Have you ever thought your life was going in one direction when suddenly it took a sharp turn? Maybe you thought your life was over, and you somehow survived a near-death experience. Perhaps it seems as if just yesterday you were living a different life, but now things have changed, and the life you once had is a distant memory.
Sometimes your situation may not make sense. That situation may be a surprise to you, but God has known about it since the beginning of time. Before God created the earth, He created your destiny. It isn’t just for you; it is for all the people you will touch through your journey. He knew it would be hard, but He knew you could depend upon Him so His glory would be revealed through your circumstances. There are bigger things going on in the universe than our challenges—things that we cannot see, but that will one day be revealed to help humanity. Our job is to never quit until God reveals the miracle of His plan.
On that day when God asked me to trust Him and promised to use Connor to reach millions, I went through the morning thinking everything was about to get better. How could it not? I just talked to God. Creator of the universe. The omnipotent One. I felt Connor’s worst outbursts were over now. It couldn’t get any worse with Connor, could it?
Yes, it could; and yes, it did.
We went into autism Defcon 1 mode. We were at war! Every day it was something different. The screaming, the self-scratching, banging of his head, biting, and crying for no reason were happening all the time. Some mornings we would walk into our five-year-old’s room and find him there with feces all over the floor, walls, and somehow even on the ceiling fan. In the Johnson house the crap had literally hit the fan.
On a positive note, one time we discovered that he had written his name on the wall with it. We can laugh about it now, but believe me—no one was laughing then. It was painful to watch, and the smell was so bad our dog came by his room, sniffed, shook her head in disbelief, and then sniffed her own butt. I guess it smelled better.
It’s in times like these we learned that you have to do a few things just to stay sane. We were learning to laugh more, even in these extreme situations. You might be asking, “How could you laugh in the middle of that chaos?” It was better than the alternative: crying. The Bible says, “The Lord is my strength and shield. I trust him with all my heart. He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy. I burst out in songs of thanksgiving” (Ps. 28:7). In other words, the joy of the Lord is my strength. When you have no more strength within yourself to cope, why not let out a smile or chuckle, or just laugh like a crazy person? I’d rather die laughing than live crying.
We also learned to keep praying and keep pressing on. When it seems like the worst is happening, don’t give up. Keep swinging. Realize what you do have, not what you don’t have. Trust God. Even when every fiber of your being tells you no, let that last ounce of hope left inside of you be your yes. While we were walking through our storm, we laughed, even when it hurt, and just kept believing for our miracle.
And then it happened.
“Craig! Craig! Get up here!” I heard Sam yelling from Connor’s upstairs bedroom. I thought something was seriously the matter, so I put down my book and ran upstairs as fast as I could.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I was praying with Connor before bedtime when suddenly he began to speak,” she said, with tears in her eyes.
Puzzled, I asked, “What do you mean he began to speak?”
Remember, we hadn’t heard our son put four words together in three years.
“He began to speak, saying one word after another word, one sentence after another sentence—a whole paragraph,” she replied.
I couldn’t believe what she was saying to me, and tears welled up in my eyes.
I hadn’t seen this coming.
“What did he say?” I asked, grabbing my phone to capture it on film, in case he spoke again.
My wife took me by the hand, walked me over to Connor’s bedside, and leaned down to speak to him.
“Say it, son. Say it again for Mommy and Daddy,” she asked him.
My son slowly lifted up his head and said: “This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. Today I will be taught the Word of God. I boldly confess, my mind is alert, my heart is receptive, and I will never be the same. I am about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living seed of the Word of God. I will never be the same, never, never, never, I will never be the same, in Jesus’ name, amen!”
Those were the first words and sentences Connor had spoken in three years. It was unreal. A rush of joy—or, I should say, euphoria—came over my wife and me in a way we had never experienced. Have you ever laughed and cried at the same time? It’s an ecstatic feeling, isn’t it? That is exactly what we were doing as we hugged our son, who couldn’t figure out what we were so excited about. He was ready to go to bed after all that work talking for the first time in a long time.
At nine o’clock on that Tuesday evening we got Connor out of bed, brought all the kids in, and had a dance party right in his bedroom. We were praising God, doing the hokey pokey, the running man, and the electric slide all in one. Let’s put it this way: I don’t think we would have been invited to be on Dancing with the Stars that night, but we didn’t care. We were dancing for the main Star, God almighty, who brought our son back to us.
A couple of weeks later I was speaking on a Wednesday night at Lakewood Church, and I showed the crowd a video of Connor speaking for the very first time in a long while. At our church we cry a lot—not tears of sadness, but tears of gratefulness because of the goodness of God. As the congregation watched the video of Connor’s miracle, Pastor Joel, who was sitting on the front row, welled up with tears of joy as he watched the miracle with his own eyes. You see, he and Victoria and the entire staff at Lakewood Church had walked with us along this journey from the very beginning.
