One night of ministry this week in the villages, we went to 2 different villages. The first village we went to we sung songs, preached the Word of God and prayed for people. There was so much healing in this village. The pastor’s wife of this village would walk around with a walker, had diabetes and was in a lot of pain. Some of our teammates prayed for healing. By the time we left, she was walking around without her walker and the pain was gone! Praise God! God is our Healer! There was so much joy when we left that village and our team was so excited about the healing that God was doing.
The next village we went to was filled with a dark presence as soon as we entered into the yard of the place we were preaching. We all felt the heavy presence weighing down on our shoulders. The religion that was practiced in this village was Hinduism and we could see it everywhere we looked. We sung songs again, preached the gospel and about God’s love for us, and prayed for people. As soon as all the people were prayed for, I went out of that area and waited in the Tuk Tuks with some other teammates. We were more than excited to leave and get out of that area. While we were sitting in the backseats, some children came up to us and started saying “Bye!” This turned into a game of “copy every thing the American says!” This turned out to be hilarious and entertaining for not only them, but for us as well. We all soaked up the joy from the laughter that was bubbling out of us all.
After about 30 minutes of waiting for everyone else to come out to the Tuk Tuks so that we could go home, a teammate called for us so that we would come back in to the yard so that we could help pray for healing for a woman.
“Why would I want to go back in there? It is not a place filled with Joy and Life! It is dark in there!”
It is not about me and there is Life and Light and Truth wherever we go because God is everywhere.
Fighting lies with Truth.
So when we went in there to go pray, 2 teammates had been praying for a woman that had an extremely broken and swollen hand. They wanted to see God heal her completely and to take away any pain. We all started praying for that as well. We wanted to see God repair her hand, take away the pain and work in her life. After about an hour of praying (time has no meaning in India, we didn’t realize how long we prayed until we finished and realized what time it was), a teammate said that we should ask for the Holy Spirit to give us a vision for what our team should be doing, for healing, for anything. As I prayed for God to reveal to me what our team should do for this woman, a picture of cake came in my head.
I saw a big sheet cake with white frosting and flowers sitting on a table and a smaller cake that was being cut up and served.
“What does this mean??”
I did not know how this related to the woman and her broken hand, so I didn’t say anything.
About 30 minutes later, Sam brought up a vision that she had. She kept hearing the words “It’s not time. It’s not time.” When she placed her hands on the woman, she heard “IT’S NOT TIME!!”
Then someone’s alarm went off on his phone.
This was not what we wanted to hear. We wanted to see a miracle! We wanted to see the woman fully healed!
Throughout the 2 hours we were there, teammates could feel the woman’s swelling go down, could feel her moving her once paralysis fingers and the pain was lessening. During the time that we were all listening and waiting for the Lord to reveal to us what to do, it was peaceful just resting in His presence. When we looked around everyone in the village was quiet, they were resting in His presence as well. Children were sleeping on parents’ laps because they didn’t want to leave, and the pastor was sitting in a chair resting in what the Lord was doing. He usually encourages us to go and head back to the house or to go to the next village. Tonight, we all rested in the Lord’s presence.
Even though there was not the complete healing that we were looking for, there was healing. The woman did have healing in her hand. There was a change in the villager’s hearts.
Every night is a blessing. Father, thank You.
