I don’t know how many will read this, but ….whatever! – it’ll be good to read it myself in the years to come… On Friday last week, I prayed for four ladies, one – amongst other things wrong with her – had a terrible ringing in her ear, not with tinnitus, but because she had a ruptured eardrum, quite a sizeable hole, that the doctors hadn’t been able to anything with for years. It was particularly bad at night, which of course, had a terrible adverse effect on her sleeping. She’d not slept properly for many years. As I prayed for her, I heard myself say to her, ‘Agnes, when your head hits the pillow tonight, you’ll hear perfect silence, and sleep for 8 hours’. It always ‘scares’ me when something like that comes out of my mouth that I haven’t thought or processed: even though I’m getting more and more confident that it’s God saying it, if I had the chance to process it I probably wouldn’t say it….

Well, Davy, in Londonderry, had a call from her this morning: the ringing has stopped, the pressure in her ear has equalised, she had perfect silence when her head the pillow, and she’s slept two nights in a row now… That in itself is wonderful….

….but… Agnes told us about a relative, a young lady, 22, Kensa or Kendra, who, when she was 13 was struck down by a terrible brain disease, Ataxia. Ataxias are rare conditions. Estimates from recent studies say that there are at just 10,000 adults and around 500 children in the UK with a progressive ataxia. In most cases there is still no cure. It’s a group of neurological disorders that affect balance, coordination, and speech. Kensa had not been able to walk for the past three years, wheelchair-bound in her home, with her mum, Catherine, as her carer. Even going to the loo had to be with mum taking her in her wheelchair, though the bathroom was only a matter of feet away from the living room. It had cost her her whole adolescent life.

As I prayed, I had a strong sense that God was going to do a miracle for her – I ‘love’ (if that’s the right word) diseases where doctors have no answer, as that’s where I have increasingly sensed over the years that God will show his power and glory. While I’ll go a long way to raise someone’s hope – and faith – I didn’t feel with Kensa and her mum that I should say anything more than that Kensa would get her life back, that the enemy would have to give her back at least double the 9 years he’s stolen from her.

WELL… last night, Kensa got out of bed, unaided, to WALK to the bathroom, did the necessary, made herself a cup of tea – all of this impossible 36 hours earlier – and then went in to her mum’s bedroom to talk to her….. I can’t even begin to imagine mum’s reaction to be woken up in that way! I’m sure she wasn’t cross to have her night disturbed….

God is so willing to do this ‘stuff’. Why, oh why, oh why are so many Christians sceptical, cynical, disbelieving, not wanting to see lives like Kensa’s changed, believing that this all ended at the end of the apostolic age, unbelieving…. the centuries of unbelief that have been ingrained into the church by the lack of teaching on faith, and the power of the Holy Spirit, is still endemic in the church not just in the UK, but in the western world. Thank God there are pockets of people who are bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth: for me, I want to increasingly see the kingdom come, and if that alienates me further from some evangelicals, so be it!!