Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - Miracles that Transformed My Family [Featuring George Jackson]

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Have you ever witnessed a miracle? In this episode, Pastor Allen and his father, George Jackson, discuss the moments when God brought healing to their family and intervened in ways they could never have predicted. Their family’s journey wasn’t defined by comfort or certainty, but by relying on God through medical crises, unexpected turns, and encounters that transformed their faith forever. Whether you’ve felt frustrated by unanswered prayers or wondered if God is really listening, their conversation is a powerful reminder: God still does miracles, He hears your prayers, and His timing is always perfect. —It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective.Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you.Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6dListen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

Welcome to Culture and Christianity. A few months ago, I introduced you to my father in a podcast, Dr. George Jackson, still involved in the ministry here at the church, and he shared a bit of his testimony. We did this thinking we were going to do one podcast, and I think so far there have been three episodes, and we weren't finished. So I asked him to come back for another session, and I wanted to share some of the miracle stories that we have seen through the years in the lives of people as he and my mom and then my brothers and myself have ministered to people. But he showed up a couple days ago and said,

I want to tell them about the miracles in the family. So the point of this session is he was going to share some of the God stories from within our own family system. It's easier to give testimonies where we know 360. So I think you'll enjoy it. We didn't get through the whole run, but we got through a good part of it. And the punchline is God is still involved in the supernatural. He doesn't always deliver us out of the challenge, but he will deliver us through the shadowed valleys. And I pray as you listen that you will see God's guiding hand in your life, whether you're on the other side and you've got a victory story to tell or whether you're still walking through some of those shadows. Our God is faithful and he delivers and heals and restores and renews. I pray that it is an

encouraging and faith-building episode. Enjoy. Welcome to culture and Christianity. Our goal is to live our faith outside the walls of the church. We have to have faith that survives a worship service, or it's really a precious little value. So how do we influence our culture? How do we shape culture? That's the point of these podcasts.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. I have a very special guest today. He looks a lot like my dad. In fact, this is your fourth episode, so I have to put you, you get frequent flyer miles. Good. George Jackson, some of you may have listened enough to know that for many years he practiced veterinary medicine. So a lot of those stories I get to tell about animals and such came from hanging out with him. Welcome back.

Thank you. I trust this is a good venture. It's dangerous when your son gets a microphone and has an opportunity to ask questions. But we have kind of walked through your life story a bit, a part of which is available in a couple of books you published. One is called An Extraordinary Life, which really tells the story of how you and mom came to faith and really kind of brings everybody up through the point when the church started. Yeah, it ends four years before the church started from when I was leaving school and we transitioned to Florida. So if you're in Murfreesboro, you can get that in the church bookstore, the next chapter. you're someplace else, you can get it from the online store. And then you've done another book

recently. Right. Just two months ago at the most, the book which explains the work and activity of the Holy Spirit in our life as the apostles experienced it in the book of Acts. Yeah, principally the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Right, yeah. Okay, and what's the name of that? The Eternal Spirit. Okay, in that same place as the next chapter or our online store. So we've kind of tracked through some of your life experiences, becoming a Christian, you and mom lived in Israel for the better part of 20 years. I thought in this session we'd take a little different turn, and it's going to be a little bit more over the span of your journey.

But my mom's story, you tell in the book, she was diagnosed with cancer just about the time you were finishing veterinary school. It was the, that was in May when Noah was born, and she was diagnosed. with cancer. And he was born the 5th of May. I graduated, I think, the 9th of June. Doyle's my youngest brother. But the doctor, she had malignancy, and the doctor said she had six months to live. And we were Methodist. We went every Sunday. I promise we went every Sunday. I tried not to go, and that was not allowed. But we weren't Christians. You can go to church and not be a Christian. The two are not synonymous. So my mom's told she's going to die. The minister came to

visit her in the hospital, and he didn't believe in heaven or hell. Right. And they wanted to do surgery. She had a C-section. They wanted to do surgery the next day. Dramatic, radical surgery. And you said it was too much surgery in two days. God is with you many times when you don't know him at a personal place.

