The One In Which My Mouth Was Wide Open Because I Witnessed A Miracle (and You Can Too)!

Back in 1996, at the ripe impressionable age of 19 I went to a large missions conference with 19,000 other college & University students from across the globe.

One night, a speaker named T.V. Thomas was having a hard time talking. His voice was raspy and was catching every 3 words.

It was painful to watch. Obviously, he was not going to make it through a 30 minute session.

After 5 minutes of his heaving and coughing, drinking water and trying to push through, the conference Director, Dan Harris came up and asked all of us to stop and pray. Dan mentioned something about every single time this particular talk was given at previous Urbanas some big problem happens. Dan said he believed God had something very special to say to us that evening and we needed to pray.

It was only months earlier that I’d decided to trust in Jesus and follow God with my life and intentions. My prayer life was sketchy at best. I wasn’t sure God actually did anything when we prayed. I rarely asked God for anything specific. I kept my eyes open watching T.V. as all 19,000 of us went before the Lord to ask for his voice to be restored.

As God as my witness I will NEVER FORGET the moment I heard T.V. Thomas look up at from that podium and bellow out AS CLEAR AS DAY —- “Amen!”

All I could do was freeze. I looked around at everyone around me who seemed not to be freaking out as much as me and said, “did you?” “Did you see?” “Did you hear?” I could just barely get the questions out…to which everyone ignored me any old way.

My mouth was hanging open. His voice was strong, it was restored fully. He went on to preach loudly for 45 minutes without so much as a wrinkle. I have no idea what he said because all I could think about was what happened —we’d asked God. God had healed him. It was one of the most life altering events of my life. It was the night I believed God was real AND very much involved in the inner workings of our life.

As a result of Urbana ’96 I made a commitment to pray for the country of Uzbekistan for the rest of my life. I made a commitment to spend a summer doing relief work overseas which happened in Kenya in 1997. I made a commitment to become a missionary (anywhere) and I have been serving InterVarsity for the past 12 years. Urbana was and is an amazing opportunity to meet God in incredibly unique ways alongside brothers and sisters in Christ from across our globe.

The early-bird price for Urbana goes up June 30th (this Saturday!), so sign up, sponsor a student or twenty-something to go, and spread the word, yo! This is a fantastic opportunity.

My friend Adam said it best here.…

“Urbana only happens every three years. This year, it’s December 27-31. And it costs real money—$339 for students, plus travel and hotel. That means for some people it ends up costing close to a thousand dollars. Every time I hear people question the cost (and InterVarsity, the ministry that puts on Urbana, is not making any money from it), I want to ask a couple questions.