Our first ministry week in Romania was focused on projects that we did together as a squad. We started on Tuesday by picking up trash around the city and talking with the people we met on the street. While my team was cleaning, we ran into a lady who lived in that neighborhood. Through our translator, we learned that her husband had lost his legs and wasn’t able to leave their apartment. She asked us to pray for him right then, but also invited us to come by the next day to meet and pray over him.
Wednesday was the first day we taught English, and I was ready to head straight back to the house after we finished. But my team found someone who knew which apartment the family lived in, so I grudgingly went along.
We climbed up several flights of stairs and then got our first look inside a Romanian home. The man’s granddaughter (or maybe niece) let us in the apartment and we filed through the small kitchen into the living room. It seems to be the common practice to have couches that double as beds in the homes here, and this is where we found Daniel.
Our Romanian contact is still learning English, so he didn’t translate much, but I hope it was a blessing for Daniel to have different people to talk to for a while. His wife is the sole provider for their family and they don’t have the funds for prostheses which would allow him to walk, to leave the house, to work.
After a time, we asked to pray for him. We sat next to him on the bed/couch and laid hands on him. The whole time, I had the same song running through my head.
There is a balm to make the wounded WHOLE.
This is our prayer, that not only would God provide this family with their material needs, but also that He would give this man back his legs.
It’s a crazy prayer.
Crazy.
How can a man be given new legs?
And that’s what I love about the World Race. How often do we shy away from asking God for things that we think are crazy? I know I do. Even though I know how uncontrollable and undeniable God’s power is, I don’t want to bother Him with ridiculous-sounding requests.
Today, I realized how this whole experience paralleled something that God taught me at Training Camp. Jesus tells a doubting Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.” I always (a little smugly) put myself into this category. But I had put myself in a tiny God-box. I put a limit on what I could believe without seeing.
What would happen if I fully immersed myself in believing in things I can’t see?
I may never find out how God answers the prayers that have been, that will be poured out over this man. How can a man be given new legs? I have no idea. And so I let the song provide my prayer.
God can heal our sin-sick souls.
God can make the wounded whole.
