I left my home the evening of Sunday Nov 23 to begin a 71-hour trip to Razole, arriving 6 AM Thursday morning, India time. I was told that I was expected to teach a bible school class at 10 AM that day. The bible school has 15 students plus another 30 or so local pastors who would attend my teaching.
I was so tired I could hardly think and I had no idea what God wanted me to teach on. I did not have much time to pray and seek God for this first class, since it was sprung on me so shortly after my arrival. I showed up with a few notes and no idea what I would say, hoping that God would put His words in my mouth. I already had an excuse in mind in case my teaching did not go very well -- that I was exhausted from a long trip. Fortunately, I did not have to use that excuse.
I had forgotten that Indian time is not all that precise. I was called to the classroom at 10:30 AM, not 10:00, and then it was another 1/2 hour after I arrived before I was given the microphone to teach. So I sat on the platform for 1/2 hour listening to worship songs in Telegu that I could not understand. The last time I was in India, this group had translated a lot of the Vineyard worship songs into Telegu and sang them. However, they had abandoned that style of worship and had gone back to the traditional Indian songs, which are sung to drums and some type of stringed instrument. They are primarily long ballads that tell a story and are sung by a single singer. There were also a couple of choruses done by a small men's choir. I even recognized one of them.. because the word Alleluia is universal in any language.
As I sat on the platform, I could feel the Lord's anointing coming on me and strengthening me. I had gotten the impression that God wanted me to teach on healing, so I had brought some notes on healing with me. But I was not sure what He wanted to say on the subject and I had not read those notes recently. As I pondered it, I could hear a friend's voice telling me something she once prophesied to me, "Open your mouth and I will fill it." I could hear it almost as clearly as if she were standing on the platform next to me. I knew she wasn't really there and the Holy Spirit was recalling it to my memory as per John 14:26. So I took it as God speaking to me and telling me that He would put His words in my mouth as I taught.
During that last 1/2 hour of worship and the first 20 minutes or so of my teaching, all sorts of people began coming into the room. I had been told to expect about 40 to 45 people for these classes. We ended up with well over 100. Some of them were bible women (women who plant churches by visiting Hindu women in their homes and leading them to the Lord, and then a small church of maybe 20 women and children is formed. Then the male pastor comes in and begins to work on the male relatives of the members and soon the church grows.) There were maybe 25 bible women there, and they are every bit as vital in spreading God's kingdom as the pastors. In addition there were the 15 bible students and another 10 or so teenage girls. But instead of 30 local pastors (the ones staying at the complex for the meetings), we ended up with more like 70 pastors. Some of them were from churches and denominations that had never before worked with other Christians outside of their own church. Some of them came from 4 and even 5-hour bus rides away, which is why they were late. We were kind of amazed that God brought so many pastors and church builders to our class.
Anyhow I opened my mouth to teach and taught for over three hours. God put His words in my mouth. I taught on healing as a sign to back up the proclamation of the gospel. I talked about the authority Jesus won over death and sickness and disease when He died on the cross and rose from the dead, and how He gave this authority to His church. I talked about the difference between the anointing to heal and healing from our authority in Christ. (When the anointing is there, healing is so easy and many are healed very quickly. But even when the healing anointing is not present over a meeting, we can still pray for the sick from the authority Jesus gave us and still see people healed, though it may require more "work", e.g, more time praying, on our part. Then I gave them practical instructions on how to pray for the sick, including some different prayer styles.. such as casting out spirits of infirmity and commanding sickness and pain to leave, command body parts to work correctly, etc.
Then the Holy Spirit told me to have them practice what they had just been taught. (That instruction was kinda scary.. it is easier for me to pray for people myself and see them get healed than to keep my "hands off" and let God meet them directly.) But God reminded me that He is the boss and I must do it His way.
So I asked for a show of hands of how many people had ever prayed for someone who was sick and saw God heal them? About a dozen people raised their hands. Wow.. only about 10 percent of them. Then I asked, "how many of you would like to see God heal the sick through you today?" Every hand in the room went up. So I asked for some people who were in pain right then and needed healing to come up and about a dozen came up. Sharath interviewed them and sent about half of them back to their seats in order to assure that we had people with conditions where we could tell if there was a change in their condition. Then I asked the people in the room to divide into groups and come up and pray for the ones up front, using the prayer styles we'd talked about in class.
One or two people came up as instructed but most of them sat there in their seats looking at me suspiciously. After quite a bit of coaxing, I got about 2/3 of the people in the room to come up and gathered around the people who needed healing. I let them pray without telling them how long to pray. There was about five minutes of intensive prayer and it got very loud in the room. Some people were making gestures as they prayed, gestures that looked like they were rebuking demons. Some were laying on hands on the injured parts of the bodies. Some where laying their hands on the person's forehead or their shoulder. Some were making chopping gestures as if a spirit of intercession was on them and they were prophetically acting out breakthroughs.
While they were praying, I was up in front interceding silently, "Lord, release Your healing power just like You said You would. Come through for them and heal through them!" And I also prayed this prayer: "Lord, if you don't heal through them, then both You and I are gonna look real bad." I guess I wasn't a great woman of faith at that point.
It looked like chaos and mayhem as they prayed, but the Spirit seemed to be moving. So I simply let it happen. Then suddenly... all at exactly the same time, they got quiet and appeared to be done praying. It was startling to me how they all stopped at precisely the same instant, as if someone had given them a cue to stop -- but no such cue was given. The sudden silence was almost unsettling, but I had a sense that the Spirit had been directing them and they all stopped when He stopped directing.
