Sligo22: Healing
Nicola Neal is an activist, pioneer, speaker and author. She is founder and CEO of Every Life International, a charity working with the urban poor in deprived communities around the world. Here’s a summary of what she had to say during her seminar on “Healing” (NB: notes taken during Week B).
In 2009, we moved to Uganda in Africa. We established our mission and have been working there ever since. I spend half my year there and half in England. Our ministry works into areas of urban deprivation, slum communities mostly. I’ve been in ministry for 21 years, which feels significant. For the last 21 years, I’ve taken the first week in January to tuck away with Jesus and listen to what He has to say about ministry for the year ahead. He usually gives me a phrase. And that’s what I dig deep into, for myself and the teams I raise and lead.
One year, He said, “This will be a year of intimacy for you.” And I had a 4-month sabbatical due to health, and I spent all day unable to leave my sofa, so I hung out with the Lord. And it was an amazing year. A foundational year for my life.
Another year, He said, “This is a year where I’m bringing you into the centre of my flame.” The centre is blue, the hottest place. It didn’t really turn out the way I expected - it was a refining fire.
One year I was away having my January with Jesus. And resting in the presence of the Lord. He asked me a question: “Nicola, what are you going to believe for, for the year to come?” This was January 2010, the first January we were in Africa. We had been doing simple projects, and not pushed massively into the spirit. And sometimes we’d pray and see people come to faith, but we were cautious and inexperienced. It wasn’t something we were thriving in.
In response, I said, “Lord, I think I could believe that we’ll see more of your love, more of your kindness…” and more stuff like this. And the Lord interrupted me and said, “Well, Nicola you don’t have to believe for something you already have. You don’t have to have faith for something you’ve already seen.” And then He asked, “Do you believe that I am everything that I say I am?” And I immediately said, “Yes.” And He asked the same thing again. And I said, “Yes, I absolutely believe.” And then he asked me a third time. When you get asked a third time, you’re probably not answering correctly, and you’re probably better off listening.
And He said, “If you believed your response would be different.” And He challenged me to dare to believe that God is everything that He says that He is. And we gathered at Seek First every day, where we come together for an hour or so of extended worship. I stuck paper around the walls and handed out pens. I said, “We are going to give ourselves permission to dream. To dare to believe that God is everything He says He is. If that’s true, what can we believe for in the next year?”
Impossible
So we wrote: We want to see the lame walk, the blind see, the dead resurrected. We want to see the end of starvation. An end to child trafficking and child abuse. We want to see communities transformed, an end to child sacrifice. And so it went on and on. The list got bigger. At first I was really excited. But then a shrinking feeling came over me. I thought, “Oh Lord, what have I done?” But I took it down and typed it up and gave everyone a copy. I was aware of the utter ridiculousness of that list. In the natural, it was so beyond impossible. But I handed them out and said, “This is it. We’re going to settle for nothing less than that. We’re going to dare to believe and see what God will do.”
A couple mornings later in Seek First, the Lord said, “I want to send your team out into this community and I want you to knock on every door, and bring out the sick outside the Witch Doctor’s compound, in this one clearing. Tell them the healer is coming out at two o’clock.” So I told the team. And they did as He said. I knew the place really well. The Witch Doctor didn’t really like me. Jesus had done something beautiful, and he had lost money, and he chased me with a machete trying to kill me. He was not a fan of me on mission.
So I’m heading to this clearing. And I had never done anything like it at this point in my life - no testimony pool to draw from. I was full of faith and confidence, ready to conquer. But in reality I felt really small, really overwhelmed and quite scared. And I came around the corner and saw a mass of sick people.
Slum culture is fairly volatile- if you say someone is coming, and they don’t, they might try and kill you. This isn’t a game – it’s very serious. So I said, “Help me Jesus. If you don’t come, we’re in trouble.”
In another situation, I was walking and listening to the Lord, and telling Him why those things were ridiculous. It was literally impossible; “I don’t know how to do it.” And He said, “Nicola, if you want to learn to dwell in the land of miraculous, first of all you have to work out how to camp in the land of impossibility.” My friend says, “You can’t see a miracle unless you need one.”
Your life should be full of “help me, Jesus” moments. We’re supposed to challenge impossibility with God.
So we turn up, and the team ask, “What do we do?” And I say, “I don’t really know.” So we worship for 15 minutes. And then I said, “Why don’t you just preach for five minutes?” So they preach on Jesus as the Healer for five minutes. And then I said, “Let’s just pray then. Ask what’s wrong, lay your hands, and say, ‘In Jesus name, I command healing to come into your body.’” We like to keep it simple - it’s not about the words; it’s about the power that backs them up.