I sat in that hospital room the day that two physicians stood over in the doorway, the OB and then the physician that was going to do them. breast surgery, and they put the pressure on me and said, if you don't do what we're suggesting, your wife won't be here in six months. And I said, for right now, we'll do nothing. And I got up and I left and I walked. It was about three blocks back to the university.

And Dr. Ebert, who was the head of clinics, but he and Hazel had no children and they kind of took us as a family because I was third oldest in my class you can remember them coming to the house at times I've got pictures of you sitting on the couch with Dr. Ebert and I went into his office and I... Let's not show those.

No. We'll just leave those as private. Sit down in his office and I explained to him briefly where I was with making a decision for Betty. He was behind his desk in a swivel chair. He turned around and looked out the window and looked up, and he said, George, there's someone bigger than us.

He gave me no more guidance, suggestions, and with that I got up and walked back to the hospital and told the physicians, we would do no surgery at this time other than the surgery. C-section. Well, I heard mom give this testimony more than once. I'm sure. And the part I remember her saying was you told the doctors you wouldn't do that to an old

cow, meaning that much surgery on consecutive days. Right. The same day. To which my mom responded, I'm no cow. Yeah. But you did go to Mayo Clinic. Yeah, she, we went home as you did in those days, especially if you had boys, you stayed till you fulfill the Jewish eight days for circumcision. Then we went home.

And that day after we had gotten home, my mother gave her a phone call and talked to her just briefly. And Betty gave her the story of the diagnosis. And my mom said, I tell you what, I need to go. And so she immediately hung up. up, got on the phone. My dad had been to Mayo Clinic in Rochester the previous year for some cardiac treatment, and she called Mayo Clinic to see when she could get a schedule for us to be there. So you got on a plane. You farmed the boys out. I've got two brothers. So you farmed us out to various and sundry people. You left us in the house with an open bag of potato chips. That's not true. They farmed us out of friends and family. Yeah. And you've

He flew to Mayo Clinic, and that's where mom said on the plane ride, you were reading a book about lameness and horses, which I believe. Right. And she said a prayer that if there was a God, he would let her know the truth before she died. Correct. So she could tell the boys to be Jewish or Baptist or Catholic, whatever that was. She didn't even know enough to ask to be healed. We didn't even know that was an option.

Oh, no. And again, I mean, we weren't Christian. And so they got to Mayo Clinic. she checked in you went to find a place to stay well i took her first like a good husband we went to the nicest hotel downtown and ordered a meal with all she had going through her mind all she did was sit there and stirred the food around her plate i ate a little bit and we went back to the hospital i found a basement room i could stay in overnight across the street. And she went to her hospital room. They took her right on back that late evening,

early evening. And after a full workup at Mayo Clinic? Well, actually, that evening, when she was in a room with another lady that had come down that was terminally ill with cancer, came into the room and said, Mrs. Jackson, I'd like for you to go with me down the hallway to do an examination. Mom and our confusion of all going on hadn't even brought a bathrobe, and so the lady in the next bed said, you can use mine. I'm not going to need it. And mom went down the hall with this man in a white coat,

and he did just a physical exam, talked to her a little bit, and he said, I find no disease in your body. And she went back to her room, not understanding what to think. He said, well, can I call your husband and tell him what I think? And she said, I have no way to know how to get a hold of him. So then the next... That was a little bit before cell phones. Yeah, quite a bit.

But then the next day we started at least two full days of going through five different departments of Mayo Clinic at Rochester, which they found no disease, no problems. And we took x-rays and lab results with us. That showed positive. And when we came to the end of the two days, the five departments, a doctor said, we find no problem. and no disease, you go home and take care of your babies. And I know just from conversations it hadn't always been a part of the public story, but you always felt that that doctor that first night was an angel.

It took us several years after we had become Christians to where we understood without a question, the man in the white coat, we never saw him again. And mom never saw him in two days going through five departments. He was never, ever anywhere in Mayo Clinic. But he showed up that evening, pronounced over her, I find no disease in your body. And he left wherever he was from. And just to highlight, so it wasn't a blown diagnosis.

