The healing clinic

I had a call from a lady named 'Lara', at around 10am. She said that she knows the man that I prayed for a few months back who was able to throw his crutches away afterwards. Lara got my contact details from him and said that she looks after another older lady - 'Jan', who has problems with her hip and knees. Then she asked whether I had a clinic she could come to for a check-up and how much I charge!

I wasn't sure what she had been told but I explained to her that I don't have a clinic, but that I pray for people and God heals them. I said that I go to meet people wherever they are and that I don't charge anything, because Jesus said in the Bible: "Freely you have received, freely give." Then we arranged a time and place to meet later on that day.

When I met up with Lara, Jan was still in a hospital appointment so I chatted with Lara for a bit about what I do and prayed for her back which was giving her some pain. It was a bit hard to test out the change after the prayer because she said she is mainly sore in the mornings. I encouraged her that when I prayed, healing power when out of me into her back and she would notice a difference in the morning. In situations when you can't tell for sure what has happened, we just need to believe that when we lay hands on the sick they recover. Whether we see it straightaway or not is irrelevant.

I waited around to meet Jan. My wife and kids had come down too so I just enjoyed some time with them. When Jan came along I asked her what was wrong with her and she listed a bunch of ailments from knee pain to hip pain, Parkinson's and some other medical terms I couldn't understand. I asked her which one was causing her the most issues and she said her knee was incredibly sore. I got her to walk around on it and she needed to lean on Lara to do so. She said the pain level was about 8/10.

I laid hands on her knee and prayed for her. She walked around again and said it was better. Now it was probably at 5/10. I said I would pray for her again because sometimes it takes a few goes. I prayed once more and she walked around again. This time she said there was no pain at all. She still had to lean on Lara though so I prayed for her again because I wanted to see her walking unaided. I also encouraged her to thank Jesus for the pain going away. When we receive something we say thank you. I then shared the gospel with both of them. I felt strongly to talk about how the Bible teaches a lot of things, and that in church you don't see all of what the Bible teaches. I shared that the Bible talks about how Jesus healed everyone when he was whipped before going to the cross. I also said that no one can see the kingdom of heaven unless they are born again. Because I am born again I can bring the healing that Jesus purchased to them. If they are born again then they could do the same things.

They drove off a little bit later even though Jan still had to lean on Lara to walk. I encouraged them that sometimes healing takes time and not to lose heart. Sometimes it just takes time for the muscles, ligaments and tendons etc. to loosen up and do what they are supposed to do.

That wasn't bad. Thank you Lord. Maybe I should open up a healing clinic!

Baptism

It was a bright and sunny Saturday morning and the TLR Hamilton team had planned to go to the beach for a day of swimming and fellowship. God had other plans for the day though. Mike & April stopped off to talk to a man name 'Mark' who was interested in hearing more about God. He is friends with Rhonda who we prayed for the week before and cast demons out of. She told Mark what had happened to her and he wanted to know more.

At around lunchtime I got a phone call from Mike to ask if I wanted to do a baptism today. I said that I was at home looking after our 1 year old son and that Irene had gone out in the car so I couldn't go anywhere until she came back so I invited them all over for lunch. They turned up around 1pm at the same time as Irene and then we all had a beautiful shared lunch.

During that time I was able to talk with Mark a bit more. I originally asked him, "why do you want to get baptised?" His answer at the time was something along the lines of, "I just want to try it out." I wasn't too impressed with that answer so I explained to him in more detail what repentance means. I used the analogy of his old life being represented by a house with a vegetable garden. Repentance means to burn that old house to the ground, dig up all the vegetables in the garden, salt the earth so that nothing ever grows there again and then to walk away from it and never look back.

I also gave him a Bible and took him to Romans 6. I shared with him that baptism is like a funeral for the old man. He then asked me what sin was and I was able to explain using another illustration. This one is about archers in the olden days who used to aim at a round target a long way away. Behind the targets they used to dig trenches where servants would be stationed who could bring the arrows back after the archer shot. If the archer missed the target completely the servant would stand up and yell "sin!" Meaning he missed the mark. The mark for us is how God wants us to live. Once Mark understood this he said, "Then everyone has sinned!" So I took him to Romans 3:23 which says exactly that. I then explained that the only way we can live a life that God wants us to is to look at his son Jesus. Before we can do that though, we need to put to death our old life through baptism and become born again and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

After I explained that to him we asked him again whether he wanted to be baptised. I explained to him that there is no turning back so he needed to be absolutely certain. He said that he wanted to so we all piled in to our cars and went down to the river.

It was absolutely packed with people when we got there because it was such a hot day. I loved it because there were so many witnesses! We then baptised Mark into Jesus. He said when it happened he felt a release in his spirit. We prayed for him to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit but nothing obvious happened at the time. We continue to believe that he will speak in tongues though.