“Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” Luke 24:31-32
It was resurrection day but these two disciples were sad and discouraged because they didn’t yet believe. It took an encounter, a revelation, for them to truly believe Jesus was alive and the Savior of the world.
A few years ago I was in Belize when I experienced this truth first hand in the life of a young mom. She asked for prayer at the end of the service and told me the problem was her right wrist. A bone had come out of joint and she was very limited in the use of her arm because there was a lot of pain if she twisted it to the left or right. I laid my hands on it and prayed a very short prayer releasing God’s healing presence in Jesus Name. I asked her to test it and when she did, she found she could move it back and forth more easily but said there was still some pain. I prayed another short prayer and tears began to flow down her cheeks.
“The pain is gone,” she said as she demonstrated full movement of her hands and wrist by twisting them to the right and left. We also prayed that the bone which was sticking up would go back down but nothing additional happened.
This woman (who gave me permission to share her story) works in the kitchen for the missionaries we were visiting so a few days later during breakfast I asked her to tell the story of what happened. She told me that after she became pregnant, a year earlier, the father of her baby was abusive and had twisted her arm in a way that the bone was moved out of joint but she never went to the doctor. She had just lived with the pain and restricted mobility.
The first time I prayed for her she said she felt pain go out of her fingertips. The second time we prayed she felt the rest of the pain leave and knew she was healed.
“The reason for the tears was that I always wanted to believe God was real. When my wrist was healed I knew it for sure.” She told me that when she woke up the next morning the bone was back in place as well and then showed me that both wrists now looked the same.
God encountered this precious young woman in a way that she would forever know it was Him. He is risen!