HOTS February 2015
We were greeted with good news in 2015. I never cease to be amazed of God’s faithfulness and unfailing love. Just read these two stories sent to me by email about who God is and what he does.
1. ‘I am the ‘lady with the long-term hip and back pain’ whose leg grew out in the training that day in December 2014 at St Martin in the Bullring. Three weeks on and my grown-out leg means I am so much more comfortable which is wonderful. Not quite pain-free yet but trusting the Lord for my complete healing.
I have further news to share with you. Last weekend I was ‘down South’ seeing my family and felt I should go to my ‘sending church’ on the Sunday morning. I’ve kept in touch with them but no-one knew I was coming that day. The priest/leader and the people are always very welcoming and on arrival I shared that I had a testimony I felt Jesus was asking me to share with the church. I didn’t know that it was an evangelistic Carol service planned that day. The leader graciously & prayerfully allowed me to speak after his ‘talk’. I simply shared what Jesus had done for me in the training and how we were praying for folk in the market-place and ‘doing’ Healing on the Streets that day, in God’s Name and Glory.
There was a shared lunch following the service, during which a man asked the Leader for prayer – his physiotherapist had told him one of his legs was shorter than the other and this was the cause of his pain in his neck, shoulders, spine, hips, knees etc. The leader came over to me and asked me if I would join him in praying for this man. This kind of prayer was new for both of us! I happily agreed whilst asking God to equip me and increase my faith! I tried to put the training into practice and as we prayed was so aware of God’s power and love for this man. We checked the legs like mine had been measured and they were indeed different lengths. We asked God to grow the leg and longed for it to grow and for Jesus to be glorified through this. We had to really persist in prayer and in between each prayer asked the man to take a little walk to see how things felt – this man wasn’t yet a Christian. Firstly he described tingling in his lower back and his hips were more comfortable, next the shoulders were ‘released’, and finally, eventually!, the legs became the same length! Praise God!
The man was thrilled, had experienced God’s peace for the first time but wasn’t yet ready to commit to Christ. Please pray for him too. He is very interested in Alpha which starts again in January.’
2. This is the account about N who was prayed for by M, one of the team members: ‘N first showed up at HOTS about a year ago – this was just after he lost his wife and he was all over the place emotionally. He had just moved to a flat in Wolverhampton and said he had nothing for it so after we prayed for him I took him to Argos that first day and got him some basics. After that he did ring me asking for money in some distress on a couple of occasions, but it was difficult to see him because he was still in Wolverhampton. I invited him to Birmingham to meet up with another Hots team member and myself but he didn’t show up. On the third occasion he told me he had moved to Highgate so I went down to see him (actually to check out what he had said about his circumstances, which all seemed to hang together – he had recently was involved on one of the latest NY accidents and was on crutches and in a bit of a mess’.
N did not come back to Hots until October 2014 when he was prayed for by two different team members D and J. the story continues:
‘N was touched by ‘God so loved the world…'(John 3:16) which I gave him on a small card. He returned to HOTS in November and again in December. This time he talked of taking his own life, so I asked all the St Martin’s HOTS contacts to pray for him. I went to visits him with J in his flat in Highgate, shared the gospel more fully and led him in a prayer of commitment to Christ. N began to pray out loud himself. With changes in Disability benefits, he was without money for several weeks. We’ve sought to help him every way we can. After that N himself began to help homeless people (having been homeless himself for a while). He shows them where they can get food and tells them that he believes in God and is a Christian and taken them to church. He comforted his nephew after a family bereavement and he now has expressed the desire to become a Christian. N regularly attends Church now and wants to be involved in Christian activities.
These are two different stories demonstrating different ways God works through his people.
The first emphasises the power of telling and /or remembering what God has done for us. The act of telling our testimony is powerful. Bill Johnson in his book, ‘Releasing the Spirit of prophecy – the supernatural power of testimony’ says: when you remember God’s supernatural interventions in impossible situations, you carry in your heart the seed of yet another miracle.’ (page 89)
The second story emphasises what we read in James 2:15-1
‘Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.’
These three team members were indeed ‘a light shining out of the darkness’ when they prayed for N and ‘the darkness around them shone as bright as day’ because they fed, clothed and helped N. Their action, faith and prayer were not in vain. Another redeemed will enter God’s glory one day.
In February despite of the bitter cold of the day, we had many who sat on the chairs for prayer. Here are some of them.
1. Someone suffering from a heart condition. As the team prayed the person said there was a “plop” in his heart and he felt that his lungs received more air’.
2. Someone with arthritis
3. A lady recovering from cancer
4. Someone who is a refugee and was amazed that we offered to pray for her. She suffered from trauma and has HIV
5. Someone open to the gospel
6. Prayer requests for people with depression, bereavement, OCD, headaches, estranged family and to have a wife, looking for a job were offered too.
We trust that all these prayers will bear fruit in due season. Please join us in our continual prayers for those in need. Thank you for your support and for being faithful to God’s calling upon your lives.
Blessings
Revd Elsie Blair-Chappell
