Recovery from bad sickness due to intercession
Jill Underdown Operation Year in Derby (September 2000 until June 2001) Overseas outreach in Argentina.
Towards the end of the outreach we worked in a new YWAM base in a place called Corrientes. We spent a lot of time helping to build an extension and visiting local house churches. On one such evening visit, we had to walk for 45 minutes to get to the house and I couldn't take the humidity. My head was thumping and I just cried all the way there.
The service was fine, but I couldn't concentrate. I was just getting hotter and hotter. Once back home my friend, who had a First Aid Certificate came to check on me. She took my temperature again and it went off the scale!! (over 104 degrees F). My head was thumping, I was crying and screaming.
Then came the panic. My limbs began losing feeling. Firstly, my hands went numb and then I couldn't feel or move them at all. It spread up my arms, to my knees, my face and them most concerningly across my chest! I began struggling to breathe. Many times I almost told the people at my bedside to tell my Mum and brother that I love them. I was convinced that I was not going to make it. I prepared myself to move on to a higher place.
Outside in the communal area, my team were praying for me and at my bedside was the base leader's wife, who I had not met until this moment. She prayed with such authority in Spanish. She commanded that the devil has no hold over my life and then immediately my condition improved. I calmed down, could breathe and feel my limbs again. My fingers took a little longer to recover, but after one day's rest I was fully fit and doing practical work again!!
Now, in itself that is something amazing to Praise God for, but there's more. While my team were praying for me, one of the guys had Psalm 18 pop into his head. He didn't know what this said and didn't have a Bible to hand at the time, but looked it up later:
"The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhemed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to My God for help. From His temple He heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears...."
Not only that, but when I got back to England and told my story, many people then recalled having a burden to pray for me on that exact day. One lady, was kept awake in the middle of the night!
Guided to pray at Ayre's Rock
Jonathan Rumens, Oxford NZ DTS Outreach to Australian, October 2000
Our team of seven were planning to go some way inland through New South Wales from Sydney. When we got as far as Orange, four hours inland from Sydney, we decided we needed to fast for three days and pray for God's direction. After three days, some of us believed God was saying we are to go to Ayre's rock, a huge red rock in the centre of the continent. This is also the spiritual centre for the Native Aborigine tribes.
We were thinking, 'but that would take three days by vehicle to get there!' or 'what about the hot dry desert?' or 'what about water?' or 'what if we have a break down in the middle of nowhere? Furthermore our team couldn't afford to rent the van needed for the trip.
After the three days we drove up to the nearest hill and prayed and sought some more guidance about where to go next, if it be Ayer's Rock. After we finished praying, I was scratching the sand and before I knew it, I had cleared the small rocks and placed a rock all on it's own, which looked just like Ayre's Rock!
The rest of the team agreed. This seemed to confirm God's guidance to go to Ayre's Rock. The next day, every thing fell into place. Our team were offered half price for a rental van, and the people we stayed with packed them with all the food and water they needed for the next week with cooking equipment. They also had two 20 litre bottles of water given to them. The leader of our team checked the finances and praise God, there was enough money for the six day trip.
Our team went to Ayre's Rock after all, and they prayer walked all around it (it takes about an hour to walk around it - it is huge). What is also interesting is that the previous 1999 DTS in New Zealand got a picture of Ayre's Rock as they were praying. A student on the previous DTS who lives nearby later told me about it. That was a prophesy fulfilled a full year after it was spoken.
Three Marys
LaRaine W. -1996 Honolulu Discipleship Training School (DTS) Outreach to the Philippines
During a group intercession time, God impressed me that I would meet three Marys - One religious, one happy and one depressed. I prayed for God to draw them all to himself.
Two days later I was walking past two girls when one seemed to call out to me, "Mary Jane!" I remembered the prophecy and introduced myself to her. Another girl walked up, and she called her own name out for no reason it seemed: "Mary Joy!" Then a third girl came up and her name was called: "Mary Chen!" - I met three girls named Mary at once!
I stayed with them during our open-air and waved to them during my performance. After the preaching I got an interpreter and went to them. Mary Chen had gone home but I did not worry about it - God was in control. I prayed for the other two in English, and the interpreter prayed the sinners prayer with them.
Through the interpreter I told them, "God has special plans for you. Two days ago God told me I would meet 3 Marys this week. Our team has been praying for you." Mary Jane told me that her mom had died and she was living with Mary Joy.
God then prompted me to tell them that He had told me that One of them was happy, one depressed and religious. They were shocked and amazed! They were excited and kept covering their faces and turning around in circles. They said that Mary Joy was happy, Mary Jane was depressed, and Mary Chen was religious!
