Saturday, March 19, 2011

Catholic Convention Miracles

So I get invited by my friend Jeanne to be on the prayer team at this Catholic conference. Now, I'm not Catholic and have always viewed Catholics as "excluding" people, meaning that you can't go to their church if you're not Catholic etc. Then there's the whole Mary, mother of Jesus and Saint so and so business that I never really got. Shouldn't Jesus be our focus? So anyway.... I had to PUSH all of that aside to agree to be on the prayer team. Then I had to take a few thoughts captive. Thoughts like "they'll find out I'm not Catholic and kick me out" or "they'll think I'm weird, I don't exactly pray the way that they do..." but I quickly cast those out and actually was quite looking forward to going. I arrive in record time, listening to rap, traffic was zero and personally I think God translated me a bit.... that'll be a talk for another time.

I walk in and find Jeanne, she was going to speak for 30 minutes at the conference and be on the prayer team as well as one other man. There were about 40 Catholics at this convention. I'm telling you ALL of this background stuff about me to let you know that there is no "perfect" way of going about this. I make mistakes. I have pre-judgements I shouldn't have. Despite my weakness of the flesh from time to time, God is still able to work through me!

I had the BEST time at this conference. I was met by extremely friendly and receptive people. I was able to lay hands with Jeanne, on at least 10 of the 40 people there, get them healed..... then be able to lay hands on 3 people to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and they spoke in tongues! Way cool. Had never done that before. Also had never grown out legs.... so let's begin with those testimonies.

First guy, named Mark (yay I remembered one name....), he was a sweet, quiet man and his friend had to persuade him to even come over for prayer. We greeted him warmly and he told us that he was in extreme pain. His entire back and he was just denied Social Security benefits, and now has to figure out what he can even do for a job to make some money. He had some depression hanging on him. He looked miserable. Jeanne and I started commanding his back to line up and Jeanne got a Word of Knowledge that his legs were uneven. So she told him to sit down and give me his feet! He had cowboy boots on :) So I grabbed his feet, notice one leg was shorter and pretty much as soon as I started to say "leg grow in Jesus name...." it popped out. Even legs. Boom. God's so awesome. He goes "whoa! I felt that!" Then we had him stand up and bend over to see if the back pain was gone. It wasn't, so we ministered again and he said he felt tingling in his back. He was able to bend and was smiling! PRAISE JESUS!

Then came Jeanne. She said, "check my legs" she had one shorter, so as soon as I touched her legs she said "oh I feel it, there it goes"! Her hip pain was gone!

Oh gosh, then one of my favorite testimonies was this woman named..... oh dear.... I've forgotten. This woman comes over and tells us she had a collapsed lung, needed a new heart, had pain in her knees, hip pain and something else.... I think. Oh gall bladder, it had been removed through surgery. Her husband was saying awful things to her out of fear, such as "you're holding me back since I have to take care of you and you can't do as much anymore". So first we ministered regarding her marriage. Prayed and let her know that he most likely was experiencing fear because he didn't know what to do since she had health problems. So then we started the healing! Jeanne got another word about uneven legs, so I took her legs and sure enough, uneven. This is why she had hip pain. Grew the legs out, she was shocked, then we got the knees healed. The first time we commanded them to heal she still had major pain when kneeling down. We did it probably 4 more times and she crouched down after each one and kept saying the pain was less and less. Until finally it was GONE! We hit the missing gall bladder, commanded it to regrow, commanded the lung to reform and the heart to beat with the rhythm of life! This woman realized just how much God loves her. She went from crying because she was so depressed to being so joyful as she hugged us both several times, then left!

One woman had a daughter who was not walking for the Lord, we'll say. In fact, she would get angry when the word "God" was spoken. Her mom, Christine, was at the conference and came over for prayer. We prayed quiet extensively for her daughter. Christine was crying and by the end felt so much peace. We reminded her that she is a LIGHT for God. That she doesn't need to say the name "God" out loud, that she represents God everywhere. We commanded the demons trying to keep her daughter from God to flee and let her go. Then we found out that Christine needed healing, not only in her relationship with her daughter, but for her blood pressure and some weird allergy of eggs, oh and damaged intestines. We began commanding and as soon as we said "blood pressure normalize" she said she felt this weight just lift off of her body. Now that is COOL! She left with so much peace and joy about everything!

Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now I have never done this before for others. I have it and I pray in tongues and I KNEW the first person I laid hands on to receive it would receive it, but I hadn't done it..... until today! Since I know that tongues is for every believer, I have no issues finding the confidence to expect God to bring it forth. It's nice to be at that place. I'm working on getting there with healing. I'm to the point now where everyone I lay hands on "feels something" which is pretty awesome! I'm excited as I grow more and more into WHO I AM IN CHRIST!

