God Intervenes Today

by John Paul Jackson
Winter 2014/15

Note from the Editor: As many of you might have heard, John Paul Jackson had a miracle intervention of God in his cancer journey. I love to hear this man of faith teach on God’s intersections with our lives. Meeting God at the crossroads is a common event here at Christian Healing Ministries!

How involved is God in our lives? Does he actually notice every sparrow that falls? Or did he create the earth and all that exists on it only to leave it in our hands and periodically return to check on how we are doing? These are questions that have plagued mankind for millennia. Prophets depended on God’s involvement, deists depended on God’s lack of involvement, and atheists depended on the notion that there was no God. Yet, if there is no God, or he randomly comes and goes, how do we account for the myriad of unusual events that happen in our lives?

Does God actually intervene? Are there depths or levels of his intervention? Is intervention only at the angelic level, such as the time God sent his angel to destroy 185,000 men of Assyria to save Hezekiah? Or can humans have some involvement, such as the time when Aaron and Hur held up the arms of Moses? As long as his arms were up, the Hebrew army won; when his arms were down, they would lose. If you stop to think about it, aren’t we actually asking God to intervene in something every time we pray? Shouldn’t that too be considered divine intervention?

On the subject of life–changing events, many people like myself met their spouse in a once–in–a–lifetime moment, a chance encounter that could not ever happen at any other time. Others have failed to board an airplane that crashed while they were stuck in traffic. Did God stop all that traffic just to save one life? Still others have applied for a certain job because they happened to overhear a conversation in a local coffee shop. Was that God who orchestrated all those events? Less noticeable might be how life could have drastically changed had you gone to the game with a friend or taken a normal route home but you didn’t. Whatever the reason, there are many monumental or abnormal times when life suddenly changes. The question is, how much was God involved in it? The reality is that on many occasions we might not notice if God was involved at all. On other occasions, we can’t stop giving God thanks for what he did. God does act in mysterious ways. Isn’t every act of God or every miracle a part of the mystery of divine intervention?

Throughout the Bible, especially the New Testament, we find many reasons why God intervenes in the lives of people by performing miracles, signs, and wonders. A few of those reasons are: to validate divine commission given to the disciples, to verify that the Holy Spirit gives power to those who believe, to prove Jesus is the Messiah, and to prove that God is greater than those who defy his commands. The very fact that while we were yet sinners God sent his Son to die for us is divine intervention at the highest level there is.

Some believers see virtually everything as an example of divine intervention. A parking spot being open is God’s divine intervention. (And by the way, I do like good parking spots.) A sudden gust of wind or the chance meeting of a friend at the store might be seen as a real sign from God. There are those times when the meaningless takes on greater meaning. A friend of mine once lost his prescription sunglasses, which made driving on a sunny day pretty painful to his eyes. Not quite prone to thinking about God in moments like this, he desperately cried out to God and asked for divine help in finding those sunglasses. The next day, in the corner of the newspaper was a message in the “helpful hints” sidebar. “Can’t find your sunglasses? Try under the seat of the driver’s side.” Well, he got up, looked and there they were.

While this mindset is more Biblical than we want to admit, it can pose problems, because interpreting virtually everything that happens to us as divine intervention can lead to some very subjective conclusions and a lot of wild goose chases. We shouldn’t spend every waking minute trying to decode secret messages from above. While there may not be hidden spiritual meanings in everyday life events all the time, we should be aware that God really does speak and intervene continually in all of our lives. While it is hard to say exactly which acts of God can be equated to divine intervention, scripture seems to indicate there is a level of divine intervention that produces a large basket of fruit in the lives of others. Nations are changed. Bloodlines come under a relationship with a God from whom they were once estranged. Children are born who become great men and women of God and in turn, change the lives of others.

My calling into the ministry came as a result of a divine intervention. When I was thirty years old, I was already successful in a Fortune 500 corporation where I had just been promoted for the third time in 18 months. I was listening to a Christian radio program on which a woman who lived in Israel was being interviewed. She was telling a remarkable story, a story about how an angel came to her in Jerusalem in a dream, and told her step by step how she was going to get up and go to the Tel Aviv airport. There she would wait and a man would give her a ticket to go to Dallas. She did go to the airport and waited for a couple of hours. A man walked up to her and said, “Are you going to the United States?’’ She said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you have your ticket?” She said “No.” He said, “Do you have money for your ticket?” She said “No.” He said, “Are you going to Dallas?” She said “Yes.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of money, threw it at her and then said, “Here, take it,” and then he stomped off. This woman was Ruth Ward Heflin, and she wrote about this particular incident in her book on the glory of God.

