The ultrasound technician pressed her wand deeper into Kath’s small pregnant tummy, frowning deeply at the computer screen, contradicting the festive music filtering in from the waiting room. They’d come to the city from out west for her 34 week appointment, and of course, for Christmas and icecream shopping, there not being a great selection in their tiny outback town.

But by the time Kath and Dave their mood was anything but jolly.  They’d been told that the foetus was only measuring 26 weeks in size, had no bladder or kidneys and had a sac hanging from her belly button, and that Kath was on the first medical plane to Sydney with a sky high blood pressure.

“This is not funny God,” Dave muttered as they hurried to the car to sort out clothes.  He stopped and flipped the car hood, dipped his finger in the sump oil and anointed his wife’s stomach.

“In the name of Jesus, I command you to grow baby.”  He said.

The day passed in a blur as they packaged Kath off to Sydney and Dave raced around preparing to follow.  Of top importance was alerting the hosts of their guesthouse, where a prayer retreat was in session, know what was going on. And they started praying hard for this baby.

(It was a great privilege to be able to travel with those same guys who prayed me into existence, to Papua New Guinea when I was 14 on a mission trip that changed my life. Who could have known?)

The next ultrasound technician was totally confused that the baby had grown several weeks and now had a bladder and kidney, and put a call through that the last machine must have been faulty, and the next ultrasound technician on a new machine had to say the same thing the next day when the baby had grown dramatically again.

So I was born, and weighed 1.5kg, perfectly healthy, and became the smallest baby to leave the hospital to that date.

 

Prayer saved my life from the very beginning and then again when I was 9, that time my pancreas clear blew up after weeks of glandular fever.

I vomiting blood and Mum taking me to the doctors over and over, till they thought it must be appendicitis and cut me open and gasped with blood in all the wrong places, sewed me up quick and ordered a plane to Sydney.  Again.

They warned my parents I could come home in a box.

The doctors didn’t know what to do with that pancreas.  After a few weeks on multiple IVs, including insulin, they warned I’d be a diabetic, and we celebrated with icecream when I left that hospital after only 3 weeks and I was not.

 

Prayer saved my life again when I delivered my 2^nd baby in 2016.  That testing pregnancy where I had to fight for health and life and struggle with gestational diabetes and then fight for a VBAC.

 

 

There was so much prayer.  Prayer for the C-section scar to hold and it did. Prayer for the baby’s blood sugar to be good and it was.

 

And when the pain grew strong as they turned the syntocin up, 9 days overdue being induced, Stephen prayed out loud in the room and it stopped and became pressure till that baby finally ripped right out of me.  A supernatural childbirth.

But I’d torn bad and they sent me to surgery, and I just knew something wasn’t right.  By the time we made it back to the ward, I couldn’t stop shaking in that hospital bed and suddenly my vitals were dropping.  The young nurse by my side pressed that Code Blue button and everyone came running.  They inserted IVs and clipped things to my fingers and still I couldn’t stop violently shaking and I begged them to get my husband who was nursing our new baby in delivery suite, while I’d been in surgery repairing the tear.

And they kept saying no, and I kept saying to myself, ‘no harm shall befall me, no disaster shall come near my tent’  Psalm 91: 10

Finally they brought him in and he said, “If you don’t mind I’m just going to stop and pray for my wife here.”

Right there and out loud in front of all the staff.  The second miracle for the day after our supernatural childbirth. Prayed and I stabilised.  Stopped shaking and they shook their heads and attributed it to the IV antibiotics just administered.   Turned out that I’d lost too much blood and got an infection in surgery.

And when the jaundice came and she didn’t respond to treatment, then suddenly the levels dropped to normal and we got sent home.  Prayer.

Prayer saved my life 3 times.

And it has been a journey since, because our health hasn’t been quite right.  Baby and I, we’ve had digestive issues, and I wondered why God couldn’t just fix it right up?

And then I learnt another aspect of prayer. Just like I had stood on Scripture  to receive no morning sickness during pregnancy, and had claimed a supernatural childbirth with the Scripture that pain was under the curse and therefore under the cross to receive a supernatural childbirth, I realised I needed to stand on Scripture to receive my complete healing for digestive issues.

But it took me a while to realise that sometimes you need to hear those Scriptures over and over again in the form of teaching and testimonies to receive what’s been promised.

Just like eating a meal once doesn’t nourish us for our whole life, hearing a Scripture once won’t either.   It’s a process of renewing our minds to His Word.

In the process of renewing my mind to what Jesus has already paid for on the cross, I went on a health journey.   I explored the GAPS diet, to fix our guts and prevent long term problems, and for a little while it worked, but living in a house with major mold issues was slowly undoing everything I worked towards with my healthy diet.

God provided us a new home, but my allergies by this stage were to the point of only being able to eat 5 foods.  I kept persevering with Scriptures like ”Bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all His benefits Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.”  Psalm 103:2  and 1 Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

I listened to many Healing Journeys Today testimonies from Andrew Wommack’s website of people being healed of brain disease, heart disease, digestive issues, Lyme’s disease and many others simply by listening to the Word of God over and over.

God does expect us to take care of our bodies; like that time my husband went up at prayer for church because of an ulcer between his toes and God quietly whispered, ‘you have everything in your cupboard at home to fix this, start taking it.’    And we looked into nutrition and supplements and it healed.

In a dream I had the other night, a man in a hospital, wife dying after having baby,  said right to me, “this just proves there is no God”

And I said to the man, “This time last year, I was in the same place as your wife, and this just proves there is a God. The world goes round on its axis, till someone bothers to pray and God looks down and intervenes.”

It has been scientifically proven that hospital patients who have someone praying for them recover quicker than those who don’t.

I’m pregnant again now; a miracle baby after being so sick the years following the last one.   I’ve stood against morning sickness that’s tried to creep in, stood against major pelvic floor issues, stood against cat allergies, and taken God’s Word and used it as a prayer.  God’s Word is one of the most powerful prayers we can pray.  He wrote it and it blesses Him for us to take Him at His Word and expect a miracle.

God has filled His Word with powerful prayers to pray for ourselves, and I’ve gathered together 6 from the New Testament that I’d love to send you as a 6 week e-mail series.  One thing I’ve noticed in many of these prayers is that Paul isn’t asking for God to give us more; He’s asking God to help us understand how much He’s already given us.

So there is one powerful and profound prayer for personal growth each week for 6 weeks, asking for things that we just never think to ask.