Monthly Archives: September 2013

Dear Paul, I just wanted to say Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou!!! Thankyou for coming to ******** ( jn the cold winter of last year year and praying for me at ******** when I was very unwell and having problems from the brain tumour and surgery ) and for allowing God to use you in praying for healing to so many of us at ************ last night. Before I came last night I had become disillusioned after the 3 recent minor surgeries and thought my hopes and dreams in life were gone as I would be living from one sickness / surgery to another, unable to work , ( now I can see clearly that was just lies from the enemy) . When you spoke and shared what God had done in the healings of others around the world and when you encouraged and prayed for me and explained about Satan’s attacks I now feel LIFE has returned in my body mind and soul . Life to the full in Jesus!!! ( not me just dragging through life with sickness and waiting to get to heaven !!) AND I now want to see others living to the full, healed by God! Thankyou SO much for letting God use you in bringing healing, for teaching us how we can pray for others too, i will now keep standing against the enemy jn Jesus power , I am so grateful I have new life brain tumour free and seizure free! And now I don’t need to fear allergies or endometriosis or sickness! I have been set free!! And I have seen today half of the burn scars on my foot have faded to a normal skin colour- I am believing that will continue to the rest of my foot and and my leg scar tissue!! Will keep you posted !!! May God bless you so, so much and thankyou again for coming to Melbourne and allowing God to minister through you!! *******Xxx

and, after asking ******* permission to post this, she wrote again…

Hi there Paul, No worries at all, that is so fine to share on your blog what I have written of what God has done and IS doing! Thankyou so so much again for coming to Melbourne and letting God use you so powerfully! I am so grateful for new LIFE ! LIFE to the FULL in God! Not held down or captive to fear and sickness as I had been!! No longer afraid of what the future may hold!! I now see God is SO much BIGGER than any attack from the enemy any situation or illness! I am now blown away by how BIG and MIGHTY God really is, that we CAN pray BIG prayers , as we are God’s children and God’s power and healing is INFINITE and HUGE and so full of GRACE!! I plan to return to my work next week at ***********,  I will ASK them them then and there if i can lay hands on them there and then and pray for them in Jesus name for sickness to go and to be set free!!! ( and look forward to seeing them walk away completely well!) God bless you so so much and am praying that many more people will be healed set free this week ( and in the future ) through your ministry ! Thankyou again so much , God bless you heaps ( and I would be grateful to have that new skin reprayed for at one of the evenings, God bless you heaps and heaps! love Kirsty xxx

….this evening, the sort of ‘doctor’s surgery’ arrangement, which works so well. Robert and I sit in one room, and people arrive and wait in the living room, so there’s a bit of privacy for the person being prayed for, and because there are people waiting, a bit of time deadline on how long we – mostly I! – ‘engage’ with them. It has worked wonderfully well every time we’ve done it, and tonight is at Shey’s mum and dad’s house (Janeece & John), 12 Honey Myrtle Drive, Eltham North.

Tomorrow’s quite a busy day, in the morning I’m with a lovely local pastor, Marco, who is unwell, then being driven halfway across the city by another pastor to pray for someone who is extremely sick, and then a meeting in the evening at Marco’s house – 67 Coulthard Crescent, Laurimar. We joked that we might end up having people lowered through the roof, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if it happened….??!! I wonder what the insurance company would say?

Unless God, pretty frequently full of surprises, springs any more of them, that’s the last ‘arranged’ meting of this trip to Australia: Robert wants to take me on a bit of sight-seeing – sounds more like a ‘lads road trip’! – to the -apparently fantastic coast road, strangely enough by the sea, in Victoria…. It’s really quite a rarity to go on a ministry trip, and get to do some sightseeing, so here’s hoping the torrential rain that’s falling at the moment, stops, and the (still winter) temperatures stay around 21C! Their winter warmth is hardly setting me up well for an Irish autumn next Wednesday!

I’ve put in my begging letter to the airline for Monday ! – suggesting that they would dearly love to give me an upgrade all the way home again…. a lot of prayer and crossed fingers, I reckon!

I’m hoping, in the next day or so, to have permission to post a wonderful letter from someone healed Monday evening: but I do want that ‘go ahead’ before I do it.

The young lady who I mentioned here as ‘A’ last night, turns out to be ‘E’ – and as she’s posed this on my profile page with her name, I wanted to re-post it here, too, her name is Emilia… acute depression, hormonal imbalances causing hair loss, and a good list of other internal issues….

