SPEAKER_02 0:07

Chuck and Nancy Horton are the pastors of Stir Up the Fire Ministries. Chuck is a retired United Methodist pastor and former district superintendent, and Nancy is a retired RN and former district nurse manager of the health department. They have done healing ministry revivals, retreats, conferences, training workshops for nearly three decades. Stir Up the Fire Ministries is dedicated to supporting churches and pastors in their mission to serve their communities and spread the message of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Welcome to the Pursuing Redemption Podcast with Heather Short.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Well, thank you, Chuck and Nancy, for coming on the Pursuing Redemption Podcast. We're super excited to have you. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Thank you. We're glad to be on, and thanks for the invitation.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Wonderful. I would love to hear uh your journey of coming to know Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Nancy and I had separate separate journeys of coming to Jesus. She uh she spent her time growing up as the daughter of someone in the military. And uh I grew up as a preacher's kid. My dad was a pastor, and uh I grew up in a family of of great faith, as she did as well. She started out Methodist and then she wandered and became a Baptist, and then we met. She became a Methodist again and we got married. So, how did you come to Jesus?

SPEAKER_03 2:25

So, my story is yes, I was raised in a military family. My dad um was an Air Force. Uh both my parents uh uh had Jesus, knew Jesus, accepted him as their savior. Um and we went to military um churches on and off. My mom's side was United Methodists, and my dad's side was Assembly of God. Um when I was 10, my dad went to Vietnam and was shot down. I was missing in action until 1974. Um it was during that time when I was 10, you know, struggled with um what was going on, and then went to uh an assembly of God church and I accepted Christ. I knew in this journey I needed God to be with me because uh my mother was struggling with with not knowing and raising three kids, and um so I knew I needed God, so that's when I accepted Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Heather, I accepted Jesus several times along the way. I I accepted him when I was young. I was in sixth grade and I went forward at a at a crusade. It wasn't Billy Graham, but it was one of his uh his assistant pastors or preachers, and um my friend uh from Pennsylvania, his name was JB. We went together to this crusade, and we were both in sixth grade, and they gave the invitation, and he grabbed my arm and he said, Come on, let's go. And so I just went forward and accepted the Lord sort of as my buddy's wingman. And then uh when I was between my 11th and 12th grade year in high school, uh, even though I'd grown up in church and was a member of a church and my dad was a pastor, I had a strong sense that I needed to give my life to Jesus. And um I did that uh at a crusade in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, which was about 15 or 20 miles away from where we lived at the time, and I had to borrow my aunt's automobile so I could get to the crusade. And my aunt said, Yes, you can take the car, but you got to take me and a couple of others to go see the movie, The Sound of Music. And so I knew how to drop them off at this theater and then to get back to the high school where the crusade was taking place. Then I couldn't figure out how to get back to the theater after the crusade was over, and I thought, I'm gonna try prayer. I just dedicated my life, I'm gonna try prayer, and so I prayed, Lord, speak to me and help me find my way back to this intersection so that once I could get to the highway, I could find the theater from there. Well, I began to drive and began to feel like God was talking to me, and it was really strange, and it was very, very quiet, and I thought, I'm either doing the I'm either doing this right or I'm doing the most stupid thing in the world, and I would feel like this voice would be saying, okay, now go straight through this intersection, and then okay, now follow this car, okay. Turn right. I did that for about 10 minutes. Next thing I knew, I was out in the country, it was dark, it was a windy road. This is the Pennsylvania mountain area, and I thought that was pretty stupid. I'm gonna I've got to turn around and find a place to get back into town, try to find that intersection and get to the theater. And as uh as I drove along, I saw some lights coming through the trees, and I figured out, oh, there's a bar, a tavern up here, and I'll go up in because it was kind of red lights, and I thought I'll go there and I'll turn around because the road was narrow and it was pretty curvy, and I got to the lights. It was the back door of the theater, it was the back entrance to the theater. God had led me not to the intersection I wanted to go to, He had led me by the most direct path, and that for me became a symbol that if I listen to God, I will get where I want to go by the best path. So that's how I came to Jesus and have been learning to trust him ever since.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

