Jesus Resurrected Jimmy - UBM [David Eells]

My dad and I have a business. We take care of foreclosed homes. We go in after the person has moved out and we address any type of issues. It ranges from cleanouts to weatherization and things like cutting down dead trees, etc. We do not do any one specific thing on any certain day. Many times we need to take two or three guys with us. We just do a lot of work that way.

Jimmy is a 52-year-old man who has worked with us since 2009. Jimmy is like a member of our family. He just really is. I will tell you how we met Jimmy. My dad and I had not been in this business long, maybe about eight months and that was in 2009. We had a big plumbing job to do and we had not done anything like that before. My dad wasn't really good at plumbing. He had sweat a few pipes and stuff but really couldn't replace one. I had no idea about anything, so we were really dependent upon finding the right person at times to help us with the jobs. We had a big plumbing job to do where all the plumbing had been ripped out of the house and the company we worked for were really evil people. They were always calling and chewing us out. They are out of business now because they were not good business people.

We were really in a bind one day. The guy my dad had set up to help us with the plumbing job was one of his buddies. He had been sober a few years but he relapsed that weekend on alcohol and went on a three-day drinking binge. So on the morning of the job he called and said, "I've relapsed! I'm drunk! I can't do it". So here we are with 12-15 hours to go and the work order had to be in. My dad and I were really freaking out! We were burdened with this business. We had this big job and we wanted badly to make everything right.

So on the morning of the job, we should have been there by now. We called a few people but nothing. So finally, my dad goes to this old shop here in my town, where he use to do some work for a guy. He pulled in there to see if this guy had anybody whom he could use; anyone who wasn't working that day. Someone he knew who could help us with a plumbing job. My dad pulled into the shop but nobody was there. The shop was closed that day. My dad knocked on the door; nobody was there. He was walking back to his truck and as he got into his truck, he saw some guy walking up to the door of the shop and knocking on the door. My dad said, "Hey! They are not in today. They are closed". The guy said, "Okay". My dad said, "Would you happen to know a plumber?" And the guy said, "Yeah, I'm a plumber", and this was Jimmy. My dad said, "Man, I have this plumbing job that I have to do today. It needs to be done. I have to be there right now. Can you do it?" And Jimmy said, "Yes, I can do it".

A lot of people say that they can do something, especially craftsmen-type work, but they really cannot. Jimmy was an expert plumber. Jimmy has led an awesome life! It's just that sin has destroyed it. Jimmy was an underwater welder on suspension bridges. He used to put on scuba gear and would weld underwater bridges. He had owned drywall companies. He had made a lot of money in his past and was very successful but drugs and alcohol had taken that from him.

My dad and Jimmy went to the property and they knocked the job out. Jimmy worked like a banshee through the night. I was very impressed. It was a miracle and we always watch for things like that, divine appointments. God saw that we needed that done. God put Jimmy there and my dad there at the same time. It was a miracle! We would mention this all the time about how God did this. He put Jimmy in our life. After that point, it was almost like Jimmy was with us every day for a job.

At that point, we didn't consider him as family, and for about a year we worked him on and off. He had a drug problem and he got caught stealing some copper wire from Lowe's or Home Depot and they put him in jail for six months, and we didn't hear from him. When he got out, the first thing he did was call my dad. He said, "Calvin, this is Jimmy. I've been locked up". We said, "We know". He said, "I just want to let you know that I've given my life to Jesus". We had talked a lot about the Lord to him. And he said, "I want you to know that I've given my life to Jesus Christ and I'm doing it right now. I've quit smoking cigarettes and I'm sober". He said, "I'm off the crack". He said, "I'm clean". He was just like a new person.

After that was when we really got close to him and this was probably two-and-a-half or three years ago and he was with us every day. He could do just about anything! Any type of work: electrical, plumbing, HVAC. I mean, he was such an asset to us. He lived in our town and we picked him up every day for work. But slowly he started getting back into crack and smoking it at night; we would pay him every day.

He lived with his sisters and they had a big six-bedroom house, so he really didn't have much responsibility. A little background story: Jimmy raised his two sisters. Their parents died in a car wreck when Jimmy was a young man and the two girls were young. Jimmy ended up having to raise his two sisters; a 25-year-old man having to raise two teenagers by himself. I guess that is why they let him slide around the house. He still partied and stuff and they really didn't mind because he did so much for them when they were kids. They have had a traumatic life. They had a brother who died and they lost their parents. They were a really tight family.

Jimmy goes back and forth to Florida. He has a really good woman down there he is engaged to. She is a registered nurse. He goes back and forth every summer. When he gets down there, he gets on drugs and he has to come back because they fight. It's just a back-and-forth thing.

