It was a warm summer day and I was driving from one appointment to another for business.  The way my GPS was sending me, meandered through a suburban neighborhood of small, one family homes with a decent size yard in front of each home.

I crossed over a road and casually looked to my left when I saw her.  She was weeding her garden holding on to her walker.  It struck me odd that an older woman with a handicap, would be out in the heat of the day, weeding her garden with her walker.  As I pondered the scene, I kept driving and was about a block away when it hit me.  I should stop to pray for her.  After all, I had just started learning about being able to pray for people to heal them.

No, I can’t.  I need to get to my next appointment, I thought, when immediately my conscience smote me and spoke to me loud and clear, “No you don’t!  You have at least another hour before you need to be there!”  

So I turned the corner and went around the block and came to her house again.  There she was, still in the same bent over position she was before, holding on to her walker.  “No, I can’t do this” I thought, “I’m dressed in a business suit.  Maybe she will think this is weird.  Maybe I would scare her.  I feel odd.”

All these thoughts and more swirled around in my head, trying to justify why I had just passed her house without stopping for a second time.  “You’re just chicken, aren’t you?” I criticized myself.  I had to admit that I was nervous to approach a stranger like this.  But I could not retreat.  I felt in my spirit that I had to do this.  I had to overcome this false fear.  So I circled around again and stopped across the street from her house.

Well, here goes nothing.” I thought.  Nervously I got out of my car and walked over her grass and approached her.  “Excuse me.  I’m a minister and I saw your walker and … ”  She just kept on weeding and had not heard a thing I had said.  Maybe she is also deaf, I wondered?  I got closer and all of a sudden, I startled her and she jumped.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to scare you but I am a minister and saw your walker and thought I would stop and offer to pray for you.”  Surprisingly she agreed right away.  Her name was Emmeline.  She was a very sweet elderly lady.  I asked her what her condition was and she said she had pain in her leg.

I held her hands as I prayed for her and then I asked her to do what she could not do before but she would not move.  I prayed a second time and asked her again to move her leg and check it out but she still would not budge.

She did not seem to understand that I wanted her to move her leg so that it would activate her healing.  She became impatient and I wasn’t sure what to do next.  So I asked her, “Do you believe in Jesus?”  She said that her husband used to go to church before he died and since then she hadn’t been much.  I asked her if she was born again.  “No, I don’t think so.” She replied.

After sharing a simple gospel, and asking her if she would like to be sure she would go to heaven when she died, she agreed to pray to receive Jesus as her Lord and Savior.   We prayed together and then I congratulated her that she was now in the kingdom.  She was happy and we chatted a bit more before we said goodbye.  I happened to have a few copies of the This Was Your Life tract and gave it to her.  She asked right away if she could have some more to give to her friends.  “Wow!” I thought, “She’s not even saved for 5 minutes and she already wants to witness to her friends.”

As I turned to head back to my car, she called after me, “Can you take the garbage can to the curb?”  “Of course.” I replied.  I picked the garbage can and thought nothing like a little humility to keep me humble.

I got in my car and as I drove away, I thought, “I could have missed that!  And if I wouldn’t have listened to the Holy Spirit’s leading, I would have missed it, no doubt.”

Though I laid hands and the word went into her, I did not physically see the instant manifestation of the healing of her leg.  But I was privileged to see the instant healing of her soul.  And that was the most important healing of all.

Franciscus M. Dartee

Grow in Faith | Walk in Power

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