The Last Month and a Half

After the last blog post, I went with the first missions group to Jandaia ladies’ recovery house on a Wednesday night. It was glorious! People were being healed one after another through words of knowledge. That mission group is the one that I was first involved in. They do missions much more infrequently, and the people haven’t yet understood very well that God’s power is for all Christians, not just a special few with a “spiritual gift.”

The Sunday before our trip to the US, someone asked me to come to the local Sunday morning service to pray for a lady with two herniated disks. I work on Sundays, but this time my classes started later so I could at least stay for a good portion of the service and then have to leave early for work.

They always have breakfast before the Sunday morning meeting. Before breakfast, people asked me to pray for a young guy. I shared an encouragement with him and he physically felt God’s glory on his body. Then we got in line for breakfast. As we were standing there, I saw a lady in another part of the building with green shorts and had the impression that she had a problem with her right hip. I noted her and then I decided I’d look for her later.

Immediately after we got our food, I started shaking and weeping because I felt God’s love for the people around me. I’m so thankful for the Holy Spirit’s influence on my life! It was like it just took over me. I prayed silently, God, you are the Guide. Show me what you want to do.” As I was praying, I felt that the lady I was walking past had a stomach problem. I set down my food and asked if I could pray for her. She said “OK, prayer is good.” I replied “I felt that I should pray for your stomach.” She said “Yes, I have an infection in my stomach.” We prayed and the pain was gone.

Then I found the lady with the green shorts, sitting with her husband. I asked about her right hip. She had such pain in her hip that she wasn’t sleeping at night. I said “Jesus is healing your hip right now.” In a moment, she was weeping and walking with no pain.

I saw another older lady a few rows up and asked if she’d accept prayer. She had bad pain in her leg and a blind eye. We prayed, I took her hand, and she got up and walked without pain. Then we were praying and I was feeling God’s power going into her eye, but the worship was starting and it was too loud to talk, so I just thanked the Lord for his power remaining on her and went to my seat.

After about half an hour, the person with the two herniated disks arrived and they pulled me out to a Sunday school room to pray for her. She started twisting and fell on the floor. We prayed for maybe half an hour and many demons came out of her. The back pain was also gone. And we prayed and God healed her husband’s back as well. She was so relieved to be free from the demons oppressing her that she kept saying “Thank you! Thank you Jesus!” It reminded me of the lady who Jesus cast so many demons out of, and then she came back and washed his feet with her tears.

I had to leave early to work, but I was crying for the next two hours as I worked. Jesus’ mighty works have quite an impact on my soul!

Then we went to the US. It was an exhausting trip, taking three flights with a baby on our laps, and I got sick on the way. Throughout the whole trip, it would seem like I was finally getting better but then I got worse again. I was exhausted. I won’t say too much about the trip except that it was really precious to see my family in Pennsylvania and New York after so many years and especially to see my parents meeting their grandchildren for the first time ever! One of the things that happened there was the Lord spoke to me about an elderly man’s eye and it turned out his retina was detaching. We prayed and the black spot that had been in his vision disappeared.

I was feeling quite tired throughout the trip and it was discouraging to be feeling like that when I was finally able to visit the US again. I wished I could have been visiting for three months, not just two weeks. I had to keep reminding myself of simple truths like “God loves me. He is for me, not against me.”

I have been watching the Jesus Encounter Ministries meetings since 2016 and was longing to finally go to an in-person meeting. We went to their meeting in New Jersey, near New York City. My dad fell on the floor during worship and felt the Lord healing him of some problems he’d had with his thyroid and breathing. He received prayer later and went crashing to the floor again. My nine-year-old daughter fell on the ground holding a ball in her hand when she received prayer, my wife was touched by God’s peace, and some of the other people I brought received. In spite of being exhausted, I was weeping much of the time as I saw what God did for others.

