God Chooses Ordinary People For Extraordinary Miracles

I heard a story a while ago about a man who received a call from Jesus. I will call him Ted. I cannot accurately recollect the details of the story. I still remember the lesson because I shared the story in my church with the congregation. When Ted received a call from Jesus, he started preparing his house with the help of his wife. He wanted to make his house clean for Jesus. They prepared a special meal. He was expecting Jesus at 1 pm. At 10 am, there was a knock on the door; it was a young guy in rags who needed food. Ted told him he had no food to give him, and that he was expecting a more important person. At 11 am there was another knock on the door. A couple of kids down the street were hungry because their parents were not at home. Ted told them he had food reserved for a very important person coming to visit him. At 12 noon, there was another knock on the door. This time, it was a homeless man who needed a place to stay. Ted got angry and slammed the door in his face saying, "Do you think I’m running a motel in my house?"

At 1 pm, there was no knock on the door. Ted kept waiting for Jesus to appear at the door any moment. At 3 pm, he received a call. Jesus was on the phone. Then Ted asked Jesus when he was arriving because he had been waiting for him since 1 pm and the special meal was ready. Jesus answered and said, "I already came to your house three times and you slammed the door in my face."

A similar story was narrated last year 2010 in our Baptist Sunday School book, LifeWay. It was the story of the pastor of the church who dressed himself in rags with hair all over his face. One of the church members arriving early for service saw him in the parking lot. The member believed he was a homeless man and asked him to leave. The pastor later changed his rags, put on a nice suit and shaved his face. He appeared before his congregation and said, "I was at the parking lot this morning, and one of the members asked me to leave."

The Lord sent me on a mission about a six-hour drive from St. Louis. I worked out of town during weekdays and would arrive in St. Louis early on Saturday for the weekend. I was going to conduct a program on Sunday and I needed to get to the store to buy some of what I needed. If I arrive on Saturday afternoon, the products were usually out. So, I came to work this particular Friday wondering if I would be able to leave work earlier that evening since my regular hours to work would end at 10:30 pm. After working eight hours I did not think it was a good idea to travel through the night without rest. I could fall asleep while driving. I had to work with a coworker. Her name was Tonya. For whatever reason, I was angry with Tonya that day, and I did not know what she did wrong. She probably got on my nerves just as I had gotten on somebody else’s nerves. Consequently, I was not going to say anything to her or ask her any favor. As soon as I arrived at work, Tonya came to me and said, "Aren’t you going home this weekend?" she asked. "Yes" I responded. "You can leave after 7 pm if you want giving you time to get to St. Louis before dark." Without any hesitation, I said "Thank you!" to her.

How did Tonya know that I needed to leave early that evening after I started work at 2 pm? I did not tell her anything, but I believe without a doubt in my heart that Jesus whispered in her ears. Each time I am on the road serving the Lord, he always finds a way to show his mysterious hand. Sometimes, Jesus places the key of our problem resolution in the hands of those we do not expect. God chooses whom he uses and he never asks for either your opinion or mine.

Part of the great challenges I encounter working in street ministry is the lack of positive responses from celebrity preachers when called for help. I sent many preachers a free copy of my latest book, Closer Walk With Jesus, just release in July 2011. I sent the books as directed by the Holy Spirit. Prior to sending the book, the Holy Spirit already told me the responses I would receive in so many ways. I recollected that I was about to remove section Four of the book, pages 165 to 218, because the book was too long. For reasons I could not explain, I was forced to leave those chapters. Those chapters discussed the spiritual transformation of a messenger. The section ended with chapter 21 titled, Jesus: Transformation by a Perfect Love. I did not know it then, I was directed by divine message to include that chapter. That chapter 21 ended being a test chapter for a person who believed he or she had gone through spiritual transformation. It was the story of a wife faced with her desire to engage in an extra marital affair but changed her mind and ended up finding Jesus instead.

If you are a preacher struggling with fleshly issues, I believe this section of the book will help you. None of us is perfect. Our best sermons always come from our personal and painful struggles. We all have personal issues we deal with while working in the ministry. Perhaps there are some issues you may be unable to discuss with people, but they are never too big for the ears of the Lord Jesus. Do not underestimate what an ordinary Deacon like me can help you to understand regarding a divine walk in the Spirit of God. The Lord Jesus has visited me. My latest book is the chronicle of that testimony. My greatest concern is the coming disaster to the United States. Will this nation survive the next catastrophe? As you can see, we are moving closer and closer. Regardless to how big your church may be or how big a house you live in, once the big one hits, everything can be turned to rubbles in a matter of seconds. The shaking we are experiencing now is not going to get any better. It’s going to get worse. Read my book and you will understand the signs of the time. We are entering a dangerous time in history. All these bad weather patterns were already predicted by many guests of Sid Roth’s Show It’s Supernatural. I may not be Bishop TD Jakes’ brother, or Oprah Winfrey’s uncle, or President Obama’s cousin. God chooses whom he uses! God will not hesitate to place his divine messages in the hands of a nonentity like me. You may be looking for Jesus in the faces of celebrities like many of you tend to do during your interviews. I may not be a member of your inner circle with big money, names and private jets. Like the first story, God places Jesus in the faces of everyday people. Jesus in turn placed himself on the faces of "the least of these." When Jesus came, he was never born in a palace or fed with a golden spoon in his mouth. The people of his time said he was a no-body. Why should they listen to him? Yet, he is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and the King with many crowns. The greatest shock of my life was when Jesus appeared in my living room to visit me. This is the joy I secretly cherish within my heart. I know I am not perfect, but I promised never to disappoint or embarrass him.

