Or a husband if you’re a wife. Praise the Lord. Here’s a man that called and said, “I can feel God all over my body. I’ve had problems in my stomach for years and I’ve been unable to eat without problems.” He said that after you prayed, he went and ate and all the problems in his stomach were gone. He could eat without any problems.
I tell you, this is a program of miracles. And, friend, if you need a miracle today, if you need prayer right now, I urge you to step to your telephone, call area code 918-495-7777. That’s the Abundant Life Prayer Group. I’ll tell you, these men and women, sixty prayer partners, dedicated to pray for you. They will pray and they’ll hold your name and needs before the Lord. Then they’ll bring your request to me. And I’ll hold your name and requests before the Lord. I’ll pray and I’ll write you back. And I want to say something special, Lindsay.
Our program this morning is on for the first time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Channel WPTT-22. It’s live, being carried right now on WPTT-Channel 22 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hello to all those of you in Pittsburgh. We want to give you a great handclap. God bless you. I pray this program is as blessing in your life in Pittsburgh. Oh, we’ve got a lot of friends and partners in the Pittsburgh area. And Lindsay, I was thinking this morning, I was thinking about our special guests, LaVerne and Edith Tripp, our dear friends, who will be with us–would you answer that please? Thank you.
That’s what you say at home. That’s right, well that’s the Abundant Life Prayer Group prayer partner. When he’s right next to the phone he says, “Would you answer that please?” I’m sorry. I was thinking about LaVerne and Edith Tripp, our dear friends, and I’ll be introducing them in just a few minutes.
And I was, I, was thinking about proving God, Lindsay, and I was thinking about, I was thinking about the, the prophet Elijah who came into the city of Zarephath. And there was a little widow–that’s right. And he asked her what she was doing. And she said, “I am gathering, I am gathering enough, some water and, you know, sticks for a fire and I’m going to, I’m going to cook one last meal (for her son and her) for her son and herself.”
She said, “I’m going to cook it for me and my son and we’re going to die. There’s not enough meal in the barrel or oil in the cruse or there’s nothing, there’s nothing left. We have just enough for one last meal.” And the prophet said, “Fine, give me the first part.” (That’s right) Now doesn’t that sound like a preacher? LaVerne, doesn’t that sound like a preacher? Edith, you know. Only a preacher would have the nerve.
You know why I think he did that? She was looking at her circumstances and her circumstances were so bad that he had to shock her out of her circumstances and into faith.
Praise God, that’s a miracle. That’s the greatest miracle of all, accepting Jesus. You’ve got a reason to believe in the healing power of Christ. You’ve got a reason, Lindsay.
Honey, this lady wrote in and she said, “I was going through such a spiritual battle. I felt like every door to God was closed. Praise God,” she said, “but helped me turn it around and the door to God is open in my life.” And she said she wanted to thank you for leading her to God. Praise the Lord.
Now listen to this. Here’s a man, here’s a testimony from a man and his wife in Rochester, New York and I’ve just got to share this with you. This man said, “I was in the bathtub. My wife was watching your program. And you had a word of knowledge about someone’s knee being healed and my wife knew that it had to be me. So she came in and told me about what you said. And while I sat in the bathtub the Lord healed my knee.”
Praise God. Thank God for good wives.Say yes, Say, thank God for good wives. Thank God for good wives. Everybody say, thank God for a good wife. For a good husband. You know, I, I can, I can tell you about some mistakes that I’ve made that nobody even knows about. That’s right. But this book And I share some of those. It’s designed to show people that no matter what your mistake has been, God can pick you up and dust you off and give you a new chance, a second chance, to start your life
Because He’s the God of a second chance. That’s right. That’s the kind of miracles we need to hear about, not all the dirt and all the gutter stuff. (Applause)…all the good stuff about miracles. Listen to this, Lindsay. This just came in over the Abundant Life Prayer Group telephones. Here’s a woman who called from yesterday’s program and I just received this as I walked in this morning. She’s calling from Peachtree, Georgia. Said, “I was in a car wreck two and a half years ago ago and yesterday Richard had a word of knowledge on the program about a person whose leg was being healed and lengthened.” She said, “That was me.
God has lengthened my leg two to three inches and the limp which I’ve had for two and a half years is gone. “My husband has been bitter and calloused and I called the other day for prayer for my husband and for the Holy Spirit to fill his heart. And on Sunday night my husband went to church with me and he went down to the altar and accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.”
From the campus of Oral Roberts University and the City of Faith Health Care Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, today with special guests LaVerne and Edith Tripp. Now, the Oral Roberts Ministry presents.
That’s right. With God’s help, notice, Lindsay, that I said, with God’s help, with God’s help–you know, God can perform miracles. (That’s right) But He has to have willing vessels. He has to have (That’s right) people to work through. I was talking with someone just a few minutes ago and I said, “God doesn’t rain twenty dollar bills down out of heaven. That’s not the way He works.”
