God Whispers

Issues such as healing-in-the-now bring varied responses. Everyone’s journey is different. We’ve all heard some wonderful stories and a few disasters. But it does seem that God responds to sheer desperation. My friend Beth testifies of an unusual God whisper, perhaps a key to real faith for some. It was for me at one stage too. In 1986, in her thirties and early in her pregnancy with her third child, Beth was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Her doctor wanted to operate straight away, which would mean aborting the baby. Beth was adamant that would not happen. She confided in a couple from church and they met each Monday night to pray. One prayer was always, Let the cancer stop growing. The doctor monitored Beth carefully over the weeks, and took a biopsy every two months. He shook his head each time, amazed. The ‘rapid growing’ cancer was not growing. The baby, Heidi, arrived two weeks overdue. The operation was not scheduled until Heidi was ten weeks old. Beth l

Last week I left us on holidays in New Zealand. This week we take a detour into my future, years later when I lived in Nambour, a delightful country town just north of Brisbane. Something felt different about that day. I hurried onto the Nambour railway platform, wondering what was important about this particular journey to Brisbane. I travelled down regularly to visit my mother with Alzheimer’s disease but this day I’d felt a clear whisper from God to pray for my train trip. There were quite a few people waiting on the platform but there was space at the end of a seat with a youngish man seated at the other end, so I sat there. “Do you have a pen I can borrow?” the man asked. Do I ever go anywhere without a pen? I handed him my biro and he proceeded to write some notes. A whirring whine announced the arrival of the train. The man, who introduced himself – we’ll call him Joe, as I tend to think of him as Jonah – said, “Oh, I’m not finished with your