Matthew 10:8
“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.”
At the beginning of this journey, I was asked to answer this simple question in a video recording, “What are you hoping to get out of the race?” My answer was “I want to grow in my relationship with the Lord, to have deeper intimacy with him. I also want to see miracles happen. I want to experience the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the deaf to hear.”
Last month, in Nicaragua, our squad mentor sent our recordings to us to remind us what we hoped to get out of the race. I watched the video and thought, “Wow, Lord. I feel like I’ve grown in my relationship with you but I have yet to see these miracles happen. Why is that? What am I missing?”
In month 7 of the race my team was in Los Guido, Costa Rica and I had been thinking a lot that month about healing and what it would look like in everyday life. One day my team was traveling on a bus when a man with a half-deformed face boarded the bus. I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, “Go pray for that man’s face to receive healing.” I was frozen in my seat. I came up with the worst excuses.
“I don’t speak Spanish.”
“He will not know what I am saying.”
“What are people going to think?”
“Why am I so afraid right now?”
We rode for a little while and the man got off the bus. I felt so ridiculous. Why didn’t I go pray for him? I knew that God could heal him. As I was thinking those things, another man who was blind and crippled boarded the bus. Again, I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, “Go pray for that man to receive his healing.”
Did I step out in faith & obedience and watch God work?
Sadly, the answer is no. I allowed fear and what others might think to cloud my judgment and refuse the obvious leading of the Holy Spirit to step out in faith and watch God do the miraculous. I walked off of that bus determined to never let that happen again.
The next month my team was in Somoto, Madriz, Nicaragua. We had just stepped out of an incredible encounter with the Lord. (I’m hoping to blog about this experience, one of these days). I walked into the hallway to get some WiFi with the other ladies. As I was sitting down, I felt this immense pain in my knee. Sabrina asked me, “Do your knees always hurt like that?” I responded, “No, I’m not sure what I could have done to have them feel this way.” She responded, “Maybe there is someone here with knee pain that we need to pray for.” We looked up and there were three men around. We called for Sandra to ask them in Spanish if they had any knee pain. The first guy said no. The second said that his leg was hurting and the third guy had said no. The second man was the owner of the hostel. We began to pray for him and after we had finished he said that his leg felt a lot better.
Praise the Lord!
As we were praying for the owner, the third man saw what we were doing and then told Sandra that he wasn’t sure what the question meant but now he knew. He continued, “I have this terrible pain in my knee from arthritis.” Sabrina and I looked at each other and kind of chuckled. We were so excited to see what God was about to do. We immediately began to pray. After we were done, he told Sandra that while we were praying he felt this intense heat on his knee. He began to move it around and stated that the pain was gone.
Thank you, Jesus!! Hallelujah!
As I sat back down, the pain that was in my knee only 10 minutes before was completely gone.
The man was so excited about his healing. He came back out to the hallway and asked if we would come into his room and pray for his mother in law. Both he and his mother-in-law were from Honduras, but had traveled to Nicaragua to see a specialist since the mother-in-law recently had a heart attack in addition to other pre-existing physical ailments.
We entered the room and his mother in law was lying on the bed. She looked very ill. We immediately began to pray. Lydia felt that the guy who had just received his healing needed to lay hands on his mother in law as well. He did and we all prayed. When we had finished, the Lord had restored color to her face. She was praising the Lord in Spanish and said that she felt so much better.
The healings didn’t stop there…
