Healing Close to Home

This past weekend, my family came to visit us. On the Friday night they arrived, my sister expressed much physical discomfort, including a stomach ache, hurting back, and many other things. Now, you must realize that my sister ALWAYS tells me that something is hurting her whenever I see her. I must admit, it can be taxing to carry the emotional burden of her being sick all the time. Thus, when she expressed her discomfort on Friday night, I was tempted to become disheartened. But, realizing this, I took my thoughts captive to Christ and gave my heart over to His desires for my sister instead.

I felt "electricity" concentrated in my forearms and palms, which from past experience indicated to me a special presence (or, "readiness") of the Holy Spirit, so I decided to do an experiment. I went over to my sister Sarah, who was sprawled out on the floor on her belly, and said, "Sarah, put out your hand palm-up."

Uncanny Coincidence...

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I started praying for a friend with back pain. Well, I got an email update a couple days ago that revealed an interesting trend. It seems as though the pain emerges and retreats depending upon my prayers.

Every instance in which I paused and prayed out loud for the pain to depart in Jesus' name, my friend reported that the pain instantly left. Unfortunately, the pain would come back (for apparently no reason) when my prayers were distracted and/or lacked force. The correlation is very evident to me, and it would be hard for me to accept at this point that the correlation is merely due to a series of coincidences. Thus, given the data, I am convinced that my prayers actually have an immediate and obvious effect on my friend's well-being.

This is both exciting and scary for me. I am excited to see the power of God at work through me. However, I now feel a new sense of responsibility that I didn't feel when I was in ignorance of the importance of my prayers.

I have learned an important lesson so far in my experiences in prayer for this friend: prayers are close to ineffective if they are not prayed with my whole heart! Perhaps this is what Jesus means by the phrase "double-minded"--if we have too many thoughts in our head at once, how can we really put our heart into any one of those thoughts? I am now convinced that I need to be intentionally single-minded so that the Father will take my prayers seriously.

My Back was Healed by a Prayer of Faith!

Several months ago (maybe even as long as a year ago), Josh and I were watching an episode of Sid Roth's show "It's Supernatural." I can't remember who was being interviewed, but the interviewee gave a healing prayer at the end of the interview. In the prayer, he said "Someone's back is being healed right now in Jesus' name." There had been lots of people (including Sid Roth himself) who had prayed something similar in past interviews, but this time I felt like he was really speaking to me. So, I prayed to God, "God, if this prayer could be for me, I would let you heal my back."

My back had been in a state of chronic pain. I always had knots in my back (so much so that my husband said my back felt "grainy"). Plus, one side of my back was significantly weaker than the other. In fact, the muscles were so imbalanced that on one side of my spine they were thick and strong (probably to make up for the other side), and on the other they seemed almost non-existent. There was a thumb-width's gap where a muscle should have been on one side of my spine. I had the suspicion that I had a slight case of scoliosis, since it runs in my family and a doctor pointed it out as a possibility once during a routine physical.

So, I expectantly hoped for my back to be instantaneously healed. I didn't notice anything right away, and not even by the next day. But within a week, my back was completely different than it had been for the past 3 years (probably more)! My husband noticed the difference as well, saying, "I don't know what happened, but you have a completely different back."

Praise the Lord that after so many months, my back is still in great condition as a result of this prayer. The Lord is good and faithful, and he has many benefits. It is the duty of those who know this to spread those benefits to others. Let me be faithful and obedient to the Father's will! May Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, Father! Amen!

Unexpected Ripple Effect

After I heard that the woman with cancer that we had been praying for had to go into surgery, and that even more, the doctors removed the entire thyroid because it was cancerous, I was devastated. I cried out to God asking Him why she wasn't healed, as I thought He had a great opportunity to reveal His power and compassion not only to His children, but also to the doctors. In my frustration, I started to sulk. Later that day, my husband asked if I would pray for his neck, since he had pulled a muscle. I prayed for it, but nothing happened. I was discouraged. Nevertheless, I prayed again. This time, I adjusted my heart so that I was focusing on Josh's neck instead of my own defeatist attitude. Josh wiggled his head around to see if there was any difference, and he said that it felt a little better. A few minutes later, we went into the other room and Josh sat down on the couch. When he sat down, he noticed the pain in his neck and said, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, but your prayer didn't work." Almost immediately, though, he remembered that his neck had felt better just a few minutes before. He used his situation to encourage me about the prayers for the woman with cancer. "Perhaps the cancer was actually defeated, and either the doctors just detected the remains of the cancer... or it came back after we stopped praying."

I had spent pretty much the whole day either seeking God for answers or sulking in discouragement, and in so doing I neglected to pray for my friend with a hurt back. I told him I would pray for it to be healed, and I had done so in spurts faithfully since the previous Tuesday (about a week before). Well, surprisingly, I received an IM from him today saying that his back started hurting really bad yesterday, and he didn't know why. I said that it may have been because I stopped praying for him because I was mad and discouraged and that I would pray for him right then. That was at about 4:30PM. At about 5PM, he IMed me again (after having been away from the computer) saying, "Whoa... that's nutty. My back started feeling better about a half and hour ago."

Wow. I must say that my friend's report was both encouraging and convicting at the same time. Encouraging because it let me see that my prayers actually can have a noticeable effect. Convicting because my sulking yesterday probably caused my friend to suffer needless back pain. This experience helped me to learn that I need to remain faithful in my obedience to God even when I'm struggling, for my disobedience could have unexpected ripple effects. I want to see the ripple effects of faithful obedience instead!