She had palpable tumors. No question. And there was, there were x-rays and, lab work. There was an abundance of scientific evidence that there was some disease process at work. And when you left Mayo Clinic, their best analysis was you're healthy. Exactly. And they weren't too wrong. She only lived 55 more years. Yeah. Yeah. She was 88. And I told that story, which is some of it is revisiting an earlier part of what we've done. But to kind of set the tone for what we do want to talk about today, all of that happened before you're Christians.

You hadn't received the Lord yet. No. You weren't ready for eternity. Before we'd moved to Florida where we heard the truth. Our introduction to Christianity was supernatural. And it wasn't even the result of a request for healing. And to me, it breaks most of the norms that we have about miracles because we weren't Christians.

It wasn't faith-based. we weren't believing God. We didn't know a verse of scripture to quote. It was an expression of God's grace. And as I have grown and matured, I've understood it differently. I know it was a miracle for mom. God spared her life. It was a miracle for you.

You got to keep the mother of your children and your wife. For my brothers and I, it was a miracle. We got to grow up with our birth mom. So there were a lot of facets to what God did, but collectively he changed our lives. Right. And he did it as an expression of his grace and mercy. And as I look back on that from today,

it was an introduction into much of what he would do in our lives along the way. You know, I can't explain miracles or the supernatural, but you would never convince me that God doesn't do that. If I'd been in charge, my preference would have been, never had been sick. Yeah. You know, not to go through the trauma and the, the fear and all of the things. But that wasn't how God chose to do it. So I thought maybe we could tell all through our Christian journey from that day until

today, we have seen God continue to do miracles. And independent of where we were, like you're saying, when we moved to Florida, right after all of this took place, and we were living in that rented house for a year, mom was in the kitchen one day and this was before we were Christians and she heard a voice come through the ceiling because she said she looked up and it said you said let me know the truth and the voice said I am the truth the way and the life and she had to go and look because our Bibles weren't on the coffee table

she found a Bible in the house and she looked until she found that scripture in John, I think it's John 15, 16, where Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And then within six months of then is when our lives changed. You know, you don't have to look far to see that our economy is in real turmoil. Our nation is $37 trillion in debt. Inflation rates made it hard to buy and sell a house, even a car. We're all feeling it. When you go to the grocery store and you spend an extra dollar or two and every item, that gets personal in a hurry. Well, the most important thing we can do during uncertain times is to invest ourselves in knowing God better. Read his word, pray. That's the only

place we're really going to find stability we need for the disruption that I'm pretty certain is ahead of us. Beyond that, it's just plain wise to make the best decisions possible in our daily lives with our investments. When you think of all the options out there, gold is an investment that has stood the test of time. That's why I work with preserved gold. They've treated me with honesty, integrity, kindness, every step of the way. They're offering a free wealth protection kit, and all you need to text Allen, that's A-L-L-E-N, to 50-505. As a bonus, you'll get up to $15,000 in free gold and silver with a qualified purchase. Go ahead and text them today. clearly God was involved. I often question his timing.

Yeah. But it doesn't seem to cause him to panic. But I thought maybe we could talk a little bit. And I'm going to limit most of it to our family because that doesn't require us to give anybody else's testimony. But we have seen God's involvement consistently. And since you're here, I'll let you tell your story first. But you've had some minor heart issues, had a stint's put in here in Tennessee. I'd had one stint put in. And you've always been active and healthy, but you had kind of,

but anyway, you had a couple stints put in, but then you and mom traveled to Israel. Right. First stop before you get to your luggage even is passport control. Right. And you're in line at passport control. I had our carry-on luggage

and that long ramp you come down to come to passport control. I noticed that by the time I'd walked that distance. I felt like I was breathing some cold air, and so I just stopped a minute. Everything was fine. And so I went on over to passport control, and we were standing in line because there are multiple lines that are long. And some man happened to be in a line next to us and heard his talking, and he was from 30 mile away from where we grew up, which was a town of about 2,000 people in southwest

Missouri. Right. And so mom was talking to him and apparently because none of this, this is all hearsay from here on like a tree I went over backwards and my head hit thump

on the concrete floor and there was a doctor in another line. He came running over to see what was the problem and he's He said, well, he's not breathing, and I can't get a pulse. And he got on my chest and started trying to put pressure to get my heart to beat.

