Ian Feeney, Toowoomba, Australia, when ministering in New Guinea

I was in the Southern Highlands of New Guinea in the mid 90s. On arrival in the village of Kagua, I noticed a young man lying on the grass floor the church building. He was sweating profusely and I was told he had had cerebral malaria for three months. My first thought was to pray for him and on squatting down beside his shaking body I felt God say instead “lay hands on him”. It took all of the discipline I could muster to lay hands on him without praying, but I was told only to “lay hands on him” so I did not pray. The Bible mentions several methods of healing but this was a test for me not to use a method out of habit. I sat for 10 minutes with that man simply resting my hands on his sweating shaking shoulders. 

The following day we travelled 25 km in a Landcruiser, across the mountains taking five hours to reach the next village, hoping to catch the MAF plane going to the village of Zembregie near the Ok Tedi mine. The following morning while waiting for the plane we noticed two men from the previous village Kagua, walking towards us. To our great surprise one of the men was the young man who had had cerebral malaria. He and his friend had in the day after having hands laid on him, walked 25 km to find us to give glory to God for his miraculous healing.

Ian’s testimony shows that:

1. God cannot be put in a box – He can do anything He wishes in whatever way He chooses.
2. God told us to lay hands on the sick and they would recover – and that was exactly what had happened. However, be careful, because God has many different ways to heal people and on different levels, so no infallible recipe systems exist.
3. God wants us to be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit whenever we are with another person.
4. God is not formulaic in how He deals with people, He made us different individuals and likes to deal with us individually.

Ivan Comments:

Ian confirms that he has not again used ‘laying on of hands’, without praying aloud, as a healing technique. Techniques don’t work, listening obediently to God is what works.

Rudolphs and a “No Faith” miracle in Salisbury, Rhodesia.

Brenda and I were new Christians in the 1970s in a church where wonderful miracles were happening such that some were reported in the local secular newspaper.

 On chatting with other Christians, we discovered there were different schools of thought regarding the role of faith in miracle healings. I sought answers for myself. My journey towards deeper understanding began when a friend, Ruth, asked her friend Sue (name changed) to come to the church for healing.

Sue was a shorthand typist who was losing the ability to use her right hand and suffered continual pain because of a car accident during which her neck had been broken. A divorcee short on funds, earning her own living in Africa was essential because little financial support existed there for those unable to support themselves, but despite her neck having been fused, her degenerating condition threatened her livelihood. Her fingers were starting to gnarl up. The medical profession had told her there was nothing further they could do to prevent this.

That Sunday night we met Sue for the first time just before going into church. She was hesitant about coming in. “I have no faith,” she explained.

“Come in anyway. Your faith is not essential;” I told her, thinking of the beggar in the Bible who had been begging for money and had been healed instead such that his faith had not been an obvious factor in the healing. Then, to give her some hope that a healing might be possible, I continued, “Ruth has told you I am investigating some of the miracles happening here, hasn’t she? If you are healed, would you be prepared to get your doctor to verify the healing?”

“Yes, I would. I have a pile of x-rays on top of my wardrobe you could see.”

After some further chat, she reluctantly agreed to come in.

At the conclusion of the sermon, Pastor Bill invited anyone who wanted prayer to come down to the front. Sue did, and was prayed for. She returned to her seat next to me.

As the service was being wound up, I noticed she was moving her head from side to side. For a moment I wondered whether she was looking sideways at my rather straggly beard – was some errant food stuck in it? Then it struck me. Her neck had been surgically fused; she had not been able to move her neck from side to side at all, but was now doing so!

Once outside, Sue confirmed that her neck had been totally healed – she could now move it freely and all associated pain was gone!

I gave her a couple of weeks to recover from the shock, then phoned Sue and asked if I could come and see her. There was a long silence before she said she supposed so and gave me the address of her flat in town.

Sue was hesitant when talking to me about the miracle.

“You were looking down the barrel, weren’t you?” I challenged her. “This miracle has set you free from pain and you can continue earning a living as a shorthand typist now, can’t you?”