A few years ago, the Lord sent me on another mission to work on medical errors because lives were being lost needlessly. I worked on the project for about five years. I discovered many errors and I worked to design solutions. I prepared a report with my group which went to the White House during President Bush’s administration. I was instructed to send the report to other government agencies including the department of Health and Human Services and some Congressional Representatives. A copy was sent to every member of congressional sub-committee on heath. Information about the report was also sent to about six thousand hospitals in the nation in a book, 101 Ways to Prevent Medical Errors. There was a massive effort to get on many of the radio and television talk shows to alert the nation about medical errors and corrective actions. The news media failed to pay adequate responses to my report. Discovery Channel came to St. Louis to interview, me and another doctor about medial errors. When the report was aired, our section on solution intervention was cut out. My portion of the interview was never aired. I was greatly disappointed.

In the report was a problem of not matching the donor’s type with the intended organ of transplantation from the donor center. This report was correction error #73 on pages 112 and 113 of the book. The book report was published in April 2002. In less than a year after that report went out, Jessica Santillan died at Duke University Medical Center in February 22, 2003 of the same medical error that was already identified in my report about ten months earlier. The 17 year old received the wrong organ type of "A" instead of the "O" type, and she died! This was exactly the same error scenario identified in my report. A year after the incident, the Duke University Medical Center Newspaper interviewed me about how the incident could have been prevented. In this one-hour press interview, I explained that it was a systemic failure that should have been corrected in all the hospitals across the nation. This year 2011, a blood center sent the wrong blood unit to a patient with incompatible type. This was the same error that killed Jessica Santillan. Evidently despite the well-publicized medical error of Jessica Santillan at Duke University Medical Center, some donor centers are yet to correct this systemic failure to prevent death of patients. My first report was in the book Overcoming the Invisible Crime published in 1993 about preventable deaths of patients in hospitals. The report was sent to many within the government. The late Senator Paul Simon of Illinois said he was going to do something about it in his response letter to me after reading the book. Ms Diane Sawyer of ABC of Prime Time Live, responded in her letter after reading the book and said, "A heart rending book." About few months after I came back from a news conference in the White House, in 1999, Institute of Medicine came out with a report that over 98,000 patients were dying every year due to medical errors. To those medical professional angry at my first report, the IOM report vindicated me. Praise God!

In this article, I wanted to make God’s message very clear to the body of Christ. Celebrity preachers are not the only ones God is using to serve his purpose. The same way popular preachers have messages, in the same way God will use the naked, the hungry, the sick, the homeless, and the nonentities to deliver his divine messages to the nation. There are some foot soldiers for Christ chosen to serve God’s purpose. You may not recognize us. We may never win any trophy, or wear the faces of celebrities, but the Lord nonetheless uses us for his purpose and glory. One of the issues that grieved the heart of Jesus was because he was rejected by the same people he was sent to rescue from a life of sins. Prophet Isaiah prophesied about Jesus as a man of sorrow. We saw the mirror of the physical pain Jesus suffered in the movie, Passion of the Christ. How many of us can measure the pain of rejection in his heart? How many more pastors will die on our watch because our next program and boat ride are more important than an outcry for help by those who are in pain? When Jesus was on his way to a national crusade, he was interrupted by a woman from Canaan whose daughter was demon possessed. She was crying after Jesus and would not let Jesus alone. The conversation between this woman and Jesus gave away the fact that Jesus was on his way somewhere. Jesus eventually stopped and responded to the woman calling her a dog. The woman did not care because she knew that was her day of miracle. Jesus cured her daughter. Immediately after the incident, Jesus went up to the mountain and great multitudes came to him (St. Matthew 15:22-31). Jesus did not tell the woman like some of us would tell the woman to get lost. She was not the daughter of a king, or the relative of a Roman Emperor. She was an ordinary woman with no name given in the Bible. Yet, her story hit the headline in the only book written by God. She was a non-celebrity.

Rock Hudson was a giant and popular movie star (1925-1985). Many fans loved and wanted to touch him during those wonderful days of his romantic comedy movies. He did about 70 motion pictures and several television productions. A story was told about his lone and painful journey in a plane from Britain back to the U.S. when he was first diagnosed with AIDS. A one-time celebrity became a man nobody wanted to touch as he wasted away, alone in that private jet. He was the first major Hollywood celebrity to die of AIDS.

While facing painful rejections, Jesus warned his disciples that they would be rejected as well. He gave them a clue that those who would reject them never knew him, nor his Father who sent him (John 15: 20-21). From personal experience, those who walk in the Spirit of God are able to easily connect with divine messages of the Holy Spirit. It takes one to know one. The reason why Prophet Jeremiah was thrown in the dungeon was because they did not like what he was telling the people that the doom’s day was coming. Despite all the suffering from the hands of the people who hated his messages, despite the rejections, did the prophecy of Prophet Jeremiah come true?

I hope you can add my voice to the messages of those crying in the wilderness that disasters are heading our way!

Jesus prayer during the most agonizing time of his life was for the unity of the body of Christ. How so divided are we today? Regardless to the size of your ministry, this is the time for a united front for Jesus.

"And the glory you gave to me, I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one" (St. John 17:22).