One of my new friends since moving to Olympia is a notorious law-breaker who has been in national news for doing the right thing. He and some others have a ministry in which they feed the homeless folks from a tent erected in a public parking lot after business hours downtown. He's been in the news because the city has fined him and threatened to jail him for feeding hungry people.
This morning he posted that he'd jammed up his knees cutting wood, and would like prayer. So when Todd came by to go out to breakfast this morning I asked if he knew where our friend lived. Long story short, a phone call and a short while later he was sitting in Solomon's Reef downtown with us at the breakfast table.
As we talked, he shared some of his misadventures with the local government, as well as the impact his ministry is having in the lives of their street family.
Todd shared some of the cool things God did on his recent mission to Brazil, and soon, wives were calling our cell phones and messaging us, and it was time to go.
I asked our friend if his knees were still hurting, and he replied that they were, and that it was a chronic problem.
"Well, then, why don't we get you healed before you go?"
"Alright, man!"
"OK," I told him, "Don't do anything. Don't try to receive, don't think about God, or your knees... don't think about anything."
"OK"
Emptying my own mind of everything but what needed to happen, and not trying to *make* it happen by anything other than what was said, I said, "In the name of Jesus I command pain to go.
I command these knees to conform to pattern that was intended for them in the beginning.
There! Done! How do they feel? The pain is gone, isn't it?"
"They feel much better." he said.
"Is the pain gone?"
"Most of it is."
"OK... Papa doesn't do things halfway...one more time, let's go.' I put my hand on his shoulder again and said,
"Pain be gone in Jesus name. Joints, bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, I command you to be whole."
All gone now?"
"Yep, " he replied sliding out of the booth and testing his new knees, "Just a little stiffness in the muscles from things stretching."
I used to think whether someone got healed had to do with what I did or said when I prayed for them, and often, they were not healed.
But once you realize that you really aren't doing anything but speaking what Papa tells you to (often with the same voice in your mind that you think with) and do and say what He shows you, Results are much different.
Everyday miracles are mostly just an expression of knowing who He has made you, not doing performing as the old, dead man did, and letting the presence of God that is already in you out.
Some people think miracles like this are extraordinary, but they are really just normal, everyday stuff when you realize the old man really is dead, and the life in you now is a new man, living in Christ by the faith of the Son of God.