Well, as an aside note, last night in the night, this hand goes to sleep partly, if I'm not careful how I lay, because he dislocated some ribs and vertebra to where it pinches the nerve if it lay wrong, and that's now been a few years. Well, let's not complain. At the time he intervened, you had no pulse and no respiration. And Mom knew nothing to do except stand over me and say, Jesus. Now, that may not sound extreme to you, but if you've not been to Israel, there's not a lot of people just standing around out loud saying, Jesus.

Not in Ben-Gurian Airport. Jesus in Ben-Gurian Airport. And about after she'd done it a while with nothing. Up came some ENTs, and they did their thing with the paddle and shocked me, and after they shocked me a time or two, they said, well, he's breathing now. And the first, all of that was black to me. And the first I knew, I was in an ambulance bouncing up and down with an Oscar mask on, and I thought, if I've got this on, I must need to breathe for some reason.

And so I began to breathe. And they... Very clever. Took us to a little hospital that was a military hospital originally, not far from the airport. But all of this was on Saturday. And everything doesn't happen on Saturday. So they put me in the hospital, in the hospital bed, and left me there to, which I wasn't having any problems. once I was awake.

My heart was beating. But I could look up at the monitor. After you died, you didn't have many problems in after you came back to life. No, I was good after I was resurrected. And I could watch and I could see I had no heart damage from muscle enzymes. All my muscle enzymes were normal. The back of my head where I hit the concrete, there wasn't a lump, there wasn't soreness. there were a lot of little details that it takes you a while to live it out for another 30 years

to know what God did for you at the time. Well, some of that story I was involved with when you were absent. Yeah. Because I was already in Jerusalem with a group of people, and I was getting ready to go speak to a Russian congregation that Saturday afternoon. And my phone rang and its mom. the back of an ambulance. I can hear the siren. And she said, your father collapsed in the airport. They resuscitated him. I don't know where I am and I don't know where we're going.

And I said, well, it's okay. I'll find you. The EMT had lent her his phone. It wasn't even a number I knew. It's a remarkable. I answered it. So I hung up. But I want to go back for a minute. if you'd had that event 15 minutes earlier on the plane you wouldn't have survived because there wouldn't have been any medical care if you'd have had that event 15 minutes later you'd have been in a taxi on the way to jerusalem and you wouldn't have survived because there wouldn't have been medical care i mean it had to happen for all the times i want to complain about god's timing there was a really narrow window when there would have been a response available for you coincidentally there was a doctor standing in

line near you. Coincidentally, you were in the airport in Israel where they would have medical equipment. EMTs are there all the time. To revive you. So again, I don't understand maybe why the event takes place, but it took place in the one location you had been in in the last 15 hours where it was survivable. And so mom calls me, it's Saturday afternoon, which is Shabbat. I called an Israeli friend that knows the family and said, I just got to call my dad's in an ambulance, and I don't know where they're taking him. And he said, I'll pick you up in 10 minutes.

And by the time he got to the hotel, he knew where you were going. I don't know how. I've often accused him of working for the Mossad. It could be true. So I got to the hotel and walked into your room and you're awake. And I said, how are you feeling? He said, I'm fine. and I mean like chipper like acting like you were in there with an ingrownail

and I said well you're not really that fine and you said well I didn't go that far and I'm thinking well how far did you want to go you mean you didn't see a bright white light and hear a voice saying go back which you didn't but they kept you in the hospital they put in two more stents they put in one they waited until Sunday and then the doctors were back at work, and I just went into the next room where they took my left arm and did the calf on the artery there, and I could watch the monitor as they did it because I had no anesthetic or anything. Well, they gave you something to make you relaxed.

