As I prepared to preach to the people, a tight cluster of dark ominous storm clouds gathered directly over our heads. They weren’t scattered evenly over the sky; they were definitely tightly clustered as if they had been moved into position by some unseen force. It would have been disastrous for a downpour to come at that moment. There was simply nowhere to run, and lightning could have made it a potentially fatal situation. I was praying under my breath about the situation when one of the local leaders suddenly announced to the crowd, “And now the man of God from America, Mahesh Chavda, will pray and command the storm clouds to leave!” and he turned to me!
I swallowed hard and stepped forward, thinking, Lord, I don’t know how I got into this spot, but You are the only One who can answer this prayer. Please answer my request in Jesus’ name. Then I asked God to disperse the clouds as the crowd listened and watched. The clouds broke apart within a few minutes and I was able to continue preaching the gospel without a single drop of rain falling on the crowd! This miraculous sign and wonder was a great witness of the power of God to those Africans, and many came to Jesus that day because of God’s open manifestation of His power and might.
The greater the move of God, the greater will be satan’s opposition to us at times. As usual, if we have paid the price in obedience through prayer and fasting, God has a way of transforming what the enemy meant for evil into something incredibly good. In many cases during the coming harvest, that transformation can literally become a sign and a wonder that itself brings conviction on the unsaved and glory to God.
While ministering in the city of Mbuji-Mayi, a center of sorcery in Kasai, Zaire, thousands of people were born again. The sorcerers and witch doctors had become extremely angry because they were no longer being paid for putting curses on people. The people whom they had cursed were being saved, and the curses were of no effect. In other words, the gospel of Jesus Christ was putting the sorcerers out of business!
Consequently, the sorcerers arranged to send the chief sorcerer to our meeting so he could personally put a curse on me. As I was praying for people in several prayer lines, this chief sorcerer pretended he was sick so he could blend in with the hundreds of people waiting for payer. Unknown to me, he ended up in the third line. The local pastors knew who he was, but they were so afraid of the power of his curses that they kept silent about this man’s identity.
The sorcerer was a tall man wearing a necklace of human bones. As I approached him, he started rumbling; then he uttered a noise that was beyond human agency. It sounded like a combination of 14 or 15 different animal voices. My hair stood on end as I heard the growlings and saw his eyes roll back in his head. I had clear discernment of what I was dealing with, and I said to myself, “This man must need a lot of help.”
I did not come up with any brilliant prayer for his deliverance. I simply said, “Jesus, bless him.”
As I spoke the words, it was as if thousands of volts of electricity hit the chief sorcerer’s body. He was flung about ten feet through the air and violently hit the dirt. Each time he tried to get up, he found that he couldn’t move an inch. That made him roar and growl all the louder! He was glued to the ground as if an angel had been commissioned to sit on him. I said, “Well, Lord, You know what You’re doing. Bless him.”
Some time later I found this man testifying to the local pastors. He explained that he could not get up from the ground until he confessed Jesus Christ as Lord. When he looked at me, his eyes grew wide, and he shook his finger at me and said, “I know spirits. But the Spirit over this man is greater than any spirit I’ve ever seen!” This ex-sorcerer was simply seeing the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit at work.
God will also move in new and unusual ways in this great harvest — even from a distance using unorthodox means (after all, He is God, and He can do whatever He wants to do). While conducting crusades in Costa Rica, our services were broadcast live over the radio to several surrounding countries. On the third day, a woman who had listened to the ministry by radio actually came to the crusade and said that she wanted to share her testimony. She told us this amazing story of God’s healing power:
“I was listening to this man on the crusade broadcast three days agao. I had a giant tumor the size of a grapefruit growing inside my throat. As I heard this man preaching the Word of God, the tumor started vibrating. While he preached, the tumor shook more and more violently. Suddenly it burst inside my throat lining and came out of my mouth.”
When this woman went to her doctors, they took 18 separate X-rays of her throat over the next 36-hour period and were unable to find a single trace of the malignant tumor that had been there before God intervened! It is significant to me that I wasn’t there to lay hands on this woman. The Holy Spirit honored the preaching of God’s Word by healing her.
Very often, God will work through us when we “don’t feel a thing,” just to prove to us that it is God who does the work, not you or me. In this revival, no flesh will be able to steal God’s glory by claiming to perform those things only God can perform. I remember another time when I was pastoring in Texas that a family drove hundreds of miles from New Mexico to come to our church for prayer.
This family had five young children, two of whom were small babies. Their need was especially acute because their mother’s body was almost totally consumed with cancer. As I laid hands on that woman, I did not feel an ounce of anointing. At that time, I had no faith for her healing, but I said, “O Lord, look on these little ones, and have mercy on this family.”
The very next day, this family had tests run on the mother at a hospital in the neighboring city. The tests revealed that there wasn’t even a trace of cancer left in her body! All the malignancy had disappeared. I was able to touch the heart of God in this case by crying out for the Lord’s mercy just as Bartimaeus did in the New Testament. God’s call has nothing to do with our feelings or with circumstances. As soldiers of the Lord, we are commanded to be “instant in season and out of season” in all things. Again, because of the magnitude of the harvest before us, we need to learn how to minister “in His rest” instead of in our own effort or personal resources.
(From the book The Hidden Power of Prayer and Fasting by Mahesh Chavda, pg 160-164)