Tuesday 31stJuly 2018
What follows is an account of what happened last summer on the last day of Focus, the HTB network holiday in the New Forest.
I went to the last of a series of afternoon seminars on the topic of Healing. I’d chosen this as it was a subject I had little experience of and wanted to test my preconceptions. Tuesday was the last day. I had been to one of the healing sessions already, and had been thrilled to see videos and hear stories of God healing people from many physical illnesses.
I went to the session, but was feeling so tired and unwell that I nearly left. I didn’t feel right being there. I did actually leave, but didn’t feel any better having left so decided to return and sit through the last 20 mins of the session (lesson- don’t rely on feelings…).
I can’t remember what the content of the seminar was, but as we all left the tent the prayer ministry team stood in two lines so that we could all walk out between them and receive prayer, as they laid hands on us in the name of Jesus.
As I was waiting in the queue to go out, I suddenly felt a rise in faith and expectancy that God was going to work. I had a sense of the continuing legacy of past illness, and started praying, almost in spite of myself, ‘let’s finish this thing’. As soon as I entered the tunnel of people, and someone put their hand on my shoulder, I immediately buckled to the floor and started crying uncontrollably. I fell to the floor and cried and cried; the queue of people needed to keep moving; someone suggested moving me out of the tunnel- I wanted more though, so crawled further along as the healing team placed their hands on me. This released in me floods of more tears, and I crawled out of the tunnel and crawled towards the dance team, still crying. (The dance team was a lady and her two young daughters, who were there to support the healing ministry).
I moved around a bit with the dance lady. Through my tears, as I was on the floor, I saw her two young daughters, about 5 and 6, who were part of the dance team. Part of me worried that my crying would scare them, but they didn’t seem at all phased..! They were used to seeing God work in this way.
By this point I was alternately crying and laughing hysterically. I laughed uncontrollably and then would start crying again uncontrollably. My mouth was also vibrating uncontrollably. I’d not experienced this before. I loved every second of it. I felt God’s Spirit moving in me and releasing all this emotion.
At one point I was sitting pretty much on the lady, hugging her so tightly and crying, my cheek on hers.
I sensed Jesus telling me to place my hands on his. I put my hands out, closing my eyes, and the dance lady put her hands underneath. I rested and pushed down on her hands.
It was around this point when the man who’d been leading the session came up to me and the person praying with me (not sure who at this point..), and said that we’d need to move out of the tent as the next seminar needed to come in! I was so engrossed in what God was doing that I found it hard to respond; but the lady helped me to my feet and we went outside the tent.
This was just the start- it went on for 2 more hours!
Outside the tent, I fell to the ground again, my mouth still vibrating, and crying and laughing and praying in tongues (this I had done before :))
There were lots of people around, some just waiting outside the tent for the next seminar- I didn’t really care what they were thinking though, I was still loving what God was doing.
One of the ladies said to me, ‘Lizzie, come into the shade; Lizzie why don’t you come this way’. (The sun was very hot). I immediately had a memory of being admitted to mental hospital in December 2010, with nurses telling me what to do, and trying to engage with me, when I was experiencing extreme psychological trauma. I cried out ‘It’s like when I was in hospital and people were telling me what to do’, and was immediately overwhelmed with a wave of the same fear and desperation I had been feeling at that time. I was caught up in this emotion, and cried and cried desperately and with abandonment. At this point those who were with me didn’t seem to know what to do, and another lady came and sat with me; she wore a cowboy hat!
‘Don’t worry’, she said, crouching down with me. She took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Can you feel that?’ she said. ‘We’re going to bring you out of the trauma’ (she might have prayed too). ‘You don’t actually need to revisit a trauma to be released from it’.
I can’t remember exactly the order of what happened next. But she basically guided me through a prayer healing session, helping me to bring to Jesus everything that had happened and the lies I had believed as a result.
She said, ‘ask Jesus, ‘Jesus, is there anyone I need to forgive?’’
My initial response was no, but then actually I started to think of people. This helped me to realise that unforgiveness doesn’t just mean conscious ongoing bitterness towards someone; it can also be a lack of goodwill/ love towards someone. Even though I hadn’t been thinking about it for a long time, there were still people who I didn’t like to think about, and certainly would not have wanted to see again. I started to name them; ‘the psychologist’, ‘the doctor’…… Each time I said ‘Jesus, I forgive this person.’
And then, more painfully, ‘my mum and dad’. I knew I didn’t blame them for their actions, but I also knew that there were still painful memories of their response to my illness.
‘Jesus, I forgive my Mum, because she didn’t understand, or know what to do’.
Then Helen continued to lead me in prayer. ‘Father, I forgive you for what happened. I know it wasn’t you, it was the enemy’. I struggled with this as I said it, and even now as I write it, as it felt like I was blaming God for what happened. But on the other hand, I also knew that there were lies I’d believed, and still believed, about God as a result of being ill, and so maybe some part of me did need to say this. Certainly, I needed to unlearn the lies that God was distant, angry, accusing, which I had felt so strongly in my years of illness with religious OCD. I obviously have known since then that that wasn’t true, but I still carried a legacy of this in my relationship with God, often feeling God was distant and finding it difficult to pray. It seems that even when you know truths in your head about God, it’s different from unlearning things at a deep emotional level.