Well, maybe they did. They didn't put you to sleep. I was very conscious of what was happening. But you doctor trained at Johns Hopkins. Yeah, he had just gotten back a few weeks before spending specialized time there. But I think what's, I hope is helpful for the people that are listening, I will put that in a category of a miracle, because outside of a very narrow window of time, that was an unsurvivable event. Yeah, I totally died. But on the other hand, God intervened, but he used medicine. Right.

He didn't do it absent the doctors. And usually, I think my preference when I'm asking God for healing is I want him to do it completely absent any physical intervention. And in our journey through all the years, and we could give multiple testimonies from other people's lives, sometimes God sovereignly intervenes like he did with mom. And sometimes God intervenes, but he does it with a variety. And I want the people listening and learning to trust the Lord to have a broad enough imagination to know that it's not a formula. You know, when Jesus prayed for the sick. Sometimes he just spoke a word. Sometimes he commanded a spirit to come out. Sometimes he smeared mud on somebody's face and said, go wash. Sometimes he took spit and put it

on their eyes. Sometimes he waited for them to die and he raised him from the dead. There's not a formula. And in our journey, I mean, it's more limited, but in the 50 years we've been following the Lord. There's not a formula, but there is a consistent expression of God's supernatural involvement in the lives of people. Be willing to do what he puts before you at the moment to do. Don't try and decide yourself. And in the midst of Ben-Gurian Airport, where it's not overly popular to say Jesus, mom is standing, I know her. She's standing there making her declaration and she could have cared less who heard. Trying to silence her at that point would have been not overly fruitful.

Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah, you had lost control. And so God met us in that place. We can tell a couple more examples from our family story because they're diverse. They're all supernatally. Only God could have brought the outcome. Right.

But what we're inviting people to do is imagine that God still does miracles. and the timing of when he does it and how he does it and how far you progress through the process or we'll have to wait to heaven to get all those answers and I'm not comfortable with people that think they know the Lord well enough to explain all the answers that hasn't been my experience um Philip yeah we start there or take the next one there well I got the chronology and timeline the other day I talked to his younger brother dole because we were living in the little of wooden frame house that set up on rocks when we moved to the farm when one day we were having a fun time probably was a Saturday afternoon because I wasn't working and we'd been out in the pasture and we had a catch pin out by the clinic and you had double gates where you came out of the

pasture, went into it and then another gate to get back out onto where a pickup with a horse trailer or something was. Well, because Alan was such an elderly person at the time, he was the one opening the gates. And Doyle and Philip were standing on the drawbar behind the tractor I was on, which Doyle we figured out was somewhere four to five, and Philip was about eight. You understand if they were happening today, they'd have to wear helmets. and knee pads and elbow pads and there have been all sorts of safety gear

so you were reckless there we were I was raising three boys to be men I wasn't looking for whamps so anyway when Alan closed the first gate he still had the one other gate to finish closing and I said let's run off and leave him

well we were on a little tractor that couldn't go 10 mile an hour wide open but we let it do what it would do and when we started to run off and leave Alan Philip was turning around laughing and waving at him as we left and when he did his right leg swung off into the tractor tire

the gravity of the wheel moving caught him and drug him in between the tire and the little fender and threw him up over the tractor wheel he was right up here when I saw him going over, so I hit the brakes on it and stopped, and he kind of flopped down in front of the tire. But he was trapped. His leg was trapped between the tire and the fender. That was one of the things God did for us. I tried to pull his leg out of the, between the where it was pints, and it was just too, he'd screamed. It hurts so bad. And all at once, Doyle, the four-year-old,

looked up to heaven, and he said, God, we need you now. And I saw to take the stem out of the tractor air went out of it. And when it did, I could pull his leg out. Because nobody's ever confused you with a mechanic. No. You have some gifts. So the awareness to take the stem out of the tractor tire really was a gift. I had other things occupied in my mind.