Paul Bennison, all I can say is thank you. I really didn’t want to go last night. I felt heavy. But thanks to Marie and Sally Barrett they pushed me and it was exactly what I needed. Just being in your presence instantly brought me peace. And when you looked at me and said ” you have a lot to look forward to” I believed you. I had faith. I have faith. Also, such amazing beautiful, honest , genuine people in that room. It was amazing. Such a peaceful feeling. So from the bottom of my heart, thankyou. Can’t wait for your next visit. I promise you ill make you my delicious choc sneakers cake when you come and visit again. Sally and the boys love it  thank you and god bless.

Bless you, Emilia!! Thank you…. your encouragement and testimony mean the world to me. God bless you loads!

God is so good… just blows me away, and bring tears to my eyes every single time, even after 27/28 years….

And a Facebook message just arrived… Natalie Jessop wonderful night last night what a lovely group of special people xx thanks to you and Paul for your ministry xx. Thank you, Natalie!

It’s quite hard to think of titles for these blogs that capture what’s happening, most times god (thankfully!), sometimes tough…. how do you title in a few words a blog following tonight’s meeting at Diamond Valley Baptist Church? A real growth in the number of people (as one of the church leaders said, ‘Word gets around!’), and, after a week of some lovely, but low key healings, and the delight of seeing people who might never have prayed for others before begin to do so, it was wonderful tonight to see God do some great things!

One lovely young lady, Kirsty – healed of a brain tumour last time I was here, and healed tonight of a number of ‘knock-on’ things, plus the beginning of healing of other things in her body: another lovely young lady (I will only call her ‘A’ as I haven’t asked for permission from her yet to tell her story) – acute depression, major-league hormonal imbalances resulting in a loss of a lot of hair as well as the internal effects, cysts in other parts of her body (I assumed ovaries, though she didn’t specify and it didn’t matter!) – she ‘looked’ desperate, sad, and in pain: and her whole appearance changed totally after receiving prayer.

A young lady from last Thursday – with increased vision (she was terribly short-sighted). Sally, now a good friend with her housemates Cam, Lach, and Kylie – healed tonight of a life-long ‘lazy eye’ – her right eye had always had a mind of its own, and she couldn’t see anything even up to arms lenght away clearly – the eye straightened, and long distance clarity was hers for the first time…. wonderful!

Natalie, prayed for last year, then almost totally crippled and in acute pain, came tonight to say that she’d been almost totally healed of all the things prayed for then, including pretty much total mobility in both arms (she’d been in a motorbike accident). A few other things to pray for tonight, mostly internal so time will tell, and has an appointment tomorrow at a cancer clinic for a skin ‘blemish’ on her nose…. that’ll be gone by the morning, I know….

Paul, acute pain in his left knee for a couple of weeks (huh….as mine are feeling much better I didn’t feel quite so envious as I might have done!) – his knee was healed, all movement back under his control, and all pain gone.

Robert’s brother, James: prayed for him last Thursday, for the ‘residue’ problems following a motorbike accident last August (13 months, not 1 month, ago!): the swelling that had been around his right ankle (his right leg, knee especially, had been totally smashed in the crash) since the accident, has gone completely, the scar on his shin, which was very red and convex, is now pink and concave, and disappearing, and his patella has lost all of its swelling and he can see his patella tendon for the first time since the accident. (I must have fatter knees than I thought, as I don’t think I’ve EVER seen my patella tendon – not even sure what I’d be looking for!!!).

It’s amazing how quickly the stories slip out of mind: I’m struggling to think of the others – maybe that’s because it’s 0030am, and the meeting was nearly 4 hours long! – but they involved a good number of people freed from pain, reduced pain, increased movement – and, thank you Lord, just about everyone there at some stage or another being prayed for – and then praying for others with Robert and me…. that really has been a special ‘occurrence’ here this visit.

It’s wonderful to hear people pray, maybe for the first time in their lives, ‘In the name of Jesus, I command…’ Thrills me to bits.

And just a quick update – I was able to kneel (not happened for a long time) today, which means increased movement and a lot of pain behind the kneecap gone, today. Thank you Lord!

Wonderful, wonderful God!!!!!

