hands on them, yes we were saying words from our mouths in prayer, but it was Jesus! He gave us the authority to heal because we picked up His cross and He is our father.
“Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons” – Mark 3:14-15
Kolkata (Day 5)
After we had spent two days outside of Kolkata for ministry, we spent our fifth and final day for our team in Kolkata going back to this amazing little street. Upon arrival we continued to bless, pray, minister, and disciple people and their shops. Towards the middle of the day a teenage boy asked us if we could come over to his house to pray for his grandmother. So my team leader and myself hired a bicycle rickshaw with the boy.
Upon arrival we quickly realized that there was no grandmother at the home, but rather his aunt, uncle, and niece. I was a little confused because after not seeing who we intended to come here for, I wanted to ask God “why are we here?”. The beauty of it is God told us to be interuptable because He had something amazing planned for us to work for the growth of His Kingdom.
The family turned out to be unbelievably hospitable and generous. They took us into a room where they cleaned up a place for us to sit and turned on the television for us to watch Tom & Jerry. We were just hanging out watching cartoons with their four year old until they began to bring multitudes of food!
They served us noodles with marinara sauce (ketchup), cooked vegetables, and what was one of the best desserts I’ve ever had called hawla. It was this sweet, cake-like cornbread that was unreal! As soon as we were finished with our plates, they had no hesitation of bringing us more even though we politely said “It’s okay we’re full”. I couldn’t believe the family’s kindness, generosity and ability to be human towards these two Americans who they didn’t know just hours before.
After we were done with our food, we started to create small talk mainly with the uncle because his english was very good. There was hardly a language barrier. He began to ask us about our lives in the U.S. with questions such as: “how old are you?”, “are you married?”, “where are you from in the U.S. and can we see pictures?”. I then showed pictures of Cincinnati to them and they were astonished at how tall the buildings are and how clean it looked. My team leader then showed them pictures of the Pacific Northwest and quickly recognized it’s amazing beauty.
We then began talking about our faiths and what we believed in. The family was Hindu and we explained to them that we believe in Jesus and worship Him as our one God. They were intrigued because they had heard of Jesus before and actually had a statue of Him in their home, but had never heard the Gospel before. We asked if either of them had any pain in their body that we could pray healing over and they said yes.
The little girl had headaches, the aunt had pain in her head as well. So we prayed in Jesus’ name over their healing and Jesus physically healed them! They were amazed by works they thought were magic, but we explained to them that it wasn’t us that healed them. IT WAS JESUS ONCE AGAIN!
They were curious about this man named Jesus so we proceeded to explain to them the creation story. About how God created everything, including human beings in just seven days. We explained that after God created the first humans (Adam & Eve) that they fell into sin by eat the forbidden fruit from the garden. Many years later God realized how corrupt and distant man had become from Him, that He sent His one and only Son Jesus to die on the cross to save all of man kind’s sin. We continued to speak that Jesus never died because even though He was crucified on the cross, He rose from the grave and defeated death three days after His crucifixion.
Jesus died to defeat death and live eternally in heaven and He invites us to do the same. He invites us to accept Him into our hearts & lives as a whole to spend all of eternity in heaven with peace & serenity.
As soon as we were done sharing the Gospel, we asked them if they wanted to accept Christ into their lives and they said “YES!”. We prayed with them asking Jesus to come into their lives!
This was honestly one of the coolest experiences of my life seeing God take these once upon a time strangers who we didn’t know and transform their lives to be my brothers & sisters and in Christ. PRAISE THE LORD!
After we said our goodbyes to this awesome family, the teenage boy took us down a few floors to what was apparently the grandmother we had originally come to pray for. She didn’t know any english so we had to use some broken english from the teenage boy to communicate with her.
We asked her how we could pray for her and she showed us that everything in her body hurt and that she had been in pain for a decade. She could hardly walk and barely bend over to touch her toes so I began praying for her a handful of times. After those times praying in Jesus’ name she began to feel lighter and little bit better, but it was very visible that the pain still existed.
To show that we had no magical powers of our own, but rather it is Jesus who does all of the healing, I had the teenage boy lay his hands on the grandmother and repeated after every sentence I said in Jesus’ name. After another handful of times praying for the grandmother, she got up from her chair she was sitting in, walked around the house stomped her feet testing her strength and bending over gingerly.
She began saying words that I obviously didn’t understand, but the teenage boy translated to me that she no longer had any pain! She had been in pain for a decade and now she was fully healed by Jesus who gave the teenage boy and I authority to heal her!
Reflection
So I’m sure some of you are wondering why in the heck was I talking about the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team in the beginning of the blog. It’s because of that strong yet, pointless word “miracle”. A miracle by definition is “an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency”.
I used to think that game was a miracle because of how amazing that story and victory was for the USA, but it’s not a miracle. Now let’s get one thing clear, I’m not taking away from how amazing the game was because it’s one of the greatest upsets in sports history.
It’s simple to explain that the USA scored more goals than the USSR 4-3. I don’t need anyone to explain to me how a little black puck went into a net more times for one team than the other. So when the USA team took role as David versus the USSR team being Goliath, it wasn’t a miracle. The Bible itself showed me that the little man can defeat the giant. We just think it was a miracle because of the circumstances and situation of the world we lived in at the time in 1980.
Now as far as our time spent in Kolkata praying, blessing, and discipling those on “Miracle Lane”, that’s a miracle right? YEAH RIGHT! GET OUT OF HERE WITH THOSE BABY GAMES!
I honestly at first thought these were miracles just because I had never seen this before. I have always believed in the story of Jesus and that He had and gave powers to heal people, but I had never witnessed it with my own eyes until Kolkata! I had to slow myself down to not call these amazing acts of God “miracles”. These so called “miracles” are so ordinary to God it’s not even funny. These healings are ordinary because He tells us in the Bible that He gives us authority to heal others in Jesus’ name and it’s as simple as that.
Truthfully I’m not so sure I believe in miracles anymore because God can truly do anything for us and other people who He places in our lives. It doesn’t matter whether it is your family, athletics, school, relationships, anything is possible and miracles don’t exist in the Kingdom of God. Everything in His Kingdom is obtainable through His prayer, trust, love and relationship with Him. Nothing is miracle because let’s remember that God is our Father.
Miracles? No its just ordinary…No, it’s Jesus
“For with God nothing will be impossible” – Luke 1:37
