CAVANNA

The meetings at Saffron Walden and Canvey Island in October and November 2005 were the first “healing services” done outside of our local church. The Minister at Saffron had encouraged me to come but warned me that his Sunday evening service was poorly attended, and I envisaged a group of about twelve people, sat in a circle. Given that figure in my mind, I had asked the Lord in private prayer before hand to heal four people. Well, when we arrived, the room was pretty full – I would say around fifty people were present; at least two in wheelchairs, plus many others who had come specifically to receive prayer for a miracle. At the sight of this much larger crowd, I began to feel quite anxious. I had not prepared significantly for this meeting, and the big question of whether or not this was going to work outside of our Cambridge church began to loom large. Thinking quickly, I preached my favourite message, although not one on healing, reasoning that there probably wouldn’t be any miracles and I would have to feed these people with something good to make it worth coming out! I had no great faith at all.

Upon the completion of my message, I invited Phil who had driven me to the meeting to take a few minutes to share about what had been happening in Cambridge, and then I asked those who wanted prayer to come forward. Many did, perhaps twenty people, and I began laying hands upon people. A lady was instantly healed upon my touch of a neck problem, and as this happened the faith level in the room suddenly soared high. I turned to a young man and asked him what was wrong with him. He replied “nothing”. He had been suffering in his stomach but just by coming out to the front, the Lord Jesus had healed him. Phil helped me to lay hands on the rest of these people and the results were phenomenal. When the fourth person was cured, I quickly repented to the Lord of my unbelief and that I had asked Him to only heal four people! I would estimate that around ten to a dozen people were healed in that place, including a senior lady struggling with deafness who began to hear much better. I recall the young people of this church were greatly touched by what they saw, and that was thrilling, although towards the end I felt we were being unduly ‘worshipped’ by them and, troubled in my spirit at this, I suggested that we leave quickly.

Both Phil and I left dazed and amazed at the demonstration of God’s power. It was probably the watershed meeting for this ministry. As we drove home I was in a state of excited shock and said to Phil repeatedly “We’re just a couple of geezers!” a phrase that would be picked up by the Cambridge Evening News shortly afterwards and became the headline “We can end the pain, say Miracle  Geezers.” For a long time, if you typed “miracle geezers” into google, it took you to the story on their news website!

A month or so later, I was in Canvey Island for a Sunday evening. It was quite a drive from Cambridge, especially after I had been ministering in the home church in the morning, and when I arrived in Canvey there weren’t many folk there, ironically due to sickness! But I had the privilege of laying hands upon Dave, a man who was not able to bend his body towards the right hand side at all, due to great pain. Praise God, after a number of prayers, he was dramatically set free, and began to swing his body freely. It was a miracle for sure, and one of the strongest I had seen at that time.

November 2005