Irene and I (Andrew) have been going through the process of buying a house recently.
It has been a lengthy and stressful process getting the various reports done, organising lawyers, finance and insurance. It is especially hard because neither of us have done anything like this in the past. We also have had to juggle parents who want to give us feedback every step of the way, with very little of it being constructive.
In the midst of this, it has been so easy to let kingdom matters fall by the wayside. I realised the other day that I haven’t prayed for anyone or shared the gospel for over a week! I felt horrible and resolved to do something about it. I rang up a mate of mine named Zion so we could organise a time to go and pray for people. Some friends of his were going to set up a tent for prayer at the local markets the next morning so we thought we’d go check that out.
When we got to the markets we quickly decided that we would walk the streets to find people to pray for rather than waiting for them to come to us. The first few people we approached were very chatty but didn’t have anything that we could pray for. Then we saw two young men standing by a shop window and offered to pray for them.
One of them was very enthusiastic in telling us about his sore hand, while the other one walked away. The one that stayed was called Huckston, and he had injured his hand playing league the day before and said the pain was 7/10. Zion prayed for him once and the pain went down to 0 or 1. Huckston was completely blown away by this and we shared a bit about repentance with him, but it was clear he wasn’t ready to give up his life of sin. We left him and went to find some other people to pray for.
One man rejected us, another lady let us pray for her until it became clear that we actually expected her to be healed right there, and we talked to another man about the reiki healing that he does. Once he found out we were Christians he immediately started playing the ‘all Christians are narrow-minded’ card. We tried to talk more but he wasn’t prepared to listen to reason so we carried on.
Zion mentioned that his back was sore while we were walking along so we stopped and I prayed for him. He said it felt a little bit better afterwards but it was still sore on one side. He said that he thought one leg might be shorter than the other so we checked it out. I could see quite clearly once we found a park bench that his right leg was shorter than his left leg by about one inch. I commanded the right leg to grow and within about 10 seconds both legs were the same size. He then checked out his back again and could definitely move more freely. As he was doing this a lady sitting directly opposite the park bench selling some merchandise asked us what we were doing.
She couldn’t have had a better view of what happened if she tried. We explained to her what was going on, and she said that she has a sore back on one side too. So of course we measured her legs and then prayed for her legs to be the same size and they did. She said she felt something move in her body and she could move more freely after that too. We told her that it was Jesus that healed her but she wasn’t prepared to accept that. We tried talking more with her about it but she had to go.
Straight after that Zion talked to a man who didn’t have any pain, but said that his missus was in constant pain. So, we prayed for her through him that she would be healed. We approached a few more people after that but nothing else exciting happened.
What an awesome morning! It was much more fruitful than worrying about a house. Yes, the house is important, but our first priority should always be the kingdom of God. It’s so easy to forget that when you’re in the middle of a big decision like this, but saving souls for eternity is a much greater prize. It’s also really easy to get busy or make excuses for not going out to pray for people.
One thing I didn’t mention, is that during the whole time we were walking around the markets, I had my one-year old son with me. Instead of worrying about what I was going to do to keep him entertained at home while I went out, I just decided to take him with me. He was fine. And he never once felt heavy even though I was carrying him most of the way (and he weighs 15kgs). God is awesome!
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