He told me he was feeling cold as I shook his hand underneath the warm, African sun. Cold? It had to have been at least 75 degrees outside and he was feeling cold. As he elaborated, it all began to make sense. He was feeling sick but it wasn’t his stomach, it wasn’t his head, he had no fever. He just felt cold, tired and heavy all the time.
I looked into his empty eyes and I realized I knew exactly the kind of sickness he was talking about. He was struggling with depression. What most people don’t realize about depression is that its more than simply feeling sad, it is a chemical imbalance in the brain that effects every part of a person. It manifests itself physically, emotionally and, ultimately, it is something spiritual. I know this because I have battled a spirit of depression for many years and what he described to me was exactly what it felt like.
He allowed me to pray for him as I held his hands in mine. As I spoke, a feeling of complete confidence in my words overcame me. I had never felt as confident in my prayers than I did in that moment. I can’t hardly remember what I said, only that I felt the energy of the Holy Spirit move through my fingers and into his hands.
When I looked up, I saw a light in his eyes that had not been there before and he all but jumped up on the step he was sitting on. I asked him how he felt and he said warm. Warm and alive. So much better. He became more and more animated by the second, saying things in Twi that I could not understand. For the first time I knew that someone had legitimately been healed by God through my prayer. The spirit of depression was completely and genuinely gone from him and his sincerity was palpable.
I had seen and heard of other people healing the blind, the demon-possessed, even the terminally ill but I had never experienced healing through my own prayers. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe God could work through me, it was just that I had never seen Him work through me in that capacity before and I wasn’t quite sure what it would feel like or how it would work. I wasn’t sure how I would even know that it was real. I know now that God gives me a peaceful assurance and I will simply know that I know that I know that what happened was real.
Keep on praying and keep on believing because healing is real. The Holy Spirit is in you too.
