I’ve been studying through the book of Acts lately. It’s hard not to read that book of the Bible and see a church and body of believers who ministered in word and power. You see stories of God using guys like Peter, John, Paul, Stephen, Phillip, etc to bring physical healing. All were definitely leaders, but not all were apostles. If you then step back into the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), you see Jesus healing many and him sending out others to do the same.
I’m not here writing this blog to get into an online argument with those who believe these gifts have ceased. I’m not trying to teach and spread some form of theology of healing either, but I do want to testify to something that I believe is at the heart God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I want to tell a personal story that is very real and very true, where the Lord showed up and touched someone in a very intimate way, healed them and saved them.
In the summer of 2018, I went with a small team on a mission trip to Zimbabwe. Our team stayed on a houseboat for almost 2 weeks and visited remote fishing villages along the shorelines of the Zambezi river on Lake Kariba. During the day, we would spend time in worship, prayer, teaching and just having fun together. But in the evening, we would visit different villages to teach, share the gospel, love on people and pray for the sick and oppressed. On this particular evening, we were visiting a village that our ministry partner had been to many times before.
In order to get into the village, we had to use a smaller fishing boat. The villagers knew we were coming and would line up at the shore to greet us. It was a very humbling experience seeing these dear people who have nothing, stop everything just to make us feel welcome. As we walked in, it seemed like the crowds continued to grow. We were headed to the center of the village. As we were setting up and finding places for our team to sit, I had something out of the normal occur. I started to feel pain in my right ear. It was weird though, because I immediately sensed that the pain was not my own. Our host, asked me to share for about 10 minutes. So, as I prepared and was rehearsing in my mind what I was going to say, I just couldn’t get it out of my mind that the Lord was trying to tell me something.
As I stood up to speak, I felt the gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit asking me to hold off on sharing with them until I addressed this word He had given me for someone. I stood there for a minute questioning Him and questioning myself. Was this pain a revelation of someone else’s pain or was it just a silly old ear ache? I’ve learned that God will sometimes give you words or impressions for others, but will not always show you their full meaning. He wants you first to step out in faith and respond before showing you the full context of the word. This pain was a word from the Lord for someone in that village. I didn’t know who, or the extent of his or her situation, but I did understand that there was someone present who needed to be touched by God.
Before I did anything else, I quieted the crowd and told them that I believed there was someone there with a problem with their ear. When I said this and began scanning the crowd, I noticed two drunk men sitting beside one another on a stump talking. They then looked across the crowd and pointed to one of the other men in the village. I believe he was a bit embarrassed at first because he just sat there for a minute before confirming he had a problem with his ear.
As he came forward, he mumbled something in Tonga to my interpreter. He told him that his ear had been hurting and draining for several weeks. He then proceeded to remove a small cotton swab from his ear and show us. Without much hesitation, I asked him if we could pray for him right there in front of his village, to which he agreed. My interpreter, Teech and I just said a short prayer. Nothing elaborate. We just asked Jesus to touch him by His Holy Spirit and bring complete healing to his ear.
After praying, we opened our eyes and looked at him. He was smiling. He said the pain had gone away while we were praying. He was excited. But then he did something peculiar. He took the cotton swab and stuffed it back into his ear. I then asked the interpreter to ask him something for me. I asked this man to take the cotton swab back out and leave it out while I spoke. If God had healed the pain, I believed that he would stop the draining as well. So, he took it back out and went back to where he had been previously sitting.
For the next 10 minutes, I shared about God’s love for us and how He sent Jesus to die in our place as a payment for our sin. I talked about how if we respond in faith and trust Christ with our lives that He would forgive us completely, give us new life that can never be taken and restore us to relationship with him. As I finished, I closed our time by praying for the crowd. After praying, I didn’t have to track the young gentleman down, because he immediately went and grabbed Teech and then cam back to speak with me. He told me that while I was speaking, the draining in his ear had completely stopped as well. Now, the pain and the draining were gone!
The Lord had this man on His heart that day. It was a divine appointment. I could see it, Teech could see it and now, the man was beginning to see it. After he told me that he had been healed, I immediately asked him if he knew Jesus. He responded that he did not. I explained to him that Jesus loved him so much that he gave someone else a word just for him that day that brought His physical healing. I then asked him if he wanted to know Jesus and receive spiritual healing as well. He didn’t hesitate. He said “Yes, I do!”
I don’t know why God chooses to heal some immediately and for others it’s a not yet and still for others it’s not this side of seeing Jesus face-to-face. I don’t know why He chooses to heal some people who we might would think are unworthy, but chooses not to heal some of those we esteem as saints. I don’t know. But that’s ok. Like I said at the beginning, my purpose isn’t to argue some theological point on healing. It’s just to share one specific story of how the Lord used an unworthy person like me to bring healing to someone he dearly loved in the middle of a village in the remote bush of Zimbabwe. It’s also to testify to the fact that God still LOVES to miraculously heal! He still uses healing to reveal himself and he uses ordinary believers like you and me to pray for the sick that they might be healed and turn to the one who Loves them completely!