This is one of those emails I expect everyone to push “unsubscribe” after reading.
You are welcome to, by the way, at the bottom of this email.
And then somehow no one unsubscribes.
I wrote it a while ago and have been so hesitant to press send.
Finally, I stopped being chicken.
Yesterday God woke me up early.
He told me that I would be healing a man unable to walk well that day.
He told me exactly what to do.
I obeyed.
In fact, I don’t believe I obeyed just a little, I believe I obeyed at each and every step.
And the man didn’t just walk better.
For a few moments, he even ran - maybe 40 yards total.
A man who hasn’t run in a few years was now running.
A man who was so uncomfortable with walking that he stopped going for walks was running.
I saw that with my own eyes yesterday morning.
This is after a string of events in which 1.) a man who could not even speak his own name to me, spoke full beautiful clear sentences after I read the Bible to him, and 2.) after a little girl who was dying, on life support, looking worse everyday, was brought back from death. She is awake, walking, and playing again.
God has had me lay hands on some people the last few weeks and has shown me clearly that He makes a way for the hopeless situations in my life to be filled with hope.
I don’t know how it works.
But I have come to believe it works.
Why?
Because I keep seeing it.
This wasn’t a view of God that I was raised into.
This wasn’t a view of God I had long accepted.
In fact this was a view of God I once ignorantly made fun of.
Every single bone of confirmation bias in my body said this view of God was utter crap. So I won't hold it against you if that is what you are saying to yourself right now too.
This was a view of God I came to find only by realizing that every other church, every other “normal” church that I wanted to walk into was closed down because of Covid.
Because of Covid, one might say I stooped to go to one of “those” churches, because I was so hungry to hear the word of God preached in any church by anyone.
And I sat and listened and it changed me in a way I had never been changed before.
And it was by those people.
It was by people who didn’t fit the mold of how I was taught.
And then I realized God didn’t fit the mold of how I was taught.
At 55hours.org we are finishing reading the book of Acts right now.
Come read it with us.
It’s such a powerful retelling of what God’s church can be.
My walk with Christ began with my infant baptism in the hands of my loving parents, in the same font my father was baptized in.
Waxing and waning years of church followed, with my faith growing stronger and weaker at times, but with church attendance being a relatively regular part of it.
The more I used my brain to explain God, the more I seemed to be unable to do it, and the more distant I got -- the more I convinced myself, to my dismay, that there was nothing to see.
That walk with Christ deepened powerfully years later when I began to read the Bible, word for word, verse by verse, the entire thing — committing to read it once a year or more.
I started in Thessalonians because that was the day in the Bible reading plan that my Pastor said to me “If you have faith issues, spend more time reading the Bible.”
I just so happened to have a “read the Bible in a year” schedule printed in the back of the Bible that was in my hands the day my Pastor said that, so I started reading.
You can join us today, wherever we are.
And you can keep reading with us from beginning to end starting in January.
But don’t let that stop you from starting today.
What’s gotten into me?
God.
After three years of watching miracles take place in my midst, I finally think I can lay hands on the sick and they can be healed.
You may think I’m on crack.
The truth of the matter is I’m on something much stronger than crack.
I think you will find yourself pleasantly surprised the day you realize God is stronger than crack, stronger than fentanyl.
Stronger than illness.
Stronger than death.
Stronger than things we have convinced ourselves are the strongest, mightiest things of this world.
Come join me in daily Bible readings and so much more.
Tap here to get started — 55hours.org.
Allan Stevo
Profound. God Bless you. I am glad you shared this news with your readers. I am glad you have been given the gift you describe. I for one believe you have written the truth about your personal experience. Thanks again for being brave and sharing this good news!
Teresa Cook, San Diego CA.
So beautiful, Allan! Keep writing about this and all the other things that make you an incredible human.