A week ago, our senior pastor announced that Felito Utuie from Iris Ministries in Mozambique would be back with us this Sunday. He asked us to bring any blind or deaf people because Felito had a special anointing to heal those infirmities. So I sent out an email to a few different lists titled, "Wanted: deaf and blind people" and indicated that we couldn't see those type of healings if we did not get those type of people to the meeting to pray for. So I knew the focus of the meeting was going to be on healing, but what I wanted out of the meeting had very little to do with healing.
The Mozambique revival is known for it's characteristic of God's love and tangible presence. I think of it as intimacy with God and experiencing Him in a deeper way. That is the part I was looking forward to. I was hungry to have a deep and life-changing experience with the Lord that would draw me even closer to Him.
You think I might have taken a hint from what happened on Friday night, only 37 hours before the Sunday meeting. I had been asked to speak at a small monthly woman's group, to share a bit about my recent missions trip to China. The turnout for that group was disappointingly small (only four people) and I was not sure why God sent me to speak to such a tiny group of ladies. But I shared several stories from the trip and the few women who were there seemed to really enjoy them.
At the end of the time, one of the ladies asked me to pray for them before we adjourned. I knew her and I knew she meant prayer for impartation and anointing, but it turned out two of the ladies there wanted prayer for physical healing. The first wanted prayer for her shoulder. She had injured it in some sort of accident and could only raise her arm a little higher than shoulder height and had constant pain. So I prayed for her and God completely healed her shoulder! She was very happy and excited about that.
Then another lady said that she also needed prayer for her shoulder, as well as for her eyes. She had a surgery that had gone wrong and her should "clicked" any time she rotated it, and it also hurt. Her eyes had cataracts and glaucoma. So I prayed for her as well. The vision only improved a little, but God completely healed the shoulder. She was so surprised that God healed her shoulder. She kept moving it and said, "That is really weird--It used to click and hurt and now it doesn't anymore."
You think those healings (combined with our pastor's request that we bring blind people to the meeting) would have given me a hint of God's agenda for Sunday morning.
But my mind and focus were on having some type of powerful intimacy experience with God, of being lost in His presence and surrounded by His nearness. I remembered some of the great times I'd had with God under the ministry of other leaders of the Mozambique revival, such as Surprisa Sithole or Heidi or Rolland Baker. I really wanted that type of deep and powerful encounter with God, and that was what I was anticipating and looking forward to for the Sunday Morning service. I knew in the back of my mind that this Sunday service had been billed as a healing service, but my thinking ignored that fact. I looked forward to having an in-depth encounter with God where His presence surrounded me and totally saturated my senses. That was my agenda, and I told God about it several times.
About an hour before service, I suddenly remembered my first service with Felito about a year ago. He had talked about spiritual hunger, and I prayed for God to make me hungrier for Him. That had been a very frustrating service for me because God had made me hungry for Him, but He did not satisfy my hunger that night. I had this alarming thought--what if today was a repeat of last year? (At the time I had forgotten that hunger prayer was on a Friday night and the following Sunday God did meet and satisfy me.) All I remembered was the Friday night service and the frustration I had felt at being hungry for God and not being met. I prayed out lout, "Oh Lord, I sure hope You're not planning to do that to me again."
"I am not." God replied. "The service won't go exactly as you expect it to, but you will like My agenda for you. Then He told me to arrive at service a bit early, just before the early service ended. I had the impression that maybe God wanted me to help with the ministry time, though that did not make sense to me.
I got there just as ministry time for the first service was starting. Rodney (our senior pastor) and Felito were handling the ministry time and they did not need any assistance. I began to wonder why God had sent me early--had I heard wrong because I was just so eager for God to touch me in the service? Just when the ministry time started, Brenda grabbed me and told me that Liz (another friend of mine) had brought her almost blind mother. So I went up and introduced myself to her while she was standing in the prayer line waiting for Felito to pray for her. I offered to pray for her after Felito did, providing she wasn't 100% cured by his prayer. Then I went to the back to get a bulletin and ended up in a conversation with someone. After a while, Liz and her mother came up to me for prayer. She had not gotten any noticeable healing. So I prayed for her and not much seemed to happen, but I did get a chance to talk to her and explain that sometimes it takes more than one prayer, and I would be happy to pray for her any Sunday that she visited us. She seemed to have faith for healing and said she would be back sometime for more prayer.
I realized that the reason God sent me to the service early was so I could meet Liz's mom.
