Last night, in the lovely church ‘Nueva Vision, Rios de agua Viva’ (New Vision, Rivers of living water), pastored by a couple becoming good friends, Walter and Diana Murillo, the church was packed to the doors and out into the entrance way on the street…. loads of new people, apparently, perhaps because it had been advertised as a healing meeting! – it was a lovely atmosphere, and you could sense expectation and feel faith in the church. Davy relayed some testimonies to raise faith, from Londonderry last year: Thanney spoke about faith and told the testimony of the 90% blind lady who got her sight perfectly for the first time in her life (about 70+ years I’d guess) in Siloé last October. The testimony of Jesus IS the spirit of prophecy, Revelation 19:10 tells us: when you tell of what Jesus DID and what he is DOING, it becomes a prophetic claim we can make for ourselves, and faith rises….
I had plans to speak about something totally different to what started to come out when I got the opportunity to share: it seems that God wanted me to speak on one of my favourite passages, Psalm 103 – the first 5 verses are God’s Social Security System, which, in a nation where social security, government assistance in any form for individuals and families, is meagre to non-existent. Psalm 103 talks about blessing the Lord, and not forgetting all his (social security guaranteed!) benefits…. :). I dropped in one or two testimonies (can I ever NOT do that? Maybe one day I’ll be a proper preacher, but I love testimony stories, and Jesus was a bit of a story-teller, so I content myself with that!). I told the story of a lady I prayed for a while back with breast cancer, and prayed in Spanish. I began to ‘panic’ as I realised I didn’t remember the Spanish word for breast – it’s not a word that features in my daily vocabulary! – and was frantically asking God what it was. The lady had only pointed to her breast when I asked where the tumour was, she didn’t use the word…. With a flash of inspiration, I thought of KFC, a local chicken restaurant, Frisby, and thought – YES!! Pechuga de pollo, Breast of Chicken, so with confidence I commanded ‘en el nombre de Jesus, este tumor en este pechuga se va’….which brought gales of laughter from the congregation, and the lady with the tumour… seems pechuga only applies to chickens….but she was healed, which was the most important thing for her…..
So, there was a lovely lady there last night with a lovely smile, faith pouring out of her, but with breast cancer. So I made her laugh by saying that her pechuga would be cleansed of the tumour: I’ve found that laughter, in the face of chronic illness, can work wonders, and have known people healed just by laughing – when the joy of the Lord becomes their strength. The lady felt things going on inside her, and I suggested to her that she gave herself a good examination when she got home. She totally believed that what she felt was God healing her….
It’d not be an over-statement to say that for Thanney, Davy, and myself, virtually all of the people who responded were healed: and the few others had major things going on inside them that came from God reorganising, repairing, restoring, or replacing whatever was wrong….
So what was the God ‘special’? Well, a lady who’d never been to church before was there as a friend had invited her, and brought her along. She was suffering from chronic lumbago, which is an awful pain. As I was speaking on the Social Security System, verse 3 of Psalm 103 – ‘(God) who heals all of your sickness and diseases’, she was instantly healed, much to her astonishment… I LOVE it when God does that!!! She got a wonderful blessing from her first church experience!
I had a great guy translating for the ministry time – he’d translated in the meeting too – Cesar Charria – and he’d never prayed for anyone before, in a healing context. So I got him to pray for about half a dozen of the folk, and they were all healed…. I LOVE that, too! It’s the joy of my heart to see others see God do healings and miracles, I don’t have the ‘need’ for it to be me I’d much rather release others into something new and so, so important. It was the same at the weekend, with another lovely guy, Santiago López Sanjuán. Why should I have all the fun and privilege?
Earlier in the day, I’d been with Wilmar, and the likelihood of bumping into someone by chance in a city of over 3 million people, in a place I very rarely go, is slim… but I heard my name called, and there was a lovely pastor, Humberto, who I’d had the pleasure of praying for about 6 years ago. He was due imminently for hip replacement surgery, and was in major pain, walking with ‘bastons’ (walking sticks), and a lot of pain in all of his leg bones. In another of my ‘flustered’ moments praying in Spanish, I bizarrely could remember the word for hips (carreras) but not the more common ‘bones’…. asking Diego, my good friend translator, what bones was in Spanish, he told me ‘huesos’, which of course I DID know…. but now, with my thought train broken, I carried on the prayer… well, ‘new’ plural (two hips, two legs) is ‘nuevos’ which is a BIT similar to ‘huesos’ …. so I commanded ‘nuevos carreras en el nombre de Jesus, y (wait for it!!) nuevos huevas’ tambien’ – should have been ‘new bones too’, but it came out as ‘new eggs’…. (I’ll leave you to work out – or google ‘huevas’!!) – everyone burst out laughing as Humberto got his new hips, and – fortunately – his new bones, too….maybe as a bonus, he got new huevas, too…. 🙂
We had a wonderful time with him over coffee, praying for each other, and him prophesying powerfully over me: such a blessing.
The foundation building is still progressing, despite the lack of funds, with the floor, the cladding, and the electric, which had already been paid for. It’s looking great. More in a blog to follow….
The financial provision miracle is coming in slowly, but it’s coming…. we still need around £3-4000 this week to make the ‘working’ week full and worthwhile, but God’s God, and he’s got it all in hand, we’re sure. A lot of the electrics are done now, too….
