On Sunday evening I had decided that I would not go to church. I was tired after a busy weekend decorating and filling a skip with rubbish from our garage.

However, I felt a nagging in my spirit that I should go. I spent the first hour outside church in the vestibule with a girl who needed some prayer. After that I wondered if I should go home, but God prompted me to go in.
I sat at the back three chairs away from a couple I had never seen before. They were not immediately “a pair” to look at. But there was a bond between them. I realised that they were married but had been estranged by something. God soon started speaking to me about them and I was pleased when the lady leant over during a song and struck up a conversation. As she asked me some questions, I realised that she was American. Her husband was from Manchester.

As we began to share, she told me part of their amazing story. Her husband had suffered a massive heart attack last month. At the time, she was living in the States (I didn’t ask why) She prayed for her husband’s life to be spared and caught the first flight she could to get to him. On the way to the hospital in the ambulance, he called his brother and sister, pleading with them to be saved. Miraculously, he sustained no lasting damage to his heart, lived to tell the tale and is now fit and well. But obviously he has been wondering what God has planned for his ‘second’ life.

Their journey has been a complex one. They have, I think, 6 children between them and it is her second marriage. One of their children had been pronounced dead at birth and had stayed ‘flatlined’ for 20 minutes. She had claimed her child’s life in the name of Jesus and watched as a nurse tried one last time to get the heart rate going. It started. The baby breathed and cried and life came into its little body.

He had also had a severe parasitic infection in one of his legs a few years ago and was told he would have to undergo amputation. But God challenged him in the middle of the night saying, “Do you trust that I can heal you?” The man replied, “I believe! But help my unbelief!” The following morning, the surgeon came into the ward to speak to him and prepare him for surgery. He lifted back the blanket and said “Praise Jesus!” The leg was completely restored.

This couple had the word ‘miracle’ all over them! As they spoke I asked if I could kneel in front of them. I felt overcome by God’s glory around them and humbled by what He was doing. I began to shake. As I did so, God started to show me some of the things they still needed to overcome. He showed me some of His plans for their marriage, their wider family and for their future ministry.

I had noticed that the lady inclined her left ear towards me when I spoke. Boldly, I said, “You are deaf aren’t you?”

“Yes” she replied.

“I believe that God wants to heal you, because I see that you are a worshipper and someone who writes and sings and plays songs. Am I right?” I said.

She stared at me, emphatically nodding. “Yes. I am deaf in one ear and below normal hearing in my other ear. I used to be able to sing and play and lead worship. I am now tone deaf. But if God wants to heal me, I receive His healing.”

The three of us joined forces and prayed with passion over her. She raised her hands to heaven, pleading with God to restore her hearing.
As we prayed, her right ear began buzzing. She described a feeling in it as though she was on an aeroplane and needed to swallow or change altitude. I sensed her healing was beginning.

God told me to keep praying and told me a few other more private things about them to pray into.

I was only with this couple half an hour but I felt as though something shifted in the heavenlies over them. I saw them with a powerful ministry of healing and deliverance. I saw books being written and services held. I got ready to take their details so I could stay in touch. Then God whispered to me.

“Don’t.”
I wasn’t sure why. I wanted to know the next part of the story! But God told me that I was just a tiny part of this miracle journey for them. He had much left to say and do over them. I was not to engineer or manufacture anything of my own desire over them. As hard as it was, I hugged them and told them how privileged I had been to meet them, that I would continue to pray for them and then drove home.

“How was church love?” Jon asked as I walked in. “I don’t know” I confessed. “I wasn’t really there. But I know God was.”