Service started with worship. Worship was good, but God's presence was not quite as tangible as I wanted it to be. So I silently cried out to Him to touch me and take me deeper in Him. I could feel His sweetness surrounding me and I knew that He was there, but it was not a powerful experience. I wanted more of Him and I told Him so. I wanted Him to give me an encounter with Him that would forever change me to make me better equipped to serve Him. And I mentioned that to Him multiple times.
"Teresa," He said, "Look at the date on your watch."
Huh? That seemed way out of the blue considering what I had been praying. However, I am committed to obey Him on the little things as well as on the big things. I hoped it would not break the spirit of worship that was over me, but I looked at my watch and pushed the date button.
God spoke to me again. He said, "Note the date." I did. It was October 15. Then He said, "I am going to send you to Africa again. By this time next year, you will be there."
I thought to myself, "Sounds great! But I hope that was God's voice and not just my imagination." Then I prayed to the Lord, "Lord, it would be really neat if You would give me some sort of independent confirmation of what I just heard, so I know it is really form you." I assumed that meant I would get some sort of unsolicited prophetic word about going to Africa, or something like that. God intended to answer my prayer, but He had other plans on how He was going to do it.
The worship ended and the sermon began. It wasn't really a sermon, it was a bunch of faith-building true stories of assorted miraculous healings that God did. Most of the stories were from Africa, but two were from the USA. The sermon was designed to inspire faith and it certainly had that effect on me. I am not going to repeat those stories here, because I am hoping to have Felito's sermon transcribed and turned into a teaching on the healing school. But as I listened to his stories, I found myself praying over and over again, "Lord, I want to do that with You too. Will You let me do that?"
When the sermon was over, Rodney said we were going to have a healing ministry time. He invited the people who are part of the Healing Rooms ministry team to come up and Felito was going to pray for them for impartation and then they would assist Felito in praying for the sick. I was a bit disappointed because I am not currently a member of our church's healing rooms--I used to be but I am not now. I really felt a heart to minister to others, but it looked like I would not have the opportunity because the pastor had limited it to just those on the Healing Room team.
About eight or nine people came up and formed a line for prayer. Felito started praying for them on the side of the line that was farthest from me.
"I want you to go up there too." The Lord said.
"But Lord, the call was just for people on the Healing Room ministry team. I haven't been on that team for over a year now. I don't qualify."
The Lord did not reply. So I began to me think about this as Felito moved his way down the line of people he was praying for. I wanted to be submissive to my pastor's wishes. But on the other hand, I do pray for the sick a lot in my church as well as other places, and I do see a lot of healings. Also, God had put it on my heart to minister this morning and the people Felito was praying for would be ministering. I could not go ask Rodney if it was OK for me to join the Healing Room team because he had the microphone at that moment and was leading the congregation in some type of prayer. But I suspected that if I asked him, he would say it was ok. Besides, God had told me to go up there, and I needed to obey Him.
So as Felito started praying for the last person in line, I walked up to stand next to her. It was not a very long walk because I had been sitting in the front row and she was standing almost in front of me.
A few minutes later, Felito started to pray for me. At first he started to pray the same things over me that he had prayed over the other lady, that God would heal the sick through me in this service, etc. Then he stopped and changed his prayer. He said something like, "At God's command I impart into you what I carry for healing."
Whew! That was an unexpected blessing. It seemed to carry a sort of commissioning along with the impartation. I could feel the Lord's presence surround me and I knew that something was happening inside of me. It was not a powerful knock-you-off-of-your-feet type of experience, but God's presence was very tangible on me and I felt as if He was meeting me personally. It did not last a long time, only three or four minutes after Felito finished praying for me, but it was wonderful.
Then Rodney asked Felito if he had any words of knowledge of what God wanted to heal. Felito gave a word of knowledge about knees. There were maybe ten of us on the "prayer team" and about 15 people lined up across the front, waiting for prayer. I eyed this one lady who had a walker. I knew that God would heal her and I wanted to pray for her. Then Felito told us to go and pray for the people. I headed towards the lady with the walker, but another team member got to her first. I suspected that we were supposed to each pray for a different person since there were more people waiting for prayer than there were people available to pray. So I walked over to the first person who was not already being prayed for.
He was a man and he stood there with his hands up and his eyes closed. I asked him if he needed prayer for his knees and he said yes. He had a problem for some time (I may be getting my people mixed up, but I think he said six years.) He could not bend down and he had pain all the time, including now. I began to pray for him, and God began to move. After a few minutes, I asked him to check it out. It had improved noticeable, but there was still some pain. So I prayed again and when he checked it, there as not anymore pain. So I asked him to try and make it hurt. He squatted so that his rear was touching his heals, and his weight was on the balls of his feet. He said that when he squatted like that he felt a small amount of pain on his right knee, but the left one was fine. What he did not tell me was that before this prayer, it had been totally impossible for him to squat at all.