When Sam and I felt helpless, we clung to messages of hope that we heard repeatedly from Pastor Joel and Victoria during our dark times. Families with special-needs children know what they are up against. They are just looking for some hope each week. These hope brokers—Pastor Joel and Victoria—were put in our lives when we needed them most. We replayed their messages in our minds when times got rough.
John Osteen, Pastor Joel’s father and the founder of Lakewood, used to say, “Put God’s Word in you when you don’t need it so it will come out of you when you do need it.” That’s true of encouraging words too. During that three-year period, we often heard Pastor Joel speak the Word of God and give us messages like, “You’re not a victim; you’re a victor. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. You are the head and not the tail. You are above and never beneath. You are more than a conqueror. Don’t look at what’s wrong in your life; look at what’s right.”
We would hide those words in our hearts and remember them when we needed them most. Whenever we needed Pastor Joel and Victoria and the church, they came alongside us like heroes, never asking what was in it for them, only wanting what was best for us. It was like God put them in our path to help us walk it.
A few weeks after my talk, Pastor Joel preached a message called “Living Breakthrough Minded.” In it he talked about the time King David was facing a monumental battle with the Philistine army (2 Sam. 5). David and his men were greatly outnumbered, and the odds were against them. David prayed and asked God to give them victory in an impossible situation. As they went out to fight this huge army, God gave them victory. Later, David said, “God has broken through my enemies by my hand, like a bursting flood” (1 Chron. 14 esv). When they left, David named that place Baal-Perazim, which means essentially, “God of the breakthrough.”
As Pastor Joel continued his message he talked about living breakthrough minded:
A breakthrough is a sudden burst of God’s favor, an explosion of His goodness. God can release His power in such a way that you are overwhelmed and flooded with victory and answers to your prayers. When things are difficult and don’t look like they are going our way, that’s when it’s easiest to lose our joy, vision and enthusiasm, to believe that things will never get any better. But during those challenging seasons in life we have to learn to do just the opposite. Right in the midst of the adversity, that’s the time—more than ever—to expect a flood of His favor, a flood of healing, a flood of vindication, a flood of protection. Our attitude should be, “It may be dark, but I know the God of the breakthrough is about to turn things around!”1
I remember sitting there on the front row with Sam and Courtney, tears rolling down our cheeks, taking in every word like it was just for us. We knew exactly what David felt like. Our situation seemed hopeless, but we just kept believing. It was dark at times. Some days we felt as if we had fallen into the bottom of a well with darkness all around us, but we were hoping that someone would shine a light.
Then Joel shared the story of our son Connor. He said,
I love the story that our children’s pastor told not long ago. Craig and Samantha have a son named Connor. He’s a very handsome, fun little boy. Connor has autism, and he’s never spoken a full paragraph. Really, he doesn’t speak in sentences. He will speak a few words here and there, but day after day Craig and Samantha keep speaking favor into Connor, telling him he’s more than a conqueror, that he can do all things through Christ. Every night at bedtime either Craig or Samantha will read two or three books with little Connor and then they will pray together and go to bed. The other night, just as Samantha was about to turn out the light in Connor’s room, she heard him start speaking. He went on and on.
As Joel spoke, overwhelmed by what God had done, his voice began to crack. He continued, “He went on and on so clearly, so fluently, she ran and got Craig and the video camera and captured the first real paragraph he had ever spoken. This is what he was saying.”
Then the video played, showing Connor saying the declaration, “This is my Bible . . .” Pastor Joel bent over at the pulpit, weeping as he listened to Connor speak. This is something most people didn’t see because that thirty-minute message was edited for TV. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched Joel break down and cry in the middle of a message. He cries for hurting and broken people. He cries, filled with hope that God would give those who watch the same favor God has given him. He cries when he talks about family or stories of how people have overcome despite their circumstances. I’ve never in my life seen someone so broken for the human condition who believes that God can do anything, no matter what family they have come from, what circumstances they come out of, or what mistakes they have made.
The video finished, and Joel continued:
Those were his first real sentences and paragraphs. What was that? That was the God of the breakthrough visiting their house. Like a flood God’s favor came upon little Connor, a flood of healing, a flood of restoration, a flood of wisdom. Now Craig and Samantha have another Baal-Perazim. That’s a night they will never forget.
As he said this, I was sitting there bawling like a baby—doing the “ugly cry.” You know, that cry you only hope family will never see in your lifetime? As I was doing the ugly cry, the camera panned around right to me and caught my face. It probably scared a few children. I was trying to keep it together, but it was not working because years of emotion were coming out.
It’s funny—I never used to cry like I do since I’ve become a special-needs parent. It breaks you in a good way, and you are never the same again. You’re broken and spilled out, and any moment that touches you can bring the tears.
