Praying for the Sick

06/23/11- 06/24/11

Today I decided to finally visit my Tio Jose Jehova and Tia Raquel. I haven't visited them at all because I was sick for nearly ten days and I didn't want to pass my cold to Tia Raquel since she is deathly ill. She has had diabetes for 15 years and about 11 years ago her diabetes developed a new disease in her that constantly attacks her nerves in her entire body. Thus, she has been in constant pain every day for over a decade. She lives off of pain killers, yet she is one of the sweetest, kindest persons I have ever met. Even though she is in constant pain she still is always smiling, giving me hugs and kisses, and being very hospitable towards us every time we visit her.
I went over to their house on Thursday afternoon to visit them and pray for her. First, my uncle Jose Jehova asked me to help him with his English. He showed me a book he was reading in English and he read it aloud for me to correct his pronunciation. Amazing, his pronunciation was almost flawless and he had never visited an English speaking country in his life. Then we hear Tia Raquel wake up and she was groaning in pain asking God to have mercy on her. We sat next to her and talked for a while, but then the pain became unbearable for her. She laid down, constantly groaning and asking God to have mercy. It was one of the most horrible feelings I have ever felt in my life; to see my aunt writhing in pain, knowing she has been experiencing this pain for a decade, and not being able to do anything about it. I began praying in tongues over her and asking God to heal her for a good while and her husband joined me.
She asked her husband "for the love of God" to please get the new prescription from the doctor's office and buy her the pain killers she needed. So my tio and I went to the hospital to get her prescription. My tio Jose Jehova is a formidable, strong man with a beautiful, deep radio voice. He is 82 years-old but he still walks and talks as a man of authority and anointing. He told me that he prays literally every single day for Brooke and I, for Brooke's family, and for all of our relatives. Every day he prays for each one of our relatives by name; he prays for Brazil, the U.S., and all the continents; and he prays for the lost to be saved. Every single day. He said that he spends hours in prayer every day.
So as we walked through the hospital every single person we walked by he would come right up to them with zero hesitation and tell them that they all need to give their lives to Jesus, read the Bible, and pray. That they needed to focus on the eternal world and not on the temporal world and that God wanted to change their lives. It was definitely not a form of evangelism that I was used to, but it was still very powerful. Everyone listened and respected him because he spoke with authority and confidence, but was still extremely respectful and humble. Also, no one dared reject or disrespect him since he was such an elderly man and respect for the elderly still exists in Brazil although it is also fading. I was deeply challenged by Tio Jose Jehova's boldness and authority to preach the Gospel. In the two hours it took for us to get the prescription and medicine for his wife he had preached to well over 20 people of all ages, sexes, and backgrounds.
God give me that Boldness!!!
He later said something to me that convicted me. He said, "Many people try to serve the Lord without living a life of prayer. They become weak, intimidated, and too scared to preach the Gospel and even when they do preach there is no authority because they don't live lives of prayer. We have to pray a lot and preach the Gospel a lot. You can't have one without the other. I always say we need to pray, pray, pray, and we need to preach the Gospel!"
OH God!!! May I and your church hear the counsel of this 82-year-old man of God. By the way, he also founded an orphanage in his lifetime and was a public high school teacher for over 30 years.
We returned to the house and Tia Raquel's sister, daughter, and grandchildren were there visiting her. We gave her the medicine and she was finally able to sleep.

06/24/11

The following day Mirinha took me to Goiania's cancer hospital to visit Gabriel, a 10-year-old boy with brain cancer. He is the nephew of a close family friend of ours. Mirinha hates going to hospitals, so as we walked into the hospital she was already believing that Gabriel was going to die soon because his cancer was so bad. I stopped us both in our tracks and began to pray together with Mirinha for faith to believe for a miracle and binding every spirit of doubt and death. Jesus hated when people with unbelief and pity were around the sick, so I didn't want to visit Gabriel just to give him some more pity and comfort him in the midst of his disease. I wanted to see him healed.
So we walked into his room full of joy and faith. I met him and his aunt who was with him and we talked with him for a while to see how he was doing. I brought my guitar and my Bible, so I sang a worship song in Spanish and in Portuguese for him. Then God spoke to me to read Revelation 21 for Gabriel, so I did. It was a really amazing chapter. I grabbed a lot of beautiful truths from the passage and shared for about twenty minutes with Gabriel. Then I told him the testimony of John G. Lake and how God used him to heal thousands of sick people in the U.S. and Africa. For those of you who have never heard of John G. Lake I encourage all of you to look him up on Google and read some books about him. He is one of the greatest revivalists in American history and the founder of the healing rooms movement. Thus, after worshipping, reading the Word, sharing from the Word. and telling testimonies of healing today the room was charged with faith and Gabriel was full of faith too. So Mirinha, his aunt, and I all laid hands on Gabriel and prayed for him with faith and I know he is going to be healed whether today, in a week, or in a month, but he will be healed in Jesus' name.

Please pray for God to heal Gabriel and my Aunt Raquel. Please only pray for them if you have faith. If you only have pity then you don't need to pray for them. Only faith is able to produce miracles.