Healing in Singapore
Singapore in April is astounding. It’s a breath-taking combination of tropical sea breeze, dozens of species of blooming flowers, meticulously manicured hedges, gigantic mahogany and angsana trees lining the parks, greenbelts, and waterfronts that cover this high tech city-state. With a population approaching 6 million people hailing from almost every country of the world, Singapore is diverse, modern, and a vital financial hub in Southeast Asia.
In the last 50 years, several Singaporean churches have emerged as global missions centers. One church in particular has been instrumental in sending missionaries into more than 90 countries. Many of these missionaries have begun disciple making movements that have resulted in the planting of tens of thousands of churches. Their rich heritage of training, resourcing, and sending missionaries is well known throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
In early 2019 we were invited to partner with this church to train their missionaries using the Doing What Jesus Did course. They wanted to validate the training, determine if they could re-teach it reproducing the same results with their deployed missionaries, and then begin to contextualize it for each of their regions.
The Pastor who oversaw this particular training is very reserved, dignified, and realistic. He politely but very directly questioned the validity of the training. After a brief conversation we could clearly see that he deeply loved God, and as he spoke his passion for the unreached people groups of the world was contagious. We discerned that this pastor was firm in his faith, uncompromising, and fiercely committed to the truth. He quietly communicated his great disdain for exaggeration, hype, and the carnal theatrics often associated with the charismatic movement.
In the Doing What Jesus Did Seminar each session is half teaching, and half activation where the participants have the opportunity to step out in faith and practice what they have just learned. The morning of the second day of training we were concluding the fourth session, Healing the Sick, and each person was supposed to make a phone call to someone they knew who needed a supernatural physical healing.
As each missionary candidate made their phone calls, I noticed the host pastor in the far corner of the room making a phone call.
In the next few minutes several students testified that the person they had called to pray for had been instantly and supernaturally healed. However, while the pastor encouraged each person who testified, he remained quiet as to the result of his phone call.
The next morning as we were starting our final day of training, this otherwise very reserved pastor burst into the room nearly shouting: “My wife has been completely healed!”
Naturally, we were eager to hear the testimony. He recounted that the day before his wife had gone to the hospital. For years she had suffered with chronic leg pain that often prevented her from walking, standing, or even comfortably sitting. The doctors had struggled to determine the cause of pain, and through the years the pastor and his wife had begun to lose hope. When making the phone call to his wife the day before he had simply taken authority over the unknown issue, commanded it to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ, and commanded the pain to leave. As he prayed, nothing seemed to happen. He prayed four times in a row and still nothing seemed to change in her condition. Disappointed, they both hung up.
The next morning, his wife awoke to no pain of any kind. After years of crippling pain, she was able to stand, walk, and sit with no pain. Unsurprisingly, they were both overwhelmed at God’s goodness toward them.
In the two years since this happened, this pastor who has become a good friend will often remind me of this supernatural healing and testify yet again that his wife is still healed.
As he continues to train missionaries and preaches at church, he often shares from his personal experience about the power of the Holy Spirit to heal. He is fully convinced that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That the same God who healed thousands in the New Testament, is the same God who healed his wife, and the same God who will heal anyone who ask Him believing in faith.
I pray that this testimony of God’s healing power brings you hope and inspiration to ask God to work through you and in you.
