Praying in the Spirit

This story is one that still boggles my mind, because I know it is accurate but I never imagined how powerful prayers truly are until I learned how my prayer was an actual experience for the one I was praying for healing.

I was watching a video from a church service of a man giving a testimony about being healed of a back injury, so I called my husband in to watch it with me, because he also was suffering from a back injury.

As the man spoke, my husband said, “Oh, I know that guy.” I quickly let him know that he was wrong and that the man was from California and there was no way he could know him. (Wives always know everything right)

My husband asked if his name was Mike. I didn’t know, but I checked, and he was correct. He said the man was in his office a week earlier to discuss a project with one of our neighbors who also was our real estate agent at that time. Anyway, a few hours later my husband tells me that he just spoke with our real estate agent, and he told him about me watching the video of his friend. That was when he let him know that Mike had just had a serious heart attack that evening and was in the hospital. I had never met Mike, but around 4:30am, I was up praying. I emailed a woman and asked her to pray with me for the man, because she was the lady that I got the video from that had his testimony. She emailed me right back, and I was shocked to see her email pop up at 4:44am, so I sent her a response and asked why she was up at that hour. She replied, “probably because of all the stuff you are praying!” Lol. I thought it was funny, but never realized that she was actually serious.

I was a fairly new believer at that time, and the only thing that I knew for sure about God was that He always answered my prayers, so I prayed for everything. I am not even joking about that. Everything that I could think of I prayed about and everyone that I saw or place where I went, I prayed for it all! I was a bit extreme, but my extreme praying brought about some awesome changes later.

So it was about two years later, and I am sitting with the man that I had prayed for from the video, because I later met him and we got to be good friends. He was telling me a story about how he met Jesus and was given a chance to go to heaven or stay, because Jesus told him he was finished with what he was supposed to do, but he could return if he wanted. So Mike said that he thought he should stay a bit longer since his daughter was about to finish college. At that time, Jesus let him know that the woman that was with him would help him, because she was with Jesus to assist Mike coming back. It was crazy, but Mike was in the middle of a cardiac arrest and the hospital workers were in his room trying to bring him back, and he saw Jesus walk in the room and that was when Mike was able to choose to stay or go. Jesus, pointed to the woman and said, “she is with us and she is going to help you now.”

At this time, Mike was staring intently at me as he was trying to recall the details of the woman. He stopped speaking and said, “She looked exactly like you!” I laughed and thought he was joking, but he went on to say how she walked to him and kissed his mouth and then touched his heart with her finger. He said that he immediately set straight up in his hospital bed and the workers were stunned by his abrupt awakening. Mike was really baffled as he was finishing the story and he looked at me again and said, I am serious that the lady could have been your twin that was there in that hospital that day with Jesus. As he said that, I had a flashback of me praying for him before I ever met him, so I asked if he by chance knew what time all of that happened. He said, “I will never forget, because when I set up in the bed, the first thing that I saw was the red numbers on the wall in front of me that displayed 4:44am.”

I said, “Oh my God! I was praying for you at that exact time!” He didn’t realize that I was praying for him since I had not even met him then, so I told him the story and how I also could never forget the time because of the email that came through from my friend who was also awake praying at 4:44am.

Here is the really crazy part of this story, my friend, Mike died about a week after he shared that story with me. There was no cause of death. He just fell straight forward while on a walk and was gone. He was the only person that I was able to share stories with about my encounter with God, and I was crushed by his death, but incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have known him in that short time. I truly didn’t know much about him until his funeral service and that was when I learned that he had been a theology teacher and coach at a well known catholic university before starting his own company that provided food for countries in war torn nations. He also was given the same blueprints that I received from God about a village for kids to be healed from severe traumas. We weren’t the only ones that had the vision. Several people in our group were all given the same designs. That is another story for later.

The point to this story is to pray and know that you could literally be responsible for another living or dying because of your willingness to pray for others!