I prayed some more, and the pain went down to a hardly noticeable twinge. Repeated prayer could not get rid of that list twinge, but I had the sense that it would go away as the day progressed. That was when he told me that he had been unable to squat before the prayer. Now he was able to squat all the way down. He was very happy about that. I decided to count that as a "healing" and asked him if he was willing to give a testimony. He said yes, so I went and got Rodney, who had the microphone at that point. Rodney interviewed him and everyone was excited about his healing.
Felito had given a word of knowledge about sore necks while I was still praying for the man's knees, but I never got to pray for any of those people, because there others who prayed for them.
However, as soon as I finished praying for the man with the healed knees, another lady came up to me who had very painful arthritis and swollen joints. When I prayed for her, the pain went down noticeable and the swelling in some of her fingers totally went away. I had her test mobility and it definitely improved, she could bend most of her fingers quite a bit more than she could before the prayer. However, one joint in her left index finger remained swollen, painful and she could hardly bend it. I Prayed for that finger quite a few times, but it would not get better.
I asked her if there was anyone she needed to forgive and she said "No." I wasn't sure what else to do to get the swollen joint healed, so I gave up and stopped praying. She had some definite improvement and was happy about that, but she was definitely not 100% healed. Still, I had seen the swelling in some of her joints go down and then away as I prayed for her and that was neat to watch.
Most of the other people who I prayed for had things that were harder to measure and quantify, so I could not tell just how much healing had taken place when I prayed for them.
When there was no one was waiting for me in particular to pray for them, I looked for the lady in the walker. I wanted to pray for her if she hadn't already received her full healing, because I was convinced that God would heal her. Unfortunately, she had already left and I was unable to find out if she'd been fully healed or not. I hope she was completely healed, but if she was not, then I trust that God will cause her and I to cross paths again, as the Lord has given me a faith for her complete healing.
The disappointing part of this service was that I was so busy praying for people that I did not get a chance to hear about the healings that took place when others prayed. By the time I finished praying for people, most of the rest of the ministry team had already gone home, so I can't give you a report on what all of the healing miracles at the meeting were.
Things slowed down around 2:30 PM. There was still a line of about six people waiting for Felito to pray for them, but no one else seemed to need healing prayer. I was about to sit down when this one lady walked up to me. She did not need healing, but she knew me from the internet and wanted me to pray for her. So I prayed a blessing for her and then the Lord gave me a short word for her. She seemed to be very blessed by my prayer. When I finished, I noticed that Felito was praying for the last person in his healing line.
I had hoped to get prayer for my left shoulder, which has been sore for a few months. Nothing in particular caused it, but I think that the thing that makes it hurt is that I walk a lot of large dogs, some of whom don't have very good manners and really tug at the leash. When you have 90 to 100 pounds of dog tugging on the leash, I guess that puts significant stress on the shoulder. It was probably the cause of my shoulder problem, but I needed a healing that would allow to continue walking dogs pain free.
So I stood behind the person who Felito was praying for and waited for my turn. I don't think Felito saw me, because as soon as he finished praying for that person, he started to walk away. I called out to him and asked if he would mind praying for one more person. He smiled and said, "Of course not. That is what I am hear for." He prayed briefly for my shoulder. I did not feel any particular healing manifestations, such as heat or tingling, etc. But I had an inner confidence that my shoulder would improve. [In fact, I took my own dogs for a hike on Sunday night and I had the larger one (who weighs 104 pounds) and he pulled at the leash some during the walk. My should did not hurt at all while I walked him. In fact, I walked him again pain free on Monday night. My shoulder hasn't hurt at all since I got home from church Sunday.]
After a few minutes, Felito changed his prayer for me. He began praying for an increase in my own healing ministry, and that God would use me powerfully to advance His kingdom. (Boy, did I like that prayer!)
When he finished praying, we talked briefly. I had not introduced myself to him at all, and last year I had met him for a total of less then ten minutes. Felito meets hundreds of people on his trips, and our interaction had been very minimal. But to my surprise, he remembered me from last year. He told me, "In January I am planting a church in Johannesburg (South Africa) and once we are established, I would like to have you come and teach us."
Right then God whispered in my ear, "Here is that independent confirmation you asked Me for earlier today." I had thought it would come in the form of a prophecy, but it came in the form of an invitation to Africa instead.
God met me on Sunday Morning in ways I did not expect Him to. I was looking for one type of experience (getting lost in His presence) and He had another plan in store for me (impartation, confirmation and ministering in His power). But I walked away from that service feeling very met and very blessed.
He is such an awesome God to serve!
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