He left in March and just came back a couple of weeks ago; two weeks before the accident. We were so happy to have him back. Not just because he helps us but because my dad likes being around him. He is a buddy for my dad. And it's just good to have him around.

You would never know that he was a drug addict; you can't tell. He is smart and he looks like a decent human being. He is in shape and you just wouldn't know that he's smoking crack and stuff. But I guess he controls it the best I've ever seen. He goes to work every day but, still, that's not something you want to be doing.

The day of the accident, the client called us and said that they needed six trees cut down on a property. They said, "We need them cut down really fast because HUD oversees all foreclosures. We cannot try to sell this property until these trees have been cut down".

So, my client called me and they were really in a bind. We went up there but we are not professional tree cutters by any means. We have cut down a lot of trees but there are some trees where you really need a professional. We cut them all down except this one. It was a very dangerous tree because you could not lay it down. All of the branches were hanging over the house; all of the weight was over the house. You couldn't lay it down because it would fall on the house.

My dad, Jimmy and me were using pull-saws. We got a ladder up on the roof and we were trying to cut the weight off of the tree so we could somehow lay it down. We got to the point where we got a lot of branches cut down. There were two big branches left and my dad and Jimmy said, "Hey, this is what professional tree guys do. They will tie the bottom of the tree with a strap or a rope and then throw it over the top branch and then cut the bottom. Then they slowly hoist the bottom one down using the strength of the branch above it, so that it doesn't hurt anybody on the ground".

There was some cause for concern; I won't say that there was no concern. Jimmy had a 20-foot ladder leaning up against the tree and he was going to walk up the ladder and cut the limb. His concern was that when he cut the branch, that it would swing back and hit him; that's what everyone's concern was about.

Something else happened but not what we were concerned about. Jimmy said, "Hold on, guys". And I even said, "Jimmy, do you want me to cut that?" And he said, "No, I got it". I said, "Alright", because I didn't see the danger at the time. I really didn't; nobody did. You know, hindsight is 20/20. I asked him if he wanted me to cut it and he said, "No". He said, "Let me smoke this cigarette". He said, "This may be my last cigarette". He went over there and he smoked it. He was kind of being serious but I just didn't sense the danger. And he went over there and sat down and he smoked that cigarette and he said, "Alright".

We threw the strap over the top of the limb and about five of us went over and held the other end of the strap, so that when Jimmy cut the limb we could slowly lower it down, using that top branch like a pulley. So when Jimmy cut that branch, he was concerned about it coming back and hitting him but that is not what happened. When he cut that branch, the weight of the bottom branch was too much for the top branch. And as soon as he cut it, it wasn't immediate, but the balance of the branch broke the top branch that the strap was hanging over.

So the bottom branch fell and the top branch came down with it and hit him in the head and it knocked him out cold, and then he fell about 20 feet to the ground. We ran over there to him and it was just like he wasn't even alive. I mean, it was like a dead body. This was almost like immediately, too! His eyes, his pupils and retinas were just grey. There was just a grey blotch; there was nothing there anymore. Both eyes were just looking straight ahead and it just looked like nothing was there. He had no pulse and he wasn't breathing.

I knew he was dead but, you know, people have been brought back medically. Also, too, I knew that I had faith. I knew that God was in the picture and nothing is impossible with Him. So I had two things that were kind of keeping me positive. It was just a horrific thing to be sitting there. My dad had never done CPR before and he began to give him CPR. He started pumping his chest and I said something like, "You have to breath into his mouth, too". None of us knew what we were doing. I just watched it in movies, where you pump a few times and breathe.

So he was pumping and breathing into his chest but Jimmy wasn't coming to. I think that CPR may have kept something going in him but it really didn't bring him back; there was no pulse. We called the ambulance and they came. I mean, he was like a dead body. Medically, I don't know what is dead and what isn't but he certainly had the look of a corpse and he had no pulse and he wasn't breathing; and there was just nothing there.

The ambulance and all of the medical workers came and they were working on him, pumping air into him. My dad kept asking, "Is he breathing? Is he breathing?" And they said, "We are assisting him. He's not breathing but we are forcing air into his lungs so, technically, we are assisting his breathing". I don't know; I just think they didn't want us to panic because they wouldn't give us a straight yes or no. They just kept on saying, "We are assisting him".

