The Reality of Healing Prayer

Our friend Thomas shares an incredible story of physical healing… right before his eyes! 

So, I’m gonna be completely honest, and say that I absolutely did not ever expect what happened to me yesterday to ever happen to me in my life! Never, ever! But the funny thing is, now that it happened, all I can think is that this kinda stuff needs to happen to me all the time, and in other people’s lives too! Pretty funny, huh? But before I even tell you what happened let me give you some background information.

Back in 2005, I got into one heck of a car accident. In the middle of a left turn, I was hit by oncoming traffic that ran the red light. My car literally exploded, and flew several feet back from the impact. I blacked out, and when I finally came through I remembered smelling battery acid and burning electrical wires.

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Everything was fuzzy from some sort of weird dust material, and I just felt really disorientated. My aching chest told me that I should probably check the rest of my body to see if everything was *ahem* in place. All good there, but my body was covered with a lot of blood. The ambulance eventually came, took me to the hospital, and the doctors fixed me up nice and good. I took a few X-Rays, and the doc told me I had a hairline fracture in my right hand, and that the knuckle on my ring finger was pushed in. My spine was crooked, and I had back spasms. Plus, there were deep lacerations on my knees, and hand. For the moment I’d be alright after things healed up, but in the future my right hand would experience arthritis. This made me sad. I love playing the piano, and the thought that one day I couldn’t play, because of pain in my hand was disheartening. 

So fast forward to this past weekend…

Saturday, before GBS Family Time I decided that I’d get in a good workout to start my day. I called up a buddy of mine to play some ball. Had a decent work out, but after we finished my knuckle started to hurt real bad. I was kinda freaking out, because there was no impact on my hand during the game at all. I didn’t really think much of it, and figured that it’d probably go away later during the day. Turns out I was wrong. That night playing the keys hurt pretty bad. I still had some mobility, but it definitely was not to my usual standards. I figured that I’d just sleep on it, and hope that it’ll get better the next day.

Sunday morning, I woke up to some crazy throbbing pain in my entire right hand. My fingers were numb, and my hand was cold. Things definitely weren’t feeling too great. I shook some blood back into my hand, and hoped that once I took a hot shower, things would feel better. Wrong again. Geeze. So I’m testing my hand’s mobility in the shower, and I absolutely cannot form a fist. I wasn’t feeling too happy about it, but at the same time what could I do? I dressed up, and made my way towards LA for lunch with a friend. At lunch, I showed her my hand, and showed her the stupid knuckle that was causing me all sorts of pain and grief. There it was all sunken in, mocking me, and ticking away like the arthritic time bomb it was. 

So the day progressed, and eventually I made my way to GBS Chinatown. As soon as I saw some familiar faces I knew immediately what was coming, but failed to avoid it. Mr. Andy Han grabs my right hand in his manly gorilla grip, and I cringe in pain asking him to let go. The look on his face was of shock and remorse as he asked if I was okay. I explained to him about the knuckle, and the car accident, and all that, and expected that after my explanation we’d all go on with whatever GBS Chinatown does. It was my first time going. But, Andy asks if he could pray for my hand. 

Yes! Of course you can pray for it! It’s hurting!

I didn’t say that, but I was thinking that. You guys get the idea. So Andy gently grabs my hand, as if he were about to propose to me or something, and starts praying the calmest healing prayer I’ve heard. I was kinda glad that it was like this, because honestly while we were praying in the middle of this cafe I was really telling myself to keep it cool and not feel too embarrassed by the people checking us out. I was really thankful that he wasn’t yelling or screaming for healing as most Christian folk do when they pray for healing. Definitely not bashing on passionate prayers, but for my sake at the cafe I was just happy Andy didn’t. But in all seriousness, in the short time, and I mean short as in like a 2 or 3 minute prayer, I started to feel something near my knuckle area. It wasn’t anything crazy, but I just knew something was there. Like a gentle whisper of a presence or something, I have no idea, but something was there on my knuckle. I just… I just knew! 

Now I really want to map out what I felt here as accurately as I can, because I feel like so many of us think we have to feel fire, or bones cracking, or some dramatical thing that would indicate us being healed. Sometimes some people do, but I’m gonna tell you right now that I did not feel ANY of those things at all. As I felt this subtle presence, I knew something was happening and immediately told Andy to keep praying, because I felt like I was getting healed. Andy prayed another short prayer, probably even shorter than the previous prayer, and his voice got a little louder. At this point though, I didn’t care how loud Andy was, because I knew I was gonna get healed. I just kept moving my fingers back and forth into a fist then to an open palm, and each time I was doing that the pain started to get less and less. It was crazy!!!!! I just kept saying “It’s working, it’s working!” and Andy just kept praying. After he finished praying for the third time, I brought up my hand, closed my fist, and looked to see that my knuckle had popped back out. After 6 years of this stupid knuckle being all deformed it finally pops out, and I just cannot help but to smile the hugest and goofiest smile ever! I literally stared at that knuckle with the biggest googlie eyes ever too, because, as weird as this may sound, my knuckle looked beautiful! I touched it, poked it, stroked it and just kept smiling. I didn’t feel anything pop out, I didn’t feel bones realign, I didn’t even feel heat or anything! I felt nothing! I just felt pain leaving, and then there was the knuckle. I seriously was like, what the f*&k! The only thing I felt was the initial whisper of a feeling when Andy first prayed for me. That’s it. There’s still some pain left near my knuckle though, but definitely nowhere near what I was feeling before. I can close my hand and form a first, and, plus, I now have my knuckle. I showed Christina Chou, whom I had lunch with earlier and whom I had showed my hand prior to the healing, and she had a priceless face plastered on her too. My hand looked different.

There’s so much that I can take from this experience, and so many lessons that I can share through this one experience, but I’m going to refrain from doing that. Partially because I’m tired of typing stuff, but also because I feel like God wants to explain this to you in your own unique way of understanding. There is only one thing I will say. Jesus loves us so damn much to not let us stay in pain, whether that be physical, emotional, or spiritual pain. He took all of the bad stuff on that cross for us so we don’t have to carry those things anymore. Part of being healed is believing that Jesus did this for us. Love you all. God is good. Gonna go and check out my knuckle.