Healing Line

Healing Line

Walking in the Gifts of Healings

by Anne Early
Mar/Apr 2007

Erling Larson, one of the special people who serves on the team of prayer ministers at CHM, is a retired physician — retired from his busy medical career as an internist, but still very active in God’s healing. While working for 45 years as a medical doctor, Erling facilitated God’s healing of his patients through medicine and prayer; now he relies totally on the Holy Spirit to heal those with whom he prays.

Testimony of a Retired Physician, Active CHM Prayer Minister

 

I gradually retired from active practice as an internist, going into semi–retirement after 45 years of practicing medicine full time. While in semi–retirement, one of my patients, who was an alcoholic*, called me to say he had been free for three years with not one drink of alcohol. When I asked him how he had done it, I expected him to say “through AA,” but he didn’t; he said he had done it through Christian Healing Ministries (CHM). Then he added, “Do you want to hear more about it?” Of course I said “yes,” and he proceeded to tell me how he had gone to CHM for prayer to break the habit, and it had worked. He got my attention.

I went to CHM for training as a prayer minister. After the last class, I went home and prayed about what I should do in retirement. While I was praying, the phone rang. It was a call from CHM, asking me to serve as a prayer minister. I said, “Lord, that was too fast!”

Since receiving that phone call seven–and–a–half years ago, I have served as a prayer minister every Thursday and have tithed my time by praying in the 3–Day Intensive Prayer Ministry that is held each month. This has been a wonderfully fulfilling time in my life. The age of miracles is not over!

Erling sig

*This wonderful man, whose testimony inspired me, has remained sober for more than ten years and is serving as a prayer minister in another city.

 

Erling showed me a note he had received a few days ago from this friend and former patient, in which mention was made of a mutual friend of theirs, a Roman Catholic priest who was also a former patient of Erling’s office and was doing well. Erling related that 20 years ago, the priest who was mentioned had suffered 4th–stage colon cancer. Erling had stood beside the operating table as a surgeon opened the man’s abdomen to find massive amounts of malignant tissue. Erling told me, “I saw the inside of his belly. It was covered with malignancy. The surgeon removed what he could and sewed him up.” Sometime later, the patient called to say he had been healed during Mass. He submitted to a second operation, and when he was opened again, there was not a trace of malignancy. Erling said to me, “I saw that; all the malignancy was gone! God had healed him.”


No sooner had we received Erling’s testimony than the following “praise report” arrived: another testimony to the healing power of the Holy Spirit and to Erling’s dedication as a CHM prayer minister.

Several months ago as I was opening the front door of my car, which was parked in my yard, I became the victim of an attempted armed robbery. Impulsively, I pushed against the perpetrator’s chest, and he walked away. Later that week I noticed that two fingers on my right hand, the hand I had used to push the robber away, were very swollen at the joints; I could not close my fingers into a fist. That condition continued for approximately three weeks before I went to Christian Healing Ministries for prayer. Thinking that perhaps the swelling was due to an arthritic condition, I asked the prayer ministers to pray for the swollen joints. The swelling did not subside and I still could not close my fingers.

The next time I met with the prayer ministers, one of whom was Erling, they were able to trace the cause of the swelling and finger rigidity to fear that I had felt every time I opened the front door of my home to go to my car. The memory of the attempted robbery had allowed a spirit of fear to creep in and take hold. Through prayer we were able to get rid of the fear, replacing it with confidence of living in the strength and protection of Jesus.

The swelling is gone, and I can close my fingers to make a fist.

“God has not given us a spirit of fear . . . .” (2 Tim. 1:7)


Mar/Apr 2007 Issue