Category: Get to Know The Author

April 25 2020

My Journey Into Healing Ministry (part 2)

A. Scott Ingram Christian Life, Christian Life and Gospel Leadership, Get to Know The Author, Gospel Leadership, Physical Healing, Spiritual Gifts Christian, Gospel, healing ministry, Jesus heals 1

…Continued from Part 1

To South Sudan

After Randy Clark prayed for me at Voice of the Apostles in 2012, and the conference ended, I went and saw my family for a few days, before getting on a plane to fly to South Sudan.

This trip was the most extreme and difficult mission I had ever taken part in up to that point. Our host told us that our precious time in Uganda would look like life in America compared to what we would face in the remote, tribal area we were working in.

To get there we flew from the U.S. to Nairobi, Kenya, then took a very small plane to Lokichoggio, Kenya. (Each person was only allowed 15 pounds of luggage!) Arriving at that small airport, we were told it should take an hour to reach the border, and less than 1.5 hours, total, to get to Narus, our final destination. As we waited for a few hours for our drivers to arrive, we quickly figured out that something was wrong.

We soon learned that it had poured rain all night, causing the vehicles to be delayed getting us. Then for the next 6, mud-soaked hours, we crawled to the border in our little hatchbacks. Arriving there, we were forced to leave the cars and wade across the flooding riverbed that marks the Kenya-South Sudan border, then deal with an immigration officer who was angry about having to work so late in the day waiting for our team. This was just the start of a rough trip.

*The Road crossing the Kenya/South Sudan Border*

From there, the next couple of days were marked by team members freaking out over a lack of plumbing, bats circling overhead in the rooms, and rats coming out of mattresses while some of our ladies slept. Finally, after resolving that we are not going home because God had called us there, our team organized ourselves for a morning of prayer and worship. From that moment on, everything changed.

Healing Breakthrough

After praying for the sick regularly for over a year, it was on our third day in South Sudan where my healing breakthrough finally came. As our team ventured out to the mango tree where our host church gathered, most of the team members were talking to some Taposa women who had come around to see the whites.

My attention, on the other hand, was drawn to the old man, sitting alone, at the base of the giant mango tree. When I got close to him, I could see that all the color in his eyes had gone, and that he was completely blind. (I would find out from his family on my return trip the following year that he went blind from alcohol poisoning, after a lifetime of drinking almost a gallon of the local brew each day.)

Suddenly I was overcome by a love for this man (compare to Jesus’ being “moved with compassion in Matthew 14:14). I collapsed in the dirt beside him and laid hands on him and began to pray.

I have no idea exactly what I was saying in this prayer. For the first time, I was being led in healing prayer by the Spirit alone, and prayed in faith, absolutely believing something was going to happen. After a few minutes, one of our Ugandan pastors came and began praying with me. Slowly, over the next 20 minutes or so, we began to watch the color come back to his eyes. As the team gathered around to see what was happening, it was obvious that his sight was getting better.

*The blind man in South Sudan – my first healing.*

When we first began to pray, all he could see was the difference between light and dark – the same way we can see light and dark if we close our eyes. As we prayed, he began to say things like, “I can see the green on the trees.” “I can see the brown from the dirt.” We kept praying. He began to say, “That one is a black man. This one is a white woman.” It was obvious to all that God was working a miracle.

We couldn’t remain there all day. Arrangements had been made for us to make our way to visit a hospital or prison or something. The trip kind of blurs in my mind now. As we left him, however, I knew the man was going to be completely healed.

It didn’t take long to find out. At the end of the day, as our team met for supper back at our base camp, one of the local pastors we were working with came running into the dining room, very excited. “Pastor Scott, the blind man you prayed for is completely healed. He is walking around the village by himself with no one leading him! Everyone is talking about this miracle.”

We found out from there that each morning this man’s children would bring him to the “church” tree, and sit him in the shade with his jug. They would bring him lunch there at some point, then come back in the evening to collect him and take him home. When he was now walking around without being led, it was sure to capture people’s attention!

