AN APPRECIATION FOR MIRACLES

Mike Cunningham

December 7, 2014

The longer I live the more I appreciate a miracle, a word which The American Heritage Dictionary defines as being “an event inexplicable to the laws of nature and so held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God.”

As I get older and my health declines I’m acutely aware of the miraculous fact that it’s in him that I live and move and have my being. (Acts 17:28,) and that I am God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for me to do. (Ephesians 2:10) 28 And I know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:28-29) Furthermore, I know that I won’t leave this world a second sooner or later that He has ordained. (Job 14:1,5)

That’s enough about me. Now I would like to quote excerpts from the excellent book, “Miracles” © 2014 by Eric Metaxas, who says that, In the previous chapter, I told the story of how Cisco Anglero found God. But it wasn’t the end of what happened to him. In fact, while he was still in prison, God used him in a dramatic way.

Cisco remembered that about six weeks after his dramatic conversion experience, he was walking back to the dorm from his job in KK-what they called the officers’ cafeteria-when he saw that his friend Hector was in bed, shaking and shivering. It was about 75 degrees out, but for some reason Hector was wearing his boots and socks, a sweater, his heavy coat, and a thick white blanket. Cisco asked him what was the matter, “I don’t know,” Hector said. “It feels like I’m dying.” In Cisco’s remembrance, Hector had always been about 215 pounds and very muscular, but the moment Hector and Frankie arrived Cisco saw that Hector was noticeably thinner. But he never asked him why. Cisco had always been taught to mind his own business. If someone wanted you to know something, they would tell you. But the truth was that Hector had contracted AIDS. He was perhaps 180 when Cisco first saw him few months earlier. Now he was even thinner.

“What’s the matter, Hector?” Cisco said, coming over to his bed. “What can I do for you?”

“The Holy Spirit told me that if you pray for me, what I feel now is going to be gone.” Cisco had no idea what to make of what Hector said. After all he had been a Christian for only six weeks.

“If I pray for you,” he said. “I don’t know how to pray.” But Cisco loved his friend and wanted to do what he could. One thing he had learned was that prayers were more powerful if the person praying didn’t have any unconfessed sin. So he said to God, “Lord, if I’m doing something you don’t want me to do, show me. But I don’t want my friend to be like this.” After that, right there by his bedside=Cisco began praying for Hector in the only way he knew how. His prayers were simple but deeply heartfelt.

Suddenly, Cisco told me, a very bright light-“as bright as the sun,” he said-covered the two of them, “like a halo. It was a circle.” They were on the second floor of the facility, so it couldn’t have been actual sunlight. Cisco said that when he finished praying the light went away and he went back to his bunk and sat down. Then, suddenly, he saw Hector stand up, take the blankets off, and take his coat off and the sweater too. And then Hector began jumping up and down and saying over and over, “Thank you Jesus! Thank you Jesus! Thank you Jesus!”

One of the corrections officers saw what was happening. He knew Hector had been in very bad shape, so he immediately called up Dr. Matthews in the infirmary and told her that Hector had taken everything off and was jumping up and down. A few minutes later Dr. Matthews showed up and asked Hector what had happened. He told her everything. Then she examined him and said that it didn’t seem that anything was wrong with him. For no reason that anyone could divine other than the prayer that Cisco offered, Hector was suddenly feeling fine.

What happened that day was clearly mystifying and dramatic, but it didn’t halt the overall progress of the disease. Hector continued to loose weight and grow weaker.

About two months after the day he prayed for Hector, Cisco had a terrible argument on the phone with his wife, Christine. It so affected him that he stopped reading the bible and praying. It was a very dark period for him.

One day during this time, Cisco walked into the dormitory and saw that they were taking Hector out in a wheelchair. Cisco learned that they were taking him to Kings County Hospital, where Dr. Matthews was in residence. Hector’s weight had by now dropped down to about 145 pounds. Dr. Matthews was with Hector and she took Cisco aside and explained there was nothing more they could do for Hector. They were taking him to the hospital to make him more comfortable while the disease took its inevitable course.

About ten days later one of the officers came over to Cisco and told him he had a visitor. Cisco absolutely never had visitors. He had made a point of telling his wife, Christine, never to visit him, so he was sure it wasn’t her. His brothers lived in Puerto Rico, so he knew it wasn’t either of them. His sister lived in Florid. Cisco had no idea who it could be. But he went to the visiting room and saw a woman coming in. She sat down and told him that she was Hector’s mother. Cisco asked how Hector was doing and she said not well. He was on many medications and had IVs all over him. His weight was down to 120 pounds.

But Hector’s mother told Cisco that Hector had told her the story of how Cisco had once prayed for him and his symptoms had vanished instantly. She told Cisco that Hector had said that God had spoken to him again. God had told Hector that if Cisco prayed for him again, he would be healed completely. Not just the symptoms, but the disease itself. Cisco again had no idea what to make of this. How could he pray for Hector? He was in prison. He certainly couldn’t go over to Kings County Hospital and pray for his friend in person. The only thing he could think of was to go down to the infirmary and talk to Dr. Matthews. Perhaps she could call Kings County, since she was a resident there. Perhaps they could get Hector on the phone and Cisco could pray for him that way.

