Phil and I heard about a HOTS (Healing on the Streets) conference in Winchester; some lovely people from Holy Trinity Church, Knaphill had gone to another of these in Coleraine N. Ireland last year; Vineyard Church, Coleraine is where HOTS is based. Others from HTC had attended similar conferences at other places around the UK. Of those who returned from those, I don't think there were any who were ambivalent about what they'd seen. One had received healing to a long-term leg injury and is as right as rain even today.
Phil's been on strong painkillers for more than three years, but he took himself off of them a week or so ago. Through the past week he found that the pain lessened, but there was still residual pain that made it difficult for him to stand still for longer than a few minutes.
On Friday night we heard Mark Marx speak, Mark pioneered the HOTS ministry. Mark set out in simple language the background and methods of Healing on the Streets. He did this with great humility and with a clear but quiet voice; though the claims he made of healings of cancer and other severe illnesses sounded too good to be true. That said, they would only be too good to be true from a worldly perspective. In order to believe that these healings happened, you'd have to accept them from a different perspective. Whether we can do that or not depends on us having either a child-like acceptance of what we see and believe, or a God-like one. Since none of us is God-like, we therefore have to suspend our worldly beliefs - and that's really, really hard to do.
Despite my positive experiences of God this past year or two - including healing through prayer (bad back), when it comes to the supernatural I still lack faith. Also, when it comes to preachers, particularly those who claim insight into the supernatural, I tend toward cynicism. For me this stems from a worldly cynicism and this was 'confirmed' by a bizarre service I attended in Maidenhead where there was a visiting American preacher - the style of preacher that you might see in an anti-Christian documentary. So theatrical that I'm surprised Equity hadn't demanded he join their union. I felt really uncomfortable with his approach, methods and preaching and I left before the end - behind a group of other people who evidently felt the same. Listening to Mark Marx however, was the antithesis of this experience. There is nothing theatrical about him.
Anyway, the Friday HOTS evening finished and as Phil and I were leaving for home, Phil excused himself and said 'hang on a minute'. At which he marched up to the now resting Mark Marx and asked for prayer for his leg. Mark had already said that evening that if any of us were to ask him for prayer he'd very likely say 'no', because they should take the opportunity to go out to the streets the next day and be prayed for by a team there. In other words, he didn't want us thinking of him as the one who was doing the healing. He was very clear that it was Jesus.
Nevertheless Mark relented and invited Phil to take a seat - telling him to sit with his hips well back into the chair so that when his legs were outstretched it became clear that there was a difference in the length of each leg - probably 10/15mm. Mark prayed, with Phil's feet both supported by a couple of fingers of each of Mark's hands, and others and I watched as the left leg grew to the same length as the other so that the heels equalised. Phil stood and said he no longer felt pain - but I could see a look of doubt on his face still. He said to me on the drive home that it felt like Mark was pulling his foot to be level with the other. The pain, though, had gone altogether.
Roll on to the next day - Saturday morning - and Mark continued with his teaching. This time he demonstrated another leg-lengthening, which was filmed. He also prayed for a lady with a medical condition that was not cured instantly. The previous night, he had told us that healing would not happen every time, but that it WOULD happen others. He also said that healing wasn't always instant and that often they would hear afterwards that healing had occurred. And so in the afternoon we went onto the streets of Winchester.
Something to know about this conference is that the Winchester churches describe themselves as being 'Joined at the hip'. In other words, their activities, prayer and fellowship is based on the one central figure of Jesus, not on differing doctrine, or team colours. They are United in Mission. They act as ONE BODY. On the streets there were a couple of hundred people at least - Baptists, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and we divided into two groups to go to different venues. So when 100+ of us knelt on the ground to pray in heavy rain in the very centre of Winchester, it got noticed!