Healing Evangelism

This whole trip was loosely planned, because you never know how things will go in the bush of Africa. The next morning, very early on, we sent a local pastor to a village just over an hour away, where we were told the gospel had never been preached. We sent him to ask if we could bring our team and share with the people. The response of the village chief left us amazed at God’s goodness.

He told our pastor that he had been approached by many missionaries over the years, but had never allowed them to come to his village. He didn’t want their stories. However, he then said, “…but I heard about the blind man, and we want those people to come here.”

A couple hours later, we gathered our team into the cars and were on our way. We didn’t have a sound system or any cool media technology. It was just our small group of believers, off to see what God would do.

Once in this unreached village, I was given the privilege of sharing the Gospel with around 40 people who had gathered to hear what we had to say. My first question was, “how many of you are Christian?” All of them put their hand in the air. I was perplexed, but quickly realized my mistake. This was South Sudan. Politically, Northern Sudan was Muslim, but Southern was “Christian” in the Catholic-empire sense of the word.

My question that followed, then, was, “how many of you have ever heard of a man named Jesus.” This time, none of the locals raised their hand.

I began to share from the Bible on who Jesus was, why He came, and how each person can be saved. I told them of how Jesus had worked in his lifetime to get this message to the world, then continued through the early disciples, and now the church. When I gave the invitation, there was quite a bit of excitement as all 40 people raised their hands to get saved by Jesus!

Afterwards, I couldn’t help myself. I began sharing how we had been praying for people all over Narus, our village base of operations, for various issues from wanting to be pregnant, to finding work. Then I shared the story of the blind man, and told them, “we want to pray for you too.”

*One of the Taposa we met on this mission.*

We decided it was wise to have men pray with men and women with women, due to some cultural sensitivities we had discovered the day before. As eager as the men were to be prayed for, none of them came to me at first. They were waiting in respect as one of the old village elders came to receive first.

This old man walked with the help of a stick, and was very slow. A 10 meter walk took 2-3 minutes for him, unassisted. I patiently waited, out of respect, for him to reach me. He told me how his knees had been very damaged in the fight for freedom and other tribal wars in the past, and asked me to pray.

At the time, I was praying with another gentleman – a very devout leader in his cessationist Baptist church. He was already skeptical of the blind man’s healing, wanting to know if we could verify he was actually blind before we met him; ignoring the fact that we personally watched the color return to his eyes.

I placed my hands on the old warrior’s right knee, while my doubting companion grabbed the left. I prayed. As soon as I finished, the old man tested out his legs, and… nothing.

There was no change to his condition, and he thought that I wasn’t understanding the problem correctly. I assured him I understood the need, and explained to him about the passage where even Jesus had to pray for someone twice (see Mark 8:25). I said, “let’s pray again.” (This received an awkward glance from my prayer partner, but he relented and grabbed the knee again.)

This time, as soon as we finished praying, I asked the man to test them out. He took one step, then took off running around the village center completely healed! I was so excited; I was shouting more than he was. My prayer partner, not so much.

More Healings

The next man to come forward was another warrior with the same issues, and the pattern followed the same. We prayed once, nothing happened. We prayed a second time, and he ran around completely healed.

The third man had major back pain and was unable to lift or work easily. After a couple of prayers the pain in his back completely left. At this point, so did my prayer partner. These healings were challenging his faith to the point that he went to pray with someone else.

The fourth man was different. He, too, was walking with a staff due to worn out knees. I prayed for him once, but by this point his faith was high after seeing all the other healings, that he didn’t check himself before taking off running. He wasn’t healed. He reached the edge of the village center and collapsed in more pain.

The thing you need to understand is that these are a warrior tribe. Every man carries an 8-foot spear and can be very aggressive. They also value their elders. Now we had broken one of them. As everyone’s attention turned to the elder who had collapsed, out of fear for what might happen next, I took off running to the man, praying “God, we broke him worse. They’re going to kill us. Please, You have to heal Him now!”

As I reached the man, I immediately began praying for him again. This time, he listened when I asked him to test it out first, and praise God, he was completely healed.