Cisco told Hector’s mother he would do whatever he could. So he went downstairs to the infirmary and found Dr. Matthews and explained the situation. He said that he felt he needed to pray for Hector over the phone. Dr. Matthews said she would see what she could do. So she called Kings County immediately and asked to be put in touch with Hector. But that wasn’t possible. They told her she could speak to the doctor in charge, or to the head nurse, but not with Hector himself. She could visit him in person if she liked, but talking to him over the phone was simply not allowed. They were at an impasse. “I don’t know what else to do,” she said to Cisco.

Just then, for the first time in his life, Cisco heard God speak to him, telling him to get the phone number Dr. Matthews just dialed. So he asked her for it.

Dr. Matthews didn’t know what Cisco thought he could do with the phone number. She explained to him that if they wouldn’t let her speak with Hector, they certainly wouldn’t let Cisco speak with Hector. But Cisco knew what he had heard. God told him to get the number, so he persisted. Finally, she relented and gave it to him. Cisco immediately left the infirmary and went upstairs to use the phone. But as he was doing that, God spoke again, telling him, not yet, to wait. So he obediently went to his bunk and waited. Phone use was restricted, and there were no calls allowed after 10:00 pm. But it was just after 10 when Cisco heard God speak the third time, saying, “Now. Go.”

So Cisco walked over to the “bubble” and knocked on the glass and said to the CO that he had to make a call.” The CO laughed, figuring that Cisco was kidding around with him. But Cisco made it clear he wasn’t kidding at all. “I need to make a phone call,” he said. “I need to call Kings County.” But the CO said that it wasn’t possible. The phone was already shut down for the night, and he wasn’t about to loose his job by letting Cisco use it.

Cisco said that at this point “something just came over me and I said, “If you don’t give me the phone, then it’s on your head.” Cisco later thought that it must have been God speaking through him, because he wasn’t sure why he said that, but the urgency was powerful. Those words shook up the CO somehow, and he immediately changed his mind and gave Cisco the phone. But he said, “Please just make it ten minutes. If you’re on longer and they catch you, I’m going to get fired!”

So Cisco dialed the number. A nurse answered. She asked if her was Hector’s relative. Cisco said that he wasn’t, that he was a friend. The nurse said she was sorry, but if he wanted to speak with the patient he had to be a relative. But he was welcome to come there in person. Cisco explained he couldn’t come there in person because he was calling from prison. The nurse said that was even worse, and he might as well forget about talking with Hector.

But for the second time, a tremendous boldness came over Cisco. “If you don’t put Hector on the telephone,” he said to the nurse, “God says he will punish you.” At this point Hector, whose bed must have been nearby, said something to the nurse. Cisco could hear his voice through the phone. Hector obviously knew Cisco was on the phone because of what he heard the nurse saying on her end. Finally, the nurse relented. “Okay, okay,” she said, “but you can only talk for a few minutes, because I’ll get in trouble.” She handed Hector the phone.

“What happened, buddy?” Cisco asked Hector. Hector said that the Holy Spirit had spoken to him again. He told me that you were going to pray for me,” Hector said, “and that He was going to heal me.” Cisco knew that what Hector said the last time it happened just as he said it would happen. There wasn’t much time, so right then Cisco prayed for Hector’s healing over the phone. After he finished praying, he told Hector that he loved him and hung up.

That Friday the COs told Cisco he had another visitor. He went down to the visitor’s area and saw Hector’s mother walking in. From the look on her face Hector assumed she was there to tell him that Hector had died. He braced himself. But when she got to the table, her expression changed. She was beaming. She told Cisco that what happened when he prayed was a miracle. She said that a few minutes after he finished praying and hung up, Hector’s whole body began shaking violently, so much so that all the intravenous needles came out of his body. He then fell off the bed, got up, and started jumping up and down, over and over, thanking God. It was a miracle. She told Cisco that the Kings County doctors had been checking Hector for the last three days and they couldn’t find any evidence of the AIDS virus in his body. They decided to keep him there for a few more weeks, just to make sure that he was okay, but after that, they would release him.

That was the last Cisco heard of Hector for about five years.

Not long after Hector’s healing, Cisco was sleeping in his bunk when he suddenly woke up, sweating. He didn’t know it was in a dream or in a vision, but God had spoken to him, telling him that he was going to prepare Cisco to become the director of a men’s ministry to alcoholics, drug addicts, and people with mental illness, ex-cons, and homeless men.

After some time, Cisco was transferred to a prison upstate, and then to Rikers Island. After Rikers he went to Ulster County Jail and then to Eastern Correctional. He finally got out in 1992, going back to his home and his wife Christine, on Coney Island. Cisco began attending a church nearby called Cony Island Gospel Assembly. The pastor who founded the church was a man named Jack San Filippo, who had died not long before, so his daughter became the pastor and Cisco was a deacon. One Sunday after church, Cisco was sitting in the pastoral office when a phone call came in for the pastor from Larry Johnson, the director of Victory Outreach.

