And he said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." (Mark 16:15-18 ESV)
See that Bold statement above? I've wondered about it for a long time. Many times in my life, most recently the past few months my faith has increased to a point that each and every time I lay my hands on someone and pray that Jesus will heal them, I believe he will! There have been an immense amount of encounters with people who are sick or have illnesses that I have prayed for, many of them I didn't see a change in that moment, my faith hasn't wavered in it, I continue to hand it over to God and believe that he will do wonders for them.
AW Tozer writes "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…" When I think about God, I know God is Love, All Powerful, everything in this earth is under his ultimate authority. And I whole heartedly believe that God wants us all to be free from illness, sickness and sin. Why else did he come to this earth in the form of man as his son Jesus, he didn't die on the cross for nothing! He came and died…and then Rose from the dead! We now have, if we choose to, the ability to be free from Sin in Jesus! And once we accept Jesus into our hearts, we are set free AND we get the holy spirit in us!? That means Jesus lives in us, the same healing miracles we read about in the Bible, we have the authority to make happen…not because of me or us, but through Jesus! He gives us the opportunity to bring Heaven to Earth through a co-laboring with him! It's all about him…
Here I am in Morogoro, Tanzania. On July 16th, another ordinary day for me (well actually quite unordinary) we meet in the main room where we are staying. Team 'Selah' and Thomas, Kayla and I begin to worship and pray about the day. We are doing what we like to call ATL (Ask the Lord). We sit and pray and listen! What does God put on our hearts for the day, where does he want us to go? As we finish worshiping, Kenra, the leader of Team Selah pairs us off in two's. I get a note that says 'B+B' (Brandon and Banko) it says in there to get crazy. Brandon and I pack up and head to walk to the dolla dolla (Bus) – on our walk there we start talking about healing. I begin to tell Brandon that I don't need to see a healing to know that Jesus is real, I've always wanted to see one but he already slapped me in the face with his reality many times this past year! We both laughed, knowing the truth how Big God is.
We jump on the bus and head into town, there is a bridge we know of that many beggars and blind people sit at so we headed that way. Once we got there we saw a path under the bridge that ran parallel to a small river. I had a feeling earlier and I voiced it that God was going to bring us to a mosque or something that day. We keep walking through this small path and see some boys on the other side, it looked like a school so we asked them where to cross the river, we made our way through the water and started talking to the boys, we find out that where we are is a Muslim school, as we continued on we met a few Men washing cars, one man in particular continued to chat with us, Nasoro Gama is his name. As we chat more and more we find out that he is the soccer coach at the school, he is Muslim, we tell him that we are Christians and we continue on. As we are leaving he starts to limp, point at us and to a building. He then starts talking about 'Powerful Jesus' and we both replied laughing 'Yes, Jesus is powerful' – at this moment we realize a Muslim man is asking us to pray for a woman for healing, she has a bad knee from a car accident. We pray for her, but we see nothing in the moment. She thanks us and we continue on, We ask Nosoro in our broken Swahili if he has any prayer needs. He points at his left knee, holding it with a grimacing face. We both lay our hands on his knee and begin to pray for him, as we are praying we begin to feel some movement internally in his knee, Brandon feels some part of his knee pop into his hand. As we end praying, we look at Nasoro and ask about how his knee feels. He starts to do some kicking motions, with a giant smile on his face and starts leaping up and down in excitement showing he can jump! He then pulls out 5000 schillings and tries to pay us for the healing of his knee!! We tell him 'Its Free!' he asks if he can buy us water, or anything, some kind of repayment but we tell him, 'Its Free, Jesus just healed you'. As we begin to walk away he runs across the street, to some friends, then runs back over to us, showing he can move his leg in a kicking motion again, walks away then comes back! As he leaves us, I see him running down the street!
(Nosoro and I)
I couldn't believe it, Jesus just healed this mans knee right infront of us. With my own eyes, I saw every bit of it unveil. The Joy in this mans face was wild, a giant smile and excitement! God brought the signs and wonders that day, I don't know why sometimes people are healed in certain instances or not but Isaiah 55:8-9 states
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
As one of many Instances while on the World Race, Jesus slapped me in the face with his reality that day.