He works through people. And you know, God doesn’t have anyone to work through that doesn’t make mistakes. (Amen) Have you ever thought about it? God has only people to work through and people make mistakes. Isn’t it wonderful to know that, that God can work through you even though you make mistakes in your life?
The good thing about a mistake, Lindsay, is, you can get up, you can say, “Well, I made a mistake. Lord, I ask You to forgive me. Help me not to do that again.” And you can start over. And God gives us a second chance. He lets us start all over. And you know what the best part about God is? He lets us start over with a clean slate. He wipes it all away.
You’re mentioning second chance. I’ve just, just this past weekend I finished writing my autobiography titled, HE’S THE GOD OF A SECOND CHANCE. And I’m, it’s on the way to the printer right now. I hope that within about two weeks I’ll be able to offer it to you on this program. We’re going to get it printed just as quickly as possible. For about ten years, Lindsay, publishes have been after me to write an autobiography, my life story, and I have never felt led to do it until, until now.
But they wanted your story, all the, all the grime and dirt and all the, all the things about how can we get the gossip and everything. That’s not what’s going to minister to the needs of people. We could gossip all day long. We could tell you stories about all day long but that’s not going to minister to your needs. Richard and all of us, everyone of us have made mistakes in our life.
My face was bright red and I took my temperature but I had no fever. And it was fear. Fear that the same thing that happened to little Richard Oral might happen to the child she was carrying. And we had already known by ultrasound that it was a girl. We’d already named her. We hadn’t told anybody. And we got out of the bed and got down on our knees and we rebuked it, in the name of Jesus.
I demanded that the fear come out. And you know, the minute we said that, suddenly the shaking stopped. My face became normal color. And a peace came in her heart. Her face became normal in its color and suddenly we had the assurance that God was bringing a miracle. And, friend, I come against that fear. Maybe you have a fear with a SR01 child right now.
I rebuke that fear, in the name of Jesus. Jesus spoke to the wind and waves and said, “Peace, be still.” RR_Mark_04:39 ) And I speak to that fear, that wind of fear, that wave of fear in your life. I command it, in the name of Jesus, to come out of you. Come out, come out, come out. For you to be delivered today, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet, in Jesus’ name. Oh, I feel that in my heart. And someone’s beginning to expect a miracle right now. Larry, I want to sing just a chorus. That’s all the time I have to do it, but I want to sing a chorus of that song, “I Expect a Miracle.” Friend, this is for you.
Friend, you can expect a miracle. Let me sing the chorus again. It’s hasn’t changed. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever. You say to me, can I really have faith to expect a miracle? Can I really believe? Yes, you can believe. Yes, you can SR02 believe. The Bible says that Job said when everything had fallen apart, when he had lost everything, he stood up and said, “God, even if you slay me, yet I will trust you.” ( RR_Job_13:15 ) Those were the words that Lindsay and I said when we lost the life of our little son. But the Bible doesn’t end there in Job. It says that God turned God’s captivity when he prayed for his friends.
And I’ll tell you, as we’ve opened up our lives and rededicated our lives to God and we’ve begun in the healing ministry afresh and anew, God turned it around in the lives of Lindsay Roberts and we were able to conceive and bring forth a new little life, to start over again.
Oh, it’s leaving. It’s leaving, Lynette. It’s leaving someone now. Hallelujah. Yes, yes. Oh, we thank You that that home shall be restored and that healing shall come in every area of that home. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Remember just what Ken said, you cannot blame God. What happens in your life is an oppression of the devil. And I know that I’ve said that a million times, but when we lost our little Richard Oral, the first thing I said was, God, what on earth did You do this for? Why didn’t You stop this? Well then I said, it’s none of my business because the secret things do belong to the Lord.
And I put the blame where it was, the devil attacked our son. There may be people that have said, “God, You did this, God, You did that,” but it’s just like breaking your vows. You set yourself in a position for the devil to attack you when you break your vows to God. God doesn’t throw things at you. But sometimes we set ourselves in positions where we have blocked God’s power. We have stopped God’s power and we’ve done it ourselves.
And it’s time we said, had to say to God. I don’t think we put ourself in a position where we blocked God’s power. But after I said I did all I knew to do and that little boy died, I said, you know, I was so confused. And I had to say, God, I am sorry. I know better than to blame You. But you know, the devil could have attacked us again and again if I hadn’t said, God, I’m sorry, I know better than that. Because at that point when I said, God, now why didn’t You do something about this, and I tried to blame God, I set myself in a position for the devil to destroy me. I did it myself and I know I did it myself. So I had to correct it and say, God, I’m sorry.
