God: “Slap the Death Out of That Baby!”
Muffled gasps fluttered through the air, whispers turned into chatter, and a growing unrest blew through the crowded auditorium.
I didn’t see the woman at first. Approaching from my right through the darkness of the room against the brightness of the stage lights, I wasn’t aware of her until she laid the child on the stage beside me.
No one knew of this mother’s struggle—how could they? She was a stranger among the thousands who came that day. However, like the woman with the issue of blood, this mother pushed her way through the crowds to make her way to Jesus.
In her arms she carried her infant son. Her journey there had been long and filled with a mixture of desperation and tentative expectation. Walking down the aisle toward the stage that morning, the battle was on to determine which of these emotions would overcome.
The expectation and hope had launched this family on their cross-country journey. Days in the car with the whole family on a road trip can be a test under the best of circumstances, but this was no simple family outing; this was a make-or-break, life-altering determination to take possession of a promise.
“I shall not die, but live, And declare the works of the Lord.”
They came with an assignment: to grasp ahold of healing for their son, for their baby brother. As they loaded the family car with the children and prepared for the thousands of miles ahead of them, all they had was their faith in God. And that was all that they needed.
The journey was long and difficult, filled with opportunities to give room to fear. But what other options were there? Stay home and wait for death to take its young victim, for the grief of a lost child to consume their family?
Going on in faith was the only option this mother was prepared to consider. Healing was waiting for them, and her own heart was placing a demand on it.
“Then He touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.” And their eyes were opened…”
Healing for their son was at that conference, and no obstacle in their way would stop them from getting there. No one there knew their story, the heartache they had already endured. To everyone else, they looked like any other family.
As the mother laid her precious son on the stage at my feet, her words were barely audible, “Please help me, my baby is not breathing.”
This was about to be a really bad day for the devil. I knew it.
Death Has No Sting
Earlier that morning, as I awoke, there had been a scripture on my lips:
“Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.”
Death did not have the power to hold Jesus in the grave, it was powerless against Him. If it could have kept Him there it would have, but death had lost its grip. It struck me that morning: if death did not have power back then, surely it has no power now.
Jesus defeated death itself. The very end result of sickness and disease people fear the most had been crushed. If no sick- ness is greater than death itself, and that had been overcome, then no sickness—regardless of its prognosis—could stay in a body and live.
Death has truly lost its sting!
My drive to the conference that morning was different. Brought back to my remembrance were the dreams of the previous few nights, all different, yet somehow the same. Over and over, I saw people being raised from the dead in my sleep.
Old people, young people, different circumstances, different nationalities, yet the same devil behind the death and the same Jesus overruling it! My confession until then had been that I had never been in a position to see a person raised from the dead, but that I had often dreamed about it.
Goldfish-Raising Power
Goldfish, however, were another matter. The goldfish was doomed from the get-go, being no match for a two-year-old who insisted on feeding the unfortunate creature his orange juice. Absent of an official autopsy, I’m relatively certain that the cause of death was toddler-initiated poisoning.
After three days, I finally got around to scooping the slimy, decaying fish out of tank. He was more than a little green around the gills and the very distinctive odor of death filled the air.
Flopping the fish from the net onto the counter, it occurred to me that Jesus viewed death a little differently than we do. To Him, it’s not such a big deal. Was it really that big of an issue that this fish was dead? Was he truly destined to die prematurely at the hand of an inexperienced aquarist? Was it too late for him?
My finger found its way to the fish’s distended belly, and gently pressed a few times. Feeling foolish, realizing I was attempting CPR on a three-day-dead fish, I swiftly drew the line at attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!
I recalled that when He had been faced with a dead girl, Jesus had an entirely different technique. He didn’t try chest compressions. Instead, He spoke to the problem: “Little girl, arise!”
Soooo, I figured if it worked for Jesus, it was worth a shot. “Little fish, arise!” I commanded.
Gradually, his color began to change from green to orange and its tail fin began to flop up and down! Our dead fish was now very much alive! I plopped him in some fresh water right away. He went on to live for several more years, eventually dying of more natural causes.
For someone who, at the time, knew very little about faith and how it worked, I learned that day to view death as temporary.
Death Is Temporary
I didn’t realize how significant that lesson was until I held that cold, motionless baby in my arms years later.
Death was back. It still smelled the same. Only, this time, the stakes were infinitely higher, the cost much greater. Yet the smell of death wasn’t accompanied by the usual fear or panic, rushing to call first responders. Death was still temporary—the atmosphere was one of peace.
Time seemed to stop. Everything in my senses went quiet. The peace of God enveloped the small group of speakers praying on the stage and drew in the eyes of the crowd. The Holy Spirit had something to say:
Hush, this child is not dead but sleeping.
As I scooped the little boy up in my arms, his head fell back- ward, and his big brown eyes rolled back in their sockets until only the whites were showing. His chubby little arms were out- stretched like a starfish and hung limp. His chest had stopped moving; he wasn’t breathing.
As a former nurse, I instinctively checked for his pulse but felt nothing. His lips were gray, and an ashen tone covered his brown skin. Yet, giving this baby CPR didn’t even occur to me. Instead, I heard the Holy Spirit’s voice again.
He is not dead but sleeping. This is temporary. Now, speak to it.
“Life, in Jesus’ name! Heart, beat; brain, function.” Authority resonated up from my spirit and I felt it leave my lips in those words.
Good. Now slap the death out of him.
One swift, solid tap on his side and suddenly life entered his little body. Immediately, the baby’s arms reached up toward me and his eyes, rolling back into place, caught mine. He gasped, taking in oxygen like someone who had just surfaced from deep water.
The peace of God felt heavy, like a deep rest was settling about us. I held the little one in my arms for a few moments, feeling the warmth return to his body. His eyes grew heavy; he had just experienced quite the adventure! As if nothing was ever out of the ordinary, blissfully unaware of the thousands of onlookers, he fell asleep in my arms.
Turning to his mother, I gently transferred the sleeping baby back into her arms.
“It’s ok now. He’s just sleeping,” I explained.
As we made our way back up the steps to the stage, the small group of speakers reassembling to carry on with the teaching, it was only then that I noticed the father of the baby and their other children who had been standing behind us watching the whole event unfold.
Victory Is Normal
It wasn’t until later—all of us backstage debriefing the morning’s events, and when Andrew Wommack said, “Well, we just saw a baby raised from the dead”—when it truly occurred to me what had happened. It all had just seemed so normal, so natural, like death never had a chance. We had the advantage all along. The battle had already been won before we even knew we were in one!
God is always supernatural, but He is rarely spectacular. We can miss the supernatural in looking for the spectacular. He is always with us, not just when we feel Him, or hear Him speak, or see Him working in a supernatural way. No. He is always with us.
In the times when we have lost our way, in the moments when we are angry at Him, at life, at the world, He is there. When faith is like a mystery that we can’t figure out or are frightened to even try, and when we are too tired to believe because our heart is hurting from the grief of previous disappointments. He is with us even then, protecting us from harm that we didn’t see, deafening our ears to words that would hurt us, guarding our hearts with His peace.
This event was not a coincidence. This victory was prepared years in advance before that baby was ever born. It was a pre- determined win. God had already planned the victory parade before we ever saw the battle.
Imagine that: a Father who cares so much for His child that He prepares a way of escape from the clutches of death before the child’s existence. God is way more faithful to keep His Word than we can fathom.
“…What can man do to me?”