So I’m watching them pray and I suddenly hear these squeals. These are the people surprised at healing - it was the staff team, shocked that this was actually working. They got excited, and we saw every single person bar one 100% set free, healed and delivered. It changed everything. Something was happening that was different. We were tapping into a power that we didn’t realise we had in the name of Jesus.
We’ve not seen everything on that list happening yet - but we’ve seen the deaf hear, the lame walk, the blind see. The dead raised, three times. We’ve seen the multiplication of food. Nearly everything on that list has come to pass. We’ve realised that everything changes when the power of the Spirit comes.
We’re going to look at Judges 6:
Gideon in a wine press threshing wheat: not the place you usually go to do that. Usually, it’s dug deep into the ground. If you were there, you could hide safely and inconspicuously. At the time, the enemy of Gideon’s people were camped all around - they kept infiltrating the camp and stealing cattle, and it was all a bit scary. It wasn’t a great moment in time. Gideon is trying to hide out and stay unseen, not wanting to engage in confrontation. He’s just minding his own business - not a Hollywood image of a hero. Suddenly the angel of the Lord appears - can you imagine? “The Lord is with you mighty warrior!!” Can you imagine his response? "It can’t possibly be me,” or “What? I’m sorry, what are you talking about? I think you have the wrong person.”
“The Lord is sending you out to bring deliverance for a whole nation”. And Gideon replies, “I’m the least and my clan is the weakest.” “You’ve chosen the wrong person, you must have made a mistake.”
One translation says he responded, “Pardon me?” Maybe he said something a bit more colourful than that! I’m small, weak, insignificant. A bit frightened. I feel like I can relate to Gideon. Sometimes a thousand times a day I can relate to him.
Gideon says, “I am weak,” but the Lord says, “You are mighty.” Gideon says, “I can’t do it.” God says, “But I will be with you. You can, Gideon, because I can. And I am with you.”
It changes everything.
One of the communities has over 1 million in extreme poverty. A sea of desperation and devastation, sickness and death, addiction and prostitution, violence and abuse. It is easy to stand there and be overwhelmed by the magnitude of impossibility. And Covid in the midst of it. How do you wash your hands when you have no water? How do you socially distance in a slum?
We had a much bigger issue with death by starvation than we did with Covid itself. We had to focus on emergency feeding and medical programmes just to keep people alive. It’s been a horribly overwhelming season. We’ve seen multiplication of food every day. By the power of God, He has cared for them when we couldn’t. It’s been painful but stunningly beautiful.
It’s so easy in those moments to be overwhelmed, so this story helps me in that. Gideon, a man God has called, and he’s freaking out, scared and insecure. If you jump to verse 34: the best verse in the whole story! He’s about to face the biggest battle of his life. And then here comes the verse. “Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him.”
The NLT translation says, the Spirit “took possession”. The presence of the Lord turns up, and the game changes. So I looked into it, and the original language says: “The spirit of the Lord put Gideon’s skin on like a glove.” Wow. The Spirit of the Lord literally wore Gideon’s skin. Doesn’t that blow your mind?
Galatians 2:20 “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
If we get hold of this truth, it effects how we see, how we live and how we pray. It changes everything. It means when I walk into a bar or brothel, Jesus walks in. When I see someone who’s sick, and lay my hand on them, the hand of Jesus reaches out. When I speak, His voice can be heard. Am I saying I’m Jesus? Of course not- that would be utterly ridiculous. But I’m a carrier of the power, presence and life of Jesus Christ, and I can see that released in every place I go to.
This is our truth and reality. 2 Corinthians 4 talks about a treasure in our jar of clay.
Huh. Don’t you often feel like a broken jar of clay? This is the thing: in all these miracles, it’s not me. I want to make it clear. It’s not the great revivalists in history. It’s Jesus who does it. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit expressed through them. He’s the hope of glory, not you.
Most of the time when we go into communities, we have no clue what we’re doing. We are not the best preachers in the world, we don’t preach the best gospel message, we’re not very clever. Our words are basic. But it doesn’t matter - it’s not about us. It’s about Him and what He can do through us. Doesn’t that take the pressure off?
All we have to do is learn to daily surrender and yield ourselves fully to Him, allowing him to come and fill us again and again with himself and learn how to release that into our communities. It’s really that simple.
The key to healing? Receive from Him and give it away. Let’s do that.