This week I made a point to read every blog from each of the forty-eight squadmates I have on my team. I was overwhelmed with their different stories and testimonies but our very similar concerns and worries about this upcoming year. I was also struck by a few people posting a similar experience. Several of my teammates like myself have a story involving one individual whose life/story marked us so powerfully.
My story involves a partially blind woman in Baja, Mexico.
One afternoon a few people called me over to pray for her eyesight to be renewed. Now I love laying hands on people and praying but I was not happy when my friend volunteered me as a translator. My spanish was very broken and I immediately became immensely nervous. I tried my very very best to translate the most basic spanish I could think of. All I could think of to have her repeat is “Dame me vision señor” (Give me my vision, Lord) We prayed and prayed for her eyesight and for her to believe God could heal her. She had said she believed in God but she had never prayed for him to enter in her heart. In the most basic and simplified spanish she prayed the prayer for God to enter in her heart but she never got her vision back.
I walked away feeling slightly disappointed. I was rejoicing that she came into the kingdom but I had really wanted to see that miracle happen right before my eyes. My heart burdened for her for the whole rest of the week and I refused to give up hope that she would be healed.
During the whole week we worked hard laboring on building a church and sunday school as well as a home to bless one of the families from the church. On our last day I was so overwhelmed with emotions and so grateful for the experience I had had. In the midst of a crazy fiesta I decided to take a moment to myself and walk down to the house I had helped build with my own hands. I was amazed at how quickly a few of us had been able to create something so beautiful that was going to bless a family so immensely. I walked around that empty house alone and laid hands on all the walls and prayed in the spirit over each room wishing blessings on the family.
On the last day we prayed over the home and the family we were giving the keys to when I saw all the way behind a crowd of people THE GIRL! The same girl that I couldn’t stop thinking and that I was dying to lay hands on again was the one who would be living in the house I had built and prayed over. Bursting with emotions I busted my way through the crowd to touch her shoulder. Over 110 faith filled people were all there extending hands and believing for her healing! Surely this would work!
Still nothing.
As I stood there looking at this beautiful woman, I couldn’t understand why the prayers of 110 people all at once couldn’t work. Then a young girl turned to me and said “I think you are supposed to share your testimony”. Just earlier that week I had had a miraculous healing in my jaw. I had TMJ for ten years and excruciating pain. One morning on a bus ride to the work site I had my team from Jacksonville lay hands on me and believe for complete healing. Then one of our leaders turned to me and said “I want you to pray for yourself. YOU have to believe in your own healing.” I began to declare that I was healed and praise God for healing. I started shouting the promises of God and faith started to arise. I took a step of faith and I chose to BELIEVE. I had always had immense faith that God could do great things for others but not for me. Then the spirit of God fell on me and I could feel my jaw being realigned right there in the bus! It was one of the single most amazing and profound moments I have ever experienced with God. A real first hand supernatural healing!
So I shared this story with this girl and God spoke to me so clearly. Her healing was his timing and she herself had to believe. She couldn’t just say she believes but truly completely believe that he is God and he can and will heal her. There were other things God was doing in her life before she would experience that miracle. Whatever the reason this girls didn’t get complete healing was not for me to know but God was at work in her life.
I had deluded myself into trusting in my spanish speaking skills or the numbers of people and the amount of faith in the room.
God’s miracles don’t just happen if you say the right words or do the right thing.
His timing is so much more complicated.
We walked away and the girl hadn’t received the miracle we so desperately interceded before but I didn’t walk away with my head down. God had a plan for her healing. It wasn’t coincidence she was the same girl that we all couldn’t forget and the same one that would receive the house we had built and prayed over.
I don’t even remember her name but I’ll never forget her face. She is a reminder that God’s timing is perfect. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts and his ways are bigger than my ways.
STORIES LIKE THIS ARE WHY I’M GOING ON THE RACE.
There are dozens of individuals with stories and lives that I get to be a part of even if just for a moment. I know I will get to witness miracles and pave the way for even more even if I never seen the fruit of it. There are dozens of stories yet to be told and more people that God can use to show me more about himself and his goodness.
Below is a picture with my Jacksonville team the woman second to the far right standing in front of the house we built for her.
