I could hardly hear her answer over the pounding of my heart. My face was hot, my mouth was dry, and my stomach was swirling. “Sorry, did you say it’s okay if I pray for you?”
“Yeah girly, sure,” she said.
That’s what I thought. Unfathomably, my heart rate increased. This was the moment I’d been thinking about since I came to ministry school—actually praying for someone to be healed.
That fall day started like most Saturdays as I begrudgingly got up and drove to church before our weekly outreach. I didn’t want to be there. In fact, when I heard about the service requirement at our ministry school the one thing I didn’t want to do was bring meals to the homeless community. This was a supernatural school and I was tired of ministry life that looked, well, natural. Besides, I’d volunteered for several similar ministries in college and always left feeling disappointed and disempowered from bringing lasting change. Hot meals were important, but what about healing, deliverance, and salvation? Instead, serving food and kitchen duty loomed over my foreseeable Saturdays.
Likewise, the first few weeks of ministry school hadn’t included much in the ways of signs, wonders, and miracles. Instead, the teaching centered around my identity in Christ. Day after day I was taught how I was no longer a slave; no longer a sinner; no longer the things my “churchianity” told me. Instead I was beginning to believe that I was a daughter of God, a saint, and a new creation. Because of this new identity as son instead of soldier, I was empowered to see heaven come to earth. Heaven was no longer only accessible through death. I was learning heaven was just a prayer, an act of faith, or one bold step away from showing up wherever I went.
Consequently, when a woman I knew and saw almost weekly, came up to me and told me she didn’t want a meal because her tooth hurt so bad she couldn’t eat, I knew this was my moment to step out in faith and pray for her.
“Okay,” I responded to her, buying myself enough time to take a deep breath. “Can I put my hand on your cheek?” I asked, following the steps I’d recently learned.
“Sure.”
I reached my hand out and gently touched her cheek. There was no turning back now. “All pain go, in Jesus’ name. Tooth, be healed,” I prayed quickly, removing my hand.
“Thanks.”
“How’s your tooth feel?” I asked, with very little expectation.
“It’s good, thanks girly,” she said.
“Wait,” I said, trying to wrap my mind around her words. “It doesn’t hurt?”
“Nope. It’s fine,” she answered.
“But it hurt before we prayed,” I clarified.
“Yes,” she said, obviously annoyed with my questions.
“And now it doesn’t?”
“Yes,” she said with an eye roll.
“But before we prayed—”
The woman turned and walked away and joined the food line leaving my question unanswered. I stood there stunned, waiting for my mind to catch up with what just happened.
The facts as I experienced them were:
This woman had a very bad toothache.
I prayed.
The toothache was gone.
It was so simple. It was so easy. It was even kind of boring. There were no angels, no lights from heaven, no audible voice of God, just pain that was there and now wasn’t. If my life was a movie this scene would have been cut.
In hindsight, praying for a homeless woman’s toothache was a very low-risk move. There was no one else there, no outside pressure, or expectation. And it was a toothache. It wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t an incurable disease. It wasn’t a broken bone, just a toothache. Even still, it felt crazy scary to me. I was in the middle of learning that God loves to show up when we step out in faith, that he wants to work miracles through all of us; not just Jesus, the disciples, or the missionary in dire straits on the field, but through me. In that low-risk, unobserved moment I learned that God shows up when I pray.
There are three other things I learned in that moment. First, I experientially learned that small things matter to God. We don’t tax him with our tooth-sized requests, robbing him from his ability to answer life and death sized prayers. A toothache matters to God—and certainly matters to the one who’s tooth hurts.
Second, I learned that this whole miracle-working, signs and wonders lifestyle is often less exciting than Hollywood led me to believe it would be. Typically, when I pray for people I don’t hear or see anything. There’s no rumbling voice or quiet whisper, no writing on the wall, or cued music. Instead, I trust that when Jesus said, “And these signs will accompany those who believe… they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well” (Mark 16:17-18, NIV), he meant me too.
Finally, I learned that in turning to him for the small things, I build the trust, courage, and faith necessary to wholeheartedly rely on him for the big things. Too often I’d attempted to move mountains when I’d never seen (or practiced) moving rocks and stones.
Faith is spelled R-I-S-K. To grow in faith, I must continually take greater risks. Praying for the woman’s toothache in the park felt risky to me that day. Today it wouldn’t, but it sure did then. I didn’t want to end with just seeing a toothache healed, but God knew it’s where I needed to start.
Likewise, start where you are. Ask him what a risk is for you today and for an opportunity to step out in faith. Then do it. Take the risk at hand and watch as God backs you up.
About Rebecca
Her love for Jesus is infectious. That is what drew me in to wanting to get to know her more. I wanted to know the Jesus she knew. I was taking a weekly class at Dare to Believe when I met her. She was helping facilitate each evening.
Her stories of how she has seen God move in healing and miracles are incredible and have pushed me to take greater risks with my faith, to step out and pray for people, and to expect God to move. She was one of the greatest influences in starting my website.
Rebecca is an author and speaker who travels all over the world teaching about Jesus and His love for us. Her book, “HOPE: A Practical Guide to Praying for Healing, is about her journey of understanding who God is and His love for her after He healed her of a life long illness. It is an amazing read! I highly recommend you read it.
To find out more about Rebecca, you can check out her website at www.rebeccaribnick.com.
She also co-hosts a podcast called Dare to Believe Podcast, which can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts.