During the course of the Race, God has taught me a lot about healing.
Healing prayer and seeing people healed before my eyes has not been something I grew up around. Honestly, sometime it kind of freaks me out. There have been several times that I have seen healing on the Race and still thought “Wait- what just happened? Did I see that right?” My human brain is still playing catch-up with the Divine.
When you’re praying for healing, an important thing to remember is that Jesus gave you the authority to heal in His name. You were given this just as God gave it to Jesus and Jesus gave it to his disciples.
But even with biblical truths and specific scriptural examples of Jesus healing, and giving the authority to us, I doubted. I reasoned that, yeah, maybe God does give some people the gift of healing- but I know he didn’t give it to me. That just wasn’t my spiritual gift. (As Christians, we often talk ourselves out of the spiritual gifts God has given to us. But I’ll save that for another time.)
Fast forward to month 8 in Thailand- My team and a team working nearby were invited to a church service in a neighboring area. There were some missionaries from Australia and our teams were going to combine for a prayer service. It was your typical prayer service with worship (Thai Karaoke style), a message, and an altar call. The fun started after the altar call.
The Aussie pastor asked if anyone had pain or needed prayer. About 15 people raised their hands and she invited them to the front of the church. The people were asked to spread out in a line and allow us to pray for them. We spread out around the people and began to pray over their request.
Praying out loud always makes me a little bit nervous, but attempting healing prayer makes me even more nervous. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that this wasn’t about me. The pastor asked the man I was standing in front of what he needed prayer for. He responded, via translator, that he was partially blind in one eye, fully blind in another and fully deaf in one ear. It took the self-control I had not look up to God and yell, “REALLY!?“
Did I have doubt? Yeah, a little lotta bit. But I couldn’t refuse to pray for this man. Before I started to pray for him, I threw up a little prayer for myself. I knew I had to have faith that my God could heal. Dear Jesus, give me faith. You have got to get me through this. I mean you really gotta come through right now. I have no healing powers. I want to see miracles. But you gotta take this one man.
I wanted to see this man healed, because I wanted him to believe in the power of Christ Jesus (and partly because I was hungry to witness a miracle). So a group of us laid hands on this man and began to pray.
After a few minutes, we stopped and the pastor asked the man how his eyes were. He told us that his left eye was more clear, but he had no vision in his right one. The pastor asked me to place a hand over his right eye and we kept on praying. Minutes went by and the pastor asked the man again how his eyes were. He replied that there was no change. We weren’t about to give up on the Holy Spirit so we continued to pray. Time ticked on. The pastor covered the man’s left eye and asked him to tell her if he could see what was there. He could in fact see, but it wasn’t clear. So we prayed again and guess what? God completely healed this man. God gave SIGHT to the BLIND right in front of me.
In that moment, not only did He heal this man of a physical affliction, but He healed me of a spiritual affliction. He restored my spiritual eyes and allowed me to see the Holy Spirit in action. But more importantly, He restored my faith.
But God was not done working for the day. We began to pray for the man’s ear. After a few minutes, the pastor had my friend Kelsey cover the man’s good ear and whisper a Thai word into his bad ear. He was instructed to repeated the word back to us. The first time this was done, there was no change. After that we prayed and repeated the process with a new word, but still no change. So we prayed a third time. On the third time, Kelsey whispered the Thai word for God into the man’s ear and he repeated it back to us. God gave him the gift of hearing.
That afternoon, 15 people walked out of that church healed of illnesses, strongholds, addictions and pain. One man had hobbled into the church on crutches. He hadn’t walked on his own in three years, but he walked out of that church without crutches. One women walked in with back pain and walked out pain free. One man walked in with 40+ years of anger and walked out free from anger and filled with joyful. Another man walked in as an orphan and walked out as a son of the Most High.
Understand, God did not heal these people because I wanted to see miracles. I just happened to be blessed to witness them. And He did not heal the people so they would be in awe and follow Him. That was just another added bonus. He healed them because of who He is. He heals because He wants to give good gifts to His children. He heals because He has compassion on us and He wants to clothe us in it. He heals because HE IS GOD.
He has the power to heal you too if you will open your heart to Him and have faith. Where does God need to heal you today?
