Persevere and Keep Loving People when They Don’t Understand!
I remember when I first started seeing people healed how I had to persevere. People didn’t understand! Many thought I was proud, a show-off! They didn’t know I was just talking about miracles constantly because I had seen Jesus through them and because the more I talked, the more happened. As I continued talking, bragging about God, I began to tangibly feel a cloud of God’s goodness around me. There was a joy springing up, an expectation, and it began to create expectancy in others. Over time the culture around me began to change, people began to understand, and some who were offended at first had a change of heart and were healed. I especially remember a particular couple that was resistant at first. In the end, their hearts opened up and I asked the wife to pray for her husband with me. He didn’t feel any change when we prayed….but God’s power went into her knee and her knee was healed as we were praying for her husband
I’ve been in a similar situation lately. I’m in new territory and getting involved in the body of Christ here. Lately, I’ve seen quite a few people in this new group healed by Jesus. In fact, the very night when I got the news that my mother-in-law passed away and I was waiting for my wife to pick me up so we could recognize the body, I was laying hands on people and Jesus was healing them.
In spite of being charismatics, so many people are surprised. They say “Wow, you have a great spiritual gift!” The other day someone introduced me as a “prophet of healing.” I’ve never heard that one before! But I know this should be normal for every Christian, and I keep telling people “This isn’t a spiritual gift. This is Jesus. It can be normal for every Christian. Jesus said that those who believe in him would do the same works.” People are getting curious and asking questions. As more miracles have been happening, I keep sharing the testimonies. And as I keep sharing, I start to feel more frequently God’s glory like a weight of his goodness around me. There’s an excitement that is starting to touch others. It’s reminding me of periods in my life like my time in Russia or my first trip to Brazil where the air was thick with God’s presence.
An Emotional Roller Coaster!
In times with so much power and glory, I have always had to pray to keep my emotions in check. You sometimes feel elated in one moment and crushed in the next. Sometimes the down feeling is just the natural emotion after the high when you just saw God heal every person in a group who had a need and asked for prayer! I think of how often Jesus, after a wild time of ministry and everyone touching him being healed, would go away to a deserted place and spend the time in communion with the Father.
There is also a lot of emotion if you don’t immediately see what you want. There was a lady having issues with pain and bleeding. The first time we prayed for her, I felt God’s presence manifest powerfully but she wasn’t having the pain at the moment and there was no way to test it. Then we heard she was still having some issues. After a few weeks, they got worse. Then got to see her pray again and this time there was a manifestation of heat and electricity and all the pain left. I also felt heat touch my body a little bit under my arm, which would have been on her breast. I asked if there was an issue in that part of her body. She wasn’t aware of anything and I thought maybe I missed it with the word of knowledge. I was still happy that she was now pain-free. But the next day, she was having issues again.
Then she was hospitalized. When she got out of the hospital I prayed again and the pain left. When we got home we continued praying and there was a lot of heat and manifestation of God’s power. She could no longer feel the hard place or any pain if she pressed on her body. She physically felt God’s power moving in her body, along with heat. But the next day we heard she was in pain and bleeding again, although not as badly.
I felt discouraged. If you get discouraged sometimes you speak and instead of the excitement you felt the first time you prayed, it feels like empty words. And I pray “God, help me!”
Then I saw another lady who had been in the group and shared a prayer request the second time we prayed for this lady. Her 92-year old grandmother had been hospitalized after a stroke and was partially paralyzed. She said it would take a miracle for the old lady to come out of this. The grandmother was not present but I said, “OK, let’s hold hands and pray.” We had held hands and I said “In Jesus’s name, for the glory of God, we command the grandmother’s body to be restored as if she never had a stroke.”
I hadn’t felt as much expectancy at the moment for the grandmother who was absent as I had for the people who were present and I was laying hands on. But a few weeks later, I saw the granddaughter again and she told me “My grandmother that we prayed for was released out of the hospital after that and she has full movement as if she never had a stroke!”
That encouraged me. Continually throughout this weekend, I kept talking to people and sharing testimonies, and I was tangible feeling something like a force feel of God’s goodness around me. I was walking increasingly in the manifestation of God’s glory. Then we were in a meeting. The sermon had a strong demonic influence. The preacher scolded the people, called them robbers for not tithing, and saying “God hates robbers!” In the middle of the meeting, people started crying out, yelling in tongues, and falling to the ground. I didn’t know if so much of what was happening was the Holy Spirit, emotionalism, or demonic. (Later God gave me an understanding of what was happening. I wrote about it in the last blog post.) But I prayed for the lady with the bleeding and pain issues yet again, and also prayed for my father-in-law.
My father-in-law felt God touch him tangibly, but in a way, he couldn’t explain. (The next day he got baptized for the second time as he has recently re-dedicated his life to Christ.) And the lady told us that when we were praying for her the second time, we were praying for her belly but God was doing something else and she felt his power pulling on her where she had two tumors/cysts (I forget which) that had shown up in the ultrasound. And then I remembered. I had given a word of knowledge the second time praying for her about something on her breast under her arm, and she didn’t seem to know what it was at the time!
