Sid Roth - How To See More Miracles
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome. Welcome to my world where it's naturally supernatural. My guest has found an amazing secret for miracles. Do you know what it is? Chutzpah. Do you know what chutzpah is? It's a Hebrew word and means "boldness, nerve". He has hundreds of miracles right in his own little congregation he's a pastor over. I mean, a hundred people stood up and they said, "I just had a recent miracle". But these are not just miracles. These are medically documented miracles. Get ready. I was speaking to Pastor Don Nordin and what he just told he is outrageous. At one of his services, he just asked a simple question and the question was, how many of you in the congregation have had recent miracles. Now that's kind of a risk on your part. But you know, how many people would you estimate stood up in your church that said they had recent miracles?
Don Nordin: I would estimate about a hundred.
Sid Roth: Did you get that? I mean, how many churches in America could you say, stand up if you just had a recent miracle and have a hundred people stand up. And then you had them actually testify their miracles.
Don Nordin: I did. I asked them to give a one-sentence testimony, which is difficult for some people. But a one-sentence testimony of the miracle that God had done in their life. We actually took about 50 of those on that Sunday morning. We didn't have time to take all of them. But it was amazing.
Sid Roth: Let me take you back. Second grade, you're minding your own business. You're riding your bicycle and you hear the audible voice of God. What did he tell you?
Don Nordin: He told me that wanted me to preach his word and you got to bear in mind that I'm second grader and it really, at first, struck fear in my heart. But then I felt this calm peace over me, and from that day, I never had any doubt about what God wanted to do with my life.
Sid Roth: Now you say it was an audible voice. You really mean that? I mean, it wasn't just a thought. I mean, you're a little kid.
Don Nordin: I absolutely heard the audible voice of God. I was actually riding my bicycle and I had stopped, and I heard this voice say, "I want you to preach my word". And I was by myself, and I actually got off the bicycle and looked around to see who was there, and no one was there except God.
Sid Roth: Now at seven, you had already seen three miracles. One was your dad. Tell me briefly about what happened.
Don Nordin: My father worked in northern California in the logging woods. He cut timber for a living. And one afternoon, he was about to finish up his day and he fell a tree, and the tree went over and hit another tree and bounced back, and struck my dad across the midsection just below the ribs. And of course, in northern California the trees are very large, and pinned him to the ground, just crushed him. And he cried out to God, and this tree actually bounced up for a split second. My dad's testimony is that something grabbed him and just jerked out from under that tree.
Sid Roth: Now how does he know it wasn't just another logger that did that?
Don Nordin: Well there was no other loggers around. Everybody was on the other side of the hill. He was the only one in that area. When you're cutting trees, they don't work right together because of the danger.
Sid Roth: So if I'm understanding you right, it fell down, it struck him really badly. I mean, he's incapacitated. It swings up, it's ready to fall down again and just before it falls down again, someone, though no one else was there, pulls him out.
Don Nordin: Yes, head first.
Sid Roth: So it had to be an angel.
Don Nordin: Had to be an angel and moved him at least six feet, maybe more.
Sid Roth: What would have happened if he hadn't been pulled out that split second?
Don Nordin: Well no doubt he would have died if the tree had come back down and rested on him.
Sid Roth: How serious was he they took him to the hospital?
Don Nordin: Well no one thought my dad would live, including the loggers that were working with him. They put him on a gurney, a cot, and put him in the back of the jeep, and had a long drive over rough terrain to get to the hospital. And when he got to the hospital, the doctors just, they didn't have any hope for him at all. The person that was in the hospital at that time, it was a small town hospital and the surgeon, the local surgeon was on a seven-day vacation. And so they just allowed my dad to lay on the hospital bed and they did nothing for him for seven days because they were convinced that he was going to die.
Sid Roth: Right.
Don Nordin: And when the surgeon came back, my dad can remember that the surgeon walked into the room, took a look at him and said, "Well I guess this guy is not going to die after all. We need to do something for him". His intestines had already set up gangrene and the whole thing. And they did surgery on my father and three weeks from the day of his accident, he walked out of the hospital on crutches, and God has completely, God completely healed him, completely restored him. My dad is 82 years old today, pastoring a church, and still working a second job in construction, and he's probably healthier than I am.
Sid Roth: Now I notice you use a word, I want you to get it. It's the audacity, the audacity of faith, the audacity to pray. What does the word "audacity" mean?
Don Nordin: The word "audacity" is boldness, confidence, going beyond the map in your life with regard to faith. The Bible says that, "We are to boldly approach the throne of grace to obtain help and mercy in the time of need". And I believe that when we pray, we should be risking when we pray, pray prayers of risk.
