Claire Lasher-Meade in Malawi and her surprising insights into the Holy Spirit ministry.

In Topic 11 Ivan described how Claire overcame opposition to her preaching at the Christian Fellowship on a Sunday by exercising a gift of healing, allied to a gift of knowledge, to win over Pete and others.

Claire’s ministry was bold and also amazing. She stopped a lady she did not know on a street in Blantyre. “Excuse me, but the Lord has shown me you have cancer. Would you allow me to pray for you?” The lady, who had been terminally ill with cancer, was healed totally. Ivan confirmed this later.

Ivan recalls questioning Claire about her ministry in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit:

I was fascinated by Claire’s ministry and arranged to see her to talk about it.

“When you get these amazing words of knowledge, how do you know it is God putting them into your mind?”

Her reply stunned me.

“I don’t,” she said, and laughed at what must have been an expression of incredulity on my face.

“But you have been so accurate! It can’t be guesswork!”

“No, of course not, but I’m seldom sure it’s God putting the thoughts in my head. Each time I start to minister it feels like I’m crawling out along a thin branch, and unless God supports me it’ll break and I’ll crash to the ground. I try very hard to listen in my spirit to what the Holy Spirit may be impressing on me to say, but I am rarely sure. There is a lot of static between ourselves and the Holy Spirit and it’s easy not to hear correctly.”

“But I don’t understand. Why doesn’t He just tell you clearly? He could of course.”

I noticed an enigmatic smile play at the corners of her mouth. “Yes, He could, but doesn’t. Each day is a fresh adventure in faith, and sometimes I crash. Sometimes He does help a little in advance, for example I knew that I was going to have opposition from some of the men in your group and that is why He helped me to pray as I did at our meeting before the service. When you saw God at work, you were more accepting of my ministry.”

Her explanation taught me fresh insights about God and how we are called to live by faith and not by certainty. Indeed, the Holy Spirit ministry is driven by faith – and develops more faith in whomever is genuinely involved in that ministry, allied to growing further hope and love.

Claire’s testimony shows that:

1. God expects us as Christians to minister to others in faith, hope and love – not in certainty regarding the results, which we must leave up to Him.
2. God does not appear to be as interested in what we can do for Him as He is in our own personal development, especially in the eternals of faith, love and hope (1Cor 13:13).

3. God the Holy Spirit will work marvellously through women as well as men (Galatians 3:28).

The Rudolphs and our relative Pete in Rhodesia.

 A strange phenomenon of the Holy Spirit was occurring in some churches, the gift of a new prayer language termed glossolalia or ‘speaking in tongues’. Apparently, some Christians began praying aloud in an unknown to them language when receiving prayer for the infilling (baptism) in the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues happened first to the disciples in Acts 2. This was confusing to us, because how could you speak in a language you had never learnt? No wonder Paul mentioned it as a “sign to unbelievers”² because, if it were valid, it pointed to a supernatural origin.

But was being filled with the Holy Spirit something God wanted for us, Brenda and I wondered?

To add to our uncertainty, there was a young pastor in our fellowship group who was from a conservative evangelical background. He was emphatic that speaking in tongues was not a supernatural gift for modern times, pointing out that witchdoctors in different cultures spoke in tongues. Was it a satanic gift then? A ruse of Satan with which to ensnare unwary Christians? I did not know, so I turned to scripture and studied the issue.

The main principle to emerge from my study derived from the words of Jesus: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand?” (Mark 3:24-26)

“Right then,” I decided. “If I can observe a case of speaking in tongues by a Christian that as a consequence builds God’s Kingdom as opposed to Satan’s, then I will know that the gift is from God. Simple as that.”  

The following Sunday, after the service had begun, a man on crutches came in. He sat on the opposite side of the congregation from us. We were very surprised to see him there because we knew him, and he lived a long way away. It was Pete, married to my stepsister, and they farmed about 250 km away. We were not close friends and Pete would not have known we were there. I doubt that anyone else in that congregation knew Pete because he did not attend that church, nor did we see him there again.

During the service, a member of the congregation began speaking out aloud in tongues. The service halted and then waited for someone else in the congregation to be moved on by the Holy Spirit to speak out in English an interpretation of what the strange language had been saying. This is correct procedure during services and is detailed in scripture (1Cor 14:22-28).

The interpretation that was spoken aloud was a powerful warning – that a person there that morning was like a drop of water in a stream being swept along towards a waterfall, and that if they did not escape from the stream they would tumble over and there would be no turning back. The stream represented wrong life choices.

Pastor Bill Anstruther then did something we had not seen him do previously, nor did we see it again over the years; he halted the service and said this had been a warning of the Holy Spirit to someone there that morning and that he or she should respond at once.

We heard a choked cry from the opposite side of the church. “It’s me. I know it’s me!” and Pete pulled himself onto his crutches and made his way to the front. Because we knew him, we could guess at some of the personal issues that the Holy Spirit might have been addressing.

