Home From Houston — A Healing Weekend

Wow!! What a weekend in Houston. I left NC on Thursday afternoon and my flight landed in Houston around 5 PM. I drove the rental car directly from the airport to St. John The Divine Episcopal Church where Dr. Dennis Sempbewa led a worship service with lessons, healing prayer, and prophecy. Dennis was the reason I flew to Houston.

Dennis was in Houston with his team Lisa, Julie, and Tracy. All strong women of God, experienced in deliverance and healing prayer. That night was powerful.

Unfortunately, all the way over to Houston on the plane I was battling Atrial Fibrillation. It had been a real problem for the previous 4 months or so — I was in A Fib several times each day, often for several hours at a time. My experience told me that this heart condition had an underlying spiritual and emotional root. It didn’t bother me so much at St. John’s but later that night at Tom and Susan’s house, where I stayed for the weekend, it was pretty intense.

Friday morning, back in normal rhythm, I had a meeting with my friend Jane and a few people from the Prayer Institute in Houston. After that meeting ended I met another strong man of God, Seumean Kuon, for healing prayer. Seumean has an international healing ministry that addresses spiritual, emotional, and physical healing. He is based at Touch Family Church in Webster, Texas, south of Houston. After leading me through a series of questions designed to identify areas of my life that needed emotional healing and cleansing my heart of unforgiveness, shame, and hurt, he prayed against the A Fib. I don’t remember what he prayed, but I felt waves of electricity passing through my body. I sensed that the A Fib was gone. And it was for the rest of the weekend.

That night Dennis led another meeting at a private home. Many people were prayed and prophesied over. Toward the end of the evening Julie prayed for my heart and I felt that she sealed the healing that Seumean prayed for.

Saturday morning Dennis led another meeting at First Presbyterian Church in Houston. My friend Damon led worship. It was a powerful time in the presence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We all sensed the anointing that was in the room. Many people were moved by Dennis’ prophesies. Toward the end of the morning, Dennis prayed for one of the young moms in the church. Then he had her stand in front of the group, invited all to come forward for healing, and had this mom pray over everyone who wanted prayer. She prayed for my thyroid nodules to shrink. I fell on the floor! That was a first. Fortunately, JB caught me so I had a soft landing.

Saturday night we met at JB’s house. Dennis led yet another meeting. More emotional and spiritual healing. Powerful. You can’t leave a meeting like this and not feel that you have been in the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the very least, it was an intense time of worship.

I flew back to NC after speaking for a few minutes at Joey’s church on Sunday morning. Dennis preached there but I had to head out to the airport. I arrived back in NC around 8:00 PM, A Fib free for the last three days.

No A Fib on Sunday night, Monday, and Tuesday day. This was the longest duration I had been A Fib free in the last several months. It came back Tuesday early evening. By chance (?) I was looking through an old notebook and found notes I made at a healing conference in 2013 in Houston led by William Lau, founder of a healing ministry called The Elijah Challenge (check them out on the internet). The notes reminded my of the importance of commanding spirits of infirmity to leave, which I felt were the cause of my A Fib.

I placed my hand on my heart and firmly commanded the spirits of infirmity to ‘go’. As I did I felt some diminishment of the A Fib but not a total cessation. After a few more times of this, the A Fib was barely noticeable, but still there (unlike many others who have A Fib I can tell immediately when my heart is beating irregularly).

I went to bed still mildly in A Fib, but as soon as I laid down, it returned strongly. I rebuked it one more time, it diminished but did not completely disappear. Laying on my back with the lights out I literally cried out the prayer of Bartimaeus “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” A few seconds later I had the strangest sensation — I sensed Jesus sitting in a chair next to my bed, his hand on my chest over my heart, speaking words of comfort saying “I will heal your heart; I will sit next to your side all night long.” With those words, the A Fib began to really settle down as I relaxed.

A few minutes later Judy reached over, put her hand on my chest over my heart, and began a prayer for healing with the words “Father God, heal John’s heart”. It was a softly spoken prayer, delivered almost timidly, but the words were powerful. When she removed her hand from my chest my heart was in normal rhythm and has remained this way for the last two days.

Each of these forms of healing prayer: Seumean’s emotional and physical healing, Julie’s prayer, The Elijah Challenge prayers, and Judy’s prayer for healing contributed to the restoration of my normal heart rhythm. It was a full-on battle against a determined spiritual foe. The culmination came when Jesus sat next to me and put his hand on my chest.

I know in my spirit that Seumean’s prayer essentially healed me. Why did the A Fib return when I got back to NC? I am not sure, except that there is an entirely different set of powers and principalities here than in Houston. Maybe there are still some emotional wounds in my heart that need healing. (I know about healing ministries that do not believe in the connection between wounds and trauma, and physical and emotional healing. All I can say is that I don’t believe there is only one way to heal. Seumean and Joey — who uses a similar healing method — are now training psychologists and therapists because these two men are achieving miraculous healings that the professionals were not able to accomplish).

I know this sounds crazy to some of you. Most of us do not associate physical illnesses or conditions with demonic attack. And not all sickness is demonic in origin. I have some experience with this, but nowhere near the experiences that many other Christians have. What I know is that my A Fib responds to prayer and reading scripture. Before Houston I would wake up at 3:00 AM with A Fib, read Psalms 16, 61, 34, 51, 91, 139 and then pray, rebuking the spirit of infirmity — at the end of this time my heart would be back in normal rhythm. But this was too much work. So I asked Jesus for healing. I believe He answered my prayer by bringing the right people and tools into my life at just the right time and in just the right way.

I should remind everyone that believers have been given the gift of healing and it is generally God’s will for His children to be healed. But I am not the healer — it is Jesus working through me who heals. And all healing is done in His name, which is more than saying, at the end of the prayer, “in the name of Jesus.” Healing prayers are Kingdom prayers.

Two weeks have passed since I wrote this post. I have had intermittent A fib but it has been generally weak and short-lived, lasting from a few minutes to less than an hour. It responds to prayers commanding it to leave. It seems to me to be like the spirit that was kicked out of the house. Every once in a while it checks back to see if the house is empty. Well, the house is full of the Holy Spirit and the Power of God. Over time I expect the A Fib to disappear completely.

Hallelujah