They got him onto a stretcher and moved him and instantly called Air Care. And as the last paramedic was leaving, the guy looked at my dad and he said, "It doesn't look good". And I knew he didn't look good. Your training kicks in at that moment. It really does! Your training kicks in and you just go into prayer. I went into prayer immediately with a 911 worker right over the guy who was praying. I was confessing it; not only praying but confessing the good report. I certainly by no means was happy or overly positive. Even against fear, I was just confessing, "He is going to be okay, guys! He is going to make it! We prayed. God is going to save him". I was trying to keep the mood controlled because, at that point, the slightest word could just totally wreck the atmosphere. You have to really take control of the environment and know what to say or you will cause everybody to go into a panic.

Immediately, I called David because I needed somebody to pray with me who was going to care and who was not going to be moved by the situation. This was no small thing to David because of the things he has seen; I needed a real prayer partner to agree with me. I called David and told him what happened and we prayed. David was very bold. He said, "Lord, please save him! Lord, have mercy!" David commanded the breath of life to come back into Jimmy. He commanded the spirit of death to leave him. He declared it and I agreed with him. David and I prayed and talked a little bit and then I hung up.

As I was commanding this, I was walking toward the kitchen where Michael Hare was so he could hear me and agree with us, which he did. Michael and I were remembering that this same thing had happened years ago, shortly after we had moved our morning prayer meeting from the office to the living room to bring in more people. I got a call on the phone from a brother from larger UBM who told me he awoke to find his wife dead beside him and asked me to pray. So I spoke pretty much the same commands while the brethren were in the meeting prayed. He then said, "She is breathing". We all rejoiced for the Lord's grace and mercy.

Everyone was still praying when Air Care came and got him and took him to the hospital.

Garrett told us that by that time Jimmy had stopped breathing with no pulse for 15 minutes before the EMS people arrived and then another 20 minutes until the Air Care people picked him up. In all, he was dead at least 35 minutes. According to doctors on the Internet, after about five minutes with no heartbeat or breathing you are just gone.

When we got to the hospital, we were just thinking the worst. Air Care said that when they got to the hospital, they were working on him and he became somewhat conscious and they gave him a thumbs-up. They said to Jimmy, "Jimmy, can you give us a thumbs-up?" I think he squeezed one of the doctor's hands.

They said that he had a broken hip and broken collarbone (I think his shoulder was broken), fractured skull, fractured sinus cavity, collapsed lungs, broken ribs, internal bleeding and his vertebrae were broken in three places, with a possible spinal cord injury (they thought a shard of bone was stuck in his spinal cord).

When we got to the hospital, nobody knew, but he was alive. It seemed like it was just one thing after another. At first it was like, "Just let him be alive!" Then, he was alive. Then, it was like he was not doing better; this thing came up and that thing came up. He filled with water, so we prayed against that and it left. He got pneumonia; there was always something else to fight for.

And those with faith like Garrett never gave up or gave in but fought the good fight of the faith. "Hold fast the confession of your hope that it waver not for He is faithful that promised".

Long story short, he had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks and the doctors wanted to do surgery on his spine. They couldn't before because his lungs were in such bad shape and he wasn't able to breathe on his own. He had pneumonia and filled with water up to 250 pounds. That was a big concern, so I called Tim and David and we prayed about this. Then, on Monday, I went to the hospital and the water was gone and he went down to 187 pounds.

This had been a constant fight against unbelief. His sisters and his fiancé don't know about faith; they were at the mercy of the bad report. They were there staring at him 24 hours a day and they were not seeing him get better. They would call and say, "It's not looking good. It's looking bad". I mean, the whole time, it did look bad! But he was still alive and I thank God for that.

It did look bad. They couldn't do surgery on him because he was in such bad shape and couldn't breathe on his own. It had been three weeks and he was lying there with a broken back, and his lungs would not work on their own. They loved him but they were ready to give up.

I don't want to make it seem like this experience was all bad, I'm just trying to get my thoughts together because there is a lot of good coming in this, too. It has just been a constant battle with my dad. I would build my dad up and tell him it was going to be okay. I would speak life to him, then the sister would call and say how bad things were and he would just sink. I just kept telling my dad, "I believe that God is going to heal Jimmy. This is God's way of waking Jimmy up".

One thing I was praying, "Lord, he is not ready to meet You. He just is not!" He was smoking crack the night before this happened. We looked on his phone and he had made a call to the crack dealer, so he totally was not living right. He would have gone straight to hell if he had died. That's when I prayed, "Lord, don't let him go to hell!" I wanted him to be healed. Not just healed physically but also spiritually. I really lifted him up.

