(This was also posted in a more limited form on Facebook)

With the ‘justified’ fear (among non-believers, surely, and not believers?) surrounding Covid19, I’m grateful that when God called me to do what I’ve been doing for the last 41 years, he removed those fears from me. Four people have been healed of covid over the internet – I wish it was 400,000 but we’re not allowed out, or into UK hospitals tp pray….

What do we have to fear if ‘no weapon formed against us will prosper? If God is our shield and protector? If he watches over us so that nothing will happen to us that will take him by surprise? I grew up knowing those truths – and many more – from the Bible, but have to say I didn’t ‘live’ them – believe them.

I’d give my right arm (though it’s not working too well at the moment!) to get into hospitals to pray for people dying with Covid – in many places over the last 30 years, it’s been my real delight to sit on beds in hospitals with people dying with even more contagious diseases, and see them healed. When God told me that I’d heal the sick ‘in the four corners of the earth’ in 1986, I was terrified. Even a cold was beyond my faith.

But something happened in my spirit when I started to be confronted with countless people with AIDS, TB, leprosy, some diseases in Africa and India I’d never heard of, and somewhere – without really realising it – the truths of the Scripture took root in me and fear disappeared without me realising it.

We HAVE THE AUTHORITY of God, the authority and COMMAND of Jesus to lay hands on the sick and they’ll be healed. Often it doesn’t even need a prayer – in David’s case – further down – it needed a hug and some love.

I’ll never forget Sandra, in hospital in Cali, dying with AIDS at 25 years old, and she was being disconnected from her oxygen tank within 2 hours to be sent home to die. I sat on her bed with a wonderful lady. Glenda Eddis, from Bangor, NI, and we hugged her as she was terrified of the tank going, and dying. Within a few minutes she was running around the ward shouting ‘I’m healed, I’m healed!!’ – while Glenda and I sat and sobbed our hearts out….I’m only sad I never got a picture of Sandra….

But I did get a picture of this gorgeous little jet-black haired fella – no name when we met him, dumped at birth, aged about 4-6 months… TB and AIDS, never named, never hugged… he was so gorgeous I couldn’t help get him out of the cot, and name him – David, a man after God’s heart – and pray. Two days later he was adopted, healed, and with a family.to love and care for him…

And Dennis, in Romania, 30 years ago, with AIDS, and TB, found at 3 weeks old in a shoebox under a hedge, his nose eaten off by rats…. He was healed and looked after by a lovely Christian young woman, Lily. God had his hand on Dennis from conception, I know it, and only through God could a newborn have survived 3 weeks in a shoebox in a field without milk and love and care…Lily loved him back to full life, and people in England helped raise money for a series of prosthetic noses to be given to him – one at the age in the picture, one at about 8-9, another about 16 years old, And a diet of high protein yoghurts and other food for years that were unaffordable to a young Romanian…

As Christians, we have nothing to fear. Disease,death, betrayal, …and I’m grateful that, from a pretty ‘ill’ family, God’s removed the fear of ‘catching’ disease and replaced it with a passion to see incurable diseases healed….

It doesn’t make me immune from being ill: but osteoarthritis isn’t contagious – I just got hit with it by the enemy. Faith trumps fear every time: fear makes us vulnerable and the enemy loves the wrong sort of vulnerability….