Friday, August 18, 2006

Muchos Milagros!

Or, “Lots of miracles” in English. Last week, I had an email box full of testimonies and I just have to share them with you. One peculiar anointing that we have seen for healing has been in sending people prayer cloths and handkerchiefs that our church has prayed over, according to Acts 19:11-12. Upon contact with these handkerchiefs, the power of God routes and destroys cancer and other incurable diseases! How cool is that?

Anyway, last Sunday at church there was no preaching, no teaching and no equipping from the pulpit. Instead, there was over an hour of testimonies of the power of God moving out in the marketplace! The best part is that the testimonies came from people in all walks of life. Mommies with kids, businessmen, teenagers, students and even grandparents are out there “doing the stuff” and advancing the Kingdom of God!



GOD @ WORK

One of the guys in our church, a business man that owns a heating and air company testified how he was on the job with a Chinese gentleman he was working with. As they talked, he began to minister to the Chinese brother sharing the Gospel of the Kingdom. After a few minutes he asked the man if he had ever made Jesus King and Lord of his life. The Chinese guy responded that yes he had. “When did you do that?” the guy in our church asked him. “Well, I did it about 5 minutes ago when you were talking and I believed what you said for the first time!” Forget a prayer of salvation! This guy just heard and then believed in his heart!


A few days later this same guy came to work with an adverse reaction to working with insulation on his forearms and hands. They were very swollen and itchy. When the guy in our church saw this he said, “Remember Jesus?” “Oh yes, of course I do!” the Chinese brother said. “Well, he’s not only our Savior but He is also our healer!” He then prayed for the man. Within hours, ALL of the symptoms had left the new believer!



ESOPHAGEAL CANCER HEALED!
A computer programmer at our church had a discussion with a colleague about his father who was recently diagnosed with stage 3 cancers of the esophagus and giving a very slim chance of living. The guy from our church preached the good news of the Kingdom of God to him, that God's will and purpose for his father was to be healed, according to the Lord's Prayer. Several folks at the church prayed over a handkerchief, according to Acts 19:11-12 and gave it to the young man who was leaving for what he thought was his last trip to visit his ailing father. He took the anointed handkerchief and gave it to his father praying a simple prayer of healing.

After some time passed the co-worker came up to the gentleman from our church and said, "I don't know if it's something you did or what, but it's (the cancer) going into remission and is almost completely gone!"



COLON CANCER HEALED!

A gentleman in our church owns and operates his own business. On hearing that one of his clients was diagnosed with colon cancer he asked the church to pray over a handkerchief according to Acts 19:11-12. He gave it to the man with colon cancer who actually slept with the handkerchief. On returning to his doctor he found that all of the cancer was gone!



CYSTIC FIBROSIS HEALED!

A mommy in our church heard about a 4 year old child that lived in her neighborhood that was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis by two different doctors over a period of about a year. She requested permission from the mother, who allowed her to pray. As she prayed, she prophesied that the little girl no longer had the disease and encouraged the mother to take her back to the doctor. The doctors checked the little girl out and pronounced her free from Cystic Fibrosis!



MIRACLES ON THE JOB!

A businessman in our church had contact with a client that was involved in a very serious accident that left him in terrible condition. Upon hearing about the accident, he desired to pray for his client but others in the company would not release information about his whereabouts. This one woman at the company was, as he later found out, sick of "all that Jesus stuff".

Working with what he had to work with and simply believing that prayer knows no boundaries he prayed, believing that the Lord would touch him anyway. Several weeks later the client who was in the hospital was released. He called the gentleman in our church thanking him and giving credit to the power of his prayer for his miraculous recovery saying that he was the only one who was believing for his recovery. Even his family and close friends were resigned to his death. The lady at the company who stopped him from coming for prayer was immediately fired.



THE INCREDIBLE CHANGING DIAGNOSIS!

One of the gentlemen in our church works as a contractor and has held many of the same clients for many years. Over the years, the Lord has used him dramatically on the job to release healing over friends and family in the neighborhood. So much so that many times when these clients and family members get a bad report from the doctor, the first thing they will do is call this brother from our church to come over and pray!

As he prays, he often declares that everything the doctors saw in X-Rays, MRI’s and CAT scans will disappear and they will be given a clean bill of health. Spots on lungs, livers and brains have many times either totally disappeared or are changed from malignant to benign growths. Also, he has even prayed for family pets and seen dramatic healings and miracles, drawing their owners close to the Lord!

Just had to share...


Monday, August 07, 2006

"IT’S SHRINKING!"

