God's Healing Touch

This post is one I think will be appropriate because I just came from a service where they were laying hands on people believing that God would heal them. There were no immediate manifestations of healing tonight, but the man who was praying over people was encouraging them to keep the faith in Christ and to keep trusting that He will heal them. That's what this post concerns. By the way, this is another one of those posts that is a reminder to me. It seems to be a common theme lately....

Now before I get into this, I need to make a disclaimer. If you read these following words and think that I am "such an amazing person" and "an inspiration", I humbly say thank you for your encouragement, but I will remind you that the amazingness and inspiration that I have is a blessing from Christ. It is not my talent that I have achieved through hard work, but a blessing from God out of His love and grace for me. So do me a favor after you read this: don't thank me, thank God.

Last summer I needed a breakthrough. I was a few days away from leaving for ministry at a summer camp and I could barely get out of bed. I was getting hot and cold flashes, my mind was racing, I was physically weak and my neck was in such pain that I couldn't even turn my head without wincing. I was getting no more than four hours of sleep a night too.

My neck was hurting since my last physical therapy visit, and I called them for another one but they were all backed up with appointments and couldn't see me until Thursday morning, two days before I was leaving. I went to the doctor about my hot and cold flashes and they told me that I may have lyme disease. For some strange reason though they decided not to test me, but told me to wait until Thursday and if it didn't get any better and then I would come in to get tested. Like I said before, I was leaving for camp on Saturday. I didn't have time to deal with a lyme disease test! I needed a breakthrough!

There was a revival service at a church in Groton with an evangelist named Jason Westerfield. I went to the service Tuesday night and was desperate for God to heal me. I spent the whole night at the altar begging God for a breakthrough. Jason came up to me too and was laying hands on me, praying that God would heal my neck and everything. He told me to move my neck and asked if it was any better. I moved it and winced. It wasn't. I left that night feeling absolutely discouraged.

I carpooled with my friend Dave to the service and I voiced my frustrations to him in the car. "Why wasn't God healing me?" I said to him.
I don't remember what the exact words that Dave said were, but they were something along the lines of "Steve, do you believe God can heal you?"
What Dave was saying to me in the most loving and blunt way he could was that I wasn't trusting God enough to heal me. It was true. I had doubts like crazy. I didn't believe that He could heal me. I wanted to believe, but I couldn't. I went to bed again that night, once more having no more than four hours of sleep as my mind was racing and I had hot and cold flashes all night long.

All day the next day I was lying down at home on the couch in my living room wrestling with my thoughts. Dave called me again to check in on me and asked me if I was going to go back to the church again that night. The revival services were a week-long affair and they were having another one. I told him honestly that I didn't want to. Dave then told me honestly that I should get off my butt and go. I rolled my eyes and said I'd think about it.

As I hung up the phone, I sighed. I realized Dave was right. I looked up to the ceiling and said, "God I'm having a really hard time believing this whole healing thing right now is true."
My eyes went over to my Bible. "I guess I'll start from the beginning..."
I picked up my Bible and placed it in my lap.
"Hi God, I need You."

That night I decided to go to the revival service. It was a real leap of faith for me to even go because I didn't know where the church was, I was really physically weak, and Dave couldn't carpool with me over there because he was caught up in something else and would meet me at the service later. So I drove there using Mapquest directions and made it there okay.

The service that night was really long! It started off with roughly an hour of intense prayer, then it went into worship, which was another hour. Then after that, Jason preached a message for ANOTHER hour and there was MORE worship! When he finished it was getting late and I was getting very weak. I could barely even sit up in the pew anymore. How was I supposed to make it back home? I then prayed silently to God that He needed to heal me tonight, otherwise I wasn't even going to be able to make it home.

Finally, Jason decided to do some prayer for healings. This was it! He had people come up who needed it and then assigned other members of the congregation to lay hands on them. I had two guys come up to me and ask me what my problem was. I told them my whole story about my pains, my weakness and how I absolutely needed a breakthrough. So they laid hands on me and started praying. I was so desperate at this point that I started kneeling on the ground and weeping. As they were praying for me, I was almost convulsing. It was pretty crazy, but like I said, I was desperate. I didn't care about how I looked or anything. The only thing I cared about was God breaking through to heal me.

They asked me to move my neck and everything. I did and it still hurt just as bad as it did before. We all kept praying for God to break through and give me His healing touch. Jason then took a glance at his watch, saw it was late and decided to wrap up the service. I was still weak and in pain, but I felt a little better. The service wrapped up, I said my goodbyes to people and I left.

God gave me just enough strength to get home, go up three stories to my apartment into my room, put on my PJs, collapse on my bed and fall asleep. That night was the first night in a long time where I slept more than four hours. I actually didn't wake up once until roughly 7:00 in the morning. My physical therapy appointment was at 9:00 so I had to get up and going. As I got up I realized that I was a lot better! I didn't feel physically weak at all. My neck still hurt a lot, but I actually felt normal again.

At the physical therapy appointment, I told the therapist what the problem was with my neck and how tense it was. He then did a series of extensive massages on it, which really hurt a lot, but after he finished my neck was 100% better!

God had healed me! I was shocked at God's goodness and provision. It was the first time ever in my life that I had received a healing like that from God. He knew how much I doubted, being an ex-Christian Scientist and all (NOTE: For more information on Christian Science, visit ChristianWay.org), but He still met me where I was at in my doubts and healed me. It was an amazing experience.

I told this story for two reasons. The first one was for me, because I needed a little bit of a reminder of God's healing touch. The second one was of course, for you. I know a lot of people who don't follow Christ for whatever reason, but try to be all "intellectual" about it, and avoid their brokenness by asking me theological questions. Questions are good, don't get me wrong, but sometimes instead of questioning you have to just jump in and trust that God will catch you.

God will too, because He loves His kids.

This was a long post. If you made it here, thank you for reading. Now thank God for His unconditional, never-ending, undeserving affection that He has for you!

Peace,

Steve