Sid Roth: You know, I looked the word up, "audacity" in Webster's dictionary and I couldn't believe what I found. One of the definitions of audacity is a Hebrew word, chutzpah. And you know what chutzpah means? It means nerve. Now talking about nerve, I want you to see a doctor in a medically verified miracle, genuine miracle. Don't you ever say this is faith. We'll even give you his name, his hospital, everything about him. Don't go away. We'll be right back.
Sid Roth: I love medically documented miracles. Skeptics, where are you? Tell me about the Garza twins.
Don Nordin: The Garza twins attend our church. Their parents, Isaiah and Evangelina have gone to our church for several years. And when they discovered they were expecting twins, they started going through the normal process of going to the doctor's appointments and that kind of thing. And pretty early on, they discovered that the twins had what is called twin-to-twin transfusion, where blood is passing back and forth between the twins.
Sid Roth: Is that dangerous?
Don Nordin: That's very dangerous. It's almost always fatal to at least one of the children and usually to both of the children. And as they walked through that process, they were advised by almost everybody that they saw to abort the pregnancy, and they chose not to do that.
Sid Roth: Even with that kind of a prognosis.
Don Nordin: Even with that kind of a prognosis. In fact, one day...
Sid Roth: They have to be, you must be doing a good job if they're in your church. You taught them right.
Don Nordin: Well I don't know if I did a good job or they're just smart people.
Sid Roth: Okay. So they went against the doctor's advice.
Don Nordin: They did go against the advice of the medical community and not aborting the twins. They just chose to let God decide what would happen with their children. And so they continued with this pregnancy. And the longer it went, the more opinionated the advice became from the medical community that they should abort. And on a Sunday night in our church, we had a miracle healing service, and they came to that miracle healing service, and came up for prayer. And a lady in our church, one of my board member's wives, Kim Hawthorne, prayed with them. And at the end of that prayer, she said to them, she said, "Go document this night because God has performed a miracle for you, and write down the date and the time, and what occurred because something has changed here". And so when they went back to the doctor, the doctor as he's doing the sonogram, he said, "Amazing, amazing. There's baby one, there's baby two and it appears that something has changed here. But yet, the diagnosis was that you still should expect that there is going to be some really severe consequences when these children are born". But they knew at that time that the miracle had taken place, and we were believing that these twins would be born normal, and that they would live normal and healthy lives. And of course, the medical community believed that even if they were born, that they probably would not be able to live normal lives just because of all the things that go with the twin-twin transfusion.
Sid Roth: Now how old are they today and what do they look like?
Don Nordin: These children are ten years old today and they're the picture of health.
Sid Roth: I want to go Dr. Alexander Reiter. He's a heart specialist at Texas Children's Hospital, Houston Medical Center. Let's go to that clip now. Dr. Reiter: Follow this blood vessel. You see, it goes like this. And here connects with this one. So this was the main connection between the two. So blood from this one will go into this one and end up in the other baby or vice versa. What happened here at a certain point, this here clotted, formed a little clot and it stopped it. And when it stopped it, allowed them to recover. That's what saved them. Those what saved them. Because otherwise, would have continued, would have died, both of them. Both of them would have died. This is a miracle. Male: Yeah, grace of God. Dr. Reiter: Yeah.
Sid Roth: Did you get that? A medical doctor said, "This is a miracle". And God is not a respecter of persons. As a matter of fact, God spoke to you audibly, and what did he tell you?
Don Nordin: The Lord spoke to me and said, "If you can convince the people I will do my work". And so I took that to mean that if, in my preparation and in my preaching, I needed to take the scriptures that the Lord had laid on my heart and figure out what can I do in my delivery, in my presentation to convince these people that God is actually going to do and wants to do this. And I think that when my preaching changed that the number of miracles began to increase that we were seeing in our church and our ministry. You know, Ephesians 3:20 says that, "God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly above that which we are able to ask or think of him according to the power of works in us". Now the problem is, not that we think God is not able. Our problem is believing he's willing. And the Bible says he's able to do these things and that exceedingly and abundantly means that God will go past or way past, do more than what the Bible says that we can ask or think of him.
Sid Roth: You're convinced of that, aren't you?
Don Nordin: I'm convinced of that, yes.
Sid Roth: Okay. There are crosses that people bear. All of a sudden, a doctor says you have cancer. All of a sudden, there's an accident. Tell me about the Mr. Funderburg.
