This morning I want to share some witnesses of healing with you. Before I share them, I want to talk with you about how important it is to enlist others to pray with you and for you as well. I am on several prayer chains. In case you aren’t sure what that means, let me explain. It is a group of people who offer to intercede on your behalf. A lot of churches have a prayer line where you can call in or email in a prayer request, and then whoever is in charge will email it out to all who volunteered to help pray. Also, it may be the members of a prayer group, or another group that has a group chat. I am in three different WhatsApp groups, and we send prayer requests when we have them, and then everyone on the chat prays for the person requesting prayer.
If your church does not have a prayer line, consider starting one. It is as easy as setting up an email address where people can send in requests. For instance, I started one at St. J’s collaborative in MA. So I went on Gmail and created an email account name that is St.Jsprayerline@gmail.com. Then I put an announcement in the bulletin looking for people who would be willing to pray for any requests that came in. There are 42 people who volunteered to be on that email list. Now, people send in prayer requests, and at least 42 other people are praying for them. For the various WhatsApp groups, there are different numbers of people in each group.
There are a lot of reasons why we may not want to ask for prayers. We may not want people to know we are struggling. We may not want to worry people. We may not think our struggle is important enough to bother people with. We may think God has more important prayers to answer. We may think other people are too busy to pray for us. Whatever it is that we might be thinking, the truth is, no one is too busy to say a quick prayer. Another truth is that there is so much power in asking people to pray for you. There is so much power in multiple people interceding on your behalf. You do not have to suffer in silence. You do not have to just deal. Ask people to pray. Also, we get graces every time we pray. So asking others to pray is actually helping them out too!
Here are a few prayer requests and responses from the various prayer groups.
This woman had asked for prayers because she had to go to the eye doctor. The pressure was high in her eyes, and they said she needed to come back for a follow-up. If it was still high, they were going to need to do surgery. The doctor seemed pretty sure that they were going to need to do surgery. Here was her text the next day.
“Good evening, Prayer Warriors. JESUS DID IT AGAIN! The test for my eyes was normal - the pressure was low, under 20! YES - HE DID IT AGAIN - what a wonderful GOD we serve. Thank you for your prayer this morning. God bless you all.”
Next is a woman whose uncle has been refusing to eat. He was having dreams of his wife who had passed away telling him not to eat, so he wasn’t. We prayed at our prayer meeting that he would start eating, and here is her text message afterward.
“Good morning, Watchmen. My uncle just asked for food. Thank you for your intercession. May God continue to bless all of you, and may He answer your prayers speedily!”
Next, I have the specific prayer request and the text message reply.
Dear Sisters, I ask for your prayers for my friend. He is young, in his late 40s. Tomorrow morning he is having a very complicated open-heart surgery to replace one of the valves. This is his third surgery, and it’s a complicated one because of complications from an enlarged heart/aorta.
Her reply after the surgery? “I wanted to update you that my friend has come through his open heart surgery successfully yesterday and is in the ICU. Thank you for your prayers and intentions. God bless you all.”
Here is the next prayer request and answer.
“Good morning, watchmen. Please keep me in your prayers. The director of the agency that I work for has recommended me for a promotion at the agency's headquarters. There are two other candidates, but the director just told me she would rather have me in that position due to my work ethic.
Good morning, beautiful people of God. God has done it! The prophecy came to pass. I got the promotion!!! Please help me praise God for his divine mercy and provision. May God do unto you all the marvelous things he has done for me.”
This woman did not even know there was a promotion available. She did not seek it out; her boss came to her, told her about it, and told her to apply. She not only got this promotion, but she got a second job that she had been looking for! God is so good!
This same woman was in prayer group one morning and mentioned her daughter was sick. Her daughter had been experiencing intense ear pain for the previous 8 hours or so. She was going to have to take her to the doctors. We took time to pray over her daughter. After prayer, her daughter said it felt a little better. Later that day I got a text from the mom saying her daughter felt so much better she wanted to go to school that day.
Here is a prayer request from another group. “Healing for my niece Kathy who broke her back 2 months ago. She is in a lot of pain, and can’t be treated until some healing can happen. Please pray for healing.”
Here is the text we received a few months later:
“Regarding my niece Kathy who broke her back in February, I asked for her because there was no hope the surgeons could restore anything. The sutures finally came out today; she will start Physical Therapy soon and will hopefully go back to work in August. A miracle thank you for your prayers!!!”
Here is another prayer request:
“Please pray for Ann, who is in the hospital and having surgery on her back to repair chipped bones to help lessen her back pain. Thanks”
And the text afterward:
“Update- Ann's surgery went well. She might come home today. Thanks for the prayers.”
Here is another one:
“Prayer request for Tom having cardiac ablation tomorrow at 12:30 pm. Thank you, everyone.”
The reply:
“Thank you, everyone, for your prayers. Tom had his heart procedure; so far, he is doing well and needs to be careful. 5 days of being careful, then back to normal! Praise God”
These are just a few of the many prayer requests that come in. As you can see, some of them are really big, and some might not feel so big. There is no criterion for when we should ask for prayers and when we shouldn’t. If you ask me, you always should; what could it hurt to get extra prayers? I remember in my Encounter Ministries classes Deacon Joe would always say it doesn’t matter if we are praying for a healing of cancer or a healing of a hangnail. God cares just the same about both and can heal them both. He doesn’t have to pick. When we are praying to God about the things we might think are small, it doesn’t take anything away from other people’s prayers. God can hear all of our prayers. He is not limited in any way.
I pray this episode of Witness Wednesday does three things for you. First, I pray in encourages you to ask others to pray for you whenever you have a prayer request. Second, I hope you search out a prayer line or prayer chain you can join so you can start interceding more for others. And finally, that when you do ask people to pray for you, you update them on how the situation turned out. When we tell others about how God answered our prayers, it builds their faith in God and also reinforces that prayer does work!
I love you all, and I want you to know that even though I may not know you, I am praying for you and your families. Please pray for others, it is so important!!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
CLICK HERE TO DONATE
CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring
CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emails
CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily life
CLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
