God’s Love Is Pursuing You!
Do You Have To Have Faith To Be Healed?
Today I’d like to share some recent testimonies about God’s love pursuing people. I’ve written quite a bit in past articles about how I stopped putting the emphasis on the faith of the person receiving ministry for them to be healed. Although of course, it’s great to encourage people to put their faith in Jesus as their Healer, what I call the “New Faith Movement” emphasizes the faith of the person ministering, not of the person who is receiving. Many people are skeptical or their hearts have become hardened with unbelief, yet God’s love is still pursuing them. In fact, I feel a special delight in seeing God touch people who just didn’t believe.
The Old Lady On The Prayer Mountain
There’s a place about a 20-minute walk from my house called “prayer mountain.” It’s really more of a hill in the middle of the city. You can go there and there will be people praying at almost any time of the day or night.
One night I went there and joined up with a group of people. They were prophesying that an old lady would be healed. However, it saddens me when I see this kind of thing because it’s just religious and it creates the worst kind of unbelief. Instead of using the authority that Christ has given us to release God’s power and then asking the person to test the condition, it puts God’s promise off to some indefinite time in the future.
After they finished, I saw that the old lady was limping badly Her son was helping her walk. I asked if I could pray for her. She said I could, but almost as if she didn’t expect me to pray right then and there.
I stretched my hand towards her knee and commanded “In Jesus’s name, pain go now! Thank you Holy Spirit for glorying Jesus by touching her.” I asked her how it felt now and she immediately responded “Oh, I’m sure it will get better. Thank you.” A typical religious response from a person who has been so disappointed by powerless religion that even though we talk about healing, we really don’t expect anything to happen! (It reminds me of a Pentecostal woman in Rio de Janeiro who covered her mouth in shock when she bent down and touched her toes with no pain in her back. In spite of all the jumping and shouting and yelling in tongues, she did not expect to actually be healed by Jesus that night! You know, praying for the sick was just some religious thing and everyone always said “It will get better” or “I am healed by Jesus’s stripes” without actually daring to test it!)
I said “But how does it feel? Can you move it? Can you test it?” I convinced her to test it and she said “It still hurts. But thank you. I’m sure it will get better” as if she was in a hurry to get the whole thing over with. And I asked, “But how is the level of pain? Is it less?” She responded, “Yes, it is less.”
And I said, “OK, let’s pray again.” I prayed again and the pain was even less. But she said “Oh, I’ve had this for so many years. I’m sure it will get better sometime.” Total religious unbelief. And I responded “Listen, forget about that! It’s very normal for me to pray several times and the pain gets less until it’s gone. This happens all the time, and I want you to leave here completely pain-free tonight. Just let me pray again.”
I prayed two more times and she was completely pain-free. Then because it was very dark and there was a part of the trail where she could get hurt or fall down the hill if she stepped wrong, I walked behind the lady and her son with my phone’s flashlight so she could see.
Even though she was pain-free after I prayed the fourth time, I don’t think that what happened really sunk in until a few minutes later when we were near the end of the trail. Her knee wasn’t hurting! The old lady started to realize that Jesus had healed her and she became very happy and started chattering joyfully. She said it was like God sent an angel to her that night. Her son was also grateful and they gave me a ride home. It was truly touching to see the happiness of the old lady!
The First Recovery House
We went to two different recovery houses the last two Saturdays, which are ministries that help people to leave drug and alcohol addictions. Two days before we went to the first one, they asked if I could share the message. I began praying for the time and I had a vision in my mind of pain in the whole neck and a triangle of pain from the neck to the middle of the back.
Before we went, I also had a few other impressions about physical issues I would encounter at the recovery house. One was deafness in one ear. I didn’t know if it was partial or complete. I shared the words of knowledge in the front. However, I forgot about the deafness at the time. As the time of praise and worship was going on, some of the men in the recovery home were clapping and moving quite a big, and I felt like that was releasing angelic activity.
I prayed for several people and they were healed. And a guy told me he had the neck and back pain that I had described. When I looked at him, his ear stood out to me and I felt that he was the person who had the hearing loss issue I had forgotten to mention. I asked, and he was! I commanded the ear to open in Jesus’s name, and it quickly opened to hear just as well as the other one. Jesus also healed his back.
He was one of the guys who had been moving a lot in the front during the praise time. I encouraged him to continue because it was releasing angels when he moved and clapped in praise to God. He told me some sometimes felt inexplicable “winds.”
This guy had been at the recovery house and off of crack for three months. It was really amazing to see how God seemed to target him that night. Two of the major words of knowledge that I had before we even went to the place were for him.
The Second Recovery House
The following week we went to another recovery house. It had fewer people, about 30, and we made hot dogs for everyone before the meeting.
I had received a few words of knowledge before we visited that place too. One of them challenged me. I felt something almost like a pressure over my eyes and it was heavier over the right eye. Only I don’t know how to explain it because it wasn’t a physical pressure but it was like something spiritual. And I felt that someone at the recovery house had an eye problem that was in both eyes but was worse in the right eye.
Even though I have seen Jesus heal people thousands of times and sometimes I’m really confident, even to the point of telling people with certainty “Jesus is healing you right now,” I still often have to confront my own unbelief. And to be honest, I sometimes have felt a little discouraged in the area of seeing eyes healed. I myself wear contact lenses or glasses and I’ve seen a few people healed of eye issues, but not nearly as many as of some other issues like just plain pain. I’ve seen a few people’s hearing restored and I was crazy about finding more opportunities to pray for deaf people after the day before.
Not only that, but I still am not always so sure if a word of knowledge was just my imagination or a word from God…I usually find it is a word from God but sometimes my mind is just going crazy with scenes of what God can go running through my imagination. But the thing is I have seen God’s glory and I really want to see Jesus glorified again as I have before, so I step out in spite of uncertainty and I confront my unbelief and act regardless of what I feel.
At the recovery house, I preached that there is a way that seems right unto a man, but it leads to death. On the contrary, the path of righteousness leads to fullness of joy in God’s presence and pleasures at his right hand. Jesus forgave sins and then healed the person to demonstrate that forgiveness and call the person to repentance. Forgiveness is not the same as salvation, but it makes salvation possible. Healing demonstrates God’s forgiveness and gives the opportunity to repent and choose the path of righteousness.
I also shared the testimonies of the lady on the mountain who was in total unbelief and of another lady who was about to cuss me out when I told her that Jesus was healing her…until she was healed. I told the people “God’s love is pursuing you even if your heart is hardened and you don’t believe.” And then I shared words of knowledge.
The first was for pain under the shoulder blades. It was a guy there and he felt partial relief upon hearing the word. I prayed for him twice in front of everyone and he said the pain was much less but not totally gone. I said “We’ll come back and pray for you again later.” Then I begged the other people to come and receive prayer, but only two more came.
One of them had the eye issues, which were worse on the right eye. When we have a specific word of knowledge like that and it hits the target, our faith skyrockets! So I knew he was being healed and prayed for him. In about a minute he was seeing 100% clearly. I went back to the guy with pain under the shoulder blades and prayed for him again, and the pain went to 0.
So I stood up again and said “Look, the pain is gone from under his shoulder blades and this man is seeing clearly now.” I felt there was a guy with chronic stomach pain and I’d shared that earlier but nobody responded. I pleaded with the people, “Who is the guy with stomach pain? Please come receive prayer! Please, everyone who had a need, whether for physical healing or something else, please receive prayer!” One of the leaders of the recovery house also encouraged the guys not to hold back from receiving prayer out of fear of not being healed.
A guy who had stomach pain for the last three days came and was healed in a few minutes. Then slowly, more people began coming to receive prayer. Maybe about half of everyone who was there came for prayer. And as far as I could tell at the moment, every single one of them received healing. Everyone who had pain testified that they were 100% pain-free after receiving prayer a few times. Of course, there were a few issues like insomnia that could not be tested at the moment.
My heart was on fire. I’ve seen God’s glory manifest before, sometimes at events like Voice of the Apostles where other people were ministering. I’d be happy to see other people giving words of knowledge and watch what God is doing. But I don’t know any of those other people near me. I’m the only one, and I don’t want to live without seeing heaven touch earth. So I found myself praying repeatedly, “Holy Spirit, thank you for glorifying Jesus now!” and saying “Jesus’ be glorified now and everything that would stand in the way, get out!” I want people to be impressed and in awe of Jesus when they see what he does. I care about so much more than just physical healing, but I like seeing people physically healed because it shows God’s love to people, demonstrates Christ’s forgiveness, and invites people to repent. It’s tangible. It shocks people and shows them that God is real and is with us.
Many people had already been healed but I felt a heat touch my shin. And I went upfront and said “I feel like someone here has pain in your shin. You still haven’t come and received prayer but God’s love is pursuing you! Please come and receive prayer!” And I saw a guy to the side leaning forward against a pole with his head down facing away from everyone like he was crying. He was the guy whose shin was hurting. He didn’t respond to the invitation for prayer, but I went to him and after I prayed a few times, he said the pain was completely gone.
Jesus came to seek and save the lost. His love is pursuing people, and the Spirit of Christ pleads with men through us, often in spite of their hard hearts and unbelief, “Come, be healed! Come, let Jesus touch you! Come, repent, be reconciled to God, and receive the life that he has for you!”
2 Corinthians 5:13-21 (NIV) If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
I’ve been back to the second recovery house (Casa de Paz/House of Peace) two times since I first wrote this article. The second time, we brought a whole bunch of vegetables. We can get a carload of vegetables here for about 50 or 60 bucks. The third time I preached, and I was so excited about how the guys opened their hearts to the Lord that I couldn’t sleep that night!
We are planning to help Casa de Paz to take advantage of a pond they already have and set up an aquaponics system to raise tilapia and vegetables. I think it should cost less than $300 USD We also have a few other projects in mind that could help them to become more self-sufficient, and would like to start bringing them a load of vegetables every month. If you’d like to contribute to these projects with a Paypal donation, I’ll be sure to send you an email update with some pictures! Just make sure your donation’s note says “House of Peace” or “Casa de Paz.” Any donation amounts above the cost of the materials for the aquaponics system will go towards other needs at the House of Peace…we’ll be sure to update you!