When Ruth got to the radio station in Dallas, Texas, she told her story to the manager and explained that she was to do a three–day live call–in program on dreams and visions. The angel told her there was a young man who would call in, and that this young man had a gift in dreams and visions but was resisting God’s call on his life. Due to the vacation of the normal host, the station had openings on the exact days and times she requested. Due to the inability of the substitute host to cover those program hours, she was put in the slot. She began to talk on dreams and visions and how they related to the Bible. People called in, and she constantly asked the young man to call in.

The program was interesting, and for the following two days, I too prayed for this young man to call in. I knew he was resisting God’s call. If God did all this for a woman to come, the man needed to listen to this radio station. Prayer was the way to make that happen. Dozens called in but they were not the one she was looking for. I heard her say again and again, “You may have a gift, but you are not the one.” In an unusual turn of events, I found myself weeping for this man every day. I was not known as someone who cries easily. Finally, on the third day of the program, with ten minutes left, I was wailing with tears that I couldn’t understand, and I heard a voice talking to me and asking me to call in. I didn’t want to. I thought it was a waste of my time. I argued with God because I don’t have dreams like these people, and he simply told me, “Go ahead. Call in, son.” So I tossed a fleece back out to God. Yes, I would call in, but if I connected to the switchboard, I was going to hang up. If this was in fact God telling me to do this, he would have to get me past the switchboard where they were putting everybody on hold. I would have to hear the words “You are live on the air,” or I was going to hang up. I felt safe, because I thought this was too hard even for God to do.

Even though I was stunned when I heard the dreaded words, “You are live on the air,” I was even more stunned when I heard the words that I was never expecting to hear — “Young man, what took you so long to call? You are the young man I was sent here for.” Well of course I argued that I was not that young man. I was not the young man resisting God’s call on my life. I was very happy in the corporate world and God had blessed me. She kept insisting that the same voice that had told her to come to Dallas was telling her I was that young man. My arguing only proved the depth of my resistance.

The call ended with her asking me, “What are you going to do now? It must be very important to God to bring me all the way from Israel just for you.” That day forever changed my life. I’d like to be able to tell you I quit my job the following day, but it took me three years to make the final separation from corporate life to ministry life. Even then it took some outside help from my employer, who said I reminded him of my boss whom he had just fired. I became part of the corporate housecleaning process after top executives are removed. Did I miss God? Did I wait too long? I don’t know. But what I do know is that when I did not make the final move, God did. One might say that God had to act twice to get me to act once. I am proof of his great mercy. Divine intervention, I’m all for it. And I think it happens more often than we think.

I want to say that God intervened to save my life, not just today but on a number of occasions. On a rain–soaked day in Los Angeles, I had another divine intervention. I was involved in an eight–car pile up on the 405 Freeway and in the process of the collision, I found myself trapped under a large 18–wheel truck being dragged toward the railing of a bridge. That bridge crossed a freeway that was down below. As I hit the protective curb just before the bridge railing, I was launched into the air and through the railing. I was praying, knowing that the only question was this: Would I die from the fall to the freeway or would I die from being hit by the cars hurtling forward in the traffic that I was about to fall into? As I clung to the steering wheel, I could feel the nose of the car heading down toward the freeway. Then I suddenly found myself back onto the very freeway I had just left. The car was standing on the surface of the bridge. Stunned, I sat there for just a moment until people came running and told me to quickly get out of the car because the gas tank was leaking. The engine of the car was sitting beside my right knee; I began to look for a way out. As I looked around, all the doors were crushed in from the accident. I noticed that the right passenger door was open just enough for me to squeeze through and get out. I ran from the car to a spot about 50 feet away, and a number of people came and told me the amazing events they had just witnessed. One man said, “Señor, I do not believe in God, but you would not believe it. You went over the bridge and were going down. My wife and I both saw the hand of God reach down, grab your car, and pull you back onto the surface of the bridge. Señor, it was a miracle.” As he was finishing the last words, a dozen or so people said they had just seen the same thing. Right there in the middle of the Los Angeles 405, I gave my first altar call. I told them it was the protective hand of God who saved my life and they could have the same hand of protection around them. All they had to do was accept Jesus as the Son of God. There in the pouring rain, more than a dozen people knelt on the concrete of the freeway to give their lives to Jesus. Those lives were changed forever because God intervened.

Permission to reprint this article, which was taken from the TV program Dreams & Mysteries, was provided by John Paul Jackson and Streams Ministries. Visit our online bookstore for books and other resources by John Paul Jackson.

John Paul Jackson is an author, teacher, conference speaker, and founder of Streams Ministries International. He often focuses on dreams and interpretation of dreams.