Whilst I love the opportunity to pray for others, it’s always a beautiful blessing to actually know that people are praying for me! I’ve had a few folk here pray for these ol’ knees of mine, which, by the way, astonished Robert when I walked out of Melbourne airport last Sunday, limping only a little, and that, after a 30+ hour journey to get here. As soon as I arrived, Lucas, Robert & Shey’s second eldest son, completely of his own volition and totally spontaneously, came into my room, knelt down, and prayed for both knees: he’s 10, what an amazing blessing!

But yesterday, I was ultra blessed to get to get two messages from the motherland(!) – an email, and a facebook message, from people saying that they’re praying for me. Lovely Nigel & Lyn, who are always so encouraging, emailed such a lovely encouraging message. And Valerie (& by proxy, I’m sure, her hubby Drew!), sent me a message on facebook.

That is one that – if you pray for me – I’d love you to pray into with them: Valerie said she ‘woke, praying for my knees, and was reminded about the parable of the fig tree, how Jesus passed, it looked at it, and seeing no fruit, he cursed it. The next day it had died , so I cursed the arthritis in your knees  and I was singing over you….’

That really impacted me: I’ve prayed – and others too – cursing the damage, injury, and the osteoarthritis, but never thought to use that passage of Scripture: so, if you DO pray for me, would you join me, Valerie and Drew in cursing it with the same power and authority that Jesus did, please? There’s significant improvement even this morning…. I can actually get out of a chair without having to stand still for about 30 seconds to allow the pain to subside, and the stiffness to go, before moving! I’m grateful for small mercies, and I’m just as happy for God to heal them (healing’s a process) as I am for him to supernaturally instantly heal them!

Thank you, and bless you, Nigel, Lyn, Valerie, and Drew!

After the last trip to Melbourne, and after the recent ‘outings’ in Mexico and Colombia, it’s been so good to be able to see God do something a little different this time. This morning, I was at Plenty Life Church – that’s not a grammatical error, England readers! – it’s a place called called Plenty, which I think is rather lovely! – and Plenty Life Church is a church that over recent trips here, I’ve got to know a bit. They’ve got a great pastor, Craig Ogden, and during the week he asked me if this morning, I’d be willing to ‘pass on’ some of the experiences I’ve had in beginning to move into a healing ministry way back in 1987, and since. It was wonderful to do it: something I think I’ll want to repeat elsewhere, as one of the great desires of my heart is to see a whole army of people rise up and take Matthew 10:7 literally – heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons, freely you’ve received, freely give….

The church, in my experience in many places, is ravaged with the fear that ‘it might not/won’t work’…. of course it never will if no one tries. So today I talked about failures as well as ‘success’ – and Craig seemed delighted with the end result. I want people to think ‘If he can do it, I can do it’…. when I take people away with me, normally for their first time(!), I tell them that I want them to go back home, not relaying stories of what they’ve seen me do, but with their own victory stories, and even their attempts that didn’t seem to work. What’s the point in spending a lot of money to go with me just to watch…?

Of course, it goes without saying that both Robert and I, and the prayer ministry team from the church, prayed for quite a few people afterwards: no mind-blowing miracles, no instantaneous healings – but a lot of ‘feelings’ in people that God had started the process of healing. One lovely lady, who has a horrible affliction where the fat cells in her system swell, become inflamed, and don’t get ‘used up’, so it results in a  weight problem that is nothing to do with diet/obesity, just a cruel disease invented by the enemy. She also has osteoarthritis in her knees, and – I expect I’ll spell this wrong – something called ‘clawy’ – which is caused by both the crippling illnesses mentioned, and results in her toes bending under her feet – especially the left one – and she effectively walks on her toe nails. Man alive, that must be so, so painful. Today, while praying for her, she told me that she felt her toes, still inside her shoes, begin to un-claw…. humanly, impossible, because of the way chiropodists (or whatever they’re called these days!) have designed cushions for her toes that are tight in her shoes… so, beginning at the bottom, God is just likely to work upwards….

Other people experienced heat, tingling, throbbing, in afflicted parts of their bodies: in a (strange) way, it was lovely to see a whole host of ‘little’ things happen rather than the fireworks! It’s good for me, too, as it keeps my feet firmly on the ground, at the same time as passing the baton I have (for what it is worth) on to other people. That is a REAL privilege…..