More Demonic Resistance!
Several people had told the pastor about the healings happening, and one of them told him that he needed to meet me to talk about a healing school. I don’t like praying for everybody. I want to see the whole church doing the works of Jesus, and so I do my best to teach everybody that this is about Jesus and the power of the gospel message, not about a “spiritual gift.”
So I had talked to the pastor and we agreed to meet and talk on the break after that night’s meeting. But I felt uneasy for some reason.
As the meeting continued, the guest preacher continued his witchcraft of threatening and cursing people if they didn’t pay tithes and “firstfruits.” I was stirred up and angered in my spirit and my wife said “You don’t have to be here.” So I walked out and went to the cabins. The pastor saw that I wasn’t there and was upset.
Then as the next session started, the pastor said publically (paraphrasing) “People often come to me wanting to talk about a ministry, wanting to have the microphone and be seen. But if you can’t sit down and listen, how can I let you stand up and have other people listen to you? Lots of people are just chasing miracles, but we are about so much more than that. It’s really about knowing Jesus.”
Those of you who know me well know how completely wrong he was! Like I’ve said, I’ve been around the block before! When I started ministering healing and talking about the testimonies constantly, some people thought I was just arrogant, a show-off! If only he knew! If only he knew that I was once so shy someone thought I was mute! If only he knew that I to become possessed with God’s love and stop caring about what people thought of me, and be willing to look like a complete fool, in order to go up to strangers and tell them “Jesus wants to heal you” or risk missing a word of knowledge for a person I saw as I was crossing the street! If only he knew how the miracles revealed Jesus to me and changed the very structure of my brain so that pornography would have no appeal to me because I couldn’t see people through that selfish lens as objects anymore! If only he knew how many times I had harsh and angry feelings for someone but I could no longer hold onto unforgiveness because I was too used to God completely gripping my heart and soul with his love!
If only he knew how I started weeping as I walked down the street at night because I have so many memories and I knew God wanted to touch someone, and I saw the guy who was threatening to kidnap my daughter and ended up praying for him! If only he knew that I cry all the time, but I almost never cry anymore because someone hurt me or because I’m having a hard time. I cry because of God’s love for people. I cry because I want people to know Jesus. If only he knew how I don’t want people to look to me or think I have a spiritual gift, but I want them to see Jesus, and I much prefer for other Christians to receive the message, find out Jesus lives in them, and minister healing, then for me to lay hands on everybody.
If only he knew that even though it was quite judgemental and just wrong for him to so quickly assume my intentions, to assume I was a show-off without knowing me, and make a statement like that publicly instead of talking to me privately, I wasn’t in the least hurt by what he said. (Although many people would be.) And the very reason I wasn’t hurt by it was that I don’t care what people think of me. I’m happy to look like a fool and be misunderstood for the sake of my friend Jesus. I’m privileged if I suffer outside the city with Him! (Hebrews 13:12) I’m in heaven, beholding the glory of God, and if nothing can change my perspective or stop me from loving, nothing can take me out of heaven! But I weep for this man and for others who don’t understand, who are hurting and broken, who still barely understand the gospel and are double-minded about it!
In spite of all that happened, I felt great peace and glory in my soul, and I still do. In fact, I don’t think this story is over yet!
It Doesn’t Matter What I Feel. What Matters Is God’s Perspective!
When we are walking in God’s glory and making progress, all kinds of things come to try to toss us to and fro. Our emotions go up and down. One moment we might feel elated and the next we feel crushed. But it is so important to keep cultivating communion with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes you just need to get alone and sing to the Lord. And we keep proclaiming God’s word and staying anchored in it regardless of our emotions. We keep laying hands on the sick regardless of what we saw or didn’t see the last time we did. I often tell myself “It doesn’t matter what I’m feeling. What matters is God’s perspective!”
I believe what is happening here, right now, is the beginning of revival. I feel like I’m on the edge of the seat, day after day feeling God’s glory around me, feeling my soul gripped by God’s love, currents of love flowing through me, touching my body. Sometimes I just cry aloud to Jesus. I start talking about him and I start vibrating. And I want to ask you to join with me in fervent prayer for the church in Goiania and in Brazil and that this move of the Holy Spirit would not be diverted in any way but would be cultivated and multiply and increase until Brazil sees such a manifestation of the Spirit of Jesus Christ as it has never known before, that millions of hearts would be gripped and transformed by the glory of God. I ask you to pray for me that I would continue to walk in truth and wisdom and see with God’s perspective. And I pray that God would grip your hearts with love for the church, compassion for the hurting, and expectation for what he wants to do around you!
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Go to Heaven Now
Featured Image by soel84 from Pixabay