According to the story in Luke 7, where the centurion's servant was maybe lying unconscious and near death, I don't know if the servant was a believer but the centurion was and the servant was under his care and he just took authority and look what he did. The centurion went on a journey to meet Jesus. I mean, physically he did something. {Heb.4:11} Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest. He was really trying hard to reach Jesus. I can't walk 10 miles to reach Jesus, but I can strive in my mind to stay in the rest. And to stay positive because that is just as hard. It may be easier to walk 20 miles for somebody and walk through crowds. It's hard to sit there and control your thoughts but I was doing it. It's a gift from God! I felt kind of uncomfortable with the kind of peace that I had at times. It's safe. It's a gift from God and I appreciate it and I was just dwelling in that.

It looked bad! It really did, but like I was telling Tim Conway, "This is one of those trials where everything looked so bad but I just wanted to believe against all fear. And to believe against everything that I saw and everything that I heard, and to have that "crazy faith" to just say that everything is going to be all right, even when everything you see says it is not". This was the type of trial, that if I could stay in the rest and stay in belief and not doubt I could see this through till the end to see the promise come. This will do so much for my faith forever and I know that. This is too valuable of a trial not to participate in this in the biblical way of believing when everything else is contrary.

I was supposed to come on the Outreach call last week but I couldn't. I wasn't too bummed by that because we were supposed to see Jimmy and I wanted to have more to report to you guys. On Friday, he had 50 pounds of water on him and they were really concerned about that, and they could not get it off. We went in there Monday and he looked normal. He was down to 187 pounds. We met his sister and his fiancé at the elevator. As we were walking into the building, they were leaving to go to the cafeteria. His sister said, "I will go up with you guys", but the fiancé went on to the cafeteria. In the elevator, the first thing out of the sister's mouth was, "It looks bad! It's bad! He's not doing good! He's not going to make it!"

It's one thing to just believe and have faith and to have a carefree attitude when you are not being forced to see and to hear all the negativity. I wanted to see how I would really react in the environment, to see if I still had this faith, this peace. Even in the elevator, she was speaking all this death and speaking what she was naturally seeing. My dad was just totally sunken. But it did not phase me one bit. I just had complete faith and I had the utmost positivity and it was really based upon nothing physical. He was lying in the hospital and, by appearance, dying, and she was saying it is bad.

I was just holding onto the confession and holding onto prayer and faith in God and just being positive. I was like, wow! I was pretty impressed with the amount of peace that I had. I was not wavering by that because I knew there could come a time when you might be like, "Well, yeah, she's probably right". It's like you succumb to the fear, you succumb to what is natural. You say, "Well, I guess it's just not God's will!" But by God's grace, I did not succumb to that. That was one of the things that came, too: "Well, you try it Garrett but this just isn't God's will", but I was just like, "Nope!"

So we walked up to the room and he looked good. He looked like a normal person for once. He wasn't all swollen and stuff. But we got in the room and found he had pneumonia and was heavily sedated on Fentanyl and totally out of it. He could have been conscious but they had him sedated because he was in such a bad way and in too much pain.

They said he had pneumonia and his lungs were not working right and he still had not had surgery. They had him on this machine; it's called a "roto bed" for when people get pneumonia and they are stationary and they cannot move, it rotates them left to right to get all of the mucus moving in their lungs. Pneumonia is a huge killer of people in hospitals. My grandmother went into the hospital for a surgery years ago and caught pneumonia and died. She went in for one thing and caught pneumonia. That is so common. So now he comes to sometimes and will squeeze your hand, you know, and gives a thumbs-up and he tries to move his neck around. He has tubes down his throat and everything.

His sister was just in a bad way and speaking the curse. The doctors said that nothing was going to work and then his fiancé comes up there and she was just bawling! And she's like, I wouldn't call her "nutty", but she's different. She has 30 years of medical experience, too, so she's really bawling because she sees people all the time like this and this is just the worst thing you could have, natural knowledge. It was like being at a funeral, I mean, the mood in the room. I was so full of faith. I was calm and positive, even being around all this. Nothing really phased me, it really didn't. I had this positivity in me, like I just knew it was going to be okay.

This is the gift of faith through grace that a person can pray for so they will not give in to unbelief.

I wanted to wait to voice my opinion because I am not immediate family and I didn't want to come off too boastful like, "Yeah, come on, guys, cheer up", because you have to be careful with that kind of stuff. They were going through something different than what I was going through, so I just waited for the Lord to be able to minister and speak life and to be able to lift their spirits. What I heard was how bad it was, the crying and how he wasn't going to get better. She was saying, "I've seen this and they don't get better!" She said, "He has ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) now". The impression you get from them is when you get that, you never recover from it; you are on a breathing machine forever.