Don Nordin: John Funderburg is a pastor friend of mine. He pastors a church in Murfreesboro, Arkansas. And at 32 years old, John is a great big guy, he's a healthy, strong guy, and at 32 years old, suddenly, he was overcome with a heart problem. In a 24-hour period of time, John went from working in a sawmill to being in an intensive care unit, in a hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas. And that night, the doctors came and told him wife Crystal that there's very little chance of his survival. His heart was pumping 10 to 15 percent of what it should be pumping. The only chance would be for a heart transplant.
Sid Roth: Simultaneously, what were you and your church doing while this is going?
Don Nordin: We're praying. Everyone that knew John was praying. There were people all over the nation, maybe around the world that were praying for John.
Sid Roth: Did the doctor expect him to recover?
Don Nordin: The doctor did not expect him to recover.
Sid Roth: Well let me read you a report from the doctor that was involved in that. And the doctor's name is Dr. Steven Hutchins, Medical Director, Baptist Health Transplant Institute. "Mr. Funderburg came to Baptist Medical Center with severe heart failure and in shock. He was gravely ill and being evaluated for heart transplantation at the time of his admission. I saw him in my office one month later and his repeat echo showed absolutely normal. Mr. Funderburg has a miraculous", you don't see that from doctors, "a miraculous recovery". Well when we come back, what happens when a world-renowned surgeon is operating on a patient and the Holy Spirit says, "Do something that has never been done before". You realize the patient will die if this isn't God and you also realize you'll lose your practice. What would you do?
Sid Roth: Talk about audacity, nerve, boldness, chutzpah, this doctor, he's got it all. He has got audacity. He's in the middle of a surgery. Tell me about Dee Sapp.
Don Nordin: Dee Sapp had been diagnosed with colon cancer and had to have emergency surgery. And Dr. Remedios was doing the surgery, and he took out three feet of her colon. And the Lord spoke to him and said to stretch the rest of the colon and to attach it. This had never been done before. And he could have lost his license. She could have lost her life. But he knew the Lord spoke to him and he did that. And the miracle is a creative miracle because after a period of time when she was examined, not only did everything work properly, but that colon had grown back to the normal six feet of colon.
Sid Roth: You know what is so amazing to me? I called my own doctor and I said, "Doctor, if someone had three feet of colon cut out, one year later, how much of it would have grown back"? He said, "None, impossible". That's what he said to me, impossible. But God says to you, "All things are possible to those who believe". And you're part of the all. Let me read Dr. Remedios' quote to you right now. "There is no question about it. I could feel the tangible presence of God in the operating room. It doesn't matter where you are, what your circumstance, there's nothing too difficult for God. The tests showed the three feet of colon that I cut out was back. This is a miracle of God". I love it when medical doctors use such terms of miracle, beyond human expectation, miraculous. That is so great. Another member of your congregation, just everything is going fine. Then what happened to him?
Don Nordin: He had a motorcycle accident. In fact, when he got the hospital, the doctors termed his condition as hopeless. I was on my way to the hospital and the Lord spoke to me and said, "When you get there, you tell Clint and his family that he will recover all".
Sid Roth: Wait a second now, you're putting your reputation on the line that you know that. I mean, the doctor said, hope-less. When a doctor says that, how do you have the chutzpah, the audacity to say what you did?
Don Nordin: Well on my way to the hospital, I didn't know what his condition was.
Sid Roth: That helped.
Don Nordin: And the Lord spoke this to me and I was excited about getting there and sharing a word from the Lord with them. And when I walked into the room and saw his condition, I'm like, oh.
Sid Roth: Among other things, he was in a coma.
Don Nordin: He was in a coma, yes. And but we prayed and I told them, I said, "The Lord told me to tell you that Clint will doubtless recover all". And today, Clint is back on his job. He is completely normal. He has recovered all. In fact, I would say that I like this Clint better than the other Clint, because he has I feel like a more outgoing personality, and God has just done an amazing, amazing thing in his life.
Sid Roth: And again, you see these papers here? These are all the medical reports from doctors on this Clinton Mayfield. God is not a respecter of persons, which means if he'll do it for one, he'll do it for all. I love the statement God gave you. I want you to hear this. I want this to soak in, inside of you. God told Pastor Don, "If you can convince them, I will do the work". Quick nugget on faith.
Don Nordin: Well I just think that people believe that if they're desperate God will hear them. God doesn't respond to desperation. He responds to audacious prayer and faith.
Sid Roth: I want you to have the most audacious faith you have ever, ever had. Read the Word, believe it's God's love letter to and go for the gold.