BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

“My leg was hurting badly,” she wrote. “I was not able to straighten it fully, so after the preaching I went to the bedroom, laid on the bed and started to repeat what Gloria taught and—miracle!—I started experiencing this all for myself. My leg got straightened and was not hurting anymore. I jumped up and started running around. My husband was suspiciously looking at me. He was thinking I had lost my mind…. “My husband had high blood pressure, and I laid hands on him and said, ‘By the Name of Jesus, Satan, leave my husband! You don’t have any right to bother him,’ and commanded the sickness to leave. And, you know, a miracle happened! Satan left him.” Remember, she had just heard for the first time a few minutes earlier that believers can cast out demons and lay hands on the sick. So, she was hardly an expert on the subject. She got results, though! “Now it is like my husband and I are on a honeymoon again!” she wrote. “We live in love and without quarrels. My quick-tempered husband is changed. I don’t recognize him. It is amazing.” That wasn’t the end of the story either. She also wrote about going to pray for her aunt, who lives in Russia. “She was paralyzed and had a hemorrhage in her head. When I went to visit her, it was a terrible picture. Her left side was paralyzed. She didn’t feel it. She could barely speak. I asked her if she would like to be healed, and she said, ‘Yes.’ Then I told her to renounce Satan’s lordship and receive Jesus as Lord, and she did it.” I carried that letter around in my notebook for years because it ministered to me. It reminded me of how easy it is for us to be the hand of God in someone’s life. Of how quickly we can believe and lay hands on the sick and see them recover. Think of it, all this woman knew about the gospel is what she was able to learn in a single television broadcast. But she didn’t let that disqualify her from sharing Jesus. She just acted on the little bit she had learned about Him. She just believed what He said and immediately began to do it. What would happen if all believers everywhere followed her example? We’d probably be amazed at how many lives would be changed and how many people would get healed. A Powerful Marketing Strategy “But Gloria,” you might say, “I just don’t feel ready to lay hands on the sick.” So? Initially, Jesus’ 12 disciples probably didn’t feel ready either. When He first sent them out “to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2), they’d never done that before. They’d seen Jesus do it, but personally they were complete novices. Yet they stepped out by faith and did what Jesus said. So did the believers in the book of Acts. They didn’t have any seminaries in those days where they could go learn all about ministering to people and sharing the gospel. They didn’t have years and years to get ready to heal the sick. They just had the new birth, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the fact that Jesus promised: • When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere. (Acts 1:8, "New Living Translation") • “[You] shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16:18) • “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.” (John 14:12) Believers in the early Church took those promises seriously! They didn’t just underline them in their Bibles, like Christians do today. They believed them and behaved accordingly. Take Stephen and Phillip, for example. They weren’t professional preachers. They weren’t numbered among the apostles. They were simply deacons. (Today we’d call them laymen.) Yet they boldly shared the good news about Jesus and “did great wonders and miracles among the people” (Acts 6:8), so that “unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed” (Acts 8:7). Talk about a powerful marketing strategy! 28 : BVOV

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