Arm Grows Four Inches
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Our Sunday evening meetings had developed considerable power. At the time, we were meeting in a room on the second story of an old building that we had purchased. The upper room was about 30 ft. by 50 ft., and we circled the room with folding chairs, leaving the center of the room open for ministry. Although we only had about 25 people at our morning service, we usually had 80 to 100 people stuff themselves into the upper room for the evening meeting. Some came from as far as 50 miles away. The meetings were quite simple. My wife, Beverlee, played songs and hymns on an Autoharp, with some of the young people joining in on guitars and cymbals, and we ministered to the Lord and waited. At some point, I knew, though I could not tell you how I knew, that the Lord had come. It was as if the atmosphere in the room had changed, as if it had thickened somehow, and Someone who had not been there before was now there. With His coming, the dusty Jericho road had suddenly become a highway of healing. At the same time, faith was imparted to me. What I did not have faith to believe before He arrived, I could now believe. After the service that morning, a woman approached me and asked if I would pray for her left arm to be lengthened. Although the Lord had imparted permanent faith to me for the lengthening of legs, which was really straightening of the spine, I had no permanent faith for straightening arms. And when she told me that her left arm had been broken at the elbow and never reset properly, and consequently was four inches shorter than her right arm, what little faith I did have fell through the floor. So, naturally, I told her the truth: I did not have the faith to pray for an arm in that condition. After the Lord manifested Himself in the evening meeting, however, it was a different story. Sometime after we had started ministering in the Lord's power, I found myself standing in front of the woman, who was sitting in the front row of chairs, and saying to her, "Norma, stand up and we'll see what the Lord will do about your arm." Norma stood up and I had her stretch both arms straight out in front of her with their hands together, fingers straight. The fingertips of her left hand barely came to the center of the palm of her right hand. Standing next to her right arm, I put the thumb edge of my left hand under her hands so that she could rest her arms upon it, and so that I could not in any way move her hands, and asked everyone who could see to watch the Lord heal her arm. It's important to say at this point that I had absolute faith that her arm was going to be healed, but it was not my normal faith, it was power faith that the Lord had imparted to me. My normal faith was never enough to heal anything. The power of imparted faith is a strange thing, I had barely started to pray when the fingertips of Norma's left hand began to move forward, slowly but steadily. People all around me began praising the Lord, some were so excited they even began dancing. When the fingertips on Norma's left hand were equal to the fingertips on her right hand, they stopped moving. The healing was done. Norma shouted and danced and praised the Lord. The last time we saw Norma was about two years after that night, and her left arm was still healed.
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