I had never met one! Not one.
After being a Christian for fully eight years, I had never personally met anyone who had experienced divine healing, whether that was physical, mental, or emotional healing sent from God and activated through prayer. In fact, I had never met anyone who had ever even prayed for another person to be made well with the expectation that God might bestow a supernatural gift of direct healing.
When I talked to friends about whether and “healed-through-healing-prayer” people really existed, neither my friends nor I were so sure. Many of my common-sense friends told me that such people probably didn’t exist.
I wasn’t so sure, either.
I wanted to meet someone, anyone, who had been healed or even had watched it happen, but those encounters eluded me. I lived “in the middle” between what I believed must be true and a complete lack of personal experience to that effect.
For eight years, I did not meet anyone who could testify to God’s miraculous healing. It was eight years, that is, until I wound up in the middle of a situation in which I myself was required to pray for someone. That one unexpected day turned out to be a game-changer, a paradigm-shifting moment that altered the course of the rest of my life.
At the time, I was a student in training for pastoral ministry. I believed the biblical accounts were true in every respect: Moses split the water and Jesus walked on it. I believed then (and believe now) that these were physical, historical events.
At the same time, a particular fellow (a brilliant, insightful, and scathing jokester) didn’t share these convictions; neither did most of our faculty members. So, when I said, “the Bible is true; those events happened,” the man would aim his scathing jester-bolt toward my verified location, and once firmly in his sights, would fire off a volley that made the class (and invariably even me) laugh until it hurt.
And.. it usually did. Hurt that is.
I was the object of his mockery.
In time, after too many of those moments, I just avoided him.
Then one day, I bumped into a mutual friend of this fellow and I – a kind, gentle lady I’ll call “Susie”. She told me that the man was in the hospital. After a moment of expressing the hope that he would get well soon, she told me that the fellow had something to ask of me:
He wanted me to come pray for his healing.
I was astonished, given the history. He had made fun of me just a few days before for embracing the very thing. In fact, not only was I flabbergasted, but I was more than a little afraid, and immediately put up my guard.
I retorted, “No! I’m not going. I don’t believe he wants me to pray at all.” I said vehemently, “He just wants to mock me again.”
Susie paused and considered what was said. After a moment, she agreed that he had been more than unkind. She promised to confront him about his behavior and find out whether the request was genuine, walking straight off to see him that very moment.
The next day, Susie bumped into me on our way to class. Susie shared that the man was truly sorry. He told her he felt badly about the way he had targeted me as an object of ridicule and was remorseful. The medical news had sobered him: he had a condition called phlebitis, and a blood clot was lodged in his vein; if it broke free, the usual result in 95% of the cases was just this: the mass would likely embed itself in this lung or brain. The result was always serious and usually fatal. It would kill him. He was young, in his mid-20s, and wanted me to pray his life would be spared.
My answer was a kneejerk response. It was immediate, thoughtless, selfish, and completely unkind. I flatly told Susie, “I’m not going.”
The usually mild-mannered Susie said my name out loud, stomped her foot on the ground with fire in her eyes, and vehemently inserted my middle initial as she raised her voice.
“DAVID R. CHOTKA!!”
I am sure my jaw dropped! Susie never talked that way to anyone! She nearly shouted the next part out loud!
“Do you believe that the Bible is the Word of God, or don’t you? Aren’t you telling everyone you meet that it is true and should be obeyed? How about this verse: ‘I was sick, and you visited me?’”
As soon as she said that a fell blow landed in the pit of my stomach. With a quiet interior moan, it became starkly, painfully clear that she was right – I would have to go, even if only out of sheer obedience to the Bible.
Later that day, as I entered the hospital room, it became plain the matter was more than serious. The space was packed with medical instruments, the man was hooked up to monitors, intravenous tubes, and wiring. After a quick greeting, it didn’t take long before I asked him a simple question.
“Why do you want me to pray with you, when all you’ve done up to this point is make fun of the very thing you are asking me to do, to pray for healing?”
His voice was filled with anguish. “I am so sorry I did that to you. Please forgive me! You need to know that you’re the only person I know who believes the Bible is completely true.” Desperately, he added, “I have phlebitis, and I could die. I don’t know anyone else who believes that God can heal. Won’t you please pray for me?”
The honest, heart-felt distress in the fellow’s voice moved me to my depths. Suddenly, my heart overflowed with a desire to honor the Lord and to bless this man. I found myself actually wanting to pray.
Yet I still had no idea how to begin. I did remember that Jesus placed his hands on people to ask God for their healing. With some hesitation, and after seeking his permission, I placed my hand on his left arm over the afflicted spot and began to ask God to have mercy on him.
To this very day, I don’t remember what I said.
I am sure it was a jumbled, halting prayer (I had never done anything like this before). Still, it was an honest prayer, asking God to remove the clot from his arm.
The change was tangible.
It was like fiery compassion filled the air we were breathing. The very room filled with what I would later learn to call “the Manifest Presence.” We were inhaling heaven’s mercy.
Then that fiery Presence filled my heart as my eyes brimmed over with hot tears of compassion. That burning fire coursed through my entire being and overflowed through my arm to enter his. He told me that his body filled with, “Presence… fiery, life-imparting Presence…”
What he didn’t know was that neither of us had ever experienced anything like that before. I was so overwhelmed I raced out of the room. I was terrified of two things: I was astonished at the Divine Presence flowing into and through me, and strangely, I was anxious that he would mock me again.
The very next day, late in the afternoon, he was out of the hospital room and back on campus. It was medically verified: the phlebitis had vanished, never to return (he sent a note confirming it years later).
Back on campus, he told me of the astonishing results. The hospital ran the diagnostics and to everyone’s great surprise, his veins were completely ordinary. Not only was there no phlebitis, but there was no scar tissue, no signs of any form of affliction at all. Then he looked over his shoulders in both directions before saying, “that prayer changed my life.”
What he didn’t know was that it changed my life too.
Excerpted from Healing Prayer: God’s Idea for Restoring Body, Mind, and Spirit © 2023 Maxie Dunnam & David Chotka. Used by permission of Whitaker House. May not be further reproduced. All rights reserved.