I frequently ask Sam, “Why do I cry all the time?”
“That is God using you to cry for the things that break His heart and bring Him joy,” she says. “You’re His vessel.”
Everyone who has been broken in life is like a vase with a crack in it. No matter how much you pour in that vase, it can never get filled up. The cracks in us allow God’s grace to pour out. This brokenness is not a bad thing. Quite the contrary—it may be the best thing that can happen to someone.
I heard a story about Chuck Colson, the man who started Prison Fellowship Ministries and worked in President Nixon’s administration in the sixties and seventies. Chuck’s daughter, Emily, discovered her son had autism. When Chuck found out about the diagnosis, he was heartbroken, and gradually he began to share the news with a few close friends. One told him: “You have found favor from God, because he has given you this special-needs child so you can experience sacrificial love.”2
It’s true. You love differently than you once did. It’s deeper because every day you learn to love without expecting anything in return.
When we told our son we loved him, we never got a response back. No feeling, no words, no reciprocation. We just loved him because he was our son. It reminds me of the sacrificial love Christ gave us. He gave His life knowing He might not get anything in return from us. He just did it because He loved us. That is sacrificial love. That is the stuff heroes are made of—ordinary people doing extraordinary things that most people would not do, all because of love.
As I listened to Pastor Joel give his message that day, talking about our son’s miracle, I was reminded of the times Sam and I felt like giving up. Why didn’t we? We are no different from anyone else who has gone through something like this. We have seen marriages break apart and good moms and dads victimized by their circumstances. We understand fully how that can happen. Why did we keep believing?
It wasn’t that we had it all together. Our faith was constantly challenged. We just would not let hope die. Every day we kept doing a little extra. Faith doesn’t make things easy; it makes them possible. Our motivator was God’s unconditional love given to us despite our circumstances. His sacrificial love for us was the example we needed to help us sacrificially love our son, even when we didn’t necessarily get anything in return.
As Joel continued to share our story in his talk, he said,
The night Connor spoke was a night they will never forget. Even though little Connor doesn’t speak perfectly yet, they know he is well on his way. What God started He will finish. How it happened is that Craig and Samantha take the DVDs of my messages home, and little Connor will put them in and watch. They said that normally when he’s watching cartoons, he’ll only watch for five or ten minutes, but he’ll sit there all through the day and watch my thirty-minute messages. I told Craig later, when a five-year-old chooses me over Barney, I know I have favor. But I love the fact that God gave them something to talk about. They were so excited about it, they tell everybody what God has done for little Connor. It was dark, but the light came bursting in.
We knew we had our Baal-Perazim. Our breakthrough had come. When that message aired, more than forty million people saw it in one month. The video went all around the globe, and we started getting e-mail messages from across the United States and countries all over the world. One person who oversaw special-needs schools in Cambodia sent the video to every teacher and every parent in his organization. It affected them so much they sent a letter of thanks for the inspiration our son Connor was to everyone at the schools and all the families of the special-needs children. They sent Connor two T-shirts; one said “Overcomer,” and another said “Conqueror.” We started getting e-mails and letters from parents of special-needs kids, saying that after they’d watched our son’s miracle, they felt that if God could do it for Connor, He could do it for their child.
People who watched in the service were so affected, they wanted to see how they could help and serve kids with special needs at our church. One family after another with special-needs children would call or stop us and say how God used our son to help them not give up on their circumstances. They now could see their child had a purpose just as Connor did.
I will never forget a Lakewood event in 2011 called A Night of Hope, held at the Chicago White Sox’s stadium, when they played our son’s testimony in front of forty-five thousand people, and Samantha and I walked out on the field with Connor. As we walked onto the grass of the infield, Connor waved at the crowd. I looked up in the stands and saw thousands of people crying and clapping as they watched his miracle on the jumbotron video screens.
As we were experiencing this on the field, I heard God speak to me the same way He did when I had asked Him, “Why?” in the car. He said, Remember when you asked Me “Why?” and I told you I was going to use your son to reach millions of people? Look at all these people in this stadium and around the world who have heard his testimony. Look at them crying and clapping for little Connor. I told you if you trusted Me, I would do this. I always stay true to My word.
Chills ran down my spine as I realized that what God said He would do, He did—and would keep doing. This wasn’t the end; it was only the beginning. I knew the struggle wasn’t over for us, but if we depended on God, He would finish what He started. When we found out Connor had autism, one way of life ended and a new one began. It wasn’t what we thought would happen, but God was using our son, at five years old, to impact the world. It was our Baal-Perazim.
When you create a recipe for the perfect life, things may turn out different from what you originally planned. Beauty comes through the struggles, triumphs, challenges, joys, sorrows, and hopes all combined to make your perfect mess a beautiful life!