And so you got Phil out of the tractor tire, but you're taking him to the car to take him. It's quicker to drive him to the hospital than to call an ambulance. Oh, yeah. Well, you didn't have ambulances available, and that was 1969 or 70. We had electricity and running water. Right, yeah. But you felt the bones crepidates. You could tell the leg was broken.

That was important. I had enough experience. I knew the feel when a bone crepitated. And so you transport him to the hospital. And on the way to the hospital, you told Philip to pray. and he prayed in the spirit. Right. You got to the hospital, and the doctor, when you came in the ER,

the first thing the doctor said was get a splint before you went to x-ray. And again, your diagnosis was that the bone was broken when you got in the car. Philip prayed on the way, a boy. Eight years old. And after they took the x-rays, the doctor, the x-rays said there wasn't a fracture. And so he said, let's take another set. And you said in the ER out loud, I'm told. I went there.

Praise the Lord. Right. They didn't have any trouble hearing me. Yeah. So they take a second X-ray and the leg wasn't broken. But there was a tremendous amount of soft tissue damage. Yeah, on the back, medial aspect of the back of his knee was a terrible place. So the physical therapy, again, this was a long time ago.

It was really difficult. painful healing was not easy and it left philip the tendon was contracted a little bit the doctor here locally told mom to put him in the bathtub you remember that big bathroom we had six by six that the family used i remember the story and uh one at a time we didn't she she was to push his leg down to stretch the tendons and the tissues in the hot water well as god would have it mom because where we were and Murphy's were spiritual and we went to Niceville with groups. And she went to a women's group in Nashville. As she went in, one of our good friends introduced her to another lady who was the wife

of an orthopedic in Nashville at Vanderville. And the lady said, well, why don't you have my husband seem? because actually her husband had been the instructor for the man locally when he was going to orthopedic school. So we took him to Nashville and we'd been doing just the opposite of what we needed to do and he helped us to see how to let the tendons, the tissue and all of it heal back in Phillips' leg and then that's where you come to with how he had the heel off the ground. You know, almost everybody I know wants to feel better, have more energy.

I mean, myself included, I went to a concert a few months ago. It's been almost a year ago now, and I sat down next to a friend Jordan Rubin was there. I made an offhand comment. I need to feel better, get a little healthier. He showed up in my office a couple days later with a plan for me. Part of it was a diet. My diet was centered on Oreos. He had some different ideas.

But a part of what he brought to me was this multi-college and pro-tebrose. It's been a part of my routine for months now, and it's made a difference. More energy. I feel better. My joints feel better. It's real food from real food sources. It helps us feel better. I recommend it to you.

It's made a difference for me. I think it'll help you. Just go to ancient nutrition.com. You can put in code Allen 30. That's A-L-L-E-N-30. You'll get a 30% discount, and it'll also bless our ministry. Again, that's ancientnutrition.com, Alan, A-L-L-L-E-N-30. You get a 30% discount.

discount on multi-college and protein, you'll feel better and you'll bless our ministry. Thanks. After the leg was healed, the tissue damage was healed. It left the tendon contracted. So his heel was off the ground, walked with a limp. Right. As an eight-year-old, I mean, it was a pretty, and you prayed for him on a regular basis. I mean, it was a part of our family rhythm.

But we went to Chattanooga to the YMCA. To an evangelistic meeting. I mean, it's an easy way to describe it. That used to be more common. There weren't churches like this. You know, so to go someplace where people would pray for the sick was a little more unusual. And we drove to Chattanooga. And the man that was ministering, he didn't even, he just prayed for the crowd.

