NOTE (1/12/18): We’re all learning and growing.  Some of the stuff I’ve written in these old posts may no longer be exactly what I believe or think, or at least may not be articulated the way I’d do it nowadays.  I preserve them in an attempt it to be transparent about my journey, and in the hopes that readers may still glean some insight from the core ideas found here.  Thanks for journeying with me!

Hey, only had one person tell me they thought I was crazy for posting the healing stuff up. I was expecting worse. It made sense then eh?

I thought I’d give an update of what we’re doing here exactly. Like I’ve spoken of in earlier posts, Jesus commissioned us to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:20). This is not optional – Jesus said if we love him, we will obey his commands (John 14:15), and by knowing his love for us, spreading it to other people is all we’ll want to do anyhow!

Pretty much everything we’re doing here has something to do with that mission.  I am renting an apartment with two friends who are gunning for the same stuff I am.  In terms of scheduled meetings, we have school (so to speak) 3 times a week with Ryan & Laura, Brandon, and Dennis.  We also have a men’s group and house church. Other than that, things are pretty open-ended in terms of what we can do.  None of us have regular jobs, we all figure that since Jesus said “Seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and [food and clothing] will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33) we’d take him up on that offer. Certainly not a slam on people who have jobs – it’s more a matter of what the purpose of it all is.  I still have money from working this summer, but most people here actually don’t have a Plan B if God doesn’t provide – and He’s been faithful without anyone so much as asking someone else for funding.

We don’t have “outreach” – we want touching people’s lives to be so much of a lifestyle that the word becomes obsolete.  Pretty much the deal is whatever place we enter, we preach the good news and heal the sick who are there (Luke 10:9).  There’s lots of places we go – malls, beaches, parks, bus stops, churches – and we’re starting to map out places in San Jose that we want to impact specifically.

We are still learning a lot about how to do this and connecting with ministries and people around the city who are already doing this stuff, but already we’ve seen some amazing things happen.  So here’s some stories of what fruits of the mission have looked like so far!

Evening at Wing Stop…

The first night Travis and I arrived in San Jose, a bunch of us went to a local wings joint to eat.  While Ryan and I were up ordering our food, Ryan found out that the cashier had pain in her feet. He said, “here, give me your hand.” She did, and when he took it he said, “In the name of Jesus I command all pain to be gone right now.”  Then he asked her how she felt.  With a surprised look she said, “I think it’s…the pain is gone.”  Boom.  That easy?  Okay…

She said she still had pain in her thigh, so later we called her over and commanded her leg to grow out, and it did, and her thigh got healed. Then we got a hold of another waitress, and she got healed of pain from an injury on her arm.  Then Ryan began speaking into her life.  He asked her if she liked writing music and if she had a grandma who was sick, which she said were both true (we call those words of knowledge, very helpful in showing people God cares about them). She was almost in tears while Ryan was telling her the amazing things God has planned for her, and by the time he was done she was praising Jesus.  Both her and the first girl were Christians, but didn’t know that miracles still happen today or that they also had the power to do what Jesus did (Colossians 2:9-10).

I got to pray for one of the other employees.  He left dumbfounded after his leg grew out and shoulder pain disappeared.  By the end of the evening every table of the restaurant had gotten to see the gospel of the Kingdom and hear the truth of Jesus’ love.  We left some contact info so we could follow up if they wanted, and headed out. Their reactions reminded me of the people in the Bible seeing the Kingdom for the first time – “they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men” (Matthew 9:8).

Football at the Mall…

A couple weeks ago we were at the mall, and I saw 6 football players sitting together in the food court. Thinking one of them could probably use a healing, I stopped and asked.  They said no, but were curious as to why.  I took the liberty to sit down, and told them about the disproportionate leg thing, since it’s usually a good starter to show people this is actually real. After getting their legs grown out, they were very attentive to what I had to say. I hadn’t said anything about Jesus up to that point because I prefer a show-and-tell Gospel (1 Cor 4:20), but as soon as I found out they went to a Christian school, I began telling them all about their authority in Christ to do the same things he did (John 14:12). It was great – a 10 minute Bible study in the middle of a mall with a bunch of football players I didn’t know! Earlier that day we also got to lead a guy to the Lord which was really exciting.