Church Planting Made Simple

About this time, the chief, who had missed our meeting due to other commitments returned and began asking his people what was going on. All of the testimonies of how God was moving in salvation and healing through many members of our team overwhelmed him. He immediately asked us to take up a permanent place in their village. They led us to the edge of town where they donated a large plot of land to build a church and anything else we wanted to do (hospital, orphanage, etc.).

They pleaded with us to stay, so much, that in their limited understanding of what had happened, they thought this power was coming from us, and not God’s Spirit in us. They went as far as to ask if we could leave some of our white women so that they could “mingle the blood” and receive this power. We explained to them that the power was not in us, but in Jesus through God’s Spirit, and that He would do these things through them if they learn to follow and obey him. We promised them that our local pastors would begin coming to work with them regularly in discipleship, then quickly left for the protection and comfort of some of our team.

I can happily report, however, that today, 8 years later, there is still a growing church in that village led by the pastors who took us there in the first place.

Here is the recap video of the entire South Sudan mission. The blind man can be seen at 7:27. Some of the warrior’s knees being healed is at 10:29.

I can also happily say that the senior pastor who hosted us on that first trip, a Ugandan missionary to South Sudan, became a good friend of mine. In fact, he has since began transitioning out of South Sudan (leaving the ministry there in the hands of the other pastors on his team) and is now planting a church in Busia, Uganda, under the covering of Sozo Ministries, the ministry God led me to open in 2015.

Ministering Through Words of Knowledge

It is difficult for me to share how much the healing ministry has shaped my work for the Lord in the years since this first breakthrough.

Upon my return to Haiti, immediately following this trip to South Sudan, healing began happing every week in church services.

As I returned to the U.S. at the end of 2012, I saw that my opportunities to pray for people were becoming less and less. Deciding I needed to grow in my understanding of this gifting and have accountability to press in for more, I signed up for Randy Clark’s online healing school, which pushed me to continue praying for the sick and growing in the gift. (I am now a member of Global Awakening’s Association of Healing Ministers, and last year I was ordained by Global Awaking — Randy’s Ministry in the U.S.)

It was through Randy’s program that I learned how to receive Words of Knowledge for healing, which has become one of the primary ways I minister in healing (and more).

In 2013, I had returned to traveling around the world with Heart of God (HGIM); Haiti, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, India, Israel. Little by little the gift continued to grow.

On a 9-day trip to India in 2014, the pastors kept me on a crazy preaching schedule. We did 2 half-day pastor’s conferences, one night open air crusade, and preached in 17 churches around the countryside. Not having time to prepare for each meeting, I really began to depend on words of knowledge to be able to minister. I would spend time praying in the car, on our way to each church, asking God to show me what to speak and what He wanted me to do.

Inevitably He would speak to me about scriptures I was supposed to share and show me pictures in my mind of how He wanted me to pray and minister to people. Surprisingly, praying for the sick was becoming a large part of what He was showing me to do. In one church He told me beforehand that every person with back pain would be healed. (They were.)

On that one trip to India, I saw more healings in 9 days than I had seen combined since South Sudan two years prior. As is sadly, often the case, the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit brought in controversy among friends, and unfortunately, this large number of healings led to some challenges within the organization I was working for. As an interdenominational ministry, it was clear that not everyone in leadership believed the same about healing that I did. The Lord began to lead me to check my motives and make sure this calling was from God, and to see where He would take me next.

A New Ministry

The month before my trip to India, I had attended a gathering of the International Society of Deliverance Ministers, invited as a part of Randy’s healing program. There, I received two prophecies which would shape the current era of my life. One prophecy was a confirmation of my calling and concerned a shift in the ministry I was doing coming “very soon,” and the other was about God having “all the funding” ready for my “new ministry.”

At the time, I held those prophecies loosely, until the following March, when in a season of prayer and by mutual agreement with the leadership, I resigned from HGIM. To be clear, this was not a divisive and angry split. Both sides felt like it was God’s timing, and I remain friends with everyone in that organization!

