Healing. Miraculous?

This weekend Mark Marx, founder of the ‘Healing on The Streets’ initiative came to our town. He did a service last night and spoke at church this morning. All I knew of him before was related to the ‘supernatural leg-lengthening’ that he regularly does on people who apparently have one leg shorter than the other. If you haven’t seen this try this clip:

Now I was totally skeptical about this. Totally. On so many levels. I struggled to believe that God could/would act supertnaturally like this. I thought this guy was probably a fraud. I thought that doing the same act on lots of people was a publicity stunt. I was sent this clip by someone a while back and pretty much dismissed it. So when I heard he was coming to our church I thought, right I need to see this.

My doubts I guess were 2 fold – is this guy for real? and can God heal like this in this day and age? (probably links back to my post about what prayer does). I guess in principal I had no problem believing that things like this can happen, through Gods power. but I think I needed to see something with my own eyes to get it completely. (will I ever get past being like Doubting Thomas…?)

So firstly I now know, yes, this guy is totally for real. His talks at both services were completely inspirational. Even if you take out of the equation the numerous examples of healing that he has seen, The ‘Healing on the Streets’ initiaitive, started just 3 years ago, is now in hundreds of town across the UK and Europe, and in many cases having seen some truly amazing results. Marx travels every weekend to towns and churches where they are running this initiative to preach and offer encouragement and training. I don’t believe that would be happening if he was a fraud. After all, it isnt really about him, he visits places running the scheme yes, but he is not at every session by any means and individuals have to then run this in their own towns without his back up. So although I have yet to see anything completely awesome with my own eyes, I believe in the power of healing through God.
Just as a quick example, he mentioned: a guy born with no irises, and therefore no vision, who after prayer had normal eyes and vision; a man with plates in his arm after an injury who suffered with constant pain and limited movement, healed completetely; numerous cancers totally healed and medically verified, including several where surgeons opened up the patient to operate to find the cancer gone, and being totally stunned… the list goes on…
On Saturday night he did do the leg lengthening thing. When he first said, ‘does anyone have one leg shorter than the other?’ I thought ‘oh no, why is he doing this? we don’t need to see this gimmick, there are loads of sick people here (and there were) why can’t you do something with one of them?’ Anyway to my amazement one of my friends said, yes they did have one leg shorter than the other by about an inch & a half. So instantly my first doubt that people were set up went out the window as this guy is totally on fire for God and would not have agreed to be party to any nonsense. Then my next doubt – ok well he must pull the leg or line them up, or whatever, was blown out of the water as I stood about 2 foot from what was going on and everyone was crowded round so there was no faking!
After some guidance we all prayed for people with a range of conditions, with limited but some success. Similar this morning at the service. One guy during the afternoon session yesterday on the streets, had walked with a zimmer frame for 30 years after falling down some stairs on a double decker bus. He could not walk without the frame and had been in constant pain for 30 years. After prayer he said the pain had gone and was able to walk down the street on the arm of one of the team, with his carers on tenterhooks thinking he would fall!
Now I recognise that this post is bound to bring up a number of comments and plenty will be negative (Hi Ron… ;) ) and I don’t blame you – I would have said the same a few weeks back – but for me, the thing that I have come away from this with, is the belief that God can and will heal. And why not? He is God… And indeed in the bible it says that we shall do greater things that Jesus. So if Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, then why can’t we in his name?:
I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. John 14:12
I’m not being naiive about this, I actually find it easier to believe that God can do this stuff, than not. No, I don’t understand why sometimes people are healed and sometimes not. Or why one man should seemingly have more of the ability to heal in Jesus name than any others. Or (still) why he uses the same example which seemingly works every time. Is this a God given example? (In fact if it wasn’t for the leg thing I would probably have total 100% belief in this guy, it’s just the repeating of it which makes it seem like a scam!).
Just for good measure here’s another clip of Healing on the Streets in Reading.(first bit is a bit of background, prob best to start at 2 mins in)

as always I eagerly await your comments…
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