So his lungs were all messed up and he had pneumonia and she was just sitting there staring at him 24 four hours a day and not leaving the hospital; just driving their little selves crazy. I was trying to talk to them. I said, "Well, what happened to the water weight?" They said, "It got taken care of". I was trying to say, "Well, is this the Lord or the medicine?" because we prayed Friday for this. We prayed Friday for the water weight because he was full of water and they could not get it out of him. I said, "Well, is this something they are really concerned about?" They said, "Oh, yeah!" I said, "Well, did they think they could manage it? Were they positive that they could get this under control?" She said, "No, they really didn't think that". So I'm thinking to myself, "We prayed for that Friday; it's Monday and it's all gone and that's one thing to be positive about". But they were not really seeing that but I did. We prayed for that; it's gone and now on to the next thing.

We were sitting there and it was bad, just like being at a funeral. My dad was sunken and they were, too. And after about 60 seconds of silence, my dad was just desperate. He said, "Garrett, let's pray". I could tell he didn't really know what else to do. He was asking that like there was no hope and maybe a last prayer would. I went over there and I couldn't speak an eloquent prayer by any means; I'm not going to move a mountain with my words. I just said, "Lord, my spirit is right in this. These people need this". I'm not perfect but just know that I'm going to be the vessel used to pray and to speak faith and let this be a turning point. We went over there and I prayed my prayer, believing that Jimmy is predestined and that this is just God's way of getting his attention and that God is going to heal him. And not only heal his body but restore him spiritually. We prayed for faith for the family.

Whatever I did say, I had faith when I said it. I know a lot of people say the most eloquent things and use powerful words, but it was just faith behind it. I felt like I could have just been saying "gobbledygoop" but faith was there. I really felt like that was the key. I believed that he would be okay. Even sitting there watching him and seeing him in real bad shape, I was being positive.

So after we prayed, about 10 seconds of silence went by and we saw his oxygen start rising. It's a little LCD number and it was at 90. It went to 90, then 91, then 92. And then it caught their attention and they said, "Look, his oxygen is rising!" We watched it go all the way to 94. I didn't know what that meant but they did and they were really impressed by that. They said, "Look at his oxygen; it's going up! It's the highest it's been all day!" It was something physical that they could see and they were really impressed by that. I guess 90 is a low oxygen level, so when it went to 94, they were really impressed by that and it was cool, too. I said I was praying and that was like God winking at us a little bit, and winking at them to give them a little bit of faith. And that kind of opened a door. His fiancé turned to the sister and said, "Maybe he will be okay!" She needed that little bit of faith, even if it was only fleeting and she returned back later. Both of them were starving for so much hope and faith, and I am sitting there worried about whether I should be positive and speak out. They were starving for a positive word. Sometimes we should not deprive people of that because we just don't know how much it will help them.

So I could tell when the mood changed in the room and I just spoke up and I said, "Listen, I know I am not immediate family and you guys are going through something different than what I am going through, and I don't want you to think that I don't understand the seriousness of the situation, I do. I said, "I just believe that he is going to be okay". I said, "I really believe that he's going to be okay and that he's going to pull through this". I said, "Listen, Melissa, I saw a dead man that day. He was not alive". I said, "He's alive now and that's the first miracle. I've already seen a miracle". I said, "You've only seen him in this condition. I've seen him dead and now he's alive. Even though he's hooked up to machines, he's living. As long as he is alive, there is hope. There is reason to have faith and there is reason to have hope. I just know that he is going to be okay". They said, "That's what Janice said". I guess Janice was his commonlaw wife for 20 years. He's only been with Melissa, his fiancé, for eight years. Janice is now a born-again Christian and she and a friend were at the hospital when this first happened and they were just spirit-filled and had the good report. They have been such a help in this by encouraging the family and not being moved by every situation. I would call Janice during the day and she would be so positive and speaking faith about a report for Jimmy. And then to hear from Melissa who doesn't know the Lord was totally without hope.

I just talked to them that day in the hospital and just really let it out. I took about three or four minutes and to speak and talk about faith and just be positive. And I could tell that they really received it. I was pretty impressed with the Lord with the amount of peace that I had in the room.

Michael Hare asked in the conference call, "Has Jimmy ever awakened enough to speak to him?" I said, "No, because he has tubes down his throat. He has awakened and has been conscious and they said he has moved his head around and has tried to sit up, and has given people a thumbs-up and will squeeze your hand. He can move his feet now and he can move one of his legs. His hips are broken, so he can't move one leg. He is not paralyzed".