Last week we were back at our old stomping grounds, the parking lot. We were out there after a hiatus of about a month. As usual, we got the chance to preach the Gospel to a bunch of very rebellious kids. We even had the police called on us. Why? Because some kids apparently don’t like hearing about the kingdom of God. Whatever. But something cool went down that really encouraged me. I was with a new friend of ours visiting from Australia. He wanted to come see us and participate in a couple of outreaches. (Think about it, 27 hours on a plane just to come see little old us!) We’re out in the parking lot for five minutes and I see a group of kids that we had preached to several weeks before, when David Baker was in town from Mexico. They were a very loud, obnoxious bunch of God haters, violently opposed to the gospel. One of the kids even bumped me with his car to get me to move out of a parking space where I was preaching to his friends! His reward for doing that was a sermon, from me, inches from his face… ha-ha.


SAVED FROM THE BRINK OF DEATH
Remember me telling the story about the kid whose neck got snapped? Well, he’s totally fine today. He walked out of the hospital only a few hours after getting taken there by the ambulance with severe injuries. God really touched him. We were fortunate enough to reconnect with him a few weeks after that happened and witnessed to him, telling him what went down in the parking lot and how God delivered him from death. That encounter left him shaken and we were there with some words of life and prophecies about his future. He let us pray for him a few weeks ago, which was a big deal. This guy has been running with gangs for years and was pretty hardened to the things of God. But not anymore!

We see him, walk over to him and he’s a totally different person! Gone are the gang clothes, the hardened look and the terrible language. I mean, we can hardly believe that this is the same guy! Since our last encounter with him, his life has totally been transformed. His Dad, who repeatedly abused him as a child had died and he was able to bury all of that unforgiveness and anger with his Dad. The Lord had been speaking to him and providing the grace to change and change he did! He sat there and told us for 15 minutes all of the differences since our last meeting. No more gangs, no more illegal behavior, clean and on his way to being sober! Thank You Jesus! Rescued from the grave!


QUIET HATRED TURNED TO VOCAL PRAISE
But that was just the start. A friend of his, another guy that was violently opposed to the Gospel barely more than a month before, came up to us to tell us what had been going in his life. He overheard our conversation with his friend, the now ex-gang member and was compelled to us of the changes in his life. Weeks before, he just sat there while we were vilified and persecuted by his friends, adding only an occasional slur in our direction. He was a tough nut, wouldn’t even speak to us, except to cuss me out. Well, he came up to us all bubbly and excited and just started talking! He told us how he had seen a couple of miracles since we last saw him and believed in Jesus now. His neighbor invited him to a ministry facility somewhere south of Atlanta and he had actually witnessed a healing of cancer in a close, personal friend. He was totally convinced and preached to us for almost 45 minutes! The Lord had dramatically proven Himself to former this God hater, transforming him from a skeptic to a full fledged preaching believer! Very cool! So now we have another ally in the fight against the kingdom of darkness. But this time, it’s an “inside man”.

Like the Lord, I try to always save the best for last…


DOES GOD HEAL SATAN WORSHIPPERS?
We received a follow up from a guy we prayed for about six weeks ago. He is literally a Satan worshipper and with his very mean girlfriend; railed against up for over an hour the last time we saw them, assailing us with the most horrendous language you could ever imagine! They were saying things to provoke us to anger and hurled some obscene garbage at us about the Lord! Sick! Anyway, after persisting with them and totally demonstrating supernatural self control (to not punch them in the mouth), we finally started getting some information from them. The big guy turned out to have an inoperable brain tumor and the doctors had only given him another 3-6 months to live. So he was going gangbusters, drinking, partying, taking drugs like there was no tomorrow. And for him, without hope and without Jesus, there was no tomorrow. That is, until we showed up. We told him of the Kingdom of God and how God wanted to prove His love and mercy to him by healing him. It took awhile, but he finally let us pray for him, under the condition that we wouldn’t touch him. So we took what we were given and cursed the tumor, only extending our hands to him, but not touching.

While we were talking with our new preaching friend, I see the Satanist out of the corner of my eye. Not wanting to be rude to my new buddy I don’t interrupt him. The “Satanist” comes up to me and hesitantly extends his hand for a handshake, looking me right in the eye (something that he couldn’t do before) and then he tells me, “It’s Shrinking!” For a minute there, I forget what he’s talking about. In fact it takes a few minutes for me to recall the whole encounter we had with him a few weeks before (sometimes I’m slow!). But he’s excited and says it to me again, “It’s Shrinking!” Getting some more details, we find out that he had been in for another appointment since we had seen him and the tumor had shrunk dramatically! I ask him if the Lord has his attention yet and he nods in the affirmative. I tell him, “that’s awesome, now what?” You see, we made an agreement that he would give his life to Jesus if the Lord healed him. He looks dead at me and says very sincerely, “I’ll give you a call when it’s totally gone”.

I love it when they come back. (Luke 17:17)




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