The Lame Walk, The Lost Return and The Demonized Are Set Free! - Part I

Wow! What a wild week we just had! We had several reports come in this week that are just awesome. Sometimes in “doing the stuff” (that is, preaching the gospel, healing the sick and casting out demons) you don’t always see an instant result to your prayers. For example, you may pray for someone who is crippled and is in a wheelchair. If you don’t see an instant miracle, you can walk away feeling like nothing happened. This can be discouraging and I believe that this is why most American Christians don’t give themselves to the work of the Gospel. David Hogan told us that we Americans want an instant, microwave Burger King Gospel. You know, “Your Way, Right Away”. But sometimes, healings and miracles may take a little time, as we found out this week.

We had several answered prayers and prophecies this week that are quite spectacular. We also had a wild demonic manifestation, a couple of instant healings and a few people give their life to the Lord… I really don’t know where to begin, so I’ll start on Tuesday.

TUESDAY
Tuesday night, we head down to a little public park in Atlanta that the locals call “Big Head” park. It’s a place where lots of homeless, prostitutes and drug addicts gather. Two weeks before, we had been there and a couple guys with our group had prayed for a guy in a wheelchair. He had severe scoliosis and some other problems that had left him without the ability to walk. While praying for him, our guys tried several times to pull him out of his wheelchair and get him to stand, which he could not do. This week, we walk up and one of the first things we see is the guy in the wheelchair as he goes rolling past us. He rolls out to the center of the park and we see him stand up out of his wheelchair and start to walk! We hurry over to get the story and he tells us that the next day after we prayed, he had strength and was able to walk and has been walking perfectly fine ever since! We could hardly believe it. We thought that maybe he was lying when we first prayed for him and so we grilled him, wanting to hear the truth. Sure enough, he swore up and down that he could not walk before they prayed and since they prayed, he has been able to walk. I asked him for his wheelchair since he doesn’t need it anymore and he wouldn’t part with it, saying that it’s much easier to get around on wheels!

I saw a guy with crutches sitting on a little bench, so I walked up to him and asked him why he had the crutches. The first thing I noticed was that he smelled terrible. I mean, “wash your clothes after talking to him” terrible. He had human feces smeared on his leg and I saw a couple flies buzzing around him. He mumbled something incoherently and I could tell that I was dealing with someone who was totally possessed. I ask him again about the crutches and he starts telling me about having arthritis. He also tells me that he is from Africa. I tell him simply that Jesus will heal him and he tells me to @#$% off! So, I look him dead in the eyes tell him, “Jesus is King!” and he starts to mumble something at me. I say to him, “And His Kingdom is here on the earth!” When I say that, he comes unhinged. His eyes flash wildly and he lets loose a stream of profanity.

But then something very weird happens…

All of a sudden a swarm of flies appears out of nowhere! There were a couple, maybe two or three flies buzzing around him before, but the second I told him that the Kingdom of God is here on the earth, there appears at least 200 flies swarming around him! With the flies came an increased stench that suddenly was totally overpowering and some of the foulest language I had ever heard. I call a buddy over and we start calling on the blood of Jesus and rebuking the demon. The guy jumps up, starts cursing and tries to hobble away. I look at him again and say in Spanish, “Fuego De Dios!” (Fire of God) and he starts freaking out saying, “What are you saying to me?” My buddy, who spent a year in the Congo, walks up and says in Lingala, an African dialect, "Moto na NZambe" (Fire of God) and the guy loses is, starts cursing and walks away. We would rather have got the guy delivered, but having demons run away from us is acceptable.

WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday night, our group heads off in a couple different directions to visit believers in neighborhoods where we have already been. We meet a couple folks there, just hanging out on the front porch. One of the guys there is a guy that we had prayed for about two months before. He is kind of like the neighborhood drunk. Everyone loves him, but he’s always sauced. The last time we had seen him, God healed his shoulder instantly, which really got his attention, but he still wasn’t ready to give his life to Jesus. He had something that he really wanted us to pray for, a missing person that he knew. They had found this lady’s car wrecked off the side of a cliff in North Georgia and no one had seen her in several weeks. There was no record of her in any of the local hospitals or police stations either. He knew her personally and was very worried about her well being. He begged us to pray that she would return and be all right. We prayed for her and someone in our group prophesied that she would be back by the same time the next day.

Fast forward to Wednesday. He is sitting on the front porch and the first words out of his mouth are, “she came back, you know”. I was like, “huh?” and he had to remind me what he was talking about. He said, “Remember praying for that lady to come back who had been missing and who had wrecked her car?” I suddenly remembered, “Oh yeah! She came back?” “Sure did. She came back the day after you guys prayed for her”. He continued, “Actually, between my shoulder getting healed and having her come back like you said she would, well, you made a believer out of me!” This was awesome! This guy had given his life to the Lord and gotten born again as the result of a healing and an answered prayer. We had several others stop by as we told testimonies of what the Lord had been doing in the neighborhood. We ended up just having church right there on the front steps for almost an hour!

To be continued…