Healing in the Name of Jesus 

Or Church Greed, a Boat and an Open Plan Kitchen? 

By the Lord Jesus’ leading, back in the early 1980’s I bumped into someone who suggested that I should go to an address in Lintern Street Xville and meet some fine older brothers and sisters there who were running a home for people  to come and stay, who needed  the healing touch of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

The husband Amos had ministered for some years as a traditional church ‘minister’, the wife faithfully supporting him in the Lord.  So  not surprisingly they had little money, and had plunged such  ‘retirement’ funds as they had into the healing house ministry project. 

I had been alongside a pentecostal type of church for a couple or so years, that underneath appeared to believe that only pentecostals really knew any thing of the healing power of God, but I had long known that God is a lot bigger than that among His children. 

I was actually led by the Lord to be in Xville  for other things as well, and while staying with dear Christian friends, believed that the Lord Jesus encouraged me to go along to Lintern Street and meet the people running the healing home. 

An older couple, the husband had been in the ministry of God’s word for many years, before they sunk everything they had into getting the Lintern Street home going.  But they needed to freehold the property so that it would not be an ongoing drain on resources which were very thin anyway. 

Miraculously God had spoken to a couple up country to fund the free holding of the Lintern Street property for the interdenominational healing ministry.  They had been made aware that they were coming into money sufficient to do that. And believed strongly that God had told them to sort out the finances of the Lintern Street property. 

This had come as an answer to much prayer by the supporters of the Healing house.  Much thanks was offered to the Lord, as already people were being sent on from hospitals, often with otherwise  incurable conditions, and the home was becoming an important centre for prayer for such dear ones. 

Then the benefactor couple putting up the needed money  shared something totally unbelievable. 

Their pentecostal pastor had heard what was happening, and approached the couple—who were putting the money forward—on behalf of the Lord Jesus, and said to them that they were required to give him and his church a certain portion of the amount (which would have left the Lintern Street healing house a long way short), and as a sweetener¾hadn’t the wife always wanted a nice new kitchen, and the husband a new boat for years as well? 

His group could have the amount they wanted, the wife her kitchen and the husband the boat he’d always dreamed of.  And in essence who cared for this healing thing that was not part of their denomination (the true church?) any way? 

And so at the time that I met the dear brother and sister running the healing house, they had one week left before the property was to go on the market with the bank’s agreement, or face mortgage default. 

I had no money to help them, and prayed with them, but had no sense that God (in this case–as in many) had a plan ‘B’.  Truly they vacated the premises as letters were returned to me “gone no address” when I tried to keep in touch.