So I began to interview the people who received prayer. Five of the six were completely healed .. the pain and all symptoms were gone. The sixth was not healed completely but has received a partial healing and reported a noticeable decrease in pain. The students were so excited that they did not want to break for lunch. But I was told we must break for lunch immediately. So I promised to come back after lunch and pray for each one and anoint them with oil and pray for an impartation for healing anointing.
We had an hour lunch break and I was in the first group that ate. After I ate, they suggested I take a short nap and they'd wake me for class. Sharath wanted to teach for an hour, from 3 to 4 and would send for me around 4 or 4:30 to come and pray for folks. That sounded good to me so I went to bed. Now, 2:30 PM their time was 1 AM my time and my body clock was ready to sleep. I planned to use the time praying rather than sleeping. I did tell God how happy I was with how He ran the first class and thanked Him for letting me participate in it with Him. Then I fell asleep.
They came to wake me at 4, but I simply did not wake up. They came back about 4:30 and tried it again, but I did not respond. Apparently, I was in a very deep sleep. I woke up and noticed it was dark in my room. So I looked at my wrist watch and discovered it was 5:30. I jumped out of bed and began to rush to the classroom, only to discover (before I got there) that class had already been dismissed. I felt terrible about missing class after promising to come pray for them. But Sharath and a few of the pastors who were there told me not to feel bad, they totally understood how tired I was and they were all looking forward to tomorrow's class.
Dinner was served about 7 PM the time the evening meeting started. Indians are not as time conscious as Americans. Sharath told me not to rush, as they would worship for an hour and send for me about 8. When I got to the meeting at 8 PM, the room was really packed, with somewhere around 250 to 300 people present. Most of the chairs had been removed and people were sitting cross legged on the floor. I was given the microphone shortly after 8 and told to preach until 10 PM.
Now, this evening service was a bit of a test of faith for me. God told me not to bring notes with me to the meeting, but to trust Him to show me what to say. Even as they handed me the microphone and I started to speak, I had no idea what the Lord's agenda was. God told me that this is just like when I prophesy -- that I often don't know what I will say until I hear the words coming out of my mouth. That is OK for prophesying, but it was kind of scary for preaching a sermon. So it was a step of faith for me.
I think God has a sense of humor, because the sermon God gave me was on growing in our faith experientially. It is one thing to have head knowledge about God's faithfulness by hearing about it from His word. But when it becomes real and God puts us in a faith-producing situation and we are scared out of our wits but we take a stand of faith -- then He comes through for us. His faithfulness becomes more real to us because we experience it for ourselves, and that makes our faith grow. There comes a certainty deep within us that He will come through for us next time because He came through for us this time. It was actually a pretty good sermon and I found myself wishing it was being recorded so I could take notes on it and use it as one of my regular teachings.
But the people did not seem to be responding to it as well as I hoped. Starting about 9 PM, some of them began to get up and leave -- and by 9:30 about 15 people had left. I thought that I must be speaking too long, so I spent the next 10 minutes wrapping it up and finished about 9:40. Sharath thanked me and said he was going to "go a bit longer," and he proceeded to preach, in Telegu, until 10:00. As he preached, another 10 or so filed out. The accuser spoke in my ear, "see you did a terrible job and they did not like you." I thought about listening to this voice, but I did not really have time to consider it... as they asked me to pray for people.
Over 100 people (about half of those who were left) came to me for prayer for physical healing. I did not have time to do anything but pray for all those people. It took over one and a half hours to pray for them all, even though I was praying relatively short prayers. Sharath was very tired, so he had someone else serve as my interpreter, and that person's English was very limited. Still, as I would pray, I would feel the healing anointing going out and almost every person I prayed for reported they were "all better." I was not sure I believed it, since they are not very expressive. The people in Andhra Predesh are very reserved and unexpressive in general, having been trained for generations not to publicly express their emotions. So I was not sure if they were really all healed or if they were just saying it to be polite and to make me "feel good."
For the most part, Indian people leave the meeting as soon as they receive prayer. So by the time I was done praying for people, almost no one was left in the sanctuary. So I went back to my room. Someone offered me a cup of coffee but I told them that I don't drink coffee that late. I wanted to talk to Sharath to debrief about the meeting, but he had already gone to bed. So I had no choice but to do likewise.
I went to bed but I was not sleepy. So I began to think about the meeting and all the people leaving as I preached. I began to wonder if any of the reported healings had been real. The accuser began to come and accuse me of being a failure in serving God. About then I had a sense of that protective angel I'd seen in Chinnai standing next to my bed and jabbing at the accusing spirit with his sword Then the feeling of failure and the accusations were gone. I heard myself praying, "God this is your meeting. I did what you told me to do and preached the words you put in my mouth. If the meeting or the sermon were a failure, it is Your problem, not mine." Suddenly I was filled with this incredible peace and slept for about three hours. I woke up about 3 AM and God really began meeting me and speaking to me giving me instructions for the next day. (I will share more of what that was like in my next report.)
But I wanted to follow up on the first night's meeting. At breakfast the next day, Sharath told me how much the people liked my teaching that night. I told him I got a different impression because several left during my teaching and because he preached for a long time after I finished, as though doing damage control. Then he explained that many people came to the meeting by bus and that they had to leave the meeting in time to catch the last bus home.. that is why several began filing out at 9 PM. He said that some people were so captivated they did not leave for their bus but stayed later, even though they had no way home. That was the reason why Sharath preached until 10:00 PM -- because people did not expect the service to be over before then. So he basically reiterated what I had said and threw in a few examples of his own. He told me he'd heard reports about a lot of people being healed that night. They might have told me they were "all better" when they weren't just to make me feel good, but they would not go report it to other people if they had not really been healed.
Just then the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear and said, "See Teresa, aren't you glad you choose not to listen to that spirit of condemnation last night? I am pleased with the meeting last night and I want you to be happy about it as well."
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