At the end of our prayers Phil and I found standing behind us a group of young lads. They turned out to be trainee squaddies and wanted to know what was going on, so we told them and invited them to take a seat if they had any health issues. They wondered off, but kept coming back and wondering off again. I had a chat with them and it turned out that one or two had aches and pains from training but they were afraid to sit in the chair. How odd that they were frightened of sitting in a chair but they would be prepared to face bullets! Anyway, one of them eventually summoned up courage, sat in the chair, was prayed for and said afterwards the pain had gone.
I noticed that Phil had been standing and talking with one man for most of the time we were there. Phil thought it was for only 20/30 minutes but we were there for two hours in all and this man had kept him chatting for most of that time. I didn't keep count but the 6 or so chairs were mostly full throughout the two hours.
Anyway, it turned out that the chap followed a sect and he believed that Christian healing was wrong. Phil had listened to Mark's teaching, that we shouldn't try to push anyone to accept healing, or to argue with them. So he stood for all that time listening to the other chap giving him scriptural references for why we shouldn't have been there. But Phil said after, that the longer the chap spoke, the more Phil realised that without the previous night's healing, he wouldn't have been able to have withstood the pain in his leg. He would have had to have moved it/lifted it from the ground/shifted weight or even, perhaps, to have excused himself and sat down on a chair. In other words, every word, every minute this chap spoke, he was confirming to Phil that healing does work and that God works through us in miraculous ways. Phil also felt 'fed' by this man's recital of the Scriptures. At the end of it he was able to shake the man's hand and thank him.
Afterwards, Phil, Mark and I chatted as we walked to the Baptist Church for the day's debrief. Phil admitted to his lack of belief and worries that he'd had his leg 'pulled'. Mark showed him a picture on his mobile phone taken in Oxford of a man holding in his hands a pair of orthopaedic boots, one of them very built up. But he was wearing a shiny new pair of shoes. He'd gone to buy those on the day that his leg had grown and he had returned to show Mark. Mark's point was that there was no way that he could have 'pulled' his leg to the length of the other given that the difference was inches and that the man had always had to wear orthopaedic boots.
Yesterday, Phil went to church and told Nancy about the week-end. She encouraged him to give that testimony at the front of the church. At the end, the Worship Group leader said that Phil would be at the back of the church for those who wanted prayer - which wasn't what Phil was expecting. He'd been dropped in the deep end.
Apparently a line formed, and Phil prayed for several people. One man said he no longer felt pain in his knee. Others wanted prayer too so they moved to the prayer room. One man had had his trousers made for him with one leg longer than the other to compensate for the 20mm difference in the length of his legs, which caused him back pain. Phil went through the taught process and was determined that if this was to work, then he must not attempt to pull the leg in any way. He let the man's heel rest on his hand, prayed and watched as the leg grew, heel "sliding" on the palm of his hand. Others saw this too and after it happened Phil asked the man to stand and sit again to see whether he could make the legs a different length as they were before. When sitting back in the chair, this time the legs were of equal length and they couldn't get the legs a different length. A second lady had been complaining of back pain, so Phil prayed for her legs too - with the same result. The man and the woman had both felt a 'pulling' sensation at the tops of their legs - but it wasn't Phil exerting pressure or tension to give them that sensation.
Having seen what I've seen and heard what I've heard it's really, really hard to remain cynical about supernatural healing. A part of me wants to believe that it can't be true - I think because if it is true it shakes my world-view and is a bit scary. But I've seen that it IS true. It's not a trick, it's not people wanting it to be true and feeling healed when they're perhaps not; there's physical evidence for it - legs of a differing length becoming of the same length once they were prayed for. AND there's nothing to be scared of.
What a great thing it would be if God wants Woking's churches to work together, to be 'joined at the hip' in the same way that Winchester's churches are. I was really encouraged to discover that there were people there from Christ Church as well as the churches that Phil and I represented. Will Woking's churches hear the call to unite in mission and take Jesus' healing to the streets, really making Him visible through Word and Power? Or are we perhaps a little scared to take this step out of the boat and discover what it's like to walk on water? Plenty to pray for here.
Blessings - John
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