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Chapter 4: How do Sufferers Perceive Healing Prayer?

George first traveled with Global Awakening on an International Ministry Trip to Cuba in 2004. His primary motivation for going was frankly a quest for his own physical healing—from a brain tumor for which no medical treatment was viable and for which the prognosis was grim. George had in the six months since the diagnosis been aggressively seeking intercessory prayer for healing at a series of North American pentecostal conferences located in every region of the United States and Canada. Almost every time ministry teams prayed for him, George perceived a powerful touch from the Holy Spirit—he fell over, cried, laughed, felt heat, and vibrated as if he had grabbed an electrical wire. Every three months he returned to his medical doctor for another MRI, hoping for medical confirmation of his healing—but he was repeatedly disappointed. Instead of giving up, George went to more conferences to seek more prayer. As intercessors prayed for his healing, they also prayed for an impartation of spiritual gifts in order that George might minister healing to others. That sounded good to George, but he was preoccupied with his own need for healing.

Still, when Randy Clark encouraged the 1,500 attendees at GA’s 2003 Voice of the Apostles conference to consider joining the prayer team that would minister in Cuba, something resonated with George and he decided to go. In Cuba, George prayed for a man who could see only two feet in front of him without glasses and four feet with glasses; after fifteen minutes of prayer, he appeared able to see twenty feet without glasses—and in gratitude accepted an invitation to become a Christian. Among several others who attested to experiencing healing through George’s prayers in Cuba was a woman whose doctors had sent her home to die from ovarian cancer following unsuccessful radiation therapy. She had a large, palpable tumor on her ovary, was emaciated from being unable to eat, and was too weak to walk. During prayer, she felt heat, fell over, regained strength to walk—and could no longer find the tumor.

When George returned home, he began to pray for other people’s healing at every opportunity. On a visit to his mother, he met one of her friends—who revealed that he had found a tumor on his stomach and had noticed, with some alarm, that it was growing larger. After ten minutes of prayer, the tumor seemed smaller, and after a few more minutes of prayer, it could scarcely be palpated. When George checked back with this man a month later, he reported that the tumor had completely disappeared. Meanwhile, George’s mother—who had witnessed the effects of her son’s prayers—marveled “It’s all about Jesus,” and decided on the spot to renounce decades of involvement in “New Age” spirituality and return to the Christian faith. George continued to frequent pentecostal conferences—and to travel with GA and other ministry groups to several destinations in Latin America and Africa—at first seeking prayer for his own healing, but increasingly to pray for other people. George also came to devote many of his evenings and weekends to praying for people who sought him out, some of whom had themselves traveled long distances in search of prayer for healing.