I love that story. That's an amazing story that I think several people need to hear and apply to their life, including myself. Uh, we would love to know how you and Nancy met. Can you tell us a little bit about your career and sort of how you guys have came into ministry? And I know you still do ministry for so many people.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Nancy and I met. She had wandered from Methodism and became uh a staff person at a Baptist student union in Oklahoma City. And uh a friend and I were living in an apartment at a Baptist Student Union, and they were trying to sell that property so they could build a better Baptist student union nearby. And Nancy came over to warn us to get our apartment cleaned up because a potential buyer was coming, and she sparkled when she came up and warned us. And I thought, I think I'm gonna like you. And I started hanging around at the Baptist Student Union a whole lot more. Every chance I got, I was across the street from the at the I'd come across from the university and I'd come in and bother her at her work, and uh eventually the Baptist Student Union director and uh my dad, they performed the marriage when we got married. I was a pastor already and was attending college, attending college, and I would I would go to I would go to the church two or three times a week, and uh I'd be at school the rest of the time. And so when we got married, she knew she was getting married to a pastor. And and and that's not sometimes people get called into the ministry, and uh they are already married, and and it kind of takes the spouse by surprise. But in in Nancy's case, uh we were doing some errand together, and I said to her, you know, I think you would make a great pastor's wife. And she said to me, Oh, I couldn't be a pastor's wife, I can't play the piano. And um it wasn't too long after that that we started dating.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

So when when my dad died, uh I was 10, God gave me the verse, he'd be the father to the fatherless. And one of the things I said, God, you need to find my spouse. And and the things I was looking for, um it was a man after God's heart, a person who loves family, and a person has a sense of humor. And so I just that was my uh journey growing up, is just trying to decide, you know, let God do the deciding, because I know now my earthly father would not have picked my spouse.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

But he would have if he had known me.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

So I I think um I've realized uh even now you know how how much God gave me what I wanted.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Well, that is amazing, and I love that you guys have been doing this such a long time.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

So when did you start having an interest in healing and really seeing the fruits of the spirit at work in people's lives? Sort of jump forward a little bit in your in your career journeys there.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

While I was a pastor in western Oklahoma, I got a phone call one morning, very early, from a man who asked me to please come to the hospital that his wife had suffered a major heart attack and was not going to be living. I headed over to the hospital right away, and he collapsed into my arms weeping. We went into the hospital room where his wife was, and the doctor was in there, and a nurse was in there, and this was years ago, and the doctor was running a strip that was reading this woman's heart uh electrical activity, and it was it was pretty obvious from what was taking place that she was very sick, and she asked me if I would anoint her. Well, I had been a religion major in college, I had attended seminary, I had grown up in a parsonage, but I had never in my life seen anyone do an anointing for someone else. What are you gonna say to someone who is very close to death who says, Will you anoint me? I said, Of course I will, and all I could do was to get a cup of water, and I used the water and anointed her forehead and said, Remember, you belong to God, you have always belonged to God, and you always will belong to God. I thought I was getting this dear person in our lives some peace to go to heaven. But God had a different idea. The doctor moved me out of the way and said to her, he's looking at another strip. He looked at her and he said, You're going to live. I thought I was giving her sort of, I don't know, last rites. But God used that anointing to bring healing to that woman. After that, I began to see a few more healing miracles happen, which was so interesting and confusing because I did not believe in healing, and I didn't think that that sort of thing really happened. Over the next few years, I started seeing some more of those, and I had to confront the fact that God was much bigger and much stronger than I had ever dreamed. That God really was.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

That is so amazing. Can you talk to um some of the different healing room ministries you've been a part of?

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Well, the only healing room that we have been a part of is the one at Tulsa, and our attendance there has been fairly sporadic. We have um for thirty years, we have been doing healing ministry, doing retreats, leading services, healing services, um preaching and teaching small groups about healing. Uh in Tennessee, in Ohio, um Florida, we did a week-long revival there on healing. Every one of these places we have seen God show up, and people, I can't say everyone because I don't know that for sure, but we have seen people have something take place in their life, and they go out and begin to pray with faith for others to be healed.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

So our journey to healing started, he and I would do retreats for our church.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

That's amazing. And I know that's how I met you all.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

So one after one retreat, he said, next year we will do the retreat on healing prayer. That's right. And as we were driving home, Chuck looked at me. He said, I don't know where that came from because I don't really believe that. And so that became our journey. I mean, we went to the Christian healing ministry, we went to conferences, um and then came back and and did a retreat on it. And God showed up, and and the first thing God healed at that retreat was two toothaches.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