I had gone determined to receive by faith whether or not I felt anything. Sometimes we receive from the Lord and don’t even realize it until later. But I really would have loved to be blasted to the floor with God’s power, or receive a prophecy. In fact, I was feeling kind of desperate. “I’m coming all the way from Brazil to this meeting because I need help!” And I did receive prayer, but I didn’t feel anything. And in spite of being exhausted and having to remind myself “God loves me. He will never leave me or forsake me,” I was praying back at the hotel for my friends and God was moving in power.

The trip back from the US was even more exhausting. We missed our third flight because the airline had trouble printing the baby’s boarding pass, and the airline staff kept sending us in circles to get the situation resolved. We paid for a temporary room at the airport to try to rest a little while we were waiting. I had been feeling almost better and now felt sick again. We were finally home after 38 hours, but without our luggage! Then the airline staff were saying contradictory things about where our luggage was, and we felt fears assailing us that we would lose most of our clothes and many other things in our luggage!

We had a mission on Saturday to Elohin ladies’ recovery house, where the Lord had already done many miracles before. I hate missing a mission, but I thought “I won’t be able to go this time. I’m feeling too bad.” However, on Saturday we found our luggage had arrived and we went to the airport to pick it up. I had rested and was feeling much better. And as we were in the car, I got a word of knowledge about a lady at the recovery house who had a heart problem and she would die early if not for the Lord healing her. So I felt the Lord was leading me to go.

I really was feeling mostly better, except for an itch deep in my lungs that would make me cough. But I thought I was finally better now and that was just something left over that would soon be gone too.

It was so good to be with my friends in the car, blaring worship music on the way. The men’s group in the US had been so dry in comparison! I received a few other words of knowledge and all of them hit the target. The lady was there who recently had a heart incident (heart attack?) and was feeling pain in her chest ever since. I had an impression about asking a certain young missionary girl to pray for her. After different people received prayer, I went to the lady who had the heart issue and asked what happened. All the pain was gone, but she was limping! The heart problem had been healed, but she also had a problem in her leg. I prayed, cried out “Jesus,” and blew on her leg. It immediately went numb. A few minutes later she came back and said “Look! I’m not limping!” The rest of the night was glorious. We kept praying for people for about another hour and there was one miracle after another.

I could barely sleep that night. My chest was so tight, it was hard to breathe! I had thought I was better again, and now I was feeling like this! The voice of fear was saying “You’ll never get over it!” I was feeling so bad that I lost my breath speaking, and I had to cancel as many English classes as I could. I don’t like taking antibiotics, but my wife consulted a doctor on the phone and she thought it was a bacterial infection in my lungs. But halfway through the treatment with antibiotics, I got so sick to the stomach I was throwing up all night. I had to stop the antibiotics. Again, the voice of fear was assailing me. “You’ll never get over this! And how are you going to keep going? How are you going to keep living in Brazil? You didn’t get your answer at the conference!” I hadn’t received the answers I’d hoped for on my trip to the United States. And I kept reminding myself. “God is faithful. He will never forsake me. He will restore, strengthen, and establish me.”

Breathing was so difficult and I was still cancelling many of my classes. I finally tried chewing two raw cloves of fresh garlic and holding it under my tongue. I felt it shoot through my body and almost vomited because the garlic was so strong. But the stomach discomfort passed after a few minutes and I felt my lungs open up. It was way more effective than any of those medicines! I’ve been feeling much better ever since and I just went to Casa da Paz on Wednesday night again.

Hear, you Deaf! Look, you Blind!

Much of Isaiah 42 is a prophecy about Jesus, and I believe the “servant of the Lord” refers to Jesus in this passage. I don’t think I ever understood this very well until I heard Mark Hemans preach on it, and it was revelation to me. (I’d share the message if I could find which one it was!)

Isaiah 42:16-17 I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
    along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
    and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
    I will not forsake them.
But those who trust in idols,
    who say to images, ‘You are our gods,’
    will be turned back in utter shame.
“Hear, you deaf;
    look, you blind, and see!
Who is blind but my servant,
    and deaf like the messenger I send?
Who is blind like the one in covenant with me,
    blind like the servant of the Lord?
You have seen many things, but you pay no attention;
    your ears are open, but you do not listen.”

