The last month of April was an amazing month. We spent it in India and the glory of the Lord was made apparent to myself and my teammates. To begin with, our ministry days began very late at night at around 6 or 7 pm everyday. This gave us all day to spend in the Lord’s presence and in each other’s company. The Lord used this time in a mighty way to cultivate intimacy with him and each other. Spending all day in a church in 110 degree weather was not easy, but then again nothing that’s worthwhile in life ever is. The Lord used the low degree of suffering we experienced, the heat, combined with hot water to drink, poor bathroom conditions and a variety of other inconveniences like no WiFi as a means to cause us to press into the Lord with our free time. The fruits were obvious. I saw tremendous growth in each of our teammates and myself. I believe we all learned to enjoy the Lord’s presence a lot more than ever before and the fruits in ministry were obvious.
For me, the fruits began the second day of ministry. Our ministry consisted of preaching and prayer for all of the congregations members after each service everyday. The hunger of the people in India for prayer is unmatched in any place our team had visited beforehand. It really showed that these were a people who depended on God daily for all of their needs. Although, it did seem like they believed our prayers were more effective than theirs, we explained to them that if they are believers, the same power that raised Jesus from the grave lives in them. Going back to the second day of ministry, my teammate Andrew and I encountered this woman with all sorts of health issues, back pain, knee pain amongst other issues, but the issue that stood out was she could not see well. She had partial blindness in her eyes and it was obvious in the appearance of her eyes. They were cloudy and grey. We prayed for her and asked her if she could see better afterward and she said yes and her eyes were no longer cloudy. They were clear. I knew God had performed a miracle in that moment and it was the first time I had seen physical evidence of God’s miraculous healing of someone in my life. If you have been following my journey, you know this has been an aspect of my faith that I have doubted. Not in God’s ability to heal, but I suppose it was in his willingness to supernaturally heal. I am not going to sit here and tell you every person I prayed for in India was healed. But, I will tell you I have never prayed for so many people in my life as I did in India and I think that’s why I had never seen so many miracles as I did in India. I probably prayed for over 150 people in India and saw many see they felt better and had a couple of encounters like this in which it was evident God had done the miraculous.
Another equally faith growing encounter I had occurred towards the end of the month. Throughout the month in India, I had been praying for God to speak to me and give me visions for people. This may sound really strange. It sounded very strange to me because I have never been exposed to this idea that God still speaks to his people this way, but the bible is full of examples of the Lord speaking to his children this way. I have no reason to believe he will stop now. In fact Joel 2:28 says “I will pour out my Spirit on all Flesh; your Sons and your Daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions”. In acts Peter explains that the fulfilling of this prophecy had occurred and that when you receive the Holy Spirit, these signs would happen. I think that in the years leading up to today, I have learned to expect too little from God. In my mind, I have shrunk what he can and can’t do. Jesus said that we could expect to do greater things than he did while on this earth. Greater Things!!!! When I began to believe this in my mind, I started seeing God do things I never saw before. So back to this church service in India. An old man with a turban looking hat walked into the church. (I am not sure what the name of the headwear was) The Lord showed me a vision of him anointing this man’s head with oil. The oil represented honor that this man had lost throughout his life. God wanted to say to this man that he was a Son of the one true King and that the Lord viewed him with honor. I approached the man to tell him this and immediately realized he was partially deaf and did not speak Telugu which was the language my translator spoke. I thought to myself how I can still deliver this message and heard from God to pray that God would allow him to hear this message he had for him and that he would heal his deaf ears. The man through two translators said he could hear better and understood what I was saying through my translator. After being told several times that communication with this man would be impossible, this news was very encouraging. I then shared the vision with him and by his reactions I knew he understood what I was saying. He thanked me for the word I shared with him and just sat staring at me across the room for 10 minutes holding his hands over his ear. I believe God performed a miracle in that man’s body that day and he touched his life forever. There are so many things God did in India during the month that we were there, but the biggest thing he did for me, was show me that he still moves the way he does in the bible. He is not a God of the dead, but of the Living, still speaking to his children and still behaving in miraculous ways.
