Here’s the deal with being a Squad Content Manager: I don’t have scheduled ministry this time around (the squad IS my ministry). But that hasn’t kept the Lord from doing some crazy awesome things – usually when I’m on the hunt for food, ha ha!
Par for the course this week, another amazing thing just happened. Christa, who is my discipleship pair on R Squad, and I decided to walk to the bakery across the street to get a croissant.
Just as we walked in, a young man ran in behind us, jumped right in front of me and started talking to us in an excited jumble of hand motions. It was clear pretty immediately that he was deaf.
We couldn’t understand him and began to get frustrated (which I’m sure is only a tiny fraction of the frustration he feels on a daily basis). Christa mentioned that her team leader, Felicia, understands sign language and wished that she was there to help interpret.
As if on cue, in walks the rest of Christa’s team – Anna, Dacey, and then – yep, you guessed it – Felicia! Along with a Malagasy interpreter – so we were trying to translate sign language into Malagasy and English – a pretty difficult task!
We found out the man’s name is Eric, and we learned that he was asking us to go to a school where there were many other deaf people, including a deaf baby.
We couldn’t figure out how far away this place was or how to get there, so we just asked him if we could pray for him.
So we did. When we finished praying for him, he was sitting down but he got very dizzy. He asked for water and kept rubbing his eyes.
We then asked if he understood what we were praying for – does he believe that God can heal him? More importantly, does he want to be healed? (I tried to convey to him the John 5 story of Jesus healing the disabled man at the pool – before he healed the man, he asked, “Do you want to get well?”) We prayed for him one more time.
Here’s the thing about healing prayers: You have to be bold when you pray them. You have to know that the person in front of you isn’t always going to be healed. You have to know that the gift of healing isn’t a permanent gift – that sometimes the Lord decides that, for whatever reason, he wants to use you to heal someone – and maybe the next person you pray for doesn’t get healed.
And that’s okay. The important thing is that you keep praying. You keep seeking the miracles. Because they will happen – maybe not in your timeline or the way you want to see them. But they will. And if they don’t – to realize that when in Luke 10, when the disciples returned, Jesus told them not to rejoice in the miracles – but to rejoice that their names were written in the book of life. Focusing on the healings and the casting out of demons is missing the point – the very most important piece is our relationship with God.
Eric wasn’t healed today. Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow and be able to hear. Maybe that won’t happen… But I know he felt the love of God through our prayer. And maybe we’ll make it to that school.
