No place for doubt.

My (Lindsay) favorite story to tell about our outreach experience on St. Lawrence Island is about a healing that was totally by God. It happened the during the second week in Savoonga, where the kids would come over all the time. During certain ministries we couldn’t allow the children to be around because they were so distracting. This happened during one of those, "no kids allowed" ministries.

We were all meeting with the teens/young adults when I heard noise coming from the arctic entryway. I quietly went to investigate, and found Henry hiding in the corner. I could see he wasn’t there to cause trouble, and I could also see there was something wrong. It turns out he had been climbing on the rooftop of a shed and fell off. His wrist was clearly hurting him badly. I felt God prompting me to pray for his healing, so I asked him if I could pray for him. He looked at me doubtingly and said, "I don’t know." I told him some stories of how I had seen Jesus heal different people and then asked him if he believed Jesus could heal him. He looked at me with a curiosity in his eyes. "I guess so," was his response. I asked him again if I could pray for Jesus to heal his arm, and this time he said yes.

At this point, I felt like I was in over my head. I had built this kid up to believe Jesus was going to heal him. My fear of ‘what if nothing happens’ loomed in my mind. I just surrendered to God and started my prayer out with something like, "Lord, we need you." Then I sat there is silence a few seconds searching for the words to pray for a healing. The silence was interrupted by Henry’s excitement. "My arm doesn’t hurt no more!!!" My first response was, "Quit joking around and let me pray for you."

It was no joke. Henry’s arm was healed! He waved it around to cure my doubting mind. God healed his arm, not because of a fancy prayer I said, but simply because God wanted to comfort his hurting child. Henry ran off excited as I sat there in amazement. God is so cool!