Lord of Lords at the Flea Market…

Last weekend we went to a local flea market to see what we could rustle up.  A guy with an arm in a sling-type of thing was a prime find, and after we prayed for him he took off his sling. He couldn’t move his fingers very much before we prayed but afterwards he had near full mobility restored.  His little girls looked especially surprised, knowing daddy couldn’t do this before.  A small group of people gathered and we got to tell them about the power of Jesus. Two girls working at a nearby booth asked what church we went to, and Travis and I got to tell them about the Jesus who was so much more real than what they may have seen in churches than they’d been to.

Dancing for Canada

This one is pretty off-the-hook.  One time in house church our friend Susan informed us of a friend named Ruth she knew up in Canada who had been diagnosed with Bel’s Palsy.  Four of us figured we’d dance a weird little jig in a circle and command it to go.  This is a letter that Ruth sent following the incident:

I wanted to tell you about my miracle healing that began when you and your group started praying for me. I was diagnosed with Bel’s Palsy August 25 and given 5 days of prednisone for the nerve. My blood sugar doubled and blood pressure shot up to 211/95. For over 12 years I have managed my blood sugar with diet, exercise and supplements. Taking insulin and blood pressure medication is a shock to me. When your group started praying for me, I began to feel better, although I did not know your group was praying for me. You asked how I was feeling about the fifth day after the prayer started and I had noticed a dramatic difference in the paralysis around the same time. On the 23 of August I went to my doctor and she was amazed at the improvement. There is only slight paralysis on the bottom right lip. My eye is blinking and closing — even a wink! Both eyebrows go up so I can look surprised instead of quizzical. My blood sugar is stabilizing and my blood pressure is on the high side of normal and both are improving constantly. My goal is to be off all medication and back onmy regular diet and exercise. Thank you Love Ruth

Doing the Stuff without Trying To…

We’ve found that some of our best encounters with people come when we’re not actually going out with the intent to minister to people, it just happens “as you go” (Matthew 10:7).  Once, a bunch of us were craving Domino’s pizza in Santa Rosa.  Since it was just us and the employees in the restaurant as we waited for 15 minutes, and with nothing else to do, soon legs were growing out, people were getting rocked, and Jesus was getting glorified.  You may have seen some of the results on the leg-growing-out video.

Another time, me, Travis and Andrew went to get a wireless router at Best Buy. Travis and Andrew were attempting to perform a dance move at the cash register, and the cashier started asking what they were doing, where they were from, etc. I gotta say, it’s pretty easy to start talking about God with people when it’s all you actually do with your life. Soon we were telling pain to leave his body (which it did) and I prayed for another employee nearby who was wondering what the heck was going on, and he got healed of knee problems.

Then we went to Target, our selection for home furnishings (we’re bachelors, I know), and Andrew waved at this random lady. She started talking to him, he told her about what we do, and she seemed really interested. As she left we started joking about growing out legs. She turned around and was like, “Oh, can you guys pray for me?  I have pain in my back all the time.” Considering we were just viewing a chair that we could potentially buy, it was fairly easy to get her to sit down, get her leg grown out, and get the rest of the pain to go. We got to encourage them as brothers in Christ and they were very happy to see other believers living as Jesus did.

One of my favorite experiences was when we went to play beach volleyball in Santa Cruz.  We met a guy there who started playing ball with us, and conversation soon turned to what we were doing. Turns out the guy was a Christian but hadn’t had fellowship with other believers for 6 months and had just been praying for some. After playing awhile we walked along the wharf, and as we went a fisherman got partially healed and our new friend’s leg grew out in front of his eyes. Being a medic, he was quite interested.  We got to disciple him for a couple hours and he in turn took me and Travis out for supper at an expensive seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean!  Ah…life in the kingdom.

These are just a few of the highlights of what has happened over the past month.  We’ve also had many long conversations and encounters with people who didn’t need physical healing but other things, and we got to point them to Christ through this.  The point is to be what love looks like to people who need it.

If reading these stories makes you realize a hunger in you to see the same thing, don’t let that hunger get drowned out by the rest of life. We have to be letting the world know about the good news of Jesus. If you are having trouble doing this stuff where you are, come out here for a week!  We have to walk as Jesus did (1 John 2:6), don’t let the cares of the world stop you.

If you have any suggestions on how to be more successful in being like Christ to people everywhere we go, let us know!  Glory to God, freedom to man.  Live it real.