We were sitting on the front row on the right side. And Philip began to weep and said, he felt something in his leg. He felt it, Daddy. He was standing on my. right, because that's why we went to the meeting was specifically to give the Lord an opportunity to do something about his leg. And he said, Daddy, I felt my leg get hot and jump. And I said, well, look at it, see if it's on the ground. It was. And it changed the way he walked. I mean, he walked normal then. So, and again, God's timing, there were so many places.

along that journey for an intervention. And I don't have an explanation for that, but I have a story to tell that God sovereignly restored him to a place that without God's help would not have been nearly as good. Is that fair? You're the diagnostician, I'm the preacher. We as a family, I think through these different things,

which will hopefully encourage people to decide how to spend their time, energy and their life, we were trying to live the best we knew at that time with our lack of experience to be Christians. Yeah, but we weren't pastors. No. There were no churches. Nobody was betting on any of us to be preachers.

No. Well, I mean, but they've known us that way for a long time now, but I'm telling you back in the day, there was long odds on any of the Jackson's preaching. You could have gotten odds on a lot of things, but preaching would not have been one of of them. We were Christians. Right. We sought the Lord. We read our Bibles. We did some of those things. But you were a veterinarian. We were normal kids. We did all the things normal brothers would do to normal brother. I mean, we were more likely to throw horse manure at one another than we were to pray for one another. Right. I mean, we have to do 14 sessions if we go through

over that. We're not going to. But God restored. Phil. Yeah. Yeah. And beyond, because he was scheduled for surgery to have, I mean, a whole bunch of, and he didn't have to do that. No. Thank God.

All he's got's a scar. So I'm going to run out of time, but I'm going to pull Doyle's story in, my youngest brother. We can do this without the extended version. Oh, come on. He had, when child, we used to get childhood illnesses. They wanted you to get mumps and measles so that you got immunities. as an adult, that was the normal operating procedure back before. I don't want to get into the vaccine debates.

But when Doyle got the mumps, he had a really bad case, and it left him with some impaired hearing. Yeah, he was basically deaf. By this time, we'd moved into the house we lived in where you grew up the rest of your life, and mom had taken the oak table. that I gave to you that's in your house, and was refinishing it, and that's where Doyle was out in the air and the wind

and got a respiratory along with not knowing he had the mumps. And it left him with enough hearing difficulty that when mom would talk to him, he wouldn't even respond to her. And it wasn't his personality at that time. It was he could not hear. I can't imagine a little boy saying he didn't hear. But he clearly had some significant impairment in his hearing.

Right. And so you did what you, there wasn't a medical solution to that at the time. There wasn't a good intervention to repair it. So you've drugged us to another Christian meeting. Yeah. Right? Well, actually, we were hosting it. You made us go.

You got the opportunity. We got the opportunity. So what happened? Okay. We had a gentleman that was that. point in history, well known in the Christian realm, Joseph Matzenbosie, from Sweden. And we were holding a meeting that people came from the Middle Tennessee area to the holiday end where we filled it up. And he spoke. And he prayed for the people at the end of the meeting

and then Doyle, this is the way he told it to me. He said, I went up to see him at the the end of the meeting to tell him I needed him to pray for me. And he said, he sat down in a chair and I sat down in a chair right across from him and he put his hands on my ears and he prayed for me and he said when he took his hands off, I could hear normal. So in your life, in mom's life and in both my brother's lives, there are places where God sovereignly did something that we didn't have a way to resolve. Is that fair enough? No question.

You're the veterinarians. I want to follow the science as much as I can. But I mean, people listening are going to think, which is it? Do you believe in prayer? Do you believe in medicine? And the answer is yes. Because I don't really, I'm going to start by trusting God, but I will pursue whatever opportunity he puts in front of us as a general beginning point.

and we have seen him through all of our I've got a story of my own but I'm not going to tell it today we'll do that I was going to say he's whimping out on me because he caused him much trouble as the others I'm not denying that I'm just but the invitation if you're listening is it was a normal family situation it wasn't a minister's family we weren't in fact we were probably underchurched oh we didn't go to church

at that point let's just be honest us for a change. We had grown past there because of our experiences in life. But I mean, I'd tell it differently. We hadn't grown past it. Anyway, we'd been to a lot of churches. And at the time, we weren't overly churched, but we were seeking the Lord wherever we could. Yeah. And there was different points along all those journeys. It was different when Philip had his problem with his leg. We were in a different place than we were when Doyle had his hearing problem and a dramatically different place. When you collapsed in the airport, that was just a few years ago.

