This is a report from Newday 2010
374 people healed, and 334 first-time commitments to Christ.
A massive “thank you” for praying for us in the build up to Newday 2010. I just wanted to say what an amazing time we had with more people being healed and more people becoming Christians than ever before!
Just under 7,000 people were there in the big top on the Saturday night, 14th August at the Norfolk Showground. Matt Redman led worship and then I came on stage with 4 people who had been healed at Newday 09. (We had 316 healings at Newday 09, and these are just 4 of the many stories we could have shared)
I’ll share these four stories in the coming days on The City, and then I’ll go on to describe the healings we saw on the night, and also the salvation response.
Here’s the story of the first person who came up on stage with me at Newday 2010 . . .
Jonathan from St Neot’s (near Bedford) had been diagnosed with a disease called Leishmaniasis, having been recently bitten by a sand fly in Honduras (Central America). The doctor has explained to him how potentially dangerous the bite could be, and he arrived at Newday 09 with the affected area on his arm under a bandage. The doctor had said he would monitor the infection to see if it would mutate into the most serious form of the disease.
“It had blistered up, and was ugly,” Jonathan said, “and I had it bandaged when I arrived at Newday 09.”
When I prayed for healing, Jonathan immediately took the bandage off. He threw the dressing to the floor, and as he did so, the bite (i.e. the lump on his arm/infected area of flesh,) also instantly came off and fell to the floor as well!
[Apologies for the slightly unpleasant level of detail, but it does illustrate how instant some “instant healings” can be]
Jonathan said: “The prayer was only about 10 seconds long. I didn’t feel extraordinary, I didn’t hot or cold or anything, but I did feel that something had been changed.
“So I took off my bandage and this entire thing, this lump, this blister, literally fell off. And underneath it, where it had been, there was this totally new skin.
“I went back to see the doctor who had diagnosed me with the condition. He said: ‘let’s see your bite.’
“So I said ‘there you go,’ holding out my arm.
“He said ‘well where’s the bite?’
“I said: ‘I got it prayed for and it fell off.’
“He replied: ‘I’ve never heard anything like that before. Let me check you out and check that you’re not fibbing to me.’
“So he checked it out and it was completely gone
“He checked it all out and he was completely stunned, it was brilliant.”
The doctor’s reaction, and the potentially serious implications of Leishmaniasis made this a very dramatic demonstration of what can happen when you take authority over disease. In some ways the most encouraging stories, are the healings from last year, because these healings have stood the test of time and the doctors or consultants who diagnosed them, get to see the results of prayer in Jesus name!
[Newday is an event aimed at teenagers, run by Newfrontiers, the family of churches that Christ Church is part of. About 100 people from Christ Church attended the event, mostly people in their 20s who served at the event in some capacity.]
More to follow . . .