Knees are made for kneeling

It’s a dark, cold Saturday evening and I’m reluctantly heading into the city centre, wrapped up in my thick winter coat, hat, scarf, gloves and boots, over all the normal layers. I’ve dragged myself out because a group of us are gathering to welcome back old friends who have just returned to the UK, after a year living in Australia.

I push on the door of the pub, and it swings open in front of me. A blast of warm air greets me. Twinkly lights are wrapped around the wooden ceiling beams as far as the eye can see. The atmosphere is thick with the hubbub of conversation. Plenty of people are propping up the bar. Many of the tables are taken up by love struck couples, looking into each other’s eyes across candlelit dinners. (It is, after all, only a few days after Valentine’s Day, and cupid has clearly been busy.) And then I spot a few familiar faces gathered around a couple of tables in the corner, by the welcoming glow of a wood burner working full pelt.

Standing in front of the fire blazing in the wood burner, I am removing my coat and placing it on the back of a chair at the table, when a guy called Kevin* starts talking to me. He’s in his 30s, tall and slight, with a shock of thick black curly hair and deeply penetrating brown eyes. I’ve known him and his wife for a while, but not well.

I tell him I’m going to go grab a drink and, as I return to the table with a glass of red wine in my hand, I am barely able to sit down before Kevin engages me in conversation again. He’s heard that I sometimes pray for people to be healed, and he’s heard that sometimes God answers my prayers.

It’s hard to know how to respond when that’s the opening gambit.

“Please forgive me for being forward,” he says, apologetically, “but I’m in agony at the moment and I wonder whether you’d be able to pray for me.”

I feel that increasingly familiar sense of compassion rising up in me and I respond by asking him to describe the problem.

“It’s my knees,” he tells me, bending over and gesticulating with his hands, even as he describes what’s happening. “They are shot,” he continues, matter-of-factly. “The muscles in my thighs have grown so huge that they are putting immense pressure on my knees, and I keep having to use a cold spray to keep the inflammation at bay, but it only lasts about an hour and then it wears off.” He pauses for a moment. “It’s having repercussions on my hips, which makes it painful when I walk.”

It turns out he works in a deli, so he spends most of each day on his feet, rushing from one thing to the next. It also turns out that he doesn’t drive, so he relies on cycling to get around town. He fears that he may have to find a desk-based job if he doesn’t get better, because he can’t continue as is unless something radical happen.

He’s been to the doctor multiple times but, apart from prescribing him the cold spray, he has not been able to help.

Taking a deep breath, I ask him whether he has a Christian faith. Does he believe that God can heal him? Does he want God to heal him? He answers affirmatively to both. He only made a commitment to Christ, relatively recently, he explains. He’d been in jail and, when he came out, he became friends with a Christian, who invited him on an Alpha course. The rest, as they say, is history.

“Would you like me to pray for you, right here, right now?” I ask him. Even as the words leave my mouth, I am shooting an arrow prayer up to the Lord, asking for an increase of faith.

“Yes please!” he replies, leaping up from the table to stand in front of the wood burner.

I get out from my position, bend down, in a squat position, in front of him, ask where it’s hurting most and then lay my hands, one each, just above each of his knees. As I do so, I take authority in the name of Jesus, and pray a simple prayer, out loud. Boldly but firmly, in the name of Jesus, I command the pain and inflammation to go, the muscles to return to normal size, and for everything between his knees and his hips to align and normalise.

It’s so noisy in the pub that I can barely hear my own voice and, looking up, I know that Kevin is struggling to hear me too. I’m also aware that his wife is watching us from the table. I hesitate a moment and then I realise Kevin’s face has broken into a smile.

“I can feel a cold arc over both my knees,” he proclaims. “It’s like the cold spray, only it’s more intense.” I’ve never come across anything like this before. Normally, when there’s a physical sensation, it involves heat or tingling, not cold, so this is new.

“Why don’t you walk about a bit and test your knees?” I suggest.

He willingly complies, although it’s not easy in a crowded pub. When he returns to the table, he’s grinning broadly, so I take it to be good news. “It’s still cold,” he says, “but I can feel the pain and inflammation going,” he tells me. His faith is simple and innocently childlike.

“Sleep on it,” I suggest, “and see how you feel in the morning. If God truly has healed you, you’ll need to keep testifying to the power that comes when we pray in the name of Jesus.”

He nods sagely in agreement, as his wife comes to join him, grabbing hold of his hand.

The next day, he finds me on Facebook and sends me a private message: “I’m completely healed and pain free. To God be the glory!” Even as I read it, I can feel my faith rising.

When will I learn? When will I realise that, when I’m caught unawares, completely unprepared, God can use me? And when I step out in faith, and pray with boldness, in the name of Jesus, God will show up?

It’s good to be reminded.

*Name changed to preserve confidentiality.

[Photo by Banter Snaps on Unsplash]