Preacher, I heard you could heal me

Wednesday night “prayer meeting” had ended and everyone had left, except our family and we were closing up the church. Lights almost all out we were standing at the front door when it opened and a young girl with blonde hair and cheeks flushed red from exertion rushed in. She looked up at my dad “I’m sorry preacher Mushegan, I don’t come to your church but I heard that you can heal people, can you heal me?” My dad smiled at her, “My dear I don’t heal anyone but I can pray for you and Jesus can heal you. What do you need?” To me the need was obvious, both of her legs were in braces and her shoes looked crooked and turned in an odd way, I had never seen anyone with clubbed feet until now. She answered him with tears streaming down her face, “Preacher I’m thirteen years old and I have never been able to run, ride a bicycle or do the fun things my friends can do, I want you to ask Jesus to heal me feet and legs, can He do that?” My dad was looking at her and his own large brown eyes had filled with tears. Before he could answer she said, “I can’t kneel at your altar but I can sit on it!” As she walked toward the altar and sat down daddy started talking to her, “Do you believe that if I pray for you and ask God to heal you that you will be healed?” She was bobbing her head up and down, expectant for something to happen. Daddy began to quote Matthew18: 19,20  “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Then he laid his big, brown hands on the top of her head and prayed a very simple prayer asking God to heal this child so that she could walk and run without pain, he asked God to make her whole. When he finished the prayer she stood up and thanked him, he asked if she needed a ride home and she explained that she lived very close and would just walk. She left and we went home.

The next day my mother went to a local mall to buy a few things and as she walked past a shoe store someone rushed out and grabbed her, startled she looked to see that her accoster was the same young girl that had come to the church the night before and asked for prayer. The girl asked mother to go into the store and meet her mother. She was very excited that she was, for the very first time in all her thirteen years, buying a pair of “normal” shoes! Her mother told the story of what had happened the night before. She said that as her daughter walked into the house she was crying and saying she was in terrible pain!! Her mother put down her sewing and rushed to see what was wrong, the girl had sat down and was pulling at the braces on her legs trying to take them off, her mother finally freed her of the shoes and braces and to their amazement the reason for the pain was that her feet and legs had miraculously straightened! Being freed from their bindings the pain was gone!

Many years later after we had moved to Atlanta, the phone rang and I answered it. A female voice identified herself as the girl my dad had prayed for so many years before. Since he wasn’t at home she asked me to tell him that she had never properly thanked him, her family still did not attend our church, but she wanted him to know that she had a wonderful high school experience, had moved to Atlanta and become a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines and she pointed out that she had to wear high heels every single day! She had married and had three daughters and was very happy thanks to the prayer that night in an empty church where she sat on the altar. God still answers prayer.