20th October, 2023. All Christians will surely be familiar with this statement found in Isaiah’s fourth and most profound ‘Servant Song’, in which the ‘Suffering Servant’ is observed taking upon himself the Guilt of all humanity’s Sins along with their Sicknesses and Diseases when going to his terrible death – a person and action identified with by no less than Jesus the Messiah in Matthew 8:17. The glorious truth about the Atonement – the subject of my recent Blog – is that the One who would bring more Healing than any other person in the world’s history was also the Person most acquainted with human suffering. Jesus has rightly been called ‘the Wounded Healer’.
I make this point because any readers of this weblog who do not know me might wonder if I can write so positively about Christian Healing because, maybe, I have not experienced much sickness myself, nor known the grief of losing someone for whom much prayer did not save their life. Is my relative ‘immunity’ causing me to be too simplistic in encouraging healing prayer?
So let me set the record straight:
Twenty years ago I experienced a Heart Attack while attending a Baptist Annual Assembly in Cardiff (“taking denominational matters far to seriously” as quipped by a mentor in Healing!). Spending a few hours in A&E being diagnosed with Angina, I then experienced “the big one” literally seconds before being connected to clot-busting drugs at the nearest bed in the Cardiac ward. Within six months, despite having an amazed reaction from medics at the John Radcliffe Cardiac Outpatients that their tests revealed no trace of my heart attack despite having the notes that indicated I certainly had, I then sank into Clinical Depression – for the second time in my life. The combined effects of these two serious illnesses was that It took out the best part of three years from my pastoral ministry. I told my church these were the worst years of my life.
That remark would be challenged soon after, when my wife of 34 years was diagnosed with Alzheimers’ Disease – a devastating illness in which you observe the gradual loss and death (in that order) of the partner you have known and loved. This experience, lasting about twelve years, had the effect of ageing me, stopping me from practising the healing prayer ministry which I had been developing over a few years, and leaving me a physical, emotional and spiritual wreck – not least because I had grown to hate myself for the changed person I had become.
My recovery soon after was the result of a powerful and gracious intervention by God in bringing a new love-partner into my life – Ingria, now my wife, followed by the stunning Prophetic words of David Opoku that I would have a new ministry in Prayer for healing. This new venture has not looked back, despite the limitation imposed by Covid-19 Lockdowns, as prophecy has been built upon prophecy by a succession of people who did not know me but knew the mind of God for me. And though the realisation of this ministry has been quite slow, at every point when I have questioned God about where this is all leading, he has given me a succession of green lights to leave me in no doubt of his purposes.
At a Zoom Prayer session today, a lady told me she was occasionally experiencing Diverticular Disease, which reminded me that, a little while after receiving my prophetic calling, I had received a similar diagnosis following a haemorrhage which had, momentarily, caused me a cancer-scare. I am now healed of that, as a result of (1) a scripture verse giving me instant peace, (2) a prophetic assurance that “I see no cancer in you”. Two subsequent medical procedures revealed no apparent cause of my bleeding, and, finally, a different prophet declared, “I saw the word ‘Cancer’ above your head, and it was being wiped away”.
My regular readers will be aware that I have already written about these experiences, but I wanted to repeat them in the light of the ‘Suffering Servant’ text. And I will pursue and encourage Christian Healing all the more because my own healings have accompanied personal experience of sickness and sad loss.
Healing in Jesus' Name 