I talked with Melissa yesterday and she was saying how bad it was and the doctors said that he should be doing better by now. And now they say that there is some kind of underlying issue that they don't know about that is keeping him from getting better. I will be honest, when I heard that, it kind of moved me but I was like, "No, I'm just going to stick this thing out and have faith and believe. As long as he is alive, there is hope". Even if he is dead, there is still hope because he was already dead once.

Tim Conway commented in the conference call, "Hey, Garrett, the other thing you mentioned is about the overwhelming peace that you've had and the rest that you've had, and how you saw the importance of that in the days to come when all calamity is breaking out". I replied, "Yeah! And it's not just calamity. Here's the thing. It's not always you seeing physical things that will move you; it's people's reaction around you that moves you. People have a greater influence on you than, say, if your house was hit by an earthquake or something".

I just really believe that negativity and unbelief being spoken by people around you is more dangerous than you seeing crazy disastrous sights and signs. It's traumatic! It was traumatic seeing him fall and seeing him lying there dead. But you have to overcome that negativity. You have to overcome people's unbelief around you. They don't know that they are doing it.

Unbelief and fear are spirits that enter people because they listen to them and do not cast their words down through faith in God's promises.

I'm sure it happened to people during the exodus, when one or two started complaining and before you know it, you have five million people murmuring an complaining around you and crying out, "We are going to perish!" I mean, that can move you and that is what you have to be on guard about. That's what I am being on guard about right now. Not following a crowd. Not being moved by the voice of the crowd.

Tim commented, "Yeah, that's a real good point. It's a spirit, that negativity, that speaking the curse. When I get around my family, it's the same thing. They just speak the curse. It's just amazing to me. It's also amazing that Jimmy, before he cut that limb, spoke the curse that this might be his last cigarette".

{Pro.18:21} Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. {Mar.11:23} Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith cometh to pass; he shall have it. {24} Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. {Mat.12:36} And I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. {Rom.3:4} God forbid: yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy words, And mightest prevail when thou comest into judgment.

Yeah, that's the part that came to me. You just know that he's not living right when he speaks that way. I'm thinking, "Lord, have mercy on him. Lord, if You would have taken him, he would have just died that day". They call Jimmy the luckiest man alive because he has been through so much. He will get drunk all night, steal somebody's keys, hop in a vehicle and drive an hour to go get crack. Drive back at 4:00 AM and never get pulled over. He has no license. He has warrants for his arrest. He has a fake ID that he has been using for years.

I was in a truck with him one day coming back from work and a state trooper pulled me over because I was speeding. I said, "My name is Garrett Crawford". The state trooper said to Jimmy, "What's your name, sir?" Jimmy said, "My name is David Gorsuch". He pulled out an ID that said David Gorsuch. And I'm thinking to myself, "Oh my gosh! What is going on?!" And I thought, "I'm going to jail!" The state trooper looked at his ID and said, "Okay". The state trooper gave me a warning. So he is really lucky in that sense but his luck ran out that day. I think it wasn't so much like judgment, although you reap what you sow. But even in judgment, God can be sovereign and use it as a blessing for you, if it turns you to God.

I tell you what, I don't know what it is about the fall, but as soon as September hit, I just saw judgment fall all around me on people. I've seen people die; I've seen people almost die. My sister was thrown in jail, which she deserved. She was a burden on us; she just would not obey the law, was on drugs and not obeying probation. Making our lives hell. The Lord has had enough of her and put her in jail; she has been in there two weeks. My dad and I are raising her 14-year-old; we are taking turns with her one-year-old. I don't mind because she needs to be in there. She needs to be properly glorified and let the Lord really deal with her.

With Jimmy, I just prayed for a spanking from the Lord, a severe one because you have to reap what you sow. If you are living like hell, you have to reap that but I just pray that the spanking is not so severe that you are destroyed through it. And that you can come out on the other side properly glorified with the fear of the Lord and with a renewed mind to do the right thing.

One of my friends' dad died from a drug overdose years ago and then on the same night of the anniversary of the dad dying, my friend died of an alcohol overdose. He would just not stop drinking. He died in his trailer the same night his sister died in a bar from an alcohol overdose but they brought her back with defibrillators. It's just crazy to see the curse have its way with the people around me. But I feel like just witnessing this puts the fear of God in me to know that grace is rare, it's valuable and it's not to be taken for granted.