She hesitated before answering: “I know I have had a miracle, but I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet, anyway. And I don’t want to go to see my doctor again, not yet. If I do and he gives me another x-ray, I’ll let you look at it. I’ll phone you.”

I knew she wouldn’t and she never phoned me. I asked Ruth months later how her friend was doing, and Ruth confirmed that Sue’s neck and hands were fine but that she still did not want to talk about the miracle.

            This testimony shows that:

1. God healed Sue despite her absence of faith. The faith of the person prayed for is not in itself an ‘Open Sesame’ to healing, God considers many other factors, I have known God heal unbelieving people at a distance in cases they have not known they were being prayed for, so their own faith could not have been a factor.
2. God loved Sue enough to heal her despite knowing she rejected Him. God will have known she would continue to do so afterwards. I only hope she ultimately turned to the God who had shown her His love for her.
3. God’s healings are unpredictable such that you cannot manipulate God into doing what you want using “faith”. His healings are not formulaic – you cannot put your faith into a slot-machine God who will spit out a miracle healing, He is far too personal for that, and His ‘Main Aim’ would be ruined if we could manipulate Him like that.
4. God has a ‘Main Aim’ for humanity. Reading down the purple text in this column from the top should help this to become clear.

Raelene Wearne (nee Wilson) on Sunshine Coast, Australia

(Ivan comments – Raelene is an extraordinary and empathetic Christian whose ministry has included establishing a successful orphanage in Thailand some 11 years ago. Here is an email she dashed off to me that includes three different methods of helping and healing that God has employed recently in her life and experiences.)

I have included 3 latest testimonies that are close to my heart. 

My daughter-in-law (only 36 years) was diagnosed with cancer in January 2022. She was immediately rushed to hospital. They found a large tumour 11x12cm wrapped around her heart and lung. They gave her days to live as it was fast growing and ready to cut off her blood supply to the heart. She also had secondary tumours in her liver, stomach and neck.

We all began to pray for her. She survived the weekend, and then the next week.

After further tests they decided to start immediate chemo. She underwent the harshest chemo for the longest period of time. At the term of findings they discovered it was still 2x3cm and still very active with cancer!

We continued to pray. The family started coming to church. They started to believe for a miracle.

She then underwent radiation on the specific area of the heart and lung. It was a very delicate radiation because of where it was placed. They did not do any radiation on the secondary ones as this one was the main concern. She then had to wait 3 months for the results as any testing would not be accurate with the burning and inflammation. The doctors did not give her much hope. They offered her trial testings. She went back in December to get a result as to what they would do next.

Miraculously, the tests came back all clear including the secondary ones. There was no cancer anywhere in her body. She was completely free and completely healed.

We all know this was a miracle. We thanked God with tears and with much joy. Her now 4 & 6-year-old sons have a mum to raise them!

I (Raelene) was diagnosed with ‘endometrial hyperplasia’ in April 2022. I was also obese and had pre-diabetes.

My first thought was I needed to repent for being so overweight. I was not looking after my body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. What I was putting in my body did not glorify God. The fatty foods, the sugary treats and the excessive junk food was doing damage to my body. So, I repented. I had to submit myself to God for obedience and repent of pride. He is the master of our lives and not we ourselves. 

The second thing was I had to let go of all negativity. “I can’t do this. This is too hard. I’ve tried to lose weight before & I can’t.” Once those words and wrong beliefs left me I knew I was set in motion to only succeed in Christ.

So, I dealt with the spiritual side, the mental side with my thought process and now I needed to do something more.

The third thing was I had to do something in the natural.

I then visited a dietician who helped me set goals and what to eat with what. It was a life style change and not a diet that I needed.

Within 6 months I had lost 26 kilos and by the end of the year I had lost 30 kilos & still losing.

The doctors gave me a full recovery from diabetes. No more high levels of sugar. The hyperplasia was completely gone also and no more awkward uterus problems. This is also a miracle as these conditions “just doesn’t go away”!

