The prophet told the king to ask a sign from the Lord. There is nothing wrong with asking a sign. It is also a step of faith. During the Faith Movement in the 80’s the faith preachers ridiculed people who ask for signs because they were over-emphasizing faith, but if the Scriptures tell you to ask for a sign it is 100% the way God also operates. It is a certain measure of faith to ask for a sign and when you receive it to believe God gave the sign to encourage you.
Ps 86:17 – show me a sign for good
Is 7:14 – will give you a sign: A virgin shall conceive and bear a son: Emmanuel
Is 55:13 – an everlasting sign: increase and fruitfulness instead of barrenness
Mark 16:20 – accompanying signs: confirming the word
John 20:30 – Jesus performed many signs: that you may believe and have everlasting life
II Kings 20: 1-11
Hezekiah (God’s strengthens) was sick and near death and Isaiah the prophet went to warn him to set his house in order because he was going to die. Hezekiah cried and turned his face to the wall when he prayed and asked God to remember all that he did for God. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah and before he left the middle court of the palace he returned to the king and told him: the Lord will heal you and add 15 years to your life. Hezekiah asked for a sign that the Lord will heal him. Isaiah said, ‘ok do you want the sun dial of Ahaz to go ten degrees forward or backward as a sign?’ Hezekiah said it is easy to make it go forward so let it rather go backward. In other words, the shadow on the sun dial must reverse by 10 degrees! So Isaiah cried out to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees backwards!
If David & Hezekiah can ask for signs, so can we!
Gideon ask for a whole series of signs to strengthen his resolve to attack the Midianites who plundered their crops.
1. Show me a sign that it is you who is talking to me! The Angel put the end of his staff onto the meat offering and a fire devoured it.
2. Dry fleece of wool on the ground: let there be dew on the fleece in the morning but let the ground be dry.
3. The next day, let the fleece be dry and the ground be wet with dew!
But even after all those signs Gideon was still afraid. (Gideon means ‘cutter of trees’ – he destroyed the holy tree of Baal – his other name was Jerubbaal which means Baal should take care of himself. When the Israelites that worshipped Baal wanted to kill Gideon for cutting down their holy tree, Gideon’s father told them to let Baal take care of himself. They let Gideon go. People hate it if you interfere with their false religions!) So the Lord told him if you are still afraid take your servant Purah with you and go down to the camp of the Midianites and you will hear what they say. (Purah also means ‘branch’ like Jesse) There they heard at the outpost of the camp of the Midianites how the one soldier told the other about a dream of a barley loaf of bread that rolled down the hill and destroyed the tents of the Midianites. ‘This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon!’ he said.
This gave Gideon the strength and courage to attack the enemy. But he took a great army and the Lord sifted the soldiers until there were only 300 with him so that the Lord would get the glory for the victory. He told them to do what he did and to shout: ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!’ He was not arrogant or boastful, but he obeyed the word that he heard. He added, ‘the sword of the Lord’ before ‘Gideon’ because he knew he could not win the battle in his own strength.
Without the encouragement of all the signs Gideon could not defeat the Midianites. He needed those signs to get the job done.
God knows we need signs. He gives signs and wonders to confirm the Word we preach so that people will know that He sent us!
Hebrews 2:4
‘God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders with various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.’
The secret is that God confirms His word with signs. We are not sign seekers like the Pharisees who wanted to trap Jesus to crucify Him. We are not followers of signs. We follow Christ Jesus and we respond to His Word. But we can ask Him to confirm His word to us with signs so that people may know that He is the Son of God and believing might have everlasting life!
Because of the precariousness of traveling to other lands the Lord often confirms things with signs. Signs are all around if you care to notice them.
In Zambia the sign was a whirlwind that surrounded me in a dusty parking lot and ‘walked’ with me to the kombi! The Lord also raised a lame man from a stretcher and later on raised a man from the dead as signs. Simon Mahlope was the man raised from the dead in Ndola.
In Zimbabwe the Lord raised a man dying of aids off a stretcher and he is still alive today. His name is Nelson and he lives in Gweru.
In Ghana I entered and exited the country without a visa.
In Myanmar I became ‘invisible’ to the soldiers with machine guns at the entry point to a Buddhist village. They let me go in and out without even noticing or questioning me or asking for my passport. Michael Naing witnessed this event.
In Bapsfontein, Gauteng, a tree caught fire and even though the fire brigade came to extinguished it three times it burned for 3 days while we preached in a tent campaign. Nola and I prophesied over that piece of land where the tree kept on burning that it would become a place where a church would be built for cash and the church now stands there. It is the AFM church. Pastor Jan can tell the story in more detail.
Before I went to Cuba I had a dream about teaching two pastors, one with a red check shirt and one with a white short sleeved shirt. When they came to meet me at the airport I recognized them from my dream and told them they were pastors. They were astonished that I knew things about them before meeting them. But it was a sign to them.
In Uganda I entered the country without a proper visa. This was a sign to Richard who works with us today.
Nola had a dream about a woman named April meeting her in New York. It happened to be the wife of my late friend Victor Ferrer. She met her in the hospital where Vic passed away.
These are just a few indications of signs that were given to us in the ministry.
Recently I was praying about all the countries that I have not been to yet and asking God to direct me because I have no contacts in those nations. I went for a walk on the beach where we live with Mac, Hilton’s Border collie. I saw a stone with the perfect map of South America embedded in the stone! I picked it up and took it home. It was a definite sign to me.