Tomorrow, back at Diamond Valley Baptist Church, 7 pm: and looking forward to seeing if God’s going to carry on with the same as the first week, or if he chooses to do some spectacular things! I bet for that lady this morning, just to have her toes unclaw a bit was pretty spectacular though. Despise not the day of small things….!

In February, at a meeting in an Anglican church, God turned up in wonderful power: many were super-miraculously healed (if you can exaggerate ‘miracles’!) – the meeting where a man with a totally wrecked leg (trampoline accident, landed with right leg pointing forwards 90 degrees – aarrgghhh!!!) – bones fused together, steel plates on outside and inside of leg, bolts, screws, pins… instantaneously healed…. and more. If leg man is there, I’d like to try and get his testimony on video….

In 45 minutes we head off to a meeting organised by the same people – Robert and Shey parents (both sets) – and so looking forward to what God is going to do there! I wish I could see into the future, just sometimes, a little way, and know what’s going to happen…! It starts at 12.30, have no idea what time it will finish, but that’s been the story not only of this week so far, but of every trip, it seems! So, Habakkuk’s words are my request to God for today (Hab 3:2), one of my most treasured verses in the Bible….

One story I missed from the night before last… I’m not even going to mention the sex of the person, as they wanted to be prayed for once the others had gone. Young, really good looking – yet totally wrecked: 10 years of more chronic/manic depression, and a suicide attempt very recently (within the last few weeks), eyes – lovely eyes if they were normal, but they’d sunk right back into the skull…. Rob, Sally, Kylie, and I prayed: many positive prayed in, and I prayed off and out  the spirits of death, suicide, self-destruction. The others prayed into problems, issues, insecurity: and, as we prayed, prophesied, spoke scriptures, the face was changed, as Rob puts it ‘the eyes came out!’ (not all the way out, you understand!), and when we left, the person was smiling, at least having ‘heard’ (maybe for the first time, rather than just listened to) Paul’s words from Romans 8:38:

Romans 8:38-39

New International Version (NIV)

Super meeting last night, a ‘small group’ meeting from a church I’ve not been involved with before, and guess I was the oldest, comfortably, by 25 years! I’ve really found that God’s taking me down a path where I feel it is so, so vital to not only preach/tell stories, but to use the Scriptures that contain promises of what we ALL have inherited from God, through Jesus.

The room was packed, a bunch of friends that Rob & I have got to know over the past year or so, led the evening. It was a faith raiser, some of the stories do genuinely seem to leave people quite speechless(!), and because of that, I threw it open for questions. That is a wonderfully challenging time – for me! – but the first guy, Chris, whose experience of missions hadn’t quite been all that he hoped (another!) as he’d longed to see healings and miracles. There were a few, Chris included, who wanted prayer for impartation – so then Rob & I chipped in here and there, but let those guys get on with the praying. No one was raised from the dea, but there didn’t appear to be too many dead people there 🙂 – but some lovely healings happened – ligament damage in a hand, 8 months long-term pretty strong neck pain went…. a couple of sets of eyes – for different reasons – began the process of being healed: short sighted-ness became somewhat longer sighted, a lazy eye tingle, then vibrated, others whom I knew/know will have woken this morning with their need met…..

So wonderful to cut other people loose to do this stuff – it’s in all of us anyway, if we know Jesus.. ‘you have everything you need for life and Godliness’ said Peter, ‘As the Father sent me, I send you’ said Jesus. Fear of it NOT working is what has crippled Christendom for so many generation, and fear very quickly becomes unbelief without realising it. That’s why so many churches won’t go ‘hugh profile’ on healing – ‘What if it doesn’t work?’

Well, then, you keep going until the enemy gets so flipping fed up with you hammering away that he gives up…..So, when they left, some of those lovely young people went away knowing that God does heal, and does it through them…. result!!!!

For me, one of my greatest pleasures is to just sit with people, and just ‘socially’ chat about what God is doing. I’ve always wanted – and hopefully succeeded! – to always be ‘accessible’ to people, there’s not much that I can stand LESS than the church/conference/preacher/speaker ‘hierarchy’ syndrome, the sort of competitive environment that means you have speakers who are not accessible to ‘punters’ at conferences, etc.

