I kind of knew it would be good, but I wasn't expecting it to be as amazing as it turned out to be. That morning when I awoke the first thing in my head was "today I am going to see the hand of Jesus at work". I think that turned out to be a thought from above.
Anyway, we turned up at the meeting, there were not that many people there, and it was a very rainy wet day. There was not much of a warm up before they announced that we were going out to do some miracles on the street. I wasn't aware that this was going to be part of the day, so okay...lets go. They asked who wanted to do a "chasse au tresor" (treasure hunt), and I reluctantly lifted my hand, really regretting that once again I had put myself forward for one of these dreadful assignments that somehow never seemed to come off when I did them, but I hey, surely it would work one day, right?
However, that afternoon during the worship I also knew that I was going to pray for someone in the street and see them healed, something I had been wanting to do for a long time. So I had a sense of anticipation.
So a small handful started out with the "chasse au tresor" thing - where you ask God for clues as to where to go, someone's name, their appearance, their need and anything else that comes to mind. The theory is that God will give you clues and you'll find the treasure that you are looking for - a person that God wants to do good for. My only problem is that I couldn't get any words of knowledge. Whatever I came up with seemed ridiculous, and I had no confidence that it was from God.
Anyway, an American guy from the team called Kris joined us and took us out to go find our clue. Kris was a lot more confident about my capacity to hear from God a word of knowledge than I was. I guess its not supposed to be that way around? Anyway, two of us had the word "fish" on our list of clues, so we headed to the super market with the clue, ridiculous as that sounds. On the way we passed a garage and Kris stopped us and asked one of us who spoke French to go into the garage and ask "where is the guy with the problem with the hip". Okay, I thought, so he has had a word of knowledge, great, so in we went and asked this small group of guys. Guess what happened? They looked really blank, and confused, and said no-one had a hip problem! Hmmm....
In fact they looked at us really weird and asked who had sent us. I evaded answering, thanked them very much and left. Kris didn't seem too put off by this, and told us:
"you know what, I'll tell you something about people - they don't always tell the truth."
Hmm, I thought, those guys didn't seem to be telling us any lies. This is sounding a bit like a scam so far...hmmm. But I decided to give it more time and keep an open mind. Unfortunately things didn't get any better! We found a place with blue and electric light, which was someone's clue and Kris went in to see the lady with a translator and came out five minutes later with no joy. Hmmmm.....maybe this stuff isn't all its meant to be?
Then we went to the fish counter and I saw a woman wearing a blue coat and boots which was on my list so Kris encouraged me to go speak to her, show her the list and ask if she had any particular health needs. He had asked me what came to mind, and nothing had, so he tried a health problem such as a bad leg or knee. Sounds suspiciously like guessing, hmmm. So, anyway, I approached, and she was very nice but had no health problem in her knee, and in fact assured me that she had no health problem at all, but was very nice about it.
Hmmmmmmm....some how this wasn't reassuring, and we wandered around wondering where to go next. It would have been easy to get discouraged or cynical at this point, but that wasn't in anyone's mind, and we walked around looking for someone we might pray for.
Then Kris saw a woman in the supermarket aisle who obviously had a problem with her foot, and he went over to her, so I followed and began to translate and speak to her with Kris. We made friends, asked her about her foot, and she confirmed that she had a problem with her left foot. We asked if we could pray for her and she said yes. Then Kris said "I can see that you love Jesus", and she agreed. She was a Catholic. Then he said "you have a problem with your hip" She said "yes, thats right, I have a prothesis". Then he said "you have a problem with your left shoulder as well, God wants to heal that" She looked surprised and said "yes, I do, I was born congenitally deformed on my left side". (It wasn't evident to me that she had a hip and shoulder problem, just that she walked oddly). Then Kris said you have a problem with your stomach here, and indicated just below the stomach. She said "il devine tout!" (literally "he devines everything!") and said she had had three caesarian sections and this had left her with problems there. So I explained this was God revealing this, that it was because God wanted to heal her and not to invade her privacy etc. She was very open. He then said " also the bladder" and I said "sorry I can't translate that" so he showed again where and she agreed again. In fact this woman seemed to be a walking health problem, and Kris had correctly seen four or five specific problems that she had.
We prayed for her, commanding health and healing into her body in Jesus name, and she went really quiet, and and Kris said "from today things will be different". Then Kris asked her to put her hand on her heart and pray for the Holy Spirit to fill her, which she did, and we asked if she could feel that. She said she did and she said she had these "frissons" go through her body when we'd prayed for her healing. You could see a peace on her. We asked her to test out her healing and she bent down and said yes that better now. She was really blessed and wow.