It’s like that woman who said, “God turned my life around when I turned my life toward Him. Amen, that’s right. It’s a two way street, isn’t it, Ken? Two way street. And there’s many people, and I heard your dad preach a message about keeping the vows. He preached it at Campmeeting, keeping the vows. People make vows. They don’t keep their vows that they made to God.
In fact, in the Word of God in Psalms and then you can run the reference on it in other places, it speaks about making vows to God and promises to God and not keeping those and in so doing you take yourself out from the protective power of God. Don’t know, it just seems to me right now coming up in my spirit is, there’s some people that have made some vows to God and they’re listening right now. And what I’ve said has pricked their spirits. And God is saying to you, if you will repent and turn around, He will restore to you what the devil has taken from you and your last days will be greater than your first.
Ken, why don’t you just follow the Lord and just pray the prayer right now that you feel in your heart for those people you are describing? Father, right now in the name of Jesus, Father, I reach out as if to touch these people, because You said that we should reach out and lay hands on those and pray for them. Father, I pray for them right now. I feel in my spirit there are many people that are being restored right now. I thank You that they are now asking You for forgiveness and they are promising You that they will do what You have told them to do.
They will turn around and they will restore themselves unto You. I thank You for ministering to them. I thank You for turning their situations around. And, O Father, yes, right now, that one, that one that has that stomach condition, curse it now in the name of Jesus and I command it to be whole, in Jesus’ name it is done. Amen. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus.
Lynette, I feel led to ask you to pray, just whatever is on your heart. O Father, we thank You. We thank You that You are concerned about us, that You are concerned about every need. Father, we pray, we pray for those wives there in that home that is troubled, troubled in your heart. Oh, I thank You, Father, that You shall minister to that one. Yes, depression, we command you to leave right now, in the name of Jesus. We thank You that she shall be …
Seeking whom he can devour. Devourer. And he’s going to kill and destroy. Well, the doctors are not killing and destroying. They’re looking for, they’re trying to preserve life. Penicillin didn’t come from the devil. No, you see, so it came from God. Now, here’s what we’ve got, we get to a point where we’ve really got to zero in on and that is, not everybody will ever be able to be healed by divine healing.
By prayer. Or prayer, whatever you want to call it. And somebody said, well what are you talking about? Well, let me go back and say it this way. Not everybody will be saved. It’s available, but they don’t all accept it. And also, Ken, sometimes there are unknown factors that we as human beings cannot understand. I’ll never understand the death of our son Richard Oral. came to a point where I gave it to God. There was enough healing power in that intensive care unit, that was not in the City of Faith, that was before the childbirth center at the City of Faith was opened, but there was enough healing power in that room to raise the dead.
I don’t understand it all, but I gave it to God. And Lindsay and I were able to try again and she brought forth a little girl that’s in perfect health. And I praise God. But there are things in this life, Ken, that we don’t understand. There are some things we’ll never understand.
That’s right. I heard my dad minister at a funeral of one of the young men that went to Rhema and they don’t know why. They still haven’t discovered really. They don’t really ever know why he died. But he used the Scripture in Deuteronomy, “The secret things belong to the Lord.” There’s some things that we just don’t know about and we’ll never know about it. Paul said it this way, “We see through a glass darkly now, but in that day we will know.”
There’s another thing was thinking about and that is this, people in the crisis of their lives, many of them out there today are in crisis, they make vows to God. God meets that need. Six months later they have forgot about that vow. And they find themselves in trouble again and they begin to pray and they wonder why God is not meeting them. Well, they’re not keeping up their end of the contract. See, when you make a contract with God, you’ve got to keep up your end of the contract before God can do His part.
Right. You minister that way all the time. In fact, I’m leaving and going to a minister right after this program on a crusade and I’ll be praying for the sick. And people say, “Well, man, there you are praying for the sick and you took your son to the City of Faith.” I said, “That’s right.” I said, “We were at a situation that I at that particular time for several reasons, I was not ready faith wise to fight a faith battle.
Besides that, didn’t have time to fight a faith battle. I had to have some immediate results. And I used”, there they are, the hands right behind us, “prayer and medicine together.” And we got perfect … Solution out of it. We got a result that was perfect. Actually where they went through the skull is not supposed, the bone is not supposed to grow again. It is.
The bone has grown again. It’s growing again. It’s covering up and there’s becoming bone in there where they had to drill through the skull and that’s not supposed to happen. That’s supernatural, see. That’s what God, the doctors couldn’t do anything about that. Now I say this all the time, Richard, I tell people, if you have a disease that medical science can help you control and keep you alive, use that until you learn how to believe God and get complete supernatural healing.
In other words, you’re saying, use all that God has for you. Use anything that you can get your hands on that God has given. Everything that’s good, you said, comes from God. That’s what the Bible said. I didn’t say it. God said it. That’s right. You see, it’s not your words, it’s the Word of God. That’s right. But people say, well I believe in medicine but I don’t believe in prayer. Or I believe in prayer, I don’t believe in medicine.