And that's the fact that God was healing teeth was ironic and funny and sort of a um educational moment because I had once seen uh a poster in Duncan while I was an associate pastor in Duncan advertising a healing minister who healed teeth. And I thought it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever seen. God doesn't heal teeth. God wouldn't do that. If God were gonna heal something, he'd heal something big, something worthwhile, not teeth. And so one of my friends asked me to go for a drive with him. I went with him out into the country to his farm, and he pulled under this big oak tree, and he turned off his engine, and he he looked at me, he said, now, preacher, you never preach about healing. You never preach on the stories of healing in the Bible. Do you believe in healing? And I said, No, I don't believe in healing, and he it just took him back, and I was telling him some very good reasons why I don't think God still heals today, and they were I was very persuasive. And um then I told him the story of this preacher that had come to Duncan and said he was a faith healer and he specialized in healing teeth. And I said, Isn't that a hilarious idea? Ridiculous. And he said, Chuck, when I was a little boy, my dad was an assembly of God pastor in Northeast New Mexico, and we didn't have any money, and they sent me home from school with a note, and the note said that I had cavities, and that my parents should take me to a dentist. He said he showed the note to his dad, and his dad said, Son, we don't have any money, but I'm gonna pray to God to heal your teeth. And he said, his dad prayed for him, and his cavities were healed. He told me that story under that tree in his pickup truck, and he said to me, Now, Chuck, if I were you, I wouldn't make fun of the idea that God can heal people's teeth. And at the retreat, the first time we ever went for a healing, the First time we just ever rolled up our sleeve and said, God, would you heal someone? He healed two people who were having dental problems. I think God was giving me a good helping and dose of humility. And it wasn't my job to say what God could or could not, or would or would not do in the way of healing.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

That's a great story. I I love that one. And it shows that he cares about the little things, which I think so many people don't realize.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

That's right. He cares about you. He cares about what is going on in your lives. The little things. And he cares what's happening in our lives.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

So you guys have seen so many healing miracles because I've heard some of your testimonies. I was specifically struck about that girl that was dying of the heart issue, and she was going to have a heart transplant. And how when you were praying, you were falling asleep on the phone, but you were didn't realize that you were going into like the speaking in tongues trance while you were praying. And then as a result of all this, she survived and didn't need the heart transplant, is my recollection of that story. And I'm wondering, could you just tell people? Because that's one of those big miracles. But I also think, too, what was so cool about it was just the fact that, like, you kept falling asleep. Like what we thought would be like falling asleep, and you just go silent, but you were really speaking in tongues. And maybe just like how all of that goes together.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

That was the most amazing series of events from our father who loves everyone. I was at my office at First Methodist Church in Tulsa, where I was doing pastoral care ministry. Nancy called me on the phone and let me know that a couple of our friends from a previous church that the daughter they were asking for prayer because their daughter-in-law was having heart issues. Nancy gave me the warning. I called my friend on the phone and was talking to him, and we began to pray for his daughter-in-law needing this heart transplant, and the family was waiting for her to be transferred from St. Francis down to Oklahoma City to Baptist Integris so that she could have the heart transplant. As her father-in-law and I were praying together, and this wasn't a girl, this was a young lady who was, I would say, in her twenties. And um the the father-in-law and I were praying together, and I had a very strange experience in that I suddenly realized that I had been asleep, and I woke up out of this sleepiness and was trying to figure out where was I, what was I doing? Here I had the phone, and I realized I've been praying for this young woman's life, and I had no idea if I had been asleep for one second or for one minute or for an hour. I had no idea if my friend was even still on the phone, and I decided that I had better act like I had better act like I was just being silent. And I just started in praying again, and it happened twice more. In that phone call, I would fall asleep. This family asked that the family could have communion with her before she was sent to Oklahoma City, and I said, I'll come up to the hospital and I'll have prayer and communion with you in her hospital room. And so I got there, they had us waiting outside in a in a kind of a lobby area, and then they had us go back towards her room, but right about the time we got back through the uh coronary ICU to where she was, uh they stepped out and said, uh, we need the family to all go into this other room because the doctors are in there with her right now, and you can't go in because there was quite a group of us, and they didn't mind that several family members were going in there together. And so we stood to the side, another family member, her mother-in-law, showed up, and then we went into her room, but first the doctor stepped around and they said she has been improving, and we are not going to transfer her, and we're not taking her off the heart transplant list, but we're not going to transfer her down to the other hospital, and so um, as soon as we all crowded into her room, I just went over to her bed, stood next to her head. Her husband was across uh the bed from me, and I just started praying in tongues, and all of a sudden I realized what was happening, and I kind of was shocked, and I said, Oh, I am so sorry. I I don't pray in tongues without asking people permission to pray in tongues, and uh I don't do that very often, and I never just pray without asking, and yet it just started coming out, and the husband and the patient both said to me, Oh, it's fine for you to pray in tongues. We do that at our church all the time. We expect that people who are praying would be praying in tongues, and so we went ahead and prayed for her. We asked God to provide healing for her, and we had communion together. And then the father-in-law, my friend, that I was on the phone with earlier, he said, Chuck, I have a question. Why did you say you don't pray in tongues with people without asking