To hear what God is saying and see what God is seeing, we so often have to be blind to the appearances of what things seem to be naturally, and deaf to what people with merely human wisdom and saying. Jesus didn’t judge by mere appearances, but he judged with right judgement. Man sees the outward appearances, but God sees the heart. So it was like Jesus was deaf and blind to what many others saw, but he heard what the Father was saying and saw what the Father was doing. And in a way, we must also become deaf and blind in order to hear the Lord’s voice and see what He sees. Things often seem one way, but God’s perspective is different.

The doctrine of the hypostatic union states that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. Although Jesus is God, he became like one of us, with every weakness we have. Although God is all-powerful, Jesus became weak and could do nothing of himself but had to fully rely on the Father. He received ministry from angels and from people. Although God cannot be tempted, Jesus was tempted. So although God is also all-knowing, could Jesus’ incarnation and humanity mean that he didn’t always know how things would work out? Yes, he knew where he came from and where he was going. He knew he would be put to death and rise again. But did he see every detail of how this was going to happen? Or did Jesus also have to trust the Father even when he didn’t fully understand, as we do?

I didn’t get the answers I hoped for in the United States. I don’t know how everything will work out. I’m going down an unfamiliar path. It seems like darkness before me, but the Lord will turn the darkness into light and make the rough places smooth. I don’t see in the natural. I’m blind, but I must trust the Lord. I must learn to pay no attention to the impossibilities and obstacles I see, as if I’m blind to them, and not listen to the voices of fear and anxiety, as if I’m deaf to them.

I was talking to a young guy who has been assailed by demonic torment and struggled to hold on to hope. He was hearing the voices of fear and accusation, and I encouraged him with God’s promises. Then I said “Guess what? You’re not the only one who deals with this! In the last month I’ve had to be deaf to the voice of the enemy and choose to trust God as well!”

You see, some people might assume that a person who has been experiencing so many miracles would never have to stand firm in faith or remind himself “God is faithful. He loves me. He is for me.” But it’s not true! We never get to the point where we see and understand everything and don’t have to walk by faith. You will always have to walk by faith.

And in a way, faith is blind because it’s the evidence of things not seen. Faith hear and sees from heaven and ignores the way things seem. They told Jesus a little girl was dead, but he was deaf to their words. When he came to the girl, Jesus was blind to what everyone else saw and said she was sleeping. They laughed, but he said “Little girl, get up!” And she did.

If you walk in faith, naturally-minded people will think “Doesn’t he understand? Doesn’t he see? Didn’t he hear what we said?” But you are hearing what the Father says and seeing what the Father sees.

The natural mind says “You were just sick for all that time. How can you pray for others who are sick?” It says “That person you prayed for died of cancer. How can you pray for the next one?” It says “Look at everything you’re going through. Is God really still with you? Does God care?” It says “Your mother-in-law is so sick, she’s out of her mind, and it’s been like this for so long. How can you minister to people on the street when she hasn’t been healed?” It accuses God, saying “This situation has gone on for so long. Why hasn’t God’s rescued you yet?”

“Jonathan, how have you seen so many miracles? You can tell testimonies all day and they never end.” It’s not because my life has been easy. But I’ve learned (and still am learning) to become blind and deaf to the natural way of reasoning, understanding, and sensing things. God’s word must grip my soul until I’m deaf to the voices of accusation, fear, anxiety, and unbelief. To see what God sees, I must pay no attention to many other things that I see. To hear what God is saying, I must not listen to what so many other voices are saying. To the one who thinks and senses things naturally, a person who is walking in faith seems blind and deaf. But the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom! To hear God’s voice, become deaf to the static. Turn off the other channels and tune in to His!

John 9:39 (NIV) Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

Become blind and deaf so you can see and hear!