CAVANNA

A pleasure to catch up with friends from Mattersey Hall College days: Dave and Sue Mansfield, now pastoring The Haven Church in Stapleford, west of Nottingham. It had been a few months since I had held a meeting specifically geared towards the healing ministry but I needn’t have worried. The faithfulness of God and the power of the Holy Spirit shone through!

Within a few moments of the conclusion of my message, and before any public prayer had been made, a lady began to indicate from the congregation that she believed she had been healed. Moving her neck with great ease she came out to the front to testify, only to realise that her back was also now free of pain. She had walked into church using a stick. She had no use for it now and, wonderfully, it was the lady’s birthday!

Faith arising, many others stood to receive prayer. A lady found her neck and arm come free without any need for the laying on of hands, and looked more than a little stunned. I’ll not quickly forget a more senior aged man healed in his knee, kicking it triumphantly in the air during the after church buffet!  But the best was yet to come, as two others received healing from the terrible condition of fibromyalgia. One lady healed in her feet, the other astonishingly set free from all pain and fatigue through her entire body. This was immensely exciting and while all miracles are special, it was a rich blessing to see the Lord healing fibromyalgia.

I was very moved, often with tears, praying for the people at Stapleford. Some had mental or emotional conditions, and I pleaded with the Lord to touch them. There was a humble lady, who was asked to make sure I had a drink and refreshment during the services, but this meant that she did not get the opportunity to receive prayer. Putting a coffee in my hand, she asked me not to finish until I had laid hands on her. She had no need for this. When trying to explain where her pain was, she discovered that it had vanished from her already – the Lord Himself had touched her and He still uses the shadow of His people.

Praise God, people jumped, shouted, wept and danced around the front of the church, while some of the young (and not so young) people looked on. One young man told me he had never seen anything like it!  Hallelujah!

A few days’ later I was teaching at the Christian Resource Centre over a special weekend. While I was briefly praying at the end, a lady who had been suffering constantly with sinusitis (a dreadful unending head pain) whispered in my ear on her way out of the meeting that it had wonderfully vanished. I spent a few minutes praying with another man, Keith from Zimbabwe, who was not able to bend his knee due to stiffness and pain. We walked around the church together and, while still certainly stiff, he was pain free. He testified a couple of days’ later that he was no longer in need of his pain-killer tablets – he was taking up to twelve a day to curb the pain, and he had no need of them anymore! During my final meeting, two others testified to some measure of healing. Patricia knelt down for the first time in five years, free of arthritic pain, and Norman, a street evangelist, was thrilled to tell us how the Lord had taken the pain out of his leg too.

Praise God!

September 2010