Thank you Jesus!
We caught up with the other guys and explained what had happened. As we stood there Kris told one of the guys to approach a woman nearby and ask her if she had a headache. So he did and they both walked off in a long discussion that went on for about ten fifteen minutes.
So we waited around, and, the other guy with us who was a young 24 year old American with YWAM asked Kris how did he see illnesses. Kris said that he sees them when he looks at people often, or it comes into his head. So he turned to me and said what do you see when you look at him? Kris looked at me and said "nothing", and then he asked and what about me? And Kris looked at him and asked why, what do you have wrong? So the guy said I tore a ligament in my right knee three years ago whilst doing a marathon and I have have constant pain, constantly as a result and can't run. So Kris turned up his piece of paper and he had pain in right knee written down on it! So he asked me to pray for him. So I tapped his knee and said "pain jump off for good in Jesus name".
One second later, Kris asks - so how is the knee now, and the guy said "its gone, its completely gone". So we double checked whether he was usually in pain and he yes constantly, but it has completely gone.
Whoa! Thank you Jesus! We were really surprised for some reason.
So, we caught up with the other guy who had just finished speaking to the lady with the shopping trolley, and he said that yes she does have along standing really bad headaches, but she wouldn't let him pray for her. The American asked Kris how he knew to ask that, and Kris said, "word of knowledge". Kris advised the guy who had been speaking to her that if he saw her later he should just go and say "the headache is leaving in the name of Jesus" and just let her get healed.
By this time our time way up and we headed back. Not before we prayed for another woman who turned out to be in our meeting. At the meeting afterwards we had a feedback time from the various teams who had been out. The stories came in thick and fast. There was a non christian healed in a shop of metal in their body who was able to move following prayer. Another who was healed of some long standing problem who was so amazed that they asked someone to come and pray for their mother who was also very unwell. (I heard that someone did that several weeks later and the mother was also healed!). Someone who got healed asked where the church met so that they could come along.Others were touched and amazed. It seemed like everyone came back with a story to tell. Jesus had been out on the street that day with his people.
I thought we were finished, and headed off for something to eat with the Bethel team. Unfortunately we found we had 30 minutes to kill before the restaurant opened, so we wandered back to the shopping centre.
Clearly Kris wasn't finished, and he saw a guy with his daughter buying a mobile phone in a kiosk. The guy had this huge leg brace on and Kris started to get enthused about what God was going to do. He said he could feel the power of God in his body. We waited for him to come out and then said hello and asked him about his leg. He said that his leg had been paralyzed in a car accident about seven years earlier. The guy was of Arab origin and probably a Muslim. Anyway I told him that we had seen miracles that day in the supermarket and we'd like to pray for him, would he mind if we prayed for him too? He was very amiable and agreed. So we prayed for his leg. Nothing seemed to happen, and he looked relatively nonplussed. I felt I'd come to the end of what I could do, and said he needed to try it out when he got home. Kris told me to tell the guy that when he - Kris - put his foot on the guy's foot he would feel electricity going up his leg. So Kris gently put his foot on that of the guy, and he sort of went quiet and watched, then Kris said and God is healing your elbow as well, and the guy immediately began to stretch and twist out his right arm, clenching and unclenching his hand, looking surprised and taken aback.
Next to us Helen began translating for one of the women from the Bethel team who addressed the girl and said "I see that you like dancing" and the father confirmed that yes she does hip hop. Then the girl from Bethel said "you are going to teach dance" and various other things about God liking her dance etc. The girl was welling up and clearly touched. The dad was too.
Kris finished by telling the guy that Allah loved him, and wanted to show him His father heart. They left a bit kind of blown away.
Then we went to dinner. During the whole time I felt a sort of weightiness on me that I wasn't used to. Even during dinner I became aware of it, and it was so strong that I had a hard time concentrating and joining in the discussion. I knew it was God or from God, but even so it was slightly disconcerting. During dinner Kris prophesied over a couple of people, and they both went quiet and seemed moved - something I had now seen happen several times that day.
After dinner we had another meeting where Chuck Parry spoke. I strongly recommend people to check this out on the Ales church website: (in French and English)
http://beta.messages.ac-ac.fr/messages/193
Later we again prayed for people in the meeting and the guy in front of me with a problem of his leg was completely healed. I knew by now that this was easy, and was completely unsurprised when he was healed. Thank you Jesus! That's what is supposed to happen!
This was the biggest activation I have had in walking in the miraculous. As the guy from the team said before we went out "I believe God is going to hit the 'easy' button". I found out that doing miracles is easy in France.
Who wants to go out and do some more?
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire