“I can write! Look! After 10 years, I can write without pain, and look, I can make a fist, and it doesn’t hurt!” William Windess, aged 20, had just been healed at City Church, Canterbury, where I’d preached on “Five reasons why we should expect God to heal.”
“I was born with cerebral palsy,” he said, “and one of the effects was a problem with my legs.
“Then, when I was 10 years old, my brother punched me, and I had to have brain surgery. They opened up my skull.”
William at this point parted his hair to show me the scars of the brain surgery. He continued:
“Ever since the brain surgery, I’ve had a problem with my right arm, and it was a similar problem to the one in my legs. It felt like cerebral palsy in my arm. It meant that I could not hold a pen and write with my right hand without real pain. And I could not grip anything with my right hand without pain.”
William immediately tested whether he’d been healed by sitting down and starting to write. I came over to where he was sitting, and he had already written four lines without any pain at all.
He jumped up and immediately told the 9.15am congregation that he’d been healed. “This is a big deal for me,” William said afterwards, “because firstly I’ve had this problem for 10 years, and secondly because I’ve always wanted to do art and become a teacher, and I thought to myself that this problem would stop me becoming a teacher, because who’s ever heard of a teacher who can’t pick up a pen and write?”
For the sake of accuracy and integrity, I was keen to find out whether William’s healing had stood the test of time. I have now received the following report from City Church, Canterbury, who’d followed up with William to find out how he was doing one month after my visit. The Church administrator wrote . . .
“Before where William could only write 1-2 sentences he can now write a whole paragraph. Will has also suffered with a very mild form of cerebral palsy since a baby. An effect of this was that the tendons in his achilles were too tight so would always walk on his toes. Since that Sunday he can now walk completely flat on his feet with no pain at all….!