Church went a bit beserk last Sunday. People kept disrupting the service by being healed. There we were, in our sedate-looking Anglican surroundings, while the people at the front had the attention of only half the congregation because the rest were either lost in prayer, lying on the floor, crying or queueing up to tell everyone what they'd been healed of. The bloke next to me was healed of a painful knee injury, and one woman was practically leaping up and down at the front because her leg was healed on the way home so she'd run all the way back to tell us. (This was about an hour after we normally finish.)

It's an exciting, if bewildering, time to be in church these days. It's not all about healing either. John Coles encouraged those who have been praying for a breakthrough to stand up, and those around to pray for them. Ask, seek, and knock, he said, again and again. I stood up to continue a desperate,
longstanding and as yet unanswered prayer of my own. I didn't stop for the rest of the service, and the woman next to me didn't stop praying for me either! By the end of the evening, the prayer was not yet answered, but I'd been on an intense journey taking me closer to Jesus than I've ever been.

First I felt like the Gentile woman (Matthew 15) asking for her daughter to be healed - Jesus seems to be ignoring her, testing her faith. I gritted my teeth and carried on. Then I was like the woman with bleeding (Luke 8:43), pressing in through the crowd just for a touch of his clothes. Then, suddenly, it was as if he finally acknowledged my tugging and turned around to meet my gaze. That was amazing. I could say 'I KNOW you are hearing me!'

I realised what faith is: that however insignificant I feel, I matter to Jesus. I somehow have the right to stand face to face with him and ask. He is actually pleased that I'm bringing my pathetic needs to him. Everything
inside me might be shouting, 'Don't bother him! Go away!' but he is steering me through the crowds of my own hostile thoughts saying, 'Don't worry. Just believe.' (Luke 8:49-50)

As I wait for my prayer to be answered, that sense of closeness, of his attention on me, hasn't gone away. I matter to him. I hate to admit this, but this is almost as good as getting what I asked for in the first place.