Ok, so tongues. Well, the man who explained the baptism to the people confused them. Heck, I was confused and I have the baptism already. I was NOT sure how it would go or if anyone would even WANT it after his confusing talk.... but people came forward. There were 4 groups of people praying for individuals to receive the baptism. Jeanne, myself and a man named David were a team. We were able to get David healed of tightened muscles (sore) uneven legs and hip pain, after ward. But anyway, we had 2 men first. The first man wanted direction from the Lord on what he should do with his life. We prayed for that first, then we asked him if he spoke in tongues because God gives you answers to things when you pray in tongues. He said he didn't and that he'd like it. So, we got him praying in tongues. Man was he blessed! He hugged us, we said a "Hail Mary" and he left.

Then a second man came up. He was my favorite. He just wanted the Holy Spirit and boy did he get Him! Haha, he was so great. He was so overjoyed as he spoke in tongues. He felt the power! He hugged us then, and again later he found us and hugged us AGAIN! He's changed! PRAISE GOD!

Ok, then Jeanne and I saw this woman who had so many great questions about tongues. But they weren't answered from the confusing talk before hand, so we tried our best to quickly help her as we walked into the room to get people praying in tongues. Well, after we prayed over the 2 men I realized this woman had already come forward and been prayed over by a different team. We asked her afterward if she spoke in tongues. She said "no" regretfully. She so wanted to. We told her that we'd pray with her and that she will speak in tongues. She said "ok!" We explained a little more about what tongues is and she was ready. We found David, so he came and prayed with us (that man just went from praying over a lot of people in the past for tongues and none spoke in tongues to 3 in a row and all 3 spoke in tongues, COOL BEANS, he's changed). So she took a bit longer 5 minutes or so but finally she like TOOK OFF in tongues. It was crazy! She was SO SO SO excited! She wanted it so badly and probably felt like it was her fault or something that she hadn't spoken in tongues yet. She was BLESSED and walked away. Well another woman came up to Jeanne and was thanking her for her talk (which was awesome by the way) when this same woman who just took off in tongues grabbed Jeanne's hand and said, "I'm sorry but I need you." and pulled her away from the other woman. Haha, it was perhaps, a bit odd. Turns out this woman and her husband have a son who was not walking with the Lord and he was in Vegas gambling but spent all his money and had no way to get home and they had tried to reach him for days but to no avail and they were so worried. The woman wanted us to pray. Me and the other woman who had wanted to talk to Jeanne came over and the 5 of us grabbed hands and prayed for this boy to CALL home in JESUS' NAME! For peace to overtake the parents. For the boy to have supernatural protection and a way to get home! You could literally see the parents bodies change as we prayed. Weight was lifted. They were changed. Their son will call. Thank you Jesus that you are REAL and that you show up in a REAL way when people need you!

Oh, so you remember the guy who gave the tongues talk that was confusing. He was also super critical of Jeanne and I since we weren't Catholic. (Jeanne was.... but isn't anymore). We broke the spirit of religion off of him, and later, he came over and told us to pray for his back to be healed. We measured his legs, one was shorter. Grew it out, his hip pain went away but he still had some pain on the left side of his back. We prayed but then he had to go up to give that talk on tongues, so we stopped. Later he came over and told me that all the pain was gone and God bless us! How awesome! He realized that perhaps you don't have to be Catholic to do good in the world.... :)

I thank God that He gave me this opportunity. I have a new respect for Catholics now. They are good people who want to PLEASE GOD more than anything! That's awesome! Thank you God that you've made us all different and that we all can learn from one another!

I pray that the people reading this are blessed and can learn from me and I from them! In Jesus' MIGHTY name! AMEN!

(ps- I have more testimonies.... but perhaps a later time, this is plenty to post!)

4 comments:

  1. Thanks Amie for your great post! It was an awesome day and I am glad you recorded the highlights. Yes, Catholics are lovely people who just want to love and serve the Lord in obedience. The problem is the spirit of fear of punishment or separation from Him that gets woven into doing it "imperfectly". I am glad you joined me. I am blessed to have you as a friend and prayer partner. I am encouraged and inspired by consistent faith and belief that God will and does heal through us!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I meant I am encouraged and inspired by YOUR faith and belief.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you so much for sharing this with everyone Amie. I came out of a religion very similar to Catholicism and understand the "fear" and "separation" the Jeanne spoke of.

    Praise God that it's all about Jesus and not about us. I need to believe and He does the healing and restoring and saving.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Haldog, you CAN believe and you will :) Keep building your faith by reading the WORD! Look at all the miracles Jesus did :) He is our example!

    ReplyDelete