One Less Thing to Worry About

I enjoy watching Mark Hemans on Youtube. He is a former missionary, and now he flies all over the world healing people. He learned from Bill Subritzky, a wealthy New Zealand developer who learned from T.B. Joshua.

He accepts donations, but he never asks for a dime. He never preaches the prosperity gospel. He hasn’t made any nutty prophesies about presidential election. The healings that take place at his meetings look legitimate to me. People bring doctors’ notes and so on.

Today I saw a video in which he prayed for healing for people with bone problems and so on. For a couple of weeks or so, I’ve had pain in my wrist on one side When I put my hand down to rest my weight on it, it hurt. I figured it would go away. I hoped I wouldn’t have to see a doctor.

I think of physicians as witch doctors. I don’t mean it in a hostile way. They are extremely weak and ignorant compared to God, the original healer. They fail all the time. They charge too much. Treatment often involves inconvenience, pain, and humiliation for patients. There are many, many things they can’t treat at all. There are many conditions they can’t explain. They actually have a word for “We don’t know what’s going on.” That word is “ideopathic.” It sounds a lot better than confessing complete ignorance.

Of course, I use doctors, because sometimes my own efforts at getting healed don’t work. I assume I’m doing things wrong. I have found doctors to be useful for simple things like vaccinations, warts, and setting broken bones. If I needed surgery urgently, and I couldn’t get healed, I would have the surgery.

I have had more than one miraculous healing, so I try to go to God first when I have a problem. Sometimes I forget.

Today I prayed along with Mark Hemans, for myself and other people. When I got done, the problem with my wrist was gone. I could feel a tiny remnant of the pain, but I was definitely healed.

When God does something for you, you should tell people, so here I am.

A few weeks back, I did my rear brakes, so I had to sit on a very low stool. While I was working, I stood up and did something to my left knee. I wondered if I had torn an important ligament. That’s a problem doctors can only fix with surgery. It’s a big deal.

My knee gave me sharp pains when I bent it too much. Putting on pants was very risky. When I lifted my left leg too high, pain shot through my knee and shin.

I was able to walk normally. I only felt pain when I bent the knee too much.

I had my wife pray for me, lay her hands on my leg, and apply oil.

My knee started getting better right away, and in a week or so, I couldn’t feel any pain at all. It was like I was never hurt.

By this time, I had developed a fear of putting my pants on, so I had to retrain myself to raise my leg without thinking about it.

During this time, I thought about a fact of which I have often lost sight: miracles don’t have to be instantaneous. In fact, the Bible doesn’t say Yeshua always healed people instantly. It just says he healed them. The Bible says that if we lay hands on the sick, they shall recover, but it doesn’t say it will happen in a second.

Yeshua tried to heal a blind man three times. The improvement got better every time. It didn’t happen all at once, the first time he tried.

There is nothing like divine healing. So much better than sitting in a doctor’s office, being billed huge amounts they don’t tell you about up front and getting bad results. It’s better than sucking down expensive prescription drugs with side effects and hoping they don’t ruin your health.

My little parrot Marvin died last month, and we prayed for her. We could not get a healing for her. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I should have fasted more.

It made me think about what I would like to do for God. For years, I’ve been praying for him to use me to heal people, but losing Marvin made me think more in terms of healing the small and helpless. Babies, children, and even pets. It is painful to lose anyone you care about, but it’s much worse when it’s someone small and helpless who depends on you for everything. When a child, baby, or pet dies on your watch, it’s your failure.

Our son has no real health problems. He had a crooked toe when he was born, but it’s nearly normal now. Taking him to doctors for little things makes me feel for the millions of people who have to watch their babies suffer and die every year. I don’t know how they keep on living.

In any case, I have testified. I hope I get to be involved in ending other people’s suffering eventually.

MORE

I don’t like giving negative testimony, but lying testimony is much worse, so here goes.

After my wrist was healed, it felt fine for a long time, but maybe eight or ten hours, the pain came back. It has gone away a few times since then, but it keeps returning.