Newfrontiers : Healings, healings and more healings!

Healings, healings and more healings!

Over the past few months, more and more stories of physical healing have been reported in our churches. Several wonderful testimonies are described here; let’s give thanks to God as we read them.

Hannah Pope – Alder Road Baptist Church, Poole

I’m 22, and my husband and I joined the church in September 2007, having previously attended other evangelical churches. I’ve suffered with arthritis from the age of six and have been in plaster, on crutches, and in a wheelchair on quite a few occasions. It started in my ankles and travelled up to my knees, hips and eventually to my lower back. When this happened a consultant told me that I would probably have a residual problem in my back. I was discharged from the consultant's care at the age of 18 and stopped all medication about three years ago. I have experienced a few flare-ups since then, but nothing serious.

However, during the past 18 months my lower back has been very painful and the pain has been debilitating. This has caused me to miss lectures and stopped me from being as active as I wanted to be during the final year of my degree. My GP gave me many different anti-inflammatory drugs but they did not get rid of the pain completely. I was referred to a consultant rheumatologist to investigate if my arthritis had recurred and whether I should go back on regular medication. This appointment was very unsatisfactory and I was left totally at the end of my tether.

Many people at church had been praying for me and I was desperate to be healed. Terry Virgo visited our church, and during his preach he mentioned that he had experienced lower back pain and had discovered that this is often caused by one leg being longer than the other. He offered to pray for anyone with lower back pain. My husband urged me to go up but I was very nervous and apprehensive. I'd never seen anyone healed or been to a healing service so I was frightened. I had heard of people's legs growing but had been very skeptical. However, I went for prayer and it turned out that my left leg was half an inch shorter than my right. Terry prayed for me and I literally felt my leg grow. It was a very weird sensation and afterwards I felt very sick! But my back felt better immediately! Praise God!

Since then I have not had any problems with back pain and have returned to swimming, cycling, and playing volleyball without any pain at all! I have had lower back pain for so long that the freedom this healing has brought has been amazing. God is so good and I have experienced him working in spite of my apprehension. I am so glad he decided to heal me despite my lack of faith!

Guy Miller, Citygate Church, Bournemouth

A trip to Africa in 1994 left me with a number of serious stomach problems, which took some years to diagnose. One of these was Coeliac disease – an inability to digest wheat and gluten. For the past ten years I have lived on a wheat free diet and over that time have received prayer many times for healing. At the start of 2008 I had further stomach problems and my local GP was scratching his head as I had symptoms for IBS, Coeliac disease and duodenitis.

Feeling unwell and in pain I came to a Newfrontiers leaders gathering where Dr Peter Carter (North Kent Community Church) asked me how I was doing. That afternoon we met during a coffee break to pray and he prayed with faith, passion and tenderness. As he prayed, my mind was battling and saying things like ‘nothing is happening…maybe this is just my thorn in the flesh’. At that very moment Martin Tibbert (Open Door Church, St Ives) came alongside and said ‘God says, “do not say this is your thorn in the flesh”’ and with his word came a surge of power. That evening I took a little wheat biscuit with my evening meal and waited for the explosion of pain and diarrhoea that would quickly follow.

The following morning I felt no pain and so decided to slowly build up my wheat intake over the next days and weeks without really telling anyone. Six weeks later I told the church and following that experienced the reappearance of all my symptoms for a day, causing me to stop eating wheat and return to a gluten free diet.

A few days later I met up and chatted with Terry Virgo. I shared my experiences and he encouraged me to learn to fight for the ground God had so clearly given me, and to hold firm. I felt faith stir again and returned to eating increasing amounts of gluten. I am now eating a normal diet and it is a wonderful blessing to be able to eat a cream cake or a jam doughnut knowing it won’t harm me. Praise God!