Miracle.

I promised stories.... here is a favorite of mine: 


  
It was a fairly normal day in the prayer room at IHOP-Atlanta. On saturdays, we have a corporate prayer meeting at 4pm to prayer for physical and emotional healing to be released in the city of Atlanta. We pray from 4-6pm and then at 6pm we have a healing service and we invite anyone who would like to receive prayer to come and we have teams trained to minister to them. 


On this particular Saturday, I noticed a man sitting in the corner of the prayer room, reading his bible, looking very normal, except for the fact that he was wearing sunglasses. I remember thinking, "Okay, well that's a little weird, but I guess he thinks he's cool." At the end of the prayer meeting, the man raised his hand to receive healing prayer, but a lot of people do, so I didn't think it was out of the ordinary. I prayed in general for all the people in the room to receive healing, and then I went to meet with the healing teams to get ready for the service. 


When we had our times of individual ministry, my team and I were sitting in our ministry room, waiting to see who we would be praying for. We heard a knock on the door, and when I went to open it I found the sunglasses man from the prayer room! He wasn't alone either, he was with his wife, and his young son, who was about five years old. He and his family came in and sat down, and we asked how we could pray for him. They had driven down 5 hrs from Charleston, SC. He had been diagnosed with Lyme disease some time ago. He described his bad days and his good days. A good day involved walking around, and being able to eat and talk, while still having to wear sunglasses inside and out because his eyes were so sensitive to light he couldn't go without them. A bad day meant that he couldn't get out of bed, or talk, or move. On a bad day, he was totally dependent on his wife for everything. That very week, he had had a string of bad days in a row, and his wife told him that no matter how he felt on Saturday morning, she was planning on driving him down to IHOP to get healing prayer. 


We began to pray, asking the Lord to release the presence of the Holy Spirit in the room, and something changed. 


The man and his wife both began to cry as we laid our hands on their shoulders and prayed. Within a few minutes, the man was kneeling on the floor, crying out to the Lord. When we asked him what had had happened, he described feeling heat throughout his body and sensing the presence of the Lord. He and his family thanked us for the prayer and went out into the lobby of IHOP. 


While they were sitting in the lobby, one of my close friends heard them talking about their time in the ministry room. The man was describing how his eyes were no longer sensitive to light! He said he felt so much better! He looked down at his young son and asked,


 "Have you ever seen Daddy without sunglasses on?" 


The 5 year old smiled back, 


"No Daddy. But I like it!" 


Amen.