Tuesday, February 07, 2006

The Kindness of God

This week, we got front row seats to the kindness of God in action. God moved Heaven and Earth so send one of our outreach teams to a gentleman in distress at the right place and the right time. It was so awesome to watch. This was in addition to some miracle reports and salvations that are becoming normal around here. The Lord raised a young man literally off his death bed as a direct result of a prayer uttered hundreds of miles away. We just received the report this week, but it happened several months ago.


HEALING FROM A DISTANCE
One of the believers in a neighborhood we are in had a very sick family member; a nephew. He had been in the hospital for several weeks and had numerous complications, each one worse than the other. By the time we were talking with his aunt, he was on his death bed in Ohio. It sounds like he went in for a relatively routine procedure and there were complications. There were infections, followed by further infections and ultimately an infection in his blood. The doctors were losing him and the family was preparing for the worst. The aunt was really pressing into God in faith and asked us to pray with her for her nephew’s life. She honestly believed that if we prayed, God would answer us. The Lord had healed her of several major illnesses through our prayers, so you can understand why. Anyway, we prayed with her that day and after we left she called her family, told them that “those people” had prayed for her nephew and told them to watch God move on his behalf.

One week later this young man was dancing with family members at a wedding!


RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
It is so cool to watch God set up “Divine Appointments” with unbelievers. It’s something that we as spirit filled believers take for granted, but this weekend we got to watch an unbeliever’s wonder and amazement at the experience.

The Story starts on Friday afternoon where an unbelieving Iranian man was in total distress at his marriage problems. He was so upset that he started calling out to God, even calling on the name of Jesus saying, “If You are real, show yourself to me!” In desperation, he called a local Baptist Pastor and asked for help. They set something up for that evening, but the Pastor called and rescheduled an appointment for Saturday morning around 9am. All that night, even late into the night, the desperate man continued crying out to God for help and for answers.

Several miles away, one of our outreach team members was about to crawl into bed when he had a simple decision to make: get up early and go preach the Gospel on Saturday morning, or sleep in and let others gather the harvest in his stead. He chose wisely, and set his alarm to wake him in the morning, deciding to preach the Gospel instead of sleep in. He got up and went to church to meet the others already gathered for prayer. During prayer, the Lord spoke to me to send a team to a neighborhood that we haven’t been in for a few weeks. After prayer, we went out to the neighborhood, the same neighborhood where our desperate Iranian friend was still crying out to God.

9am came and went and the Baptist Pastor didn’t show or even call to let him know what was going on. Our desperate friend started to despair, figuring that maybe God didn’t care about him or his situation. Barely an hour later, our team showed up at his door, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. He was flabbergasted and repeatedly asked them, “How did you know to come to me?” After a couple words of knowledge, he gladly submitted to this King who knew everything about Him and would send His servants to answer his call of desperation. The Kindness of God won him over. Something so simple and so basic, being at the right place at the right time in response to a desperate man’s plea, convinced him that indeed, Jesus was King and Lord and that moment, he gave his life to Jesus.

The next day, he wandered into our Sunday service and begged for an answer to his question, “How did they know to come to me?” I had the privilege of explaining that God’s sheep know His voice and God had simply sent us to his doorstep. He wept as I explained to Him the goodness of God and how God would hear his simple prayer for help and send strangers to bring him Jesus. He gratefully worshipped God with us; he attentively listened to the message and even came forward at the end of the service, asking for physical healing. He had severe pain in his back for over 15 years and Jesus took it away in a moment. He just sat there, basking in the presence of God, thanking God for His kindness.

After the service, he ran up to me and asked me if I would speak to his wife about his experience over the last 24 hours. He got her on the phone and through broken English started describing to her what had happened, the team coming to his home in response to his prayer, the Kingdom of God and his physical healing that morning. He then handed the phone to me and asked me to, and I quote, “Tell her about this Kingdom of God”. It was my privilege to describe to his wife what Jesus had done for him and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom to her. I could tell she was weeping on the end of the line as she heard what God had done for her husband. I said, “He’s good, isn’t He?” “Oh yes! I just can’t believe that God would do all of these things for my husband!” I told her that the Lord would do all of those things and more for her and her entire household. “Really?!” she asked. “Absolutely” I replied.

This week, we’ll go and baptize them and begin a house church in their home.

God’s cool, isn’t He?


4 comments:

The Bearded Belgian said...

amazingly cool!

Anonymous said...

I am so encouraged by that. God is so amazing, we just have to listen to His voice!

Anonymous said...

Hey this is Kami, Never been to this site before but have a question for ya?

So .... When you go out and pray for an unbelievers healing and you want to pray with boldness that God will heal them and then they dont get healed what do you say to them because you know in your heart that God is still the healer??? And you want them to know HIM and you want them to know that he is a healer even though he didnt heal them instantly????
What to do
What to do

Unknown said...

Kami,

I hear what you are saying. But believers' mindsets must change! Jesus is eager; He's ready, willing and able to heal all those that come to Him! We're getting to a point now that we expect them to be healed, EVERY TIME! We're actually surprised when we have to go back and pray...

But anyway, we don't guarantee that they will be healed instantly. Even Jesus didn't heal everyone instantly. We just tell them that Jesus will heal them. Normally, when they let us pray through, they get their healing, but sometimes they don't. Many of the healings we see are 24-48 hours after we pray, so the only way to verify the healing is to minister to people we can follow up on.

Most unbelievers are incredibly blessed that you would care enough for them to even pray, much less get healed...

Ryan