I talked to them about works vs. grace. I told Mary Jane that God understands how she feels and that He is always with her to help her; she only needs to call out to Him. I told Mary Joy that God wants to use her joy to draw others to Jesus. She covered her face and cried for joy! She began to laugh and laugh - I believe she was laughing in the spirit.
Mary Jane also had tears of joy in her eyes. I told the interpreter that the word I had about works vs. faith was for Mary Chen. The interpreter said she would probably see Mary Chen the next week. I gave the two Marys a bible and my address. I told them to read the book of John first.
God used me to touch those girls dramatically - I was so awed and humbled at His mercy on me! God has given me such grace! This was one of the most incredible experiences of my life!
Through prayer God provides a team a key contact person
Perth Discipleship Training School (DTS) outreach to Malaysia, 1996
Two girls on a DTS team were going out for street evangelism one afternoon and they prayed before setting out asking God where they should go and who they should talk to. God told them to go to a shopping complex, so they went to the ground floor of the shopping center they had seen as they prayed.
As they entered the shopping complex, a man named Alfred saw a cross around the neck of one of the girls and approached her and asked both of them if they were Christians. Alfred was a local Malay Christian who had been praying up on the 10th floor of that complex, and God had told him to go to the ground floor where he would meet some Christians.
Alfred turned out to be a key contact in the region and he was able to take the team to an island where illegal immigrants were allowed to live. No Christian group had ever been there before. The village was built on stilts over the water on the edge of the island. As the team walked through the village, they were able to pray and minister to the kids. They just laughed, talked and played with them and God touched many people's hearts that day.
We visited Mount Hermon school in Darjeeling and did several Christian programs with skits, songs and testimonies there. After one of he programs I was teaching several 12 year old boys how to hear the voice of Jesus (that is how to sense what God is saying to you during a time of prayer).
I explained the principles of intercession and then we practiced. (The "principles of intercession" are mainly to pray as a group and then to have a time of silence in which we waited to see if any of us sensed God showing us something, such as a Bible verse, words or pictures. Sometimes when people compare what they sense from God, the words, pictures and verses can fit together and show us something God wants us to know.) As we did this there were many other young boys that were not Christians but they were interested and they stood behind our circle and listened.
After praying and then waiting for a short time I asked if any of them sensed anything from God. One boy said, "Yes, I think I saw a picture of Jesus on the cross." Another said that he got the verse John 3:16, and another boy said that he saw a picture of God holding the world in His hands. Someone else saw a picture of a butterfly trapped and struggling in a spiders web. Someone else got the words, "I love you and I will help you."
I did not know what to do with all of this so I cried out to the Lord and asked quickly what all of this meant. Was it all connected or was everything just a bizarre mix?
I mentioned that these things probably all related to each other and as we reviewed each picture and verse, a boy that was standing outside the group started crying. He stepped forward and said that he was not a Christian but that he knew that he was the butterfly struggling in the spiders web. He said that he had a drinking problem and that he could not get free. He repented, and asked Jesus to help him. He told us that he felt a very heavy weight lift off of his shoulders and that he knew that Jesus had set him free.
God leads a team to a divine appoinment
Joe R. - Hong Kong Far East Evangelism Team (FEET) outreach in China, 1993
We had an intercession time one day and we sensed the Lord telling us to go to a certain place and to tell the people who we met that there is a God and he loves them. So we walked onto a campus of a university and a girl came down the sidewalk to talk to us. We told her that there was a God and that He loved her. She was very interested and had many questions. Her roommate (a communist party member) was with her. The roommate said that this was very interesting because Mary had been asking all day long, "Is there a God?" Mary very quickly became a Christian when she realized that the One True God sent people to answer her questions on the very day that she was asking them.
Prayer can even change governments
Joe R. - Far East Evangelism Team(FEET) outreach to China 1987
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On October 23, 1987, out FEET team was marching around the Great Hall of the People in Beijing asking God to change the government. We would go up to the doors but the police would run at us and tell us to leave. It turned out that there was a meeting of all the leaders of China in that building at that time.
We went back to our Hotel after a few hours and were tired and cold. We did not see anything happen in the physical realm but we sensed that the Lord did something in the spiritual realm! | 
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I was reading a newspaper in August of 1989 after the Tiananmen Square incident and I saw that there was a change in leadership. Zhou Ziyang was removed because he was so favorable to the students and the democracy movement. I was interested to note that he was placed in power on October 23, 1987 at a meeting of Chinese leaders at the great Hall of the people in Beijing - the same day we were praying around that building!
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