When we submit to God and obey Him, it is amazing what God can do. He is a miracle-working God. Amen! He is full of love, forgiveness and restoration for us.

A relative of mine was recently tormented and tried to commit suicide. In doing so he had severely damaged his pancreas, liver and heart. They didn’t expect him to make it. He had also suffered a stroke previously. Everyone prayed. He was a Christian but had some other things mixed in with Jesus. He prayed and repented to Jesus. Within a week his levels had begun to come down. By two weeks he was released from hospital free and healed. Praise God, who is our great physician and heals even when we wrongfully do stupid stuff and make wrong choices.

I have many more to share but that will do for today. I will write more as I have time.

Thank you as we praise God together for all the great things He has done and will also do.

Raelene’s testimonies illustrate that:

1. God can and does help and heal those who diligently seek Him.
2. God has principles rather than methods in place that He wants followed to access His help and to facilitate healings.
3. God is full of love, forgiveness and restoration for us.
4. God is our great physician and heals even when we wrongfully do stupid stuff and make wrong choices.
5. God can be more interested in our character than in our healing, and may deal with us on a “I will if you will” basis.
6. God loves restoring us, but his order or importance is often the opposite to ours. He is more concerned with our spiritual healing, then our emotional, psychological, social etc healing, and then least of all our physical healing. After all, He has made it such that our bodies will degrade and die before we pass on into the exciting afterlife. We, in our lack of understanding, often reverse God’s order of importance – putting the physical first.

Gill in Australia about prayer in Malawi, Africa.

A premature baby in Malawi wasn’t feeding from her mother. In fact, she was so tiny I thought she was a new-born, but she was 3 months old! 

The Malawian Pastors and myself gathered around outside Manyowe Baptist Church. Mum and baby sat in the middle of our circle.

We prayed, thanking God for saving this baby girl, and that she would grow strong. We prayed, believing she was already feeding. 

This precious baby girl then started to feed from her mother’s breast. Our prayer had been answered instantly. It was a beautiful sound to hear her sucking for the first time! 

What Gill’s testimony reveals about God:

1. God loves babies and can respond to prayer when a baby is in a desperate situation.
2. God likes the impassioned prayers in faith from a group of believers.
3. God likes prayer to carry a visualisation about the future of the one prayed for.
4. God can heal instantly.

John Napier in Perth, Scotland – Neck Testimony

My neck problem originated as a result of a car crash in Zambia in July 1974. I was one in group with a licence to shoot a hippo and we went out hunting.  

Apparently, the car flipped after hitting a tree trunk in the middle of a dirt road. I exited from the vehicle and landed on my head.

Fortunately, there was additional transport. The Landcruiser that should have transported a dead hippo, instead took me to hospital.

I remember nothing of the crash apart from regaining consciousness lying in the back of the Landcruiser and the words coming into my head, like a voice speaking, “you are not going to die”.

I arrived in hospital with half my scalp hanging off, connected to my skull by a 1 cm strip, with 2 cracked ribs and extensive bruising.

Two days later, I was out of the hospital bed as soon as possible and did as much walking as I could manage, being determined to get properly fit and released from sickbay.

I affected a good recovery but the most obvious lasting effect was pain across my neck and shoulders when I was doing something like peeling potatoes. This pain subsided when my arms were in a rest situation and I slept with my one arm trailing out of the bed to the floor. However, I had ongoing pain in the back of my neck. Until today, I am aware that my head is connected to my spine!!

In July 2007 in Queensland, while visiting my friends and fellow believers Ivan and Brenda Rudolph. I attended a meeting held by John Mellor, an Australian with a gift of healing. who has now sadly passed away. I asked John for prayer for healing and my experience was a substantial reduction in the pain I normally experienced, but not complete healing. Good things included more comfortable sleeping without needing to trail my arm outside the bed onto the floor, and a return to camping and some youth work.

Why was my healing only partial? I don’t know, but I do know that it serves as an ongoing reminder that certain practices, hippo shooting and following my own path, are usually had ideas. Also, the residual pain serves as a reminder to look very carefully at road junctions!

