Stories of Healing

Physical healing has been the most common request by people in my nearly 50 years of experience in ministry to God’s people. So many are in physical pain and look to God for healing.

The most important aspect of praying for any type of healing is to pray with the love of Jesus. My prayer always is, “May it be all of You and none of me.” That is when miracles start happening. When I pray over people, I pray to be the vessel of the love of Jesus Christ.

Healing for Mother and Baby

An example of the power of healing prayer can be demonstrated through the story of a woman with whom I worked. One day she told me that she was expecting her second baby. She said to me, “I’m scared because I had a significant problem-pregnancy with my first child, and I am concerned about what is going to happen now.”

As she spoke to me, I immediately felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. I saw in my spiritual vision how much God loved her.

Every single time I worked with and saw her after she had shared her worries, I prayed over her. I prayed for the love of Jesus to flow through her and flow through her pregnancy and her child.

With her first baby, my colleague had problems leading up to the birth, and she was unable to take the baby to full term. With this pregnancy, she literally worked up until the day of her Cesarean section surgery.

In the delivery room, as she was delivering the baby, the doctor suddenly gasped loudly. That’s not something you want to hear from a surgeon during surgery.

Later, the woman found out the doctor gasped because the uterine wall was so thin, she and the baby should have died. But, praise God, not only was the baby in perfect health and blessed, the mother suffered no harm as well!  God is so good! All the time!

A week later, when I was asleep and dreaming, the Lord showed me all the locations and times of my prayers over this woman and how those prayers had protected her and the baby. God wants us to believe. He wants to heal us according to His perfect will.

A most important lesson of healing is found in Chapter 9 of Matthew’s Gospel—the story of the two blind men.

 Jesus asked the men if they believed He could heal them. He then told them that the extent to which they believed is the extent to which they would be healed.

I believe God asks us the same question: “Do you believe?”

Healing a Woman Who Believed

Another encounter with physical healing that I have experienced occurred on one of the pilgrimages my wife Mary Anne and I lead as part of our ministry, Spirit Filled Hearts. Often these pilgrimages travel to the Holy Land.

On one trip, a woman, who was an internist, developed all the symptoms of the flu. She had a high temperature, chills and sweating and she told me that she should go to the hospital. I knew that as a physician, she obviously could diagnose her own situation. However, I also knew that God is the God of miracles.

We were riding in a bus over sacred ground in the Holy Land, and I felt the Holy Spirit come upon me.

I asked the woman if she wanted to be healed, the same question Jesus asked of the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-18). She said, “Yes.”

I then asked if she believed that Jesus could heal her, the question Jesus asked of the blind men in Matthew’s Gospel (9:27-30). The woman looked at me and said she believed.

Everyone on the bus began praying fervently for her, singing songs, believing in a miracle for the woman. By the time we returned to the hotel, the sweats, chills and fever had disappeared. The big smile on her face said everything—completely healed!

I could tell she was truly sincere when she stated her belief in God’s healing power. Her faith, belief and her love of Jesus supported the prayer for immediate healing.

Healing of Eye Disease

Another example of instant healing happened at Catholic conference I attended. On the Saturday evening of the conference, the Mass celebration was followed by a healing service.

After the Mass had ended, the celebrant asked the attending priests and deacons if they had received a word from the Lord. If so, they were asked to go the microphone and share what God had told them.

My heart was beating rapidly.  God had told me to say that He was healing the eye disease of some in attendance. On the way to the microphone, the Lord clarified what I was to say. He wanted me to share a more specific affliction — macular degeneration, a serious disease in which one’s vision becomes severely narrowed and which is difficult to treat.

I went to the podium and, with great faith and courage, I pointed at the thousands in the audience and said that God was healing macular degeneration of individuals in several particular locations of the arena. I pointed straight ahead, to the left of center and to the far end.

The next day, the celebrant priest came running up to me. He related that three women who had been in the audience came to his booth and told him they were instantly healed of their macular degeneration when I prayed!

God is so good! God is so loving. We must learn to ask and believe. To seek and find.

Healing Through a Stand-In

One final example of physical healing illustrates how we can “stand in” and pray for healing of other people, especially people we love most dearly. God uses the love of the person praying to help in the healing process.

A woman who deeply loved her aunt approached me at the end of our prayer meeting and asked if she could “stand in the gap” for her aunt. The aunt was in critical condition having suffered a brain aneurysm. The doctors didn’t know if she would survive.

We prayed fervently for the aunt’s complete healing. Exactly two days later, she walked out of the hospital, completely healed!

God wants to heal us because He loves us. I know this is so because of the many healings of physical ailments I have seen, including blindness, paralysis, cancer, cardiovascular disease and depression.

Jesus told us we will accomplish what He did in His ministry on Earth and more! He told us to lay hands on the sick and they will recover.

Pray! Pray with love! Pray with the love of Jesus! Expect and experience miracles!