Immediately I began work on registering Sozo Ministries, Inc. with the state of Texas and working on non-profit status. We took the name “Sozo” because it is the Greek word for “saved” or “salvation” in the New Testament. However, if you look it up in a concordance, it means complete salvation – body, soul, and spirit – meaning that in Christ’s atonement are the promises of salvation from sin, physical healing, and spiritual deliverance from the devil.

Since the foundation of Sozo Ministries in 2015, we have seen over 2000 people healed from various physical diseases.

My Healing Ministry Today

As I now live in Uganda with my family, and lead almost 40 churches registered under Sozo Ministries in Uganda and Kenya, it is amazing to look back and see this journey the Lord has brought me on.

Today, I spend my time not only preaching the gospel and praying for the sick, but training other pastors and believers to do the same. If you have time, you can watch some testimonies on our youtube channel:

HEALING TESTIMONIES

Throughout the year I preach in churches around East Africa (and in other countries as God opens the doors), and see healing happen in every single service.

Sozo pastors plan gospel crusades throughout the year, and I have the privilege of preaching to the lost, and again, in every single meeting people are getting saved and healed.

The largest event I am a part of is the annual Global Outreach mission, in partnership with Living Water Ministries, Uganda. It is my privilege to help train the outreach team in healing ministry, then to lead the healing session at each mega crusade. Last year’s team saw over 600 healings during the three-week outreach. Less than 100 were through my prayers. It came through those who had been in the training and walked out equipped and filled with faith!

The Lord has connected me with other ministries operating in healing and equipping the church for the supernatural, which has allowed me to bring ministers like Kimberly Cleveland of EquipNations and Jim Wietner from the Global School of Supernatural Ministry to help take our work in Uganda and Kenya go higher.

All in all, I can say that being a part of what the Lord is doing in saving the lost and healing the sick around the world is one of the greatest privileges of my life. Looking back at the 16 year old me, I could never have imagined things going this direction, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

To be truthful, in many ways I feel like my journey into healing is still just beginning. The blind man’s healing was less than 7.5 years ago! I cannot wait to see what the next few decades hold.

It’s Your Turn

Hopefully sharing my journey into healing ministry has encouraged you in some way, to pursue God for more in your own life. The Bible encourages us to pursue spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 14:1) and seems to imply in many places that you will receive the gifts you ask for. So go after Him for more!

I would also ask you to pray for me. While I am confident that God heals, and see him do so often, I know there is more. I also know the challenges that come from, both, believers and nonbelievers concerning healing, and I need the boldness to remain faithful to God’s calling.

Finally, I will say that if your church or ministry is wanting to learn to operate in the healing gift, or wants to plan a gospel-healing outreach, it would be my pleasure to be invited to speak, or to offer guidance to your team in any way possible.

INVITE ME

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Cover photo by Sozo Ministries, Inc.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.”

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April 22 2020

My Journey Into Healing Ministry (part 1)

A. Scott Ingram Christian Life, Christian Life and Gospel Leadership, Get to Know The Author, Gospel Leadership, Physical Healing, Spiritual Gifts christian healing, healing ministry 3

Last week I shared a word the Lord has been speaking to me concerning another healing revival that will follow this coronavirus pandemic, and I said I would talk more about the healing ministry in the weeks ahead. Before I start talking about the practicals of healing ministry, I felt like it would be a good idea to give my own background in the healing ministry, to give some credibility to what I am teaching; or at least to show that I wasn’t brainwashed into some psychological mumbo jumbo.

I am a fairly average Christian. Yes, I am a pastor and missionary and all of that, but when I compare myself to the great heroes of the faith, I am usually left feeling un-remarkable. (I don’t recommend you compare yourself to anyone but Jesus, by the way. It works out better for you in the long-run.) Never in my life could I have imagined that God would one day use me in the healing ministry. Now, however, it is one of the greatest joys of my life.