We talked to Jimmy a lot about the Lord. I am always playing my Christian music around him and when I bring a new CD out, I say, "Listen to this new CD". We don't preach to Jimmy; he's a grown man. And, obviously, he's older than me. My dad and I try to lead by example. We are not perfect by any means but we know that God put Jimmy in our lives for this very reason. And for us to be a positive example for him and to lead by example and be there for him, and love him. I just cannot accept that it's going to end this way. Years ago, when he got out of jail and he called my dad he said, "Calvin, I found the Lord in jail. I gave my life to Jesus". He also had said, "I quit smoking cigarettes and I'm off crack. Will you guys take me back to work with you?" And I believed it! And I just refuse to believe that it's going to end like this. I don't accept just a physical healing.

Jimmy has two sisters and they all live in this big house together with a bunch of kids, nephews and nieces. And Jimmy is like the patriarch of the family. If Jimmy is touched by the Lord, that could change the whole family and they would follow him to serve the Lord. I said, "Lord, just with Your slightest breath, you can breathe life into a human being. Lord, please, just move upon his family and move upon Jimmy and breathe life into him, bring him back. Lord, God this will be a great story; You could do so much with this".

The whole time, I'm just sitting there praying. The Lord knows the end from the beginning. He knows what He is going to do and sometimes we pray for something that He is already going to do. We just need to be in the rest. I'm just taking the chance that He already has this planned. I'm just going to be in the rest and just believe.

Let's say he dies; me worrying and being in fear would not change one thing. Even if he were to die (this is hypothetical because I don't believe it) and looking back, I wouldn't change one thing that I did. I wouldn't say, "Well, I should have been more fearful". What good would your faith do? Well, it kept me positive! Fear is never good!

Michael commented, "That is an excellent point, Garrett. We need to be in the rest. It doesn't make any difference what goes on around us in natural life. Just like you said, you can't change one thing about it! Not one thing! But God can! And we rest in the fact that we know that God is going to change him. Hey! That's faith! And that's what he feeds off of".

Tim commented, "Yeah! And when we were talking, I remembered the testimony of Tom Kruger, where he had about a 4% chance of surviving the surgery and, if he did, a 95% chance or something of being a quadriplegic. He walked out of that hospital. You know, God can do it. Right now, Jimmy needs our faith along with your faith, along with his first wife's faith joining in on that because there is no other faith there. Everybody else is speaking the curse and speaking the bad report and all that.

My dad is always feeling guilty and cornered from me. If I ever speak about faith or being positive, my dad says, "I have faith! Jimmy is going to live because I have faith!" I said, "I never said that, Dad!" And he's like, "If I don't believe, Jimmy isn't going to live!" The poor guy, it's really bothering him because he feels responsible. Although he wasn't responsible, but any time someone gets hurt on your watch (your friend) you feel responsible.

I said, "Dad, honestly! God is going to heal Jimmy, whether you have faith or not". I said, "There are too many people who are believing; it isn't just up to your faith". I said, "God is going to heal him". I wasn't trying to be spiteful but giving him peace. I think it took the burden off of him because if you just have one person in the crowd (of a thousand people) and that one person has faith, God is not going to negate that person's faith because of the masses' unbelief. I just believe that. I don't think that a multitude of unbelief is stronger than one mustard seed of faith. Because you might get into places where everybody doesn't have faith and you are thinking, "What's the point of having faith if nobody else is believing?" Don't give in to that. That's what I'm doing because I don't really see a lot of faith around. I don't say, "Well, it was a good run. I've seen a couple miracles but nobody is believing with me, so this isn't God's will". I say, "No! I'm going to ride this thing till the end. I've invested too much".

It's kind of selfish too because I want to see this through to the end. I want to reap. There have been a few times in my walk where something became a trial and I would believe. And the, I would falter and not believe and I would give up. But God would eventually do the thing anyway. Although I was encouraged, I would say to myself, "Man! But I gave up!" Although you are happy that the thing you got came to pass, you really couldn't grow on that because you gave up.

This is the time where, by grace, I'm going to be on board with this till the end. I'm not going to give up because when you hold fast until the end with your faith, you fulfill a part of it. And you feel like a part of the team. Like being on a Super Bowl team. Everybody on the team gets a ring but a lot of the guys sit on the bench. The back-up quarterback doesn't necessarily really feel like he's part of it. The guys who are in the game playing, they feel like they were part of the game. They helped win the game. They feel like they were used.

That is how I want to be. I want to have been used through this. I want my faith to have been used, so that at the end of this trial I can say, "Wow! I didn't give up! I saw what happened and now I want to start doing this every time there is a trial". A lot of things are going on here. He's killing a lot of birds with one stone here.

Tim asked during the conference call, "Does anyone have any words of encouragement?" Michael said, "I do. We are all agreeing with you, Garrett. And we're hanging in there in faith and believing the same thing you are. He's going to have a glorious testimony when he comes out from under this stuff. Praise God!"

