Click on links below to go to a written personal story:
Industrial accident shatters joint. After 18 months of surgery, Michael was told he would only have 60 per cent use of his arm...
Healing at Brighton. I could go no further on my own and I cried out to Jesus....
Professional footballer healed. I had virtually stopped all physical activity as the knee was getting progressively worse and more painful....
Oxford Rector shares his story. ...these were the last kicks of a person drowning in the love of God....
Geoff Shattock - Are you ready? Reflections on the unexpected death of his nephew, Matthew aged 25....
Industrial accident shatters joint.
Michael Wattanobbi, from Australia, was visiting Church of Christ the King, Brighton. Adrian Holloway (ChristChurch London) was the visiting speaker and he describes what happened.
‘Michael responded for healing after the worship. He explained that he had suffered from an industrial accident nine years previously. He had been hit on the shoulder by a brick elevator which fell from a height of six feet. This resulted in a shattered anterior cruciate joint. Keyhole surgery took place and the surgeon removed half an inch of bone from the joint. After 18 months of surgery, Michael was told he would only have 60 per cent use of his arm. Since the accident his arm has clicked and hurt everyday and he was unable to lift his arm above head height.’
After prayer for healing, Michael lifted his arm straight above his head, for the first time in nine years!
Melanie shares her story
The elders at Church of Christ the King, Brighton, UK received this email recently. They decided to share it.
Dear Elders,
I just want to share how great God is.
In 2004 I was diagnosed with a rare condition called Medullary Sponge Kidney (MSK). One of my kidneys was a peculiar shape and was unable to function properly. MSK is a condition that you are born with but can go undiagnosed until adult life, usually presenting with terrible pain and kidney stones. My doctor explained that it is irreversible and incurable and to expect pain at a later stage in life.
A year after that I discovered I had advanced breast cancer stage 3 which needed very aggressive treatment. I was 33, a single mum, and absolutely terrified. I had 4 major operations, 5 months of chemotherapy and 15 sessions of radiotherapy. Immediately after my last treatment, my father died.
At the end of 2006 I was weary, weak and broken. My kidney pain returned with a vengeance, as the doctors had predicted. I could go no further on my own and I cried out to Jesus. I did not know much but I had a wonderful feeling in my heart toward God.
In March 2007 I walked into Church of Christ the King (CCK). I cried through the service, so moved to find a church where people were worshipping openly and warmly. I sat next to someone who was very friendly and told her about my health issues. She said I should go for prayer from the elder giving the message. I was sceptical but at the end of the service I found myself approaching him for prayer for healing. During the prayer I cried and cried.
God is awesome! It is all new and wonderful; I have never met anyone in my lifetime like Jesus Christ. I had a scan in June and the doctors told me that both of my kidneys were perfect. My incurable kidney defect had been healed. I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of God and that He has healed me completely.
I have been going to CCK every Sunday since that day in March. I am living testimony that God has reversed a diagnosis through prayer in Jesus name that Terry Virgo prayed that day.
Just an up-date on my walk since:
13 May 07... I publicly went forward after Adrian Holloway’s message.
June 07 ...... Did central Alpha.
Sept 07 ...... I got baptised in water!
I am currently serving and joining the church body. But most of all I am living life to the fullest and turning back all of God’s blessing into praise! God is real, alive and moving among us!
Melanie Briggs
‘In my distress I called upon the Lord, to my God I cried for help. From His temple He heard my voice and my cry to Him reached His ears’ (Psalm 18:6).
Paul shares his story
"During the service, the speaker, Lex said he wanted people with knee problems to come forward to receive healing.
I had an arthritic knee as a result of four knee operations incurred when playing professional football. In fact, I was pensioned off and had to retire early because of this. I had virtually stopped all physical activity as the knee was getting progressively worse and more painful, and resulted in a noticeable limp when walking. I came down to the front and Lex prayed over me. Lex asked me how I felt and I admitted that the pain was no longer there. He then asked me to start jogging on the spot, which I did, without pain. He then asked me to start jogging across the floor, which I did, again without any pain or discomfort. At the end I was sprinting!
My friends, Mark and Tom, were watching this in total amazement and Mark commented afterwards that he said he had never seen me move so fast even when I was playing professional football!
The best result for me was still to come. At the end of the service Lex gave an open invitation for people to make a commitment to Christ. Mark and Tom both stepped down to the front and both promptly committed themselves to Christ!"