Coming to Faith

Growing up and finding my own faith in Jesus was a journey in itself. My parents had left the Baptist church when I was four, and when I had questions, all the different denominational beliefs from my extended family left me feeling more confused than before I asked. By the age of 16, I knew that my faith in Jesus was real and that I was saved. I had rejoined the church from my childhood. Beyond that, I had no intention of anything in ministry. My life’s trajectory was Texas Christian University’s “Ranch Management” program. I was going to be a full-time cowboy.

Although this is not the place for my full life story, it will suffice to say that around the age of 18, my course changed as I felt God redirecting my priorities and leading me into the ministry. Instead of TCU, I enrolled in the fundamentalist Baptist college recommended by my pastor. It also happened to be the same school where many of my family members in ministry had gone since the 1920’s. Frankly, it was also the only Bible college I knew of, which made the decision fairly easy to make.

Unbelieving Bible College

While in that Bible college, my faith really began to be tested and challenged as my hopeful outlook of God’s big plan for the world, was turned upside down by legalist rules and a lot of hypocritical, self-righteous attitudes by some of the students and faculty. Not to mention their belief that the supernatural gifts of God ceased after the 12 apostles died.

As I have discussed many times before, it was during this time that I began reading the book of Acts, not only as a historical record of the early church, but as a book that must either validate Christianity as real, or which would force me to consider that this whole thing was a myth. I began to pray for God to expand my experience to fit my convictions about the Bible, and after a few months of praying, the Holy Spirit of God filled me, just as the Bible promised.

Surprisingly to me, not everything in my life changed at once. Although there was a new, revitalized spirit within me and my optimism of the Christian faith had been renewed; and there was definitely fruit being produced in my life from this change, I was also faced with a lot of controversy and hostility from my peers and the college faculty. Nevertheless, my hunger for the things of God continued to grow.

Healing Enters The Picture

Along with my pursuit of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I also became hungry to see the power of God at work. It was around this time in my journey that divine healing entered the picture.

First, it came through stories from both my grandmothers. On my mom’s side, my grandma has always been the charismatic believer. She has always prayed in tongues and believed God for miracles. Yet for most of my life, I ignored her stories and moved along with my life. (In the worst times, I argued with her from my Baptist education, and hurt our relationship in many ways.) However, over a holiday break in college, she began recounting to me, again, all of the many miracles of healing she had seen over the years. Not only in her own body and in our family, but through former pastors and other believers she used to know. Though these stories were not new to me, I did pay more attention to them now.

It was my other grandma who surprised me with stories of healing. She had been raised in the Church of Christ her whole life, until she married my granddad and moved over to the fundamental Baptist church where I had also attended as a child and again from the age of 16.

This grandma began to tell me of different things she had seen in her own Christian life that her (our) church would not validate, yet she knew them to be true.

The craziest story she told me was about how when she was young, she was diagnosed with a severe case of appendicitis which was nearing a rupture. The doctors told the family that there was nothing they could do, medically, and sent her home. It was her older sister, however, who refused to accept that answer. This older sister, who was a faithful member of the Church of Christ until the day she died just a couple years ago, took my grandmother out to the barn, laid her down in some hay, laid hands on her and prayed a prayer of faith. My grandma’s pain instantly left, and soon everyone saw that she had been completely healed.

These stories from my own family – people I loved and trusted more than anyone – began to sink into me and stir up that hunger to see God move in these ways again.

I Got Healed

A few months went by, and as I have shared in other places, Bobby got us invited to a “revival” meeting at the church of a Nigerian missionary to the U.S. We couldn’t wait to go, based on the pastor’s presentation of the revival as being full of “healings, miracles, deliverances, and more!”

On the first day of the revival meeting, however, I woke up in the morning in terrible pain. My stomach felt like something had broken inside, and I couldn’t deal with it. I skipped class that day to go to the E.R; where I received x-rays and an MRI of my stomach, all to no avail. The diagnosis I left with was the same as I had written on my intake form: “extreme abdominal pain.”

Discouraged and still hurting, I did manage to go to the revival service that night, where we did, in fact, see many incredible things we had only imagined up to then. Demons were being cast out. People were falling under God’s power (although we still struggled to accept that as really from God).