Bill spoke quietly to him and prayed for him to get his life right and to follow Jesus. Then he prayed separately for Pete’s injured, swollen and infected knee. It was healed instantly! Pete walked back to his seat without crutches, face beaming, as though there had been no problem with his knee.

“Thank you, Lord,” I whispered in appreciation because I had been given a clear answer. Speaking in tongues had just served God’s Kingdom, not Satan’s, that very morning. Using Jesus’ own yardstick, it had to be a gift from God. Satan might mimic the gift with witchdoctors and so forth, and Christians might misuse the gift as some did, but at least the genuine article was of God. It was still confusing to us, because how could you speak in a language you had never learnt? No wonder Paul mentioned it as a “sign to unbelievers” because it points to a supernatural origin.

 This Rudolph testimony shows:

1. God gives supernatural gifts because they are important for reaching into lives in novel ways.
2. God’s supernatural abilities and His personality can be experienced through the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but only when these are exercised correctly.

3. God’s solution to misuse was never non-use, but instead correct use. Therefore, the modern church tendency to discourage the exercise of the different Holy Spirit giftings in church meetings is incorrect.

4. God wants Christians who have been given a Holy Spirit gift to provide access to this gift prayerfully, decently, and in order.

Father Stewart Lane in Malawi (using a letter supplied by Catholic friend Frances Sequiera) 

I can remember the day Stewart Lane was ordained, and after the service I (Frances) visited a friend of ours. The father was dying; he lay there gasping for breath and the loud rasping sounds he made shook the whole room. It was so painful to see his family around him watching helplessly. Someone read from their holy book and another whispered words of comfort in his ear.

I was struck by the emptiness and helplessness in the room and approached the children and asked them if I could send for someone to pray over him. I rang up Stewart…. I said to him, “Here starts your first mission, to pray over a Hindu who is dying.” 

John (a Christian friend) and Stewart came right away. They felt a bit out of place but they started praying over him and suddenly they prayed in tongues.

The man’s breathing quietened down and later his daughter said to me that he became calm and quiet at the moment of praying and quietly passed away, with a peaceful and relaxed look on his face. The family also kept asking me if Stewart knew Hindi as they heard him praying fluently in the Indian language, saying OM,,,OM,,,,SHANTI,,,,SHANTI,,,,etc; which means LORD… LORD… PEACE…. PEACE… etc. They were quite amazed to hear from me about the gift of tongues.

Frances’ testimony shows that:

1. God’s love and concern is towards all people regardless of religion. After all, He has revealed we are all designed in His image and carry something of Him with us.

2. God the Holy Spirit can speak earthly languages fluently, (but sometimes speaks in heavenly languages and not earthly ones – 1Corinthians 13:1).

Ivan Rudolph in Rhodesia and God Protecting Ivan’s brother Arnold with a Holy Spirit ‘Word of Knowledge’

Arnold was several years older than me, and while I got on reasonably well with him in childhood, he spent little time at home during teenage and then left home forever when he turned sixteen. I saw little of him afterwards apart from an occasional visit while he forged a successful career, becoming the youngest District Commissioner in Rhodesia.

Because we hardly saw one another, seldom wrote or phoned, our distant relationship had little effect on either of us as we got on with our lives.

At the close of a fellowship meeting with a few Christians in our home, I had a strong impression to pray for Arnold, that he was in danger (Word of Knowledge, ICor12: 4-11, perhaps best in NKJV version of the Bible). During the war, you learnt to pray immediately someone came to mind, especially if this was accompanied by a feeling of ‘heaviness’ inside.

Our fellowship group was packing up and about to go when I stopped them and asked them all to come back and to pray for Arnold urgently for his safety. Some of us then prayed aloud together for him.

Arnold was not yet a Christian and had in fact made some strong anti-Christian statements to me previously.

This ‘heaviness’ I felt persisted for a while and I continued to pray until it lifted.

I had felt so strongly that we had needed to pray for him that I wrote to Arnold and told him what had happened.

Arnold responded with a phone call soon after, saying at that time in the bush war he had been in serious danger and on one occasion under fire when a bullet had whizzed very close to his head, at the same time that the fellowship group had been praying for him. He was emotional during the phone call and not long afterwards he decided to ask Christ for forgiveness and began to follow Him in his own way.

           Ivan and Arnold’s testimony shows that:

1. God responds to prayer during warfare, as He does during all times of human crisis, and this is true for friend and foe alike. He is also involved behind the scenes in the great spiritual conflict that dogs our planet.
2. God is concerned about strained relationships in families and may intervene.

3. God loves everyone, even those who express no interest or even speak negatively about Him.

4. God gives us spiritual gifts as in 1Cor12 because we need them to learn how to function for Him and with Him during our earthly lives, and we ignore them to our own impoverishment and often to the detriment of others. The gift of knowledge and the other Holy Spirit gifts may come very occasionally (my case) or become an actual ministry gift.

5. Why does God need us to pray? Actually, He does not need our prayers at all, but does like them and sometimes even solicits them! That is because He wants us to become closer and more effective members of His loving family, in preparation for the afterlife where we will be involved with Him in many different and interesting activities.