Healing on the Streets

Yahweh is a healer. I know that. He is Jehovah Rapha. But what happened today was not what I was expecting.

Here's the story, with a little bit of important background:

Two weeks ago I moved to the north coast of Ireland! I am able to continue doing the work I've been doing with Pais, work I love so much, and I get to be part of a great Vineyard church. The church here have their own internship, and I get to participate in that as well. In addition to the teaching sessions for this internship, we have opportunities to do outreach each week in the city. My host has a huge passion for something they do called 'Healing on the Streets,' and being curious to experience this, I asked if I could tag along and do outreach with them today.

At 10:30 this morning, the Healing on the Streets team set out 6 chairs and a banner, we gathered to pray, and then we were open for business. The church have been doing Healing on the Streets every Saturday for 12 years, so the town is used to this happening. People all over the city know it happens every week, and people from other areas around Northern Ireland will drive, sometimes hours, to be prayed for here.

The idea is simple. People who need physical healing come, they sit in the chairs, we ask how we can pray for them, and we pray. Nothing weird or fantastical, just the simple power of prayer in the middle of the town centre. It's beautiful.

During a lull in our prayer time this morning, the team gave me the opportunity to receive prayer, partly so I could experience it for myself from the other side, but also, I had a physical need I wanted prayer for.

I don't even know when it happened, but I know the first time I experienced it I was about 12. There was something wrong with my back, and at that young age, it 'went out' for about three days. The pain came out of the blue one day at school. I was getting my massive stack of textbooks from my locker, and all of a sudden, I couldn't move. My mom, the nurse, put me on bedrest and anti-inflammatories for three days and it seemed to be fine after that. But for some years now, I've found that if I stood too long without walking or sitting, especially in bad shoes, pain would flair up in my back again and I would be in agony. I learned how to deal with it, what would set it off and how to manage it, but to be honest, it had become a hindrance, and it was painful!

So this morning, my host and one of the leaders sat before me as I sat in the chair, and the leader asked me some questions about the pain. She made me stretch out my legs in front of her, wondering aloud if my problem was sciatica. When I stretched out my legs and compared them, they looked normal to me, like they always had. I didn't see anything wrong. But when she prayed, and I put my feet down on the ground and then stretched them out again, I saw that my left leg had been a tiny bit shorter than my right leg. Now, I know this happens frequently; one leg will appear shorter than the other, and it's an issue of alignment with the body, but I never suspected this was my problem. But right there before my eyes I saw how my feet aligned where they hadn't before. The leader asked me to get up and walk on it, and it felt different. In fact, for the rest of the afternoon, I could feel a difference in my entire leg and in my hip and I found myself even walking differently on the way home. It was such a blessing and I am so relieved and thankful to not have that pain and hindrance affecting me anymore!

Yep, our God is a healer!