The eye with peripheral vision she can now see in colour with! She went for the checkup (at the hospital) on Tuesday but didn’t say how that had gone – she was so excited about being able to see colour again!

God’s so good at this stuff, isn’t he?? Why do we doubt, or think he won’t use us or do it for us? Someone(!) once said ‘You’ll lay your hands on the sick and they will get well’ – the same person said ‘You’ll do the things I have been doing and greater things you’ll do because I’m going to the Father’. Wonder who that could have been, and if he was just teasing us…? Samuel Lamb (Lin Xiangao in Cantonese, who sadly – for us – went to be with Jesus in 2013), who many will know of as I mention him a lot, and who – as the English speaker in a group of 5 pastors, answered my question to the five -‘What do you say to people who aren’t healed?’ with what I’ve used as the title of the blog. ‘That situation never arises – it’s not possible for God not to answer prayer, or keep his promises!’. It changed my life…. and changed my ‘theology’, my understanding of ‘no matter what promises God has made it is yes and amen in Christ Jesus’, and made me realise it was nothing to do with faith, it was to do with unbelief. I’d always believed – until then – that the ‘enemy’ of faith was fear. It isn’t. It’s unbelief. Unbelief cancels faith out – the wonderful (late, sadly) John Paul Jackson spoke about it: if you have a church of 100, and 50 have faith, and 50 have unbelief, then you have a church with nothing. Unbelief knocks faith on the head – that’s how powerful it is – but is that ever taught (unless by John Paul, or people like the Chinese)?

I’m probably as excited for the lady in Bolney as she is for herself!! And it means that faith lives in that church in greater measure than unbelief does – so bless you, Simon, keep preaching the truth mate!

I’ll be eternally grateful to God that I had the chance to spend many days in China in the 1980s, and sit with Pastors like Samuel Lamb, Brother Yun, Wang Ming Dao (he passed away just a couple of years after meeting him – Wang Mingdao (July 25, 1900 – July 28, 1991) was an independent Chinese Protestant pastor and evangelist imprisoned for his faith by the Chinese government from 1955 until 1980. He has been called the “Dean of the House Churches – imprisoned for 25 years, Samuel was 22 years incarcerated). No wonder they saw miracles! They paid the price… Samuel had been given a big Bible by Billy Graham (I think) and often, when my ‘western unbelief’ surfaced – which it did often – he’d hold it right by my face (I thought at times he was going to clout me with it!), and say, Paul. if it’s in here, it’s going to happen!’ – I’ve done my utmost to believe that and live that for the past 33 years since I met him. ‘We never have a prayer not answered – and we pray every day that God will bless the west with the precious gift of persecution!’.

Perhaps a question that blew me away almost as much with its answer – ‘In your evangelism meetings, Samuel, you have on average 500 not-yet-Christians in your meeting and 500 belieers. How many not-yet-Christians would you expect to see saved on average each week?’. ‘On the night – 450, and the other 50 by Saturday’ was his matter-of-fact answer. I would have been delirious then, in the UK, to see 10%, perhaps more realistically 5% or even 1%. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked me. My problem???!!!! 100% salvation, that was my problem! ‘Jesus said, “IF I be lifted up, I will draw ALL men to me”. That means ALL men – now what’s your problem?’. Life-changing days for a growing-in-faith yet still unbelieving English preacher….

I haven’t been persecuted like the Chinese pastors are: but certainly faced some extreme opposition and circumstances since then – mostly from ‘fellow saints’!