“Sometimes God will hide the truth we need in the revelation we are mostly afraid of. Faith explores what revelation reveals.”
Afraid: the beeps of a heart monitor, the smells of bleach, the bags of IV dripping, hallways filled with beds on wheels, the nurses, and sounds of tears and confusion.
I am afraid of hospitals. I spent the first ten years of my life in and out of one. In and out for cancer treatment, blood work, breathing treatments.I knew God was calling me to healing ministry in Africa. So, against my own desires I volunteered myself to hospital ministry.
My first week we went in and out of the hospital’s children’s ward and hospice homes. My stomach turning and my head light I walked into my biggest fear. This time my biggest fear was my ministry. How was this going to work? I hate the injustice of illness. It strikes anyone it pleases. I hate it so much I want nothing to do with it, at the same time somewhere deep in me I want everything to do with it.
Hospital ministry only lasted a week before several teammates and squad-mates got sick. Was that it? Was that the healing God had for the people of Swaziland? One week of hospital ministry and my few sick teammates.
I wasn’t happy with it. I tried to be. But Swaziland needs more healing and more Jesus. Sickness sucks. Let’s be real. It’s a lion waiting to just eat anyone of any age. Even in my fear, I was so sick and tired of hospitals being my fear. I felt like chasing down that lion and killing it with my bare hands. Mainly because I get so angry I feel like I could develop some sort of super hero strength and take that four hundred hunk of a lion down myself.
“God make this the most productive day of ministry for the kingdom.” I remember praying on our bus ride over to one of the care points my sick teammate worked at ( like a children’s center for feedings,preschool, and discipleship)
And there I was, screaming songs over and over again at the top of my lungs with a classroom full of about seventy SiSwati children. My teammate Kelsey held the book of lessons we had to teach the kids. “Today’s lesson is about healing.”
Kelsey was tired and not feeling the best so half way through the lesson we switched leadership rolls. I began teaching the children with an older student translating. I spoke about healing I have seen in the last few months. Then proceeded to teach elementary, middle, and high-school students how to pray and what to do when in situations healing is needed. We went over and practice on each other asking if we could pray, laying hands, and praying in authority.
Was this my most productive day in ministry? I felt like it was a day where I will never know the impact that our lesson will have on the future of Swaziland. We have close to seventy young kids all educated in praying for healing. But, are they going to act? Will SiSwati people see the glory of God through the children? I think yes, because if any faith can heal it is the faith of a child praying for healing.