I remember, a few years ago now, being at the Detling Bible Week in Kent, when Tony Campolo (most of you know he’s one of my great heroes!) was a speaker. If anyone had a ‘right’ to be ‘exclusive’ because of status, position, qualification, gifting, importance – Tony does. In recent past, he’s been a personal spiritual advisor to the President of the USA: he’s a senior lecturer/professor in Philosophy at Eastern University, Pennsylvania: he’s got a list of doctorates longer than most people’s CVs: he’s in demand the world over, even as he approaches his 80th birthday: he’s established countless ministries in some of the world’s most desperate and desolate places, like Haiti: he’s so passionate, a motivator extraordinaire, and hilariously funny…. at Detling, and when I’ve seen him and met up with him elsewhere, did he have an entourage around him? No. Did he quickly disappear to the equivalent of the green room? No. He walked around the campsite, and the dining tent, introducing himself to people, ‘I’m Tony, can I sit here please?’ ‘I’m Tony, who are you?’

Tony’s the man whose very personality and approachableness drew me out of the depths of shyness and insecurity, a few months after God had given me a passion to see people healed, through Ian Andrews’ ministry, and not knowing – until I got to know Tony – what the heck I was going to do with it. His extrovert nature, his faith, his passion, his fire, rubbed off on me, and though, at the time, it felt like God was dragging me by the collar kicking and screaming out of shyness, I’m forever grateful to an amazing, anointed man of God, who tok the trouble to get to know me, and who, many years later, still remembered not only me, but my name….. Since then, whenever I’ve met other ‘approachable’ men and women of God, I’ve literally – sometimes – gone up to them and rubbed shoulders with them, as I want what they’ve got. If I’m able to go to the States when – and hopefully it’s not for decades yet – Tony’s funeral takes place, I want to be there if I can.

Now, I’m not even beginning to put myself in Tony’s league, or those others, like John Arnott, Bill Johnson, Rolland & Heidi Baker: but I LOVE it when people want to hear what God is doing, and I can almost ‘feel’ them drawing out of me, and into their own spirits, something that THEY’D love to do. Tonight was one of those nights…. when I was here 8 months ago, I met a ‘gang of 4’ – Lachlan, Kylie, and Cameron Inglis, and Sally Barrett. God did something then that accelerated tonight, when they invited me to their home for a meal – their dad and two other friends were there, too. It was just so good to eat, drink wine (and cognac!), eat an enormous meal, and then down Sally’s special homemade cupcakes… and talk, and talk, and ta…..

There’s a meeting at their house tomorrow night, when they’re expecting quite a crowd, and Robert & I are going, and I have no doubt God will heal people tomorrow. Faith grows, stories build faith (Jesus proved that, so I don’t feel at all insecure I’m not ‘up in lights’ as a fantastic preacher, teacher, professor… I just want people to catch what can only be caught, not taught….

And this morning, had a lovely time with a super bloke, Mitch, who I know will see his healing in the coming few days… he’s going to be a radical bloke as his healing occurs. Robert had previously prayed for an injury he had, and that seems pretty good, so now the next phase…. 🙂

I love Australia…. 🙂

A lovely meeting tonight, not a big crowd, but just the right people there – prayed for all bar two of them, ranging from cancer pretty much everywhere to migraines to over-active extension of a lovely young girl’s thigh bone… always something different! Even the migraines were different….

Prayed for a whole family – for many inherited allergies and auto-immune issues, to the daughter, who’d had hip surgery at 22 months old, which had caused her left leg to grow at a more rapid rate than her right. No visible change, but she felt her leg tingling, which is frequently the first sign of something bigger about to happen. I have a sense it will all ‘equalise’ (she wanted to be shorter!!) in 48 hours.

The lady with cancer – started in her bowel, then moved to lungs, then lymph nodes – had been very encouraged by the story of Alejandrina in Mexico: visibly more peaceful, seemed more assured, the acid test will come in a few weeks when she is scanned….. 🙂 – but that she will know within days that her healing has begun, and that there’ll be no side effects from the chemo, which have been quite bad I discovered.

A young man with a severe migraine problem – with the knock on on effect of causing stomach migraines (I’ve forgotten the medical name!), as we prayed for him, both Rob’s and hands got extremely hot….  Bladder issues, stress, confusion…. prayed for, with some response…

Before the meeting, went to pray with a lovely family, originally from Uzbekistan, now out-and-out Aussies, for digestive and auto-immune issues, eczema, rashes….hearing in the youngest son, with a marked improvement before I left.

Tomorrow begins the roll….. 🙂