The hardest thing though was to forgive myself. ‘Jesus, I forgive myself for what happened’. This was really hard to say, but felt a massive relief, to let myself off any self-condemnation or guilt for years of illness and struggle, and the pain caused to family and friends. Again, I would not have thought consciously that I carried guilt about this, but on some level I must have done.
I’ve been learning since then that forgiving ourselves is so important. It can seem ‘holy’ in some ways to think badly of ourselves, to remind ourselves of our sinfulness, etc. But that is not how God sees us, and if we are to step into our new identity as beloved children, accepted and received by our Father as perfect in his sight, all our sin forgotten and paid for, then we need to see ourselves the same way. Holding onto self-condemnation or thinking badly of ourselves is actually disobeying the God who has declared us righteous and given us a new identity.
At this point I started to feel pain in my chest (I had had ongoing health problems with my chest for the past year). I put my hand on my chest, and the lady said, ‘does your chest hurt?’ I said yes, and she said, ‘ok, so you can take the pain to the cross, because Jesus has suffered the pain himself so that you can lay it on him’. My first instinct was that I didn’t want to do that, because I didn’t want to cause him more pain. But then I understood- that he had already suffered the pain, and that was finished, but the pain he suffered was like a well that was eternally deep, and could absorb anything and everything I or anyone else brought to him. He had born the pain already. ‘He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’ (Isaiah 53:4) I’d understood this in terms of bringing sin to him- that the punishment he endured was sufficient to atone for all of my past and future sin- but this gave me a sense that the cross also could be brought to bear on the emotional and physical scars of living in this fallen world. He suffered the consequences of sin, and also the effects of it; so that we can be healed. ‘[He] forgives all your sins, and heals all your diseases’. Psalm 101:3
I was so excited to realise this; and excitedly started to grab pain from my chest and lay it on Jesus. I did this for a few minutes, pulling pain out of my chest and placing it, as I imagined, on him.
Helen continued; say to Jesus, ‘What lie have I been believing about you?’ Even as I asked the question I knew the answer, and had identified it before as the lie that had resulted in my being admitted to hospital for four months, terrified that I’d fallen away from Jesus. ‘The lie is that he’ll lose me’. Saying it out loud though somehow called it out, as it showed it for what it was and took the power out of it. I think I then renounced the lie and declared the truth that Jesus will keep me to the end, and will never let me out of his grasp.
At about this point there was a picture of a huge hammer, enormous and heavy, but God could pick it up as if it weighed nothing and smash to pieces the stone wall, the lies I’d believed about Him.
Helen said, ‘open your mouth’. I opened it, wide, and as I did so shrieked out loads more pain. She then said, ‘now breath in’. At this moment I had a picture of a lion, like Aslan. He opened his mouth and breathed over me, and as he did so I breathed in, knowing I was breathing in God’s Spirit.
A few moments later, I said ‘Oh, that’s funny’ ; and Helen said, ‘sometimes he does things like this, stay with it’. I said, ‘there’s a fish; I think I’m a fish…!’ I had this very peculiar sense that I was a fish, writhing around in the water. ‘I’m stuck’, I said, ‘I’m stuck in the net!’ This wasn’t scary or alarming, but just a rather curious situation. Then it occurred to me what it meant. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘I’m stuck in the net. So I couldn’t get out even if I wanted to!’. This of course was a picture Jesus gave me of how he had caught me in his net, and I was so securely ‘caught’ that even if I wanted to get out I couldn’t! Let alone fall away unwittingly. The perspective then changed slightly, as I thought, well I don’t want to be stuck in the net, I want to be on the boat! With Jesus and the disciples. I can’t remember exactly what happened next, and how I came to be on the boat is rather hazy. I guess it’s an ongoing journey, and as I get to know Jesus bit by bit, calling out the lies, I will learn more to live out of the sure reality that I am seated with Jesus in the heavenly realms.
My final ‘view’ though was from the boat; looking out over calm waters.
After this I spent some time walking and dancing in the Spirit, whilst Helen sat on a bench nearby (everyone else had left by this point and were busy packing up their tents!). This made me recall David dancing in the Spirit in the Old Testament. Eventually Helen needed to leave as well, and she left me sat at a picnic bench to finish the lunch I’d started several hours before…!
In case I was in any doubt as to what had happened to me, there on the table was a boiled sweet with the word ‘re-boot’ written on it. I laughed. At the time I hardly needed any more pointers that this had all been from God, but it was nice to have something to keep as a souvenir!
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For anyone who would like to read more about the Biblical basis for this kind of inner-healing ministry, I have been recommended the book ‘Agnes Sanford and Her Companions: The Assault on Cessationism and the Coming of the Charismatic Renewal’, by William L. Arteaga. I’ve not started it yet but planning to read it, if anyone wants to read with me!
And for anyone who would like to experience Spirit-led healing for themselves, I can recommend booking a session with the Salvo Foundation- http://www.salvofoundation.org.
Lizzie T 