The Lord's presence was so strong in worship that when it ended, everyone remained in His presence for another eight minutes or so and waves of His power seemed to just flow over the building and wash over people. A lot of spontaneous laughter broke out. It was so good that I did not want it to end. However, The teaching in the morning session was incredible. It was all teaching designed to build your faith and transport you into the realm of "doing the stuff." It was so very inspiring and it was practical.
At the end of the session, Todd Bentley had a few words of knowledge. I had come to the school with a short shopping list of physical things I wanted God to heal. Todd called out a word of knowledge that was rather unique and applied to me, but was not one of the healings I'd been explicitly seeking God for. But since the unique word applied to me, I came to the front. Several others came to the front as well, lining up across the altar area (which was well over 100 feet wide). I ended up on the far right end with only one person to my right. Todd came and laid hands on each of us, starting with the lady to my right. Then he laid hands on me and I don't remember what he prayed but it was a sentence or two. I was not thinking about falling, I was not planning to fall, but I felt myself going down and there was a catcher behind me who laid me gently on the floor. Then God's presence seemed to surround me and I was sort of lost in him for a short while. When I got up, I could notice about a 50% improvement in that condition.
After lunch, Todd was to teach on power to raise the dead and how to get started in doing creative miracles. I really wanted to hear that teaching, but I had to leave the meeting 30 minutes into it because I had an errand at home that I could not get out of. I had to take my dog to the Vet for a bandage change. It was a 40 minute drive each direction to/from the meeting. And it was another 20 minute drive to the vet, not to mention an hour at the vet. So there was no way I could get back before the session was over.
However, God did something incredible related to my dog. Let me digress and share that story. On Saturday June 28, one of my dogs had hurt the pads of his feet from running around on a hot day. They blistered, then two had skin peel away and the entire pad came totally off the other paw. We spent most of Saturday night in the emergency veterinary clinic with the dog, and the vet said the front right paw was the worst case he'd ever seen. He had to do some minor surgery and cleaning up the wound and wrapped the three injured feet in bandages. Even after being bandaged and medicated for pain, the poor puppy could hardly walk. We were asked to take him to the vet for a bandage change on Wed, July 2, four days later. Sunday he could not walk. I remember praying that God would somehow fix the paw so there would not be any damage.. the gaping hole where the pad belonged looked SO bad and the image was still burned into my memory. A few friends from church said they'd pray for the dog as well. Monday he could barely walk until about 2 PM when suddenly he began bouncing around the house and I had my hands full trying to keep him still.
When we went to the vet for the bandage change, the assistant vet saw us. He said that the dog's feet did not appear to be nearly as severe as the medical records the emergency clinic sent over indicated. He bandaged the dog back up and we went home. Thursday night the dog chewed the bandage off of the right front foot. So I took a look at it to see how bad it was. To my surprise, it looked completely normal. A pad was where the gapping hole had been. The skin was not pealed off, it was new and fresh looking skin, but it was whole. The dog did not seem to have any pain at all in walking on it. Still, I bandaged it back up to protect it. It took me about an hour to realize that this was a re-creative miracle -- that God had grown back the missing body part on my dog. I guess that really amazed me because I'd not laid hands on the dog and prayed for healing -- I'd simply interceded that God would take care of it so there would not be any permanent injury.
The next morning, Friday, puppy chewed off his bandage on the front left foot (the one with the least amount of injury). It looked much worse than what we'd seen on the right foot where God grew back the pad. We had a series of the dog chewing off his bandages and us replacing them over the next couple of days. Ed was supposed to take puppy to the vet for a bandage change and exam on Monday while I was at the conference, but he did not do it. So I had to leave the conference Tuesday afternoon -- missing the part about how to move in creative miracles -- to take puppy to the vet. This time the senior vet looked at puppy. He told us, "Your dog sure heals fast. I have never seen pads heal that fast before! Usually it takes a minimum of 3 weeks for minor injuries and more like 4 to 6 weeks for the level of damage described in the emergency clinic records." All pads were totally healed and he did not need new bandages. The vet said that if there had not been the coloration change where the new skin was, he would not have believed this was the dog described in the medical record.
So instead of hearing the teaching on creative and regenerative miracles, I got to experience one and get it "medically verified" by my vet.
The evening teaching was good, but the material was not as exciting and stirring as the day sessions had been. At the end of the evening service, Todd decided to demonstrate words of knowledge. He had his team, the three people traveling with him in ministry, give words of knowledge. The worship leader, Charlie, went first. His first word applied to me. In fact the thing he called out had been bothering me (and distracting me) all evening. But something in my mind told me, "that can't be for me, because I was already called out this afternoon." So I decided not to go down and let someone else respond to that word. No one else responded. They moved on to the second person on the team giving his words of knowledge. People responded to his. I wanted to go down now, but it was too late because they were calling out different words and expecting people to respond to those words. Elvi nudged me and told me to go down. I told her it was too late. Then, a few minutes later, Todd said, "where are the people with the two conditions Charlie called out?
I got out of my seat and walked up. Another lady did likewise. He prayed for her first and I overheard her say she was coming up for the same condition as me and that she waited to see if anyone else came up. That was my story too. Anyhow, when he came over to pray for me, he also had a prophetic word for me. The word so fit what I had been struggling with recently that I would be totally blessed to have simply gotten the word even if the healing doesn't happen. (I was not healed instantly, but as Todd pointed out, many healings happen over a period of days or even weeks. So it may still occur.)
Let me give you a little background about why the word blessed me so much. Last September God called me out of secular employment to being supported solely by ministry. (I had a full time tent-maker job as well as a full time ministry job for seven years preceding that.) When God first called me into fulltime ministry, enough money came in to support that calling. But in the past three months or so, there has been hardly anything coming in. Also some speaking engagements I was counting on evaporated. I was beginning to wonder if maybe I'd "missed it" on leaving my secular employment for full time ministry. I had been asking God what was going on, figuring it was one of three things. Either I heard right and the devil was opposing me and I had to stand in faith. Or I had heard wrong and God was not blessing me in ministry finances because he had not called me to be supported by ministry or else I heard right and there was something in me that had to be adjusted/fixed before I could move forward. I had been seeking God on this fervently the past two weeks and was even considering that maybe I should close down the ministry and go get myself a paying job.
Charlie's word for me was that God has anointed me and called me to ministry. He saw a crown and saw something trying to interfere with me wearing the crown. That was something coming against the call of God on my life and trying to interfere with the ministry God was calling me to. The word encouraged me to hold on and things would fall into place ministry-wise, because God had definitely called me to full time ministry and there was a definite anointing on me.
I was so blessed by that word. It was like cool refreshing water in the middle of the desert!
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