One Sunday in the late 1970’s I was in church in Matamata (NZ) and suffering great pain in right knee from a injury on the soccer field on Thursday night when training the school’s 1st XI. We had a visiting speaker who also practised the gift of healing. At one point in the service, while he was calling people out for specific ailments, he said “There is someone here with pain in their knee, will you stand please?” I stood up and so did my best friend. He asked, “Which knee has the pain?” My friend said “My left knee”. He said, “no I specifically saw the right knee”. He then asked me, “Which knee do you have pain in?” I told him the right knee and he invited me forward.
After praying over for sometime he asked me if the pain had gone. I said No, it hadn’t. I wasn’t going to lie and go along with a farce. Either I was healed or I wasn’t. I won’t play games. He announced to me and the church that the Lord had healed me but I had to wait three days. Oh, I had a major problem at that point. I was so annoyed at what I thought this man was doing. I wasn’t healed and so we play this other game of cover up saying I would be healed in three days. I thought what nonsense. This is a sham and left church that day somewhat disillusioned. Three days later I had forgotten all about it, or had pushed into the back of my mind. I wasn’t dwelling on it, the moment had passed. God had had His chance to show me healing and had blown it. I didn’t believe the preacher’s statement and so I was not holding any hope of anything more happening.
I was sitting on the couch in the lounge and reading my Bible. I sensed the thought form in my mind, “Put your hand on your knee (the right one).” I did it out of impulse and “obedience” to the thought. Instantly heat flowed from my own hand into my knee and I was healed. I sat there amazed. Remembering what the man had said on the Sunday I started to cry because I had been so anti and so unbelieving of the preacher’s statement. Despite all that, God was faithful and it seems he had put in the preacher’s mind to tell me “three days”. God brings His healing in the way He determines. Just accept that and embrace His purposes for you. And what about my friend? Why wasn’t his knee healed too? I am sure he was more deserving than me at that time, he was certainly more spiritual. God is God and He will bring His granted His healing as he please. Healing is not Christian magic nor a matter of saying the right words. But it is real and it meted out through the gifts granted to members of the body. That much I know. See the “scars” – He healed me.