>> Do you need a miracle in your life?
Are you up against something that's so overwhelming
that you need Almighty God
to break that stronghold for you?
Do you have a loved one or a friend
that is in such bondage that you need a genuine miracle?
Are you at the place that only Almighty God
can deliver this person or yourself?
You've tuned into the right station today
because what you're about to hear
is living proof that Jesus Christ
can do anything, that no matter how far you've gone
or how far a loved one has gone,
there's nobody beyond the reach of Almighty God.
I know firsthand.
My name is Jim Maxim, and I layed in a pool of blood
with over 300 stitches in my face.
I had five tubes in my body feeding me
and draining me intravenously. My life was over as I knew it.
My jaw bone came through my skin.
It was busted and wired shut. My life was out of control.
One night I got so drunk that a friend took me home,
and after he drove my car, his girlfriend was driving his.
He handed me the keys. It was midnight.
He said, I'll see you in the morning, Max.
And I said OK, whatever.
But you see when you're an alcoholic,
when you're a drug addict,
you don't drink or do drugs just to do it.
You do it because there's a demon inside of you driving you,
forcing you, telling you you need more.
So as he left, I hid on the side of the house
until they're completely gone.
I got back in my car, cuz it was only midnight.
I knew the bars were still open,
so that gave me a couple of more hours
to satisfy this driving force in my life.
So I got back in my car,
went back to the bar and got some more.
So now it's about one o'clock in the morning
and I was driving down the road. I was so drunk I reached over
to change an old eight track tape player in my glove box.
Some of you may know what that is,
but as it fell on the floor,
I bent over to pick it up and as I bent over,
I passed out. I came to for a brief second.
The car was coming at me and I passed out again.
They told me that my vehicle went up an embankment,
came down and hit a telephone pole,
and I flew through the passenger side of the windshield.
And after my head and face went through the glass,
my shoulders hit the windshield and stopped me,
and the weight of my body dragged me back down
in, across the jagged glass.
The cops told me that my vehicle was on an embankment,
a side hill lie,
and my face was now in the passenger floor compartment.
The cops told me as they put their foot in the car
to brace themselves to pull me up,
because I'm a big guy, they told me that my face,
the blood had come up over the top of their shoe.
I had lost so much blood.
So they raced to get me to the hospital
and I don't remember any of this,
but they told me that as they were pulling me out of the car,
the one cop said to the other one,
Forget it, it's too late. He's dead.
They said, I looked at him and said,
No, I'm still with you.
So they rushed me back into the hospital
in the emergency room, and the young intern there,
they told me he was just trying to pull shards of glass
out of my face.
They couldn't get a plastic surgeon at 2:00 in the morning.
And then they called my mother.
You see, my mother, as a young girl,
had given her life to this God, this Jesus Christ.
But through a series of events and falling away from God
and things in her life
really didn't materialize to much of a Christian walk.
But through a lot of dysfunction and things in our home,
she had rededicated her life to Christ.
And when she did that, something changed in our home.
This God that she claimed to serve, this Jesus Christ
that she's claimed to know, something was real with her.
We used to hear her back in her room
praying to this God, talking to this God,
and then telling us that one day we're going to serve this God.
And well, mom could be a little kooky because that's mom.
But now, as they called my mother,
it's two o'clock in the morning.
They said, Ma'am, your son's been in an accident.
And she said, Can I come down in the morning?
You see, for mom, this was nothing new.
They said, No, ma'am, you don't understand.
You need to come now.
So she got in the car by herself.
You can imagine a mother
driving to the hospital, at two in the morning.
Hearing this story, you might be in this same situation.
You might have a husband, a son, a daughter, niece and nephew,
a friend at work that continually is abused
by drugs and alcohol
that continually is just, their life is wrecked
and seemingly there is no hope in their life.
So she got to the hospital and she, they told her,
Ma'am, there's so much, your son,
when he went through the windshield,
the cut in the top of his head is very deep.
We don't know about brain damage.
The amount of glass in his left eye
was so much we don't know
if he's ever going to see again out of his left eye.
Now, ma'am, he's fallen into a coma now.
So my mother, completely overwhelmed
with fear and doubt and unbelief,
she told me, she said, Jimmy, as I got in my car
that night to go back home, the enemy of my soul,
Satan, was relentless with me. Isabelle,
where's this great God of yours now?
This Jesus Christ you claim to serve?
This all powerful God, where is he at now, Isabelle?
All this time you spend in prayer
talking to Him, going to church, reading that Bible.
If it's really real, Isabelle, where is he at now?
Well, my friend, you might be thinking the same thing.
You might be saying, you know, God, where are you at in my life
or my husband's life or my kid's life?
God, nothing seems to change. God, when's it going to end?
Please God, if this is real, where are you at?
Well, my mother told me, she said,
Jimmy, when I got home,
I just fell next on my knees next to my bed,
where we had heard her cry out to God
so often, she said, Jimmy, I was just crying out to God.
Please Jesus, don't let him be blind.
Jesus please. When's it going to end?
God, can't you do something? He needs your help.
Almighty God, please God do something.