He explained that seven homeless men had been staying at the Victory Outreach church but could no longer do so for various reasons. “Would Coney Island Gospel Assembly be willing to take them in?” Larry asked. The pastor asked Cisco if he would be able to take responsibility for them. “I’m not a babysitter!” Cisco shot back. But then, Cisco felt “something like a bolt of lightening” hit him in the back of the head. And he heard a voice telling him, “Remember!” It was God jogging his memory of when he had told Cisco that some day he would run a ministry for the homeless, ex-cons, alcoholics, drug addicts, and people with mental illness. So Cisco changed his mind and those seven men eventually turned into a ministry that he would run for seven years.

A year after that, Cisco was at DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn, meeting with his parole officer. On the way home he stopped into a restaurant to get a soda when he bumped into someone who knew his old friend Hector. It had been five years since he had prayed for him over the phone and he hadn’t heard anything from him since. So he immediately asked the friend about Hector. Had he heard any news of him?” The friend told Cisco that Hector was completely healthy. In fact, he was at that time in Bible collage, training to become a minister.

Cisco’s ministry to the men of Brooklyn thrived too. Over the next few years 1,200 to 1,500 passed through it. The journals kept by Cisco and the pastor documented that during the nine-year period more than eight hundred of them gave their lives to God, went back to their families, and found work. Cisco’s been ministering to men in Brooklyn ever since. (1)

That account brought back lots of wonderful memories for me as well as an appreciation for the miracles that I personally experienced. Here’s another one.

Elisa Leberis is my chief of staff, overseeing everything in our company. She is a Stanford graduate, brilliant and omnicompetent, and has accomplished extraordinary things in her varied career. But this story concerns a time that was a rare low point in her life. In fact, it was her first real experience of failure. Up until then she had been one of those achievement-oriented kids who was used to receiving praise and support from her family and teachers and friends. She graduated at the top of her high school class of six hundred students, got into every college she applied to, and talked about her experience of God in her graduation speech. Even teachers who disagreed with her beliefs praised her for having convictions. She entered Stanford with almost a year’s worth of credits.

Elisa remembers biking down Church Street in Skokie on a particularly hot and humid day, when it happened. In her impatience to get home, she was peddling hard in a low gear and going extremely fast, as fast as she could go on her sister’s yellow Schwinn Varsity ten-speed bike. She was approaching an intersection and in the oncoming traffic a truck was slowing down to make a left turn at that intersection. As she got closer to the intersection, she must have looked away for a moment, because when she looked ahead again, she realized that the truck had not stopped at all, but was already proceeding to turn. Elisa assumed the driver had seen her coming toward him, but she now realized to her horror that he obviously had not. He was steering the truck right across her path, and Elisa remembers that she was going so fast that before she could blink, the letters M-A-C-K on the front of the truck were right in front of her eyes.

At some point in all of this the driver obviously saw her. She heard the truck’s brake’s screeching loudly and a pedestrian shouting. Elisa says, “For a split second, it felt to me as if everything froze in space and time and in that split second

I tried to figure out what to do but couldn’t see a way out.” She couldn’t turn left, since the truck was to her front left.  To her front right, just past the truck were a concrete island and a stoplight post. It was too late for her to break-she was going much too fast and the truck was much too close. “I know it sounds ridiculous,” she says, “and I can’t really explain why I responded this way, but my conclusion was, “This is for me. There’s no way to go.” I don’t know if I thought I was going to collide with the truck, or die, or what-but I sat up and released my hold on the handlebars.”

Then something abrupt and shocking happened, which she says is hard to describe exactly. She says the best way to put it is that she heard a voice, but not an audible voice. The voice was clear, and forceful, and emphatic, and it rebuked her saying, “You are not going to give up that easily! You are not going to die!” As she heard these words, she felt as though an invisible pair of hands grabbed the handlebars, and on the first “not” the handlebars jerked to the right to get her out of the way of the truck. But she was then heading straight into the concrete island, and on the second “not” the handlebars jerked hard to the left, directing her through the thinnest of gaps, perhaps two or three feet wide, between the truck and the concrete island. She whizzed by the panic-stricken truck driver and waived, and said, “I’m all right! I’m all right!” And then she turned down the first side street she could find, and started shaking, and said again, “I’m all right! I’m all right!” And she thanked God that she was all right.

“On the slow, shaky ride home, I didn’t think about how poor my choices had been that summer,” says Elisa. “I didn’t think about any of my choices at all. Instead, I pondered how, in just a few split seconds, God not only miraculously spared me from terrible injury or worse, but also communicated to a confused and discouraged nineteen-year-old the powerful, life changing truth that her life matters to him.” (2)

As I pondered these accounts of miracles my memory was jogged and I recalled a dozen times when I came close to being accidentely killed or deliberately murdered. Only God knows how many other times when he miraculously did the same that I’m unaware of.

It’s been my prayer filled hope that through this sermon each of you folks will also have “AN APPRECIATION FOR MIRACLES.” Posting your thoughts on my blog will be helpful to me and greatly appreciated.

Lord willing, next week….

1. Pages 165-170
2. Pages 246-248