Ivan Comments – those who read my newsletters know that I deal in them progressively with the issue of partial healing rather than total healing, alongside other apparently confusing questions. It all comes down to why we are on earth in the first place. 

John’s testimony illustrates that:

1. God may comfort us during very threatening circumstances, that we are nevertheless going to survive.
2. God is with us helping us even during painful recovery processes.
3. God deals with us as individuals and not as job lots – one may be healed totally while another only partially. There are always underlying purposes for how God works in our individual lives.
4. God’s love is always with us even during pain and difficulty.

Emory Alvord in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)

Greg Alvord, Emory’s grandson, sent me this truncated account of Emory’s miracle. The account was provided to Greg by his cousin Peter Burgess and was published in full on ‘The Last of the Rhodesians’ page on Facebook 8^th December 2022.

Emory Alvord OBE was the popular Director of Native Agriculture and was known as ‘Africa’s first agricultural missionary’, when a horrendous fall and resulting spinal injury on 8^th November, 1947 left him in a cast in hospital with no hope, medically speaking, of ever walking again. “Nonsense”, said Emory and arranged for his powerful son Roy and another big man to support him daily while trying to walk up and down the hospital ward, but they made no progress. Repeat examinations and x-rays confirmed Emory’s prognosis as hopeless regarding ever walking again and that his overall condition was degenerating. A lifetime in a wheel chair was his best hope. Quoting now from the original article: ‘Meanwhile, word came in that Africans all over the country were praying for his recovery.’

 On Thursday evening he decided he ought to try praying for himself. Could he afford to be confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life? He thought of the big job yet to be done. There was no-one else in the department who could take over his duties, and it would be at least a year before a good man could get hold of all the particulars of the work. So, Thursday evening, he decided to pray and leave the matter entirely in the hands of God.

Immediately after praying he fell soundly asleep; it was the first sound sleep he had had since the accident. He woke up about 3 o’clock in the morning. He still felt considerable pain, so prayed again then dropped off to sleep and did not wake until almost 8 o’clock, when he found his breakfast cold on the bedside table. He rolled over, ate the cold food with relish, then dropped off to sleep once more, not waking until after 11 a.m.

As he lay there thinking, and thanking God for the restful sleep, suddenly everything went quiet and peaceful. He thought it must have been raining and had now stopped. But the man in the next bed said, “No, the sun’s been shining all the time’. Then it dawned on him that all the pain was gone. He twisted inside of the cast and could not feel soreness or pain – he never felt them again. This was Friday, the 28th, just twenty days after the accident.

On Saturday morning he got out of bed unassisted and stood beside the bed. That afternoon he walked up and down the big ward between the two men, but carried all his weight upon his own feet. However, he could not balance to stand alone.

On Monday morning he got out of bed and practised balancing, on Tuesday he walked with crutches, on Wednesday he walked with two sticks and on Thursday with just one stick.

On the Sunday he walked out of the hospital unassisted and drove the car home himself, accompanied by his wife. This was just twenty-nine days after the accident.

The doctor pronounced it a miracle.

But an African demonstrator in Southern Mashonaland said “He had to get well for Africans all over Rhodesia were praying for him”.

(Copyright Unknown/Public Domain.)

Emory’s miracle testimony illustrates that:

 1. God hears the prayers of others, but He also wants us to pray for ourselves – thereby appreciating in a more personal way             His responses.

2. God can bring miracle healing even for extreme spinal conditions.

3. God wants us to work with Him in our lives. For example, the miracle was not complete when Emory prayed, but became so as he worked together with God to restore his body.

4. God hears prayer and on occasion responds with the miraculous. (However, God’s responses to prayer depend on a number of important factors and physical healing is just one of these.)

5. God responds to corporate prayer as well as to the prayer of individuals. Emory was teaching the African farmers how to farm more effectively, and enabled many to enter the cash economy. Their sincere prayers for him will have been heard by the Lord.