I think they are both wrong, Ken. That’s right because they’ve got to take the whole package. The whole loaf. Right. Who gave all of the doctors, the researchers, everybody that’s found all of the drugs, all of the cures, the operations, who gave them the knowledge to do that in the first place? Where did it come from? Did the devil do it? According to the Bible he didn’t because the Bible says that the devil is going around as a roaring lion, you know …
Some people say, only believe. I prefer to say the words of Jesus, believe only. That means, don’t do anything else. Not just only believe, but believe only. I, Richard Roberts, want to ask the Oral Roberts University Singers to get ready to sing. In a moment I’m going to introduce them to you. And I do want to say this to those of you who have need at the City of Faith. Here we are outside the City of Faith today and it’s a wonderful, beautiful day here in Oklahoma.
You can see the healing hands behind us. And I, Richard Roberts, hope that those hands, as you see those hands on this program today, remind you of God’s healing power and also be reminded that the City of Faith is standing by to serve you. If you have a need to come to the City of Faith, then I want you to call and make an appointment, area code 918-493-8000 or 493-8181. Someone will answer your call.
They will help you in arranging an appointment. Don’t just show up. Call first before you come and that way we can, we can get you scheduled properly and we can take care of you in just the way that you need to be taken care of. And Lindsay and I have had a fantastic experience in the childbirth center. If you’re getting ready to have a baby, I can’t think of a better place for you to have that baby than in the City of Faith Childbirth Center.
That’s the truth. They cared for me and they loved me. But you know what? They were that way with everybody. You know something that happened to me. Now looking back, sitting in front of the City of Faith, it dawned on me that, you know, I entered the City of Faith with absolutely no fear whatsoever. During the entire birthing process I never had a moment’s fear.
You know, that’s probably one of the most important things in having a baby or going to the doctor or going to the hospital. If you can set your mind that God is going to work a miracle for you and do it without fear, there’s something about coming to the City of Faith that for me it removes fear. I was not afraid in any way of the entire process. And I think that’s a miracle.
Could you use a little attitude help today? I know there are days when I can use that kind of help…because it’s not always easy to have a “can-do” attitude in the world we live in. There are plenty of reasons why our attitudes can get down and depressed. But even if we’re surrounded with a “can’t-do” atmosphere, I believe God is still looking for someone who will say, “I can!” The apostle Paul was God’s original can-do man. In fact, he went so far as to say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13 NKJV).
Notice that Paul didn’t say that he could do all things in his own strength. He made it very clear that he was dependent on God to help him do what he couldn’t do in his own humanness. Even when he was thrown into jail because of his faith, Paul wrote encouraging can-do letters to the churches he had established. How could he write those letters while he was in such dire conditions? Richard Roberts believe He could do it because he had learned three simple things that helped him have a can-do attitude.
I Think I Can!
The first thing Paul had learned was to think the right thoughts. If we want to have a can-do attitude, I believe we have to think right. Do you remember the children‘s story about the little train that was trying to make it up the mountain? The only way the little train could make any progress was by telling himself, “I think I can…I think I can….” And that’s and example of right thinking, isn’t it? Proverbs 23:7 NKJV says, As [a person] thinks in his heart, so is he. It’s true a person often becomes whatever he or she continually thinks about. And life’s battles aren’t always won by the strongest man or woman…but I believe victory often goes to the one who thinks, I can!
I Believe I Can!
If you want to have a can-do attitude, it’s essential to believe the right things. You may be thinking, Well, Richard Roberts, I have a little trouble with the believing part. I understand how you feel. But if we want to become victors rather than victims in life, we have to: Believe we were created in God’s own image. Believe we were created for success. Believe we were born for such a time as this. Believe what God says about you and me. God says you’re worth the price He paid when He sent His Son, Jesus, to the Cross to die for your sins. He says in Psalm 139:14 that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. God made you, and He created you for greatness. Decide today that you’re going to believe what God says about you!
I Say I Can!
So many people underestimate the power of the words they speak. But Proverbs 18:21 tells us that the power of life and death is in the tongue. And isn’t it true that a lot of the trouble we get into is caused by the words we speak out of our own mouths? If we want to have a can-do attitude, we need to speak the right words. Too many of us say, “I can’t make it,” or “I can’t take it.” If you’re having trouble thinking of something good to say, you can start with the Bible. You can begin to say by faith what God’s Word says about you. “If God is for me, who can be against me” (Romans 8:19), and “No weapon formed against me shall prosper” (Isaiah 54:17). I believe that when we begin to think right, believe right, and speak right, we can be lifted up above our past, above our fears, above the can’t-do atmosphere of this world. And with a can-do attitude, the whole world can be opened up to you!