Tim prayed, "Before you go, let's put our faith together for Jimmy and pray over the situation. Father, right now we just lift up Jimmy. We just speak to that pneumonia. We just rebuke that pneumonia right now in the name of Jesus. We command those lungs to clear. We command his breathing to be normal. We command his breathing to be totally on him and not on the machines right now, in the name of Jesus. We just thank You for just the awesome, awesome testimony that's going to come through Jimmy. We just thank You for his salvation. We thank You for his sisters' salvation, and his fiancé's salvation. Lord, we just put our faith together with his first wife and with Garrett right now, Lord. We are just believing for a total restoration for Jimmy, spirit, soul and body, Lord. And we just thank You for that, Lord. We thank You for just working in him, Lord, and working in that family, and working in Garrett's dad; just to build their faith. And, Lord, we just thank You for giving Garrett the wisdom and we thank You for the peace You've kept him in. And the rest You've kept him in and the faith that You've kept him in. We ask You to continue to pour out Your faith in him and pour out Your wisdom in him to be led of you, and have him speak when You have him speak, Lord. And we just thank You for the awesome testimony. And just the blessing You are going to do for Jimmy and his family. And we praise You and we put our faith together in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank You, Lord, that his lungs will start working".

I believed it! I hate to make sports analogies but when you're down in the fourth quarter and you make that winning drive, everybody is a part of it -- every receiver, every blocker. You make that winning drive and you win, that builds your confidence. That builds your confidence so that next time when you are down, you guys can pull together and you can pull that one out. You can drive and get that touchdown.

It's easy to pray when it's not a big deal or you could care less whether or not you get it, but this is a man's life at stake. I'm just one of the few people he knows, along with you guys, digging deep and we're going to see this thing. We're going to get the victory. So, collectively, when we're all in our own little personal trials trenches with the score down in the fourth quarter, we can know that we can pull this thing out again. Not by works but by faith. By just not giving up because that is what we are going to need in these days ahead. We are going to be down a lot and we are going to have to dig deep and hold fast to faith. Because we have the masses around us speaking the curse, brethren are going to be giving up, and you just have to know that everything is going to be okay and see it till the end; from trial to trial. That just makes you calloused to unbelief.

Update of answered prayers

Jimmy was brought home from the hospital last week. He is doing really well. He still has to learn how to walk again from his hip being shattered, but that is only a small hurdle to overcome at this point. My dad and I sat with him and talked to him; he was so happy and full of joy. He was like a child, just happy to be alive. He kept saying how much he and God have this great relationship now and how God brought him through this whole ordeal.

He told us he had a dream at the very end of being unconscious in the hospital, where God allowed him to speak with his deceased parents. They were gospel singers who died in a car wreck while he was a teenager. They told Jimmy, "No more drugs or cigarettes" and encouraged him to live a Godly life here on out. During our time with him Jimmy repeated this statement multiple times: "God is in my soul". It was refreshing to hear him say all these things and even in spite of the tragedy he has been through and the recovery ahead, I can honestly say he is the happiest person I know.

Saints, this was not a "greater works" resurrection. Jesus resurrected Lazarus after four days and from the tomb: {Joh.14:12} Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father. And when Jesus resurrected the bodies of saints long gone and in the tombs, their bodies were nothing but a few bones and dust but were reconstituted and walked out of the tombs. God can do anything. He says, "Is anything too hard for me? Is my arm so short that I cannot save?" By grace I have had a part in four resurrections and none of them were the "greater works" that are coming but part of the former rain. They didn't seem like some great thing on my part because they came so naturally with only a few words that were ordained and fulfilled by God. I am awed that God could use me but it felt like I had little to do with it and I am sure that I had little to do with it. People don't look at this that way but the greater work in this resurrection testimony was those who endured the trial of their faith to see the healings.

Jesus said, {Mat.10:8} Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely ye received, freely give. We received these gifts freely and we should give them freely. He put raising the dead in with everything else full gospel people believe in and do (healing and deliverance). And He commanded those early disciples to tell us to obey the same commands. {28:19} Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: {20} teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Resurrections are not meant to be thought of as a great or impossible task, since it is God doing the work and not us. Resurrections came all through the Bible and they will be common in the future. Not everyone should be called back from the dead but those who have a need, from God's point of view, to be here. Many have finished their course and have no need or desire to come back. There are reasons for some to return. We see from scripture that a woman's only son died, an only male heir, an only bread winner, one who was doing great service for others, as a witness to the lost, etc. Be ready, if God leads, to be used in this way.

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