My mother told me,
she said, Jimmy, the Holy Spirit came alongside of me
and he said, Isabelle, that's enough.
Now, Isabelle, start to praise God.
Isabelle, don't insult God
with fear and doubt and unbelief. Isabelle,
put your faith in God.
You see, the Bible says without faith,
it's impossible to please God.
For he that comes to God must believe that he is
and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
Well, she was that kind of a woman.
So my mother said even when it didn't feel right to praise God,
she broke forth in praise. She started thanking Jesus
for all the things he had done in her life.
She started thanking Jesus for his death on the cross.
She started thanking Almighty God for the faith given to her.
And before long, she said Jimmy, in a few minutes, fear had left.
Doubt had left, but faith had risen in my soul.
I started to praise God and to worship him,
even when you were in the midst of that coma.
I started worshiping him, and she said Jimmy,
she said it was as if I saw God's index finger
come down and touch your left eye.
Then when I saw that, I knew you were going to be OK.
But what she didn't know as she was interceding for me,
I was falling through darkness, this coma that I was in.
It wasn't fake, but it wasn't unreal.
It was very real to me because even though I was in a coma,
I was very aware of my surroundings.
It was as if I was falling through darkness
and I reached up my arms on both sides to break the fall.
But there was nothing there,
and I had never been in a situation like this
before because as a big guy,
I could control myself in most situations.
But this time I knew I had gone one step too far.
I was in an area that I knew was not meant for mankind,
and as I was falling through darkness
and I could not stop the fall, all of a sudden my fall stopped
and I came into this little black room,
I don't know, 12 by 12 or whatever.
But as I stopped falling, I looked on my left handside
and it was there I saw two creatures, demons,
that I would have laughed at, I would have mocked at
before this night. Now it wasn't so funny,
because these creatures were about to hurt me
and I couldn't get a gun, a knife, a club.
There was nothing that I could do and I knew it.
And it was then that I,
my mother continued to intercede for me,
and as those demons, I looked at those demons, it was
then that Jesus Christ came to me on this side.
No, I saw him, but I can't describe him,
if that makes sense. It was a spiritual thing.
You see, I'd never read the Bible.
I'd never been to a prayer meeting.
I'd never been to a Christian church as we know it.
So I had no concept of wicked spirits
in high places and demonic forces.
I did not know that the weapons of our warfare aren't natural,
manmade or carnal, but divine weapons
for the pulling down of demonic strongholds.
And that's what my mother was doing,
exercising the weapons of prayer,
the most powerful force in mankind,
the same force that you have the privilege to use today
when we're finished in a minute or two,
because it was then that Jesus came to me,
and what he didn't say to me is what shocked me the most.
He didn't say to me, Why should I help you now?
You fool, you've mocked my people, you've mocked my word.
You've laughed at your mother.
Why shouldn't, why should I help you now?
No, it was quite the opposite. When I looked at Jesus,
it was as if it was a liquid sea of love,
overpowering me with love and hope.
And it was as if he was saying to me, he loved me.
He wanted to help me.
And then he said to me, Jim. Not word for word.
But the essence of the discussion was this: Jim,
you've been playing around long enough?
Do you want to continue? And I said, Jesus, I don't.
But what do I got to do? I prayed that prayer in jail.
Get me out of this jam and I'll go straight.
Well, that didn't work. Here I am again.
And he said to me, Jim,
if you ask me to help you and to cleanse you, I will.
And I'll be your best friend, Jim.
But I'm not going to barge my way into your life.
You have to ask me, Jim.
And I said, Jesus, I know I needed help.
Jesus didn't have to convince me
that, I knew my life was out of control.
So I looked at Jesus and I simply said, Jesus,
please help me. Please forgive me.
My friend, the moment I said
that, whatever those two things were, they left.
I woke up several days later in intensive care.
My head was wrapped like a mummy from here to here,
over 300 stitches on my face.
My jaw bone was wired shut, I had to talk like that.
But my mother said when I came out of my coma,
the first words that I muttered through my broken jaw was,
Mom, Jesus is here. Jesus is here. And my friend,
that same Jesus Christ is here right now.
That Jesus Christ saved me and washed me in his blood,
then filled me with his spirit,
broke the power of drugs and alcohol,
broke it once and for all of my life.
He's here right now. Let's pray.
Pray with me right now. Please say this prayer,
Father in the name of Jesus Christ,
I come to you, father, as you touched Jim Maxim's life,
I'm asking you, almighty God, to touch my life.
Or perhaps it's your son.
Your daughter, niece, nephew, touch their life.
Father in the name of Jesus.
We come to you, God and Father, by the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ as you broke the bondage in Jim's life.
Father, please break the bondage of my life.
Please, God, deliver me or deliver my friend,
my son, my daughter, my husband, Father.
Please allow this same presence, God to minister to them today.
Father, please in the name of Jesus Christ, I cry out to you.
My friend, if you did that today, go tell somebody.
Go tell somebody that Jesus Christ delivered you,
that Jesus Christ has forgiven you, because he's with you,
and all he wants is to be your best friend and your savior.
God bless you.