The Great State of Alaska

by Linda Strickland
Jul/Aug 2009

This year (2009), Alaska celebrates its 50th birthday as a state. Although I would agree with every resident that their state is truly great, I am happy to report that the spiritual state of Alaska is great as well.

Recently, Judith and I journeyed from Jacksonville to Anchorage for a Healing Prayer Training Conference, hosted by Community Covenant Church, Eagle River — a bedroom community of Anchorage. Of the 683,000 people who call Alaska home, one–half of them live in the Anchorage metropolitan area.

This healing conference was birthed out of a vision given to several members of this church who had attended our School of Healing Prayer® on our campus in Florida over a year ago. The vision was that the ministry of healing prayer would be brought to Alaska.

Judith (along with Mike Evans of Wholeness Ministries) brought the teaching of CHM to this extraordinary group, which represented 50 churches from around the state. In addition to the churches represented, the conference was attended by many native Alaskans who were flown in from various villages of the “bush” area of Alaska. (These are areas that cannot be reached by road.) In addition, 27 pastors, representing all of the area denominations, were present.

To say that this was a diverse group would be an understatement — and it was a beautiful thing. Although a lot of individual healing took place within the group, it was exciting to see how much was accomplished corporately, which is now being carried back to the many churches represented.

In an effort to show you what is going on in Alaska, I would like to share some of the wonderful comments from the attendees:

“I will never be the same!” (This was a resounding comment that we heard over and over again)

“Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to Alaska! I am so excited to see what God is doing up here. I had begun to think that God had forgotten about us. During the conference He touched me…zapped me actually. I didn’t think I could fall even more in love with my gentle Daddy.”

“Thank you! I have been fighting with issues for a while that I thought were just mine. But through your teaching/ministry I was able to identify it as generational and now it is gone!”

“I have never heard speakers speak from such a strong foundation of love: love for people and love for God. Everything you said was rooted in that. Thank you for coming and teaching us and loving us here in Alaska.”

“We are much more equipped to go back to our congregation with authority and empowerment.”

“This conference was confirmation of my suspicion that prayer need not be complicated.”

“I was stretched this weekend. I was shown several areas that I still held anger and resentment — and that I needed to let go. It is incredible to have so many churches together in one place to equip them for spiritual healing.”

“I let go of unforgiveness that I have held onto for 23 years!”

“God touched me with much learning, anointing and grace from the speakers and those around me. I don’t want the weekend to end!”

“I received a deep sense of the Father’s love for His children…and for me. He is crazy about us! He desires health, wholeness and happiness for us….and that is our (my) inheritance.”

“I was very much out of my area of comfort, but I know this is God.”

“I discovered that God allows everyone to play. He calls all of His people to be a part of His healing ministry.”

“I was filled and continued to be filled with an overwhelming love for people, a love that is unexplainable. I know it is not possible for me to love like this on my own, it is God’s love for people.”

“The power of God and His Holy Spirit has become so real for me.”

“I attended this seminar reluctantly and with little to no expectations. Through the worship and the message the first night, God moved Matthew 23:9 from an intellectual knowledge to a deep inner knowledge and understanding. I know now that He is my Father and I am His daughter. I rushed home that night and asked my husband if he could rearrange his work schedule so that I would be able to attend the entire conference.”

“The thing I enjoyed most as the organizer of this event was watching as the teams from a variety of churches came to be trained in healing prayer. Several of these teams were even accompanied by their pastors. I loved their hunger to learn and desire to take this work back to their homes, churches and villages. It was delightful to watch as they sat and learned together and prayed together. I also loved the unity we had from the most conservative to the most charismatic churches.”

— Sandy Gold, Coordinator of Prayer Ministry, Community Covenant Church

Linda Strickland is the Associate Director of Ministry and Assistant to Judith MacNutt.