Paul Shinner (New Community Church, South London, UK)
Charlie Cleverley, Rector of St Aldates Oxford tells how he came to believe in Jesus.
I was brought up in a very liberal household with my parents divorcing when I was fourteen and although I was drawn to spiritual things at school I pretty quickly put them away, especially when I came to study modern languages at Oxford and was trained to disbelieve.
However, my girlfriend, Anita, with whom I had had a stormy relationship when I was in Oxford, moved to Cambridge, became a Christian and rang me with this news. I really didn’t know any Christians. She persuaded me to buy a Bible and at the age of 24, I read the whole of the New Testament and was drawn to the figure of Christ who I found irresistible.
Anita would send me articles or books, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, for example. I would then write five-page letters disproving every analogy. But really these were the last kicks of a person drowning in the love of God. One Sunday morning, persuaded by Anita, ‘to try going to church’, I went into St Aldates church in Oxford. I heard someone talk about Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever, and how he was still calling people, just as then, to follow him. I made a decision to follow him.
Geoff Shattock - Are you ready?
This piece is dedicated to the memory of my nephew Matthew Powell who passed away unexpectedly on 24th May 2009 aged 25. 'Father into your hands we commit his spirit'.
Most days just come and go. You have to do some things and you choose to do others. Some days become memorable whilst they are happening due to a measure of success or the arrival of a struggle. But even these memories fade.
Occasionally, and it is occasionally, something happens which crashes into your day and interrupts the routine so dramatically that the day becomes engraved in the metal of your mind.
The interruption could be spectacularly positive in the form of an unexpected windfall or a major breakthrough. Alternatively the invasion can be shocking or disturbing. This could be the reception of a medical test result with serious implications, or the news of the death of a friend or relative.
When the unthinkable occurs, it can act as a spiritual wake-up call causing you to examine yourself and circumstances with heightened thoroughness to check the foundations of your life. Generally you don't, or can't live with this level of awareness, but on such occasions you are forced to reflect.
And the reflection is often about your own mortality. You hear people say things like 'well that makes everything else just seem trivial' or 'in the light of that news it doesn't really matter does it?' Some people, on hearing terminal news, testify that, paradoxically, they start to feel more alive even in the face of the closing of life.
Whatever the circumstances, news or reaction, the issue that emerges is one of readiness. The question raised is 'am I ready?' The question is not 'can I get ready?' or 'will I be ready?' but 'am I ready?' The reason that this is the question is because some types of invasion of your day don't come with the luxury of a lead time. One day it will be your last and none of us knows exactly which one it will be.
Now the discipline I am beginning to describe is not morbid or gloomy. It is not a syndrome of dread or doom, it is the satisfying state of the person who knows he or she has packed everything for the journey, covered all the aspects of an event, prepared completely for an exam or knows that all possible imponderables in a project have been covered in the planning.
Whilst you would find it rather intense to tune up your awareness to the levels related to the reception of difficult news all the time, it is wise to ask at least once a day 'am I ready?'
Here again, the words of our Lord from the cross will help us learn to be ready for our 'it is finished' moment. Readiness will include constantly engaging with questions such as 'have I any outstanding unforgiveness, poisoned relationships or unspoken gratitudes?' 'Have I loved and lived as I should?' 'Have I made my stand, been myself and honoured all that I should?' Each one of these questions finds its answer in the sentences from the cross. But the issue is more to do with the cross itself. The cross causes us to ask 'am I placing my trust entirely in the work of the Carpenter who paid all the fees, covered all my faults and sacrificed Himself so fully that there is nothing more I can do to qualify myself for Paradise?'
If you know you are putting your faith in the dying man who conquered death, staying focused only on His achievements and trusting only in His promise - you are ready.
So when it happens - the unthinkable, the invasion, the desolate dawn of terminal realization, you need not fear. The voice in the dark is the one you have known all along saying 'welcome'.
Such is the big issue resolution. The point of this piece is to provoke you to ask the question 'am I ready?' on a daily basis. Not because you cease to be ready by not asking it - this discipline is to remind yourself of the sweet state of readiness even if you are faced with a bitter cup.
Then there is a calm, a peace, and a quiet confidence that what you have lived for, you die by and it will be enough. In the end you can be ready because the One you follow was also ready, drank the cup and paved the path. Walk on.
More reflections from Geoff especially on faith in the workplace can be found at www.worktalk.gs
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