As I went out my front door Monday morning headed for work, I was discouraged and conflicted. I was thinking, “I should have gone to church yesterday and got prayer, I don’t feel any better and yet here I am going to work”. I had been sick for 2 1/2 weeks with pneumonia, gone to the doctor twice and the medicine didn’t seem to be helping. I was really weak, kept on trying to work, crashed and did nothing on the weekends, missed church two weeks in a row. Yet, here I was going out the door headed for work.
I looked up, as I was almost to my van parked on the street, and I could not believe my eyes! Here right in front of me was a couple taking their morning walk. Not just any couple, but a couple who are in charge of one of the ‘healing rooms’ at our church. I had no idea that they lived close by. I immediately blurted out “could you pray for me?” They looked up with a confused look on their faces at first. After five minutes or so of prayer in the street, I went on my way to work praising God and convinced that I was healed.
Ten minutes down the road I started feeling a whole lot worse. I was hacking, coughing, and wheezing up big globs of stuff, getting weaker by the second, and I couldn’t stop coughing. Disappointedly I remarked, “Lord, I thought you would heal me!”. Then came a clear word into my mind: “Yes, but I have to clear out your lungs first”. After that, I cooperated with the hacking and praised God in the midst of it.
I started gaining strength in the afternoon, in the midst of working a very full and strenuous day. In the evening I was nearly back to normal, and by the next morning it was finally behind me. Praise God.