So the church was here, and we were ministers then, there was a different story. So across that whole spectrum of places in our spiritual formation, before we were Christians, God healed mom. When we were very new to the Christian faith and very much learning, he intervened in Phillips' life and in Doyle's life. As believers with years of experience and lots of things, you collapsed. And God brought you through that, not absent doctors, but you got good outcomes in some ways that there were too many coincidences involved in that being successful to imagine God wasn't involved. So what I would say to anybody listening is this isn't about your spiritual maturity or your expertise or your own ability to do all the right things.

but I would encourage you strongly to turn your face to the Lord and invite him into the midst of your life. God does do miracles. God helps us. He doesn't always remove us from the arena. He doesn't always remove us from the tragedies. He doesn't remove us from the disruptions. But in the midst of those things, if you will seek the Lord,

over decades, we have seen God consistently intervene to bring resolutions that were beyond what we could do on our own. So to this day, the greatest joy of our life is to pray with people and to encourage them to invite God into the midst of their lives. If it's the midst of a tragedy, if they're just aware that they need God's help, whatever that may be, God has, he's a waymaker. That's not just a song.

It's a reality. And we wanted to take the time today to say it's personal. It's not theoretical. I could drag all my brothers in, but that really would take 12 episodes. maybe another day, but God's still doing these things that we see evidence of it every week. And people all over the church, it's not just when we pray, there are people all over this church that pray and come back with God's stories. The devil will tell you you're unique, or you've gone too far, or the darkness in your life

is too dark, or the evil that you've encountered was too deep. And I don't believe that. I believe our God is a deliverer and a restorer and a healer. and what he's done in our lives, he will do in somebody else's life. Is that fair? I'm convinced of it. I spend my time each day trying to make it real. So I think we ought to close with a prayer for the people that are watching that need a God event

or someone they love needs a God event. And don't despair if you pray and the answer doesn't show up today or in the moment. It doesn't mean God hasn't heard or he isn't listening. if you move from one solution to the next. I mean, we've seen God do that in his timing and his way. I usually prefer the instantaneous miracle, but I don't typically receive that. I do sometimes.

And none of these instances were we special or in a special place. We merely did the only things we knew to do at that time. Oh, we were special. but we weren't especially good or godly or righteous. We were just special. But we want to pray because we believe God hears those prayers. Is that fair? I'm with you.

Father, I thank you that we are able to recount your faithfulness in our lives. That in desperate places and in times of brokenness in great need, you have shown us over and over grace and mercy, and we thank you for it. And I pray for those listening today. Lord, no detail is hidden from you. You know the circumstances and all the contributing factors, and we invite you into the midst of those places to bring life to their bodies and forgiveness to them, Lord,

the peace that they need, give them the courage and the determination to overcome every expression of darkness that is leveled against them. I thank you that you're a God who heals and delivers and restores and renews. We praise you for it. May your name be exalted in the earth. May people know of your truth. In Jesus' name, amen.

If you're listening and you don't have a good church, get your Bible down and start to read it on a regular basis. You go to our website, join us in our Bible reading program. You can tune into the live stream. Don't just watch the podcast. We just do one of these a week. We do three church services a week. You can stream them all.

If I were in a place and I needed God's help, I would be a participant in every one of those real-time services and just begin to invite God into your life on a daily basis. He will lead you in spite of what we're not. It wasn't because we had great everything around us, but God is faithful. It looks like to me we may get another session out of this. You know, a man, when you were saying, encouraged him to read the revival, I had an encounter with a man this week that had visual problems.

problems and he wasn't able to read the Bible. But when I told him to go to our app, it would read it to him. In one week, he's a changed man already. Just listening to the Bible, be read. Well, it's culture and Christianity. It's not Christianity separate from the culture. We're going to live out our faith in the midst of this world. And to God be the glory. We'll see you soon. Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and Leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow

the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.