KNOXVILLE, TN (July 19, 2006) – Efrem Smith declared to students attending the Tuesday night worship service at CHIC 2006 that God’s heart is to bring healing “for people tore up from the floor up.”
On an evening when speakers focused on Jesus: No Ordinary Healer, the students responded in waves as they streamed to the front of the arena to kneel and pray, seeking healing from the hidden pain so many carry.
For more than half an hour, students knelt on the floor, sobbing, clutching hands to their chests, stretching out their arms in praise, and embracing one another throughout the arena. They became companions as they walked forward with hurting friends who shared wounds with members of the CHIC Prayer Team who were strategically positioned throughout the facility.
The worship band played the entire time as students joined them in song:
And I, I’m desperate for you;
And I, I’m lost without you.
Even before the invitation for healing was offered, one crying student had grabbed Prayer Team member Lillie Johnson to ask for prayer. Students brought healing needs ranging from broken relationships, physical abuse, confession of sin, self-image challenges, and issues coming out of difficult home situations.
They were witnesses to the truth of Smith’s words that “people are hurting so deeply beyond the physical.” He told the students that only one could heal that pain – “His name sho’nuff is Jesus!”
Smith encouraged the students, explaining that it is God’s nature that leads him to heal. “This is the inside of God,” he said. “God has compassion for broken people.”
Judy Howard Peterson told the students of how she began her walk across America years ago carrying an 80-pound backpack. She said she was convinced by the end of the second day that she never would make it and wanted to quit. Her legs felt like rubber and her feet were covered with painful blisters. Her walking partner encouraged her to continue, however, and just when she didn’t think she could walk any further, a woman driving by stopped her van, saying she wanted to carry Peterson’s pack to her next stopping point.
“She just said, ‘I’ll take it for you,’ ” recounted Peterson, who ultimately finished the journey. Like the woman offering to carry her pack, Jesus wants to carry the heavy packs that we unnecessarily bear, Peterson observed.
Much of the pain comes from feeling we cannot be forgiven our sins, Peterson suggested. “Forgiveness is the ultimate healing,” she said, adding that Jesus “keeps no record of wrongs.”
Peterson also spoke of the importance of offering forgiveness, pointing out that Jesus wants to heal each of us so deeply and so completely that we can in turn forgive others. She implored that Jesus commands Christians “to give people an undeserved out.”
It is easy to receive forgiveness, “but oh how difficult it is for us to offer it,” she confessed. “Forgiveness at its core is not fair,” she said, adding, “It’s not fair – and thank God it’s not.”
She related the story of holding bitterness against her father who had abandoned her and her family when she was young, forcing her to grow up without a father in the home. Her father was not around when she become a Christian, when she walked across America, when she was ordained, and when she was married, she recalled.
Peterson said she struggled fiercely with going to a family reunion, to which her brother had invited her father. “I was supposed to be the same and my dad was supposed to be different,” she said in explaining her concept of forgiveness, suggesting it should have been up to him to ask for it.
She considered not going, but felt God compelling her to go. Still, for days at the event, Peterson refused to speak with the man with whom she had no contact for many years.
Just before parting ways, Peterson says she worked up the strength to say to him, “Dad, I love you.” She said he broke down in tears and “let out a wail like a wounded animal.” He went on to tell her that he had loved her the whole time, but did not know how to express it.
Peterson said that had she not offered forgiveness, she never would have heard her father say that he loved her.
“Tonight, Jesus wants to enter your pain,” Peterson said. That was a message the students obviously heard, loud and clear.
Covenant Communications is providing daily coverage of CHIC 2006 from the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville as part of this online Covenant news report. For additional articles, photo galleries, and daily blogs (with Spanish translations), please see CHIC 2006.
Copyright © 2011 The Evangelical Covenant Church.
