In Jesus’ name

I had a phase when I focused a lot on praying for those who were sick. I initially asked the Lord for one person per week and after a few weeks someone would come to my door, then I upped the request to 3 a week and the same began to happen, and then…

I still have a simplicity about healing… how would the historical Jesus of Nazareth respond to a request for healing – the one who is the same yesterday, today and will be consistently the same tomorrow. There might be many reasons why a person is not healed but I do not think it is a good idea to start with that!

I could recount many stories but – hopefully not being foolish but helping to raise realistic expectations – will throw in two here.

Back in the day of ‘healing meetings’… and in this new setting, a setting of life, we have to find a new way, but back in the day as these posts are reflections that maybe I can pull together the threads in days to come. Edith, in her early 60s came in sitting in a wheelchair and I immediately turned to my colleague and said – that woman will walk tonight. The story was written up in a national newspaper (The Daily Mail – not a paper I would recommend!). I later found out that for 19 years she had never walked unaided, 16 in a wheelchair and living in a home for those severely physically challenged. By the time I prayed for her she was in advanced stage of Multiple Sclerosis. Her eye sight had virtually all gone, her vocal cords destroyed. She walked and returned to ‘normal’ life, she soon left the care home and lived some 15 kilometres from where I lived. She had to be medically examined to have her driving license restored and the report was – other than your medical records we have to say there is no trace of any symptom in her body, no residual evidence that she had ever had MS!

I got to know her some and found out that she had been prayed for on numerous occasions over the previous decades with seemingly no result. Two options… someone comes along who knows what others before did not know, or (the reality) one more prayer tipped the scales. There the challenge remains. Persistence and certainly no hollow promises, and no action as if we know everything.

A mother brought her 8 year old daughter to me. I sat with them in an office. She had a rare disease and at its worst she had to be carried in a duvet from one place to another such was the pain to even touch her. I simply said – if Jesus were here physically, but it is me who is here so let’s see. I simply prayed ‘Lord Jesus it would be great if you touched this young girl today’… I held her hand and after a minute or so said, ‘many times when one is being healed there is a sensation that is experienced in the body – often heat or tingling or something similar’. The girl replied with – I have felt something happen in all my joints. My reply – you never know, let’s see.

I had a letter from the mother a few days later. When we left your office my daughter said she had never let this well in a long time. Next day she cycled 800 metres, not having been able to cycle in weeks. Then later she communicated that the clinic that she was under communicated that they could not explain the shift, but that their conclusion was that the cumulative effect of the different drugs they had prescribed had overnight somehow catalysed the healing. Maybe… probably not!

I could recount hundreds of similar situations, and maybe one last one in this post. In Brazil at the back to the auditorium there was a major commotion with people gathered all around. I said go find out what has happened. A woman born without fingerprints had received finger prints! Necessary? Probably not – but what a testimony to the restoration of identity.

I don’t know too much, have also prayed with people who have had no improvement; sadly lost Sue when she was only 50. But I remain a convinced charismatic, that there are gifts that God releases.

I doubt if I will know a lot more once I travel beyond the 70 mark, and I hope in recounting just 3 stories that I will not come out the other side to be more foolish than I am. My motivation – God is not one of us, but breaks in to our world over and over again. We rejoice with every testimony, we weep with those who do not experience something amazing (Heb. 11) knowing that as we walk together and make room for God there are all kinds of possibilities… ‘What if?’ possibilities.