Can you learn to work miracles?

Ship, publishing, coaching, writing... I'm not really lacking in challenges at the moment. Nevertheless, God has obviously thought of sending me off on a new adventure.

A fortnight ago I saw a prophecy from Aliss Cresswell on YouTube. It was actually just out of curiosity, because I was simply interested in what this woman with the waist-length fiery red curls had to say. The calm, natural way in which she spoke, but also what she said, really touched me. Aliss is a woman who uses God very strongly in the area of signs and wonders, but less at big events and more in her everyday life - in her Book Naturally supernatural she describes how she healed someone's hearing loss in the supermarket between noodles and soups. Or how she experienced how broken bones were healed spontaneously in the café she ran.

The night after I read the prophecy, I dreamt that I was in England in a place I already knew, in a Christian centre, and that I would be staying there in an attic room. As I had already been to the place where Aliss and her team were on a student exchange - so I knew it - I took the dream as a hint from God to pay a visit to this place and sent an email to Aliss and her team whether that was possible. I felt that God was telling me that May was the right time. But I didn't write them that.

The answer surprised me. They invited me to a 28-day intensive personal training programme in signs and wonders. Intensive means: There are only two people as participants!!! The training is a mixture of lots of time with Jesus, Bible study mixed with mentoring, participation in the activities and challenges for your own faith. Oh yes - the time they invited me where there was still a place available was ... May!

28 days!!! I couldn't get my head round it. That's a long time when you're self-employed, running a publishing house and building a ship. I was amazed a second time when I looked at the calendar. May is the only !!! month in the whole of 2015 in which I don't have a single appointment.

When I prayed and asked God whether I should get involved in this crazy thing, I was reminded of my father in his youth. He was a very good handball player - played in the Bavarian team back then. Something similar to the Bundesliga today. He was extremely fast and could throw powerfully. With the right. One summer, he decided to train his left arm. In the absence of gyms, he spent an entire summer using his left arm to lift the hay harvested on the farm from the threshing floor into the hayloft. By the end of the summer, he was just as powerful on the left as he was on the right. His team's opponents usually sent two players off to cover him! He was simply too dangerous.

Reflecting on this incident, it seemed to me that God was saying to me: „You have trained your natural abilities, your right arm, a lot over the last 10 years. Through coaching training, learning, etc. Now it's time to train your supernatural abilities, your left arm, to be even more powerful in my realm....“ 

It's true. When I coach, I have a „success rate“ of almost 100%. Practically after every coaching session, people tell me that their problem has been solved or has at least become easier to solve. Prayer for the sick is a different story. Many people have already prayed for me - especially for healing of the effects of several accidents. So far without any noticeable change. And I have probably prayed hundreds of times, perhaps even thousands of times, for sick people over the last few decades.

So far I have only experienced four times what I would consider to be an obvious answer to prayer and supernatural intervention by God.

• When a neighbour's daughter's life was in danger because of bulimia, another woman and I prayed for months for her survival and healing. At some point I knew: it's good now. She was discharged soon afterwards. I usually see her once a year at the Christmas service in my home town... and every time I have tears in my eyes: she is alive... and I am probably part of that.
• At a costume party in England, a friend got a severe stomach ache. I searched the whole house unsuccessfully for herbal tea and when I couldn't find any, I had the idea of praying. When the stomach pains suddenly disappeared after the prayer, I was the most surprised.
• When I was in Wales in January 2013 with my friend Rosemarie at the prayer centre Ffald - y - Brenin where healings often happen, she asked me to pray for her back, which kept giving her pain. Since the prayer, she has never had pain in that area again.
• I once prayed for a woman who had had no hair growth since the age of 9. Nowhere. No eyebrows, no armpit hair and of course no hair on her head. In the weeks following the prayer, the hair began to sprout again - for the first time in over 15 years!!! Then the newly grown hair fell out again. No, I don't understand that either!

The three or four experiences were impressive. But to be honest, they are a meagre reward for an infinite amount of prayer. As a coach, I would probably have given up long ago if my results in coaching were as poor as when praying for the sick. The fact that so little happens frustrates and irritates me deeply. But somehow I keep at it. Also because Jesus clearly said that praying for the sick is one of our tasks as disciples, or rather he doesn't say that we should pray for them, he says even more pointedly „Heal the sick, raise the dead!“ (Matthew 10:8).

But it's also true: I've invested well over 10,000 euros in my coaching training, I've learnt for years - in seminars, from books and from people who know it really well. I've read a little about „healing for the sick“, attended a workshop once... but so far I haven't really learnt with and from people who are experienced in it and who „know“ it better than I do.

What also moves me is that there are so many weird things going on in the area of prayer for the sick. Loudness, drama, lack of strength or - worst of all - accusations of guilt against the sick person when nothing has happened in response to prayer. „You just didn't believe enough!“ What a burden to place on people. How terrible!

I long to become more effective in the area of physical healing and liberation. A dear friend of mine is currently in hospital after a stroke. That takes me with it. How wonderful it would be to simply bring about healing. To actually experience that I can help people not only with emotional problems, but also with physical ones. To experience more healings happening. In a way that is respectful and empathetic - and at the same time powerful and effective.

A praying friend, who knows about my adventure in England, wrote to me:

You live your natural abilities and everything you do in the visible realm (ship!) highly consciously as in the presence of God, with Him, for Him, and what you will increasingly do in the supernatural realm, during and after this training, in the same way. And that is the most precious thing about it: not what you create or what God creates supernaturally through you, but that God's presence becomes so concrete that many people see Him, feel Him, fall silent in awe and worship Him.