Healing

In my childhood home church, healing, miracles and other physical signs of God's power were definitely thought by most people to have been something for biblical times and not for the modern world.  How a Methodist church could have drifted so far from the experience of their great founding father is anyone's guess.  Unfortunately, there are still lots of people within churches today who dispute that God moves in power these days.

Over the years, as we've worked with YFC and been in a couple of home Churches and been to events like Spring Harvest and Soul Survivor, we've received some excellent teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit and seen our fair share of healing's.  We've both been on the receiving end of a few, so can speak from personal experience. We've even blogged about a couple that Ruth has experienced in the last few months.

I was asked by one of our interns if the story of the healing of my back was true, as it had been mentioned in a session.  I had to explain that it happened about 30 years ago.  I'd had some issues a few years previous, after I'd damaged my back trying to lift a piano (those who were in the youth group at Garforth might remember the incident).  It had eventually healed itself with lots of rest, but I badly pulled/tore the muscles getting out of the back of a mini (they don't tell you about these kind of problems in the adverts, do they?).  I was confined to spending 24 hours a day lying on the floor and popping lots of painkillers.  We'd previously arranged to visit Ray & Nancy to discuss a possible job with Heartbeat (which we didn't get, but we were persistent and ended up joining them about 29 years later!).  The journey was horrendous and I could hardly move when we arrived. They offered to pray for me, which I obviously accepted and gingerly stood up. The next thing I remember was lying on the floor, not being able to move or speak and just feeling warmth in my back. I could see and hear  them, as they proceeded to make lunch for us, with them coming back every so often to check on me. I was told later, that they were completely exhausted after a long mission and that they weren't sure that they had the faith or energy to pray for me. They also told me that I'd gone down virtually as soon as they'd started praying and that I'd been literally bouncing on the floor and that they were worried that I might do more damage to my back. Suffice to say, that I got up after about half an hour, without any pain.

Here at ngm, we've been experiencing a fresh call to go deeper with God over the last year (see the A Day in His Presence blog from April).  In the last couple of months or so, we have seen numerous physical healing's - check out the videos from Amy and Joel on the new Generation Music Facebook page - Amy talks about her back being healed, while Joel talks about his eyes being healed and the fact that he doesn't need to wear glasses anymore.

Oh, to see more healing's, as God continues to draw us closer to him!  I'd started writing this in mid-November, but for some reason never published it, but having had a chance to talk to people over Christmas about some of the things we've been involved in, it just seems right to publish now.