It was at the end of the night that the pastor said something like, “I know some of you came for healing, but we are not praying for the sick one-by-one tonight. We are doing that tomorrow. However, if you are sick, God can still heal you, now,” and he prayed a general prayer over the congregation.

To my surprise, as he prayed this prayer, all of the pain in my stomach instantly left. No trace. And it never came back.

As people were leaving, I went to greet the pastor and told him of my healing. He quickly put me on the mic to share with the dispersing crowd what God had just done, to help raise their expectations for the next night. Needless to say, we made sure to go back!

Years of Charismatic Stagnation

From this time on, my Christian walk remained rather stale. I was still in Bible college, and struggling with the pessimistic Christian culture and the little bits of ongoing backlash I faced there. Nevertheless, I did graduate in 2007 with a Bachelor’s degree in Bible.

Two years before, I had also began interning in the summers with a missionary group in Mexico, and I spent June of ’07 with them. Then, I took my first trip to Uganda with my friend, Micah, in July.

On that trip, we again saw things that piqued our interest in spiritual things: deliverances taking place, healing evangelism at work, etc. Still, it didn’t have any effect on actually bringing me into doing those things myself.

From there I returned to the Texas and joined the staff of Grace Baptist Church as Associate Pastor. I was also invited to minister with another international missionary organization, Heart of God International Ministries (HGIM), on a volunteer basis, which took me back to East Africa multiple times, as well as India and eventually Israel and Haiti.

Again, I believed whole-heartedly in healing, and at times would try my hand at praying for the sick, but never saw healing take place. Despite my desire, I began to think this gift was not for me.

In 2012, the HGIM’s work in Haiti required the long-term presence of the U.S. Team, and I resigned from the church, became a full-time missionary-evangelist, and moved to Haiti for almost a year. It was during this time that I got serious about praying for the sick.

Continual Failure

While living in Haiti, I primarily oversaw the orphanage work of HGIM. However, I was also preaching in church services every Sunday, and often on other days as well. Within the church culture there, it is standard for people to approach the pastor for prayer following every service. As these poor people do not have the financial ability to go see doctors for general health issues, the majority of my praying each week centered on physical healing.

Sunday after Sunday I was praying for neck pain, back problems, recurring headaches, cold and flu-like symptoms (common to the people in the mountains where I was staying), and more. These weren’t “major” healing issues like cancer or AIDS, so for some reason, my mind thought these things should be easier to see healed. They weren’t.

It didn’t matter what I did. Week after week, no one was getting healed. Not once, from March to October, did a single person claim to be healed through my prayers. I didn’t know what was happening. I had been reading every scripture about prayer. I believed that, as James says, that the prayer of faith would heal the sick (see James 5:15). I was praying with all the faith I could manage, yet was met with a continual failure to see healing manifest. I had no idea what was wrong.

My Introduction to Randy Clark

It was at this time that I began looking for mature Christian leaders who had a verifiable healing ministry from whom I could learn.

I read a few biographies of different ministers in the past who had great healing ministries. They were encouraging, but they didn’t teach me how to pray for the sick. I watched some YouTube videos of modern street-evangelists who practiced healing, and I got a few insights from them. However, the turning point was when I found a book on the Apple Bookstore, by two men named Randy Clark and Bill Johnson. The book was called, “The Essential Guide to Healing.”

Despite the fact that these men were quite famous in charismatic circles already, I have to admit I did not know much about them. In fact, had I known beforehand that Randy was involved with that “Toronto Blessing” some Baptist pastors had warned us about, I probably wouldn’t have read the book at all.

As I began the book and read their biographical stories in the first two chapters, much of the spiritual life of Randy resonated with my own upbringing – charismatic grandparents, faith-filled youth, Baptist education that challenged it all, and a lot more. I immediately knew this was someone I would learn from.

As I continued the book, I learned Randy’s “five-step prayer model” for healing, and I began using it in my post-church service prayers. Still nothing happened…

I also read in the book about “impartation,” or the transferring of anointing through the laying on of hands. (I shared about impartation on my podcast recently, and don’t want to dig into it here.) Suffice it to say, I began to think that perhaps this is what I needed. After all, I had never been part of a charismatic church. Nor had I ever really been mentored by anyone in the ministry, beyond what Bible college tries to teach.

I began to question my own assumptions, which I had for years, that you either have a gift or you don’t, and that they would simply appear one day, and just work. While that may be true at times, what I found is that most of the time, spiritual gifts are not instant.

It began to make more sense to me that the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit would likely be learned, built and passed on through the Christian community, from one generation to another, just as it did in the Bible. They are developed in a person as part of their life in the body of Christ.

Promise of Impartation

One night, as I was sitting on the balcony of the house where I lived in Haiti, I was praying and asking God to speak to me about healing and growing in the gift. I very clearly heard Him speaking to me, saying that “in October, Randy will be doing a conference. If you will go to the conference, he will lay hands on you and you will receive and impartation for healing.”

I got so excited. I didn’t even know Randy Clark would consider coming to Haiti, so I quickly began to look at his website to find out when he would visit! Unfortunately, I discovered that he was not coming anywhere near Haiti.

Instead, what I learned was that at the end of October, Randy would be hosting his biggest conference of the year in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, called “The Voice of the Apostles.” This just happened to be taking place a few days before I was supposed to go to South Sudan with my organization, so I immediately began making arrangements to go.

Confronting My Doubts

During the conference, once again coming into a major charismatic event as an outsider, I began to see and experience things I could never imagine. I questioned many things happening around me, and thankfully, was given quick validation from the Lord almost every time, that what I was seeing was from Him.

There was holy laughter taking place through Rolland Baker, which I strongly doubted, until it was me on the floor laughing.

There were angelic encounters! I had been feeling a slight tickle on the top of my head for three days, when finally a woman came to me and asked, “Do you know you have an angel messing with your head? I have seen him from across the room for three days, but was never close enough to you to tell you.” Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure what he was doing. (I can tell you that the whole event did mess with my mindset about God and His work, though…)

There were words of knowledge (another gift of the Spirit listed in the Bible) coming from many of the speakers. Again I was skeptical, until Georgian Banov called out “old knee injuries from basketball accidents.” Up to that point, I had very bad knees from middle school basketball. I actually had to quit sports in 9^th grade because of it. As I went forward for prayer, I was instantly healed, again!

Impartation

Finally the time came for Randy’s impartation session. Over 8,000 people prayed for the touch of God on their life, and I was beginning to get discouraged that my impartation might not actually come as the Lord had told me.

As Randy led us into this time, he said “there is no way I can pray for all of you, but I have a team who have travelled with me around the world. If you begin to sense God touching you – you feel electricity in your body, or heat, or you get cold, or you begin to shake – then put your hand in the air and my team will come pray for you.”

As Randy prayed over the room, I told the Lord, “You said Randy would pray for me, but if it comes through his team, I will take whatever You have for me here.” Then my right hand began to shake uncontrollably.

After his prayer, Randy left the platform, and I began to put my hand in the air to receive prayer from the team. Quickly, however, Randy turned back to the microphone and said, “I forgot to say it, but if you are a full-time missionary or evangelist, come up here on stage. I want to pray for you.”

As quickly as I could get there, I climbed onto the stage. I was the second person in line when Randy began to pray for us. All I remember was him putting his finger on my open hands and saying, “Lord, I bless Anthony…” (which he read on my nametag) and I fell to the floor under God’s presence.

Two hours later, Randy’s stage crew came to clear bodies from the stage for the next session’s sound check. I stumbled back to my chair, still feeling the weightiness of God’s presence, where I sat with an electric pulse occasionally hitting my body and causing me to jerk. (This lasted for the next week, causing my dad, a long-time paramedic, to wonder what was wrong with his son. He thought I might have had a stroke, or was having micro-seizures.)

Something had definitely happened in Randy’s prayer, though. Could this be what I had been seeking for years? Could this actually be an impartation for healing? I supposed time would tell….

I do not usually write about myself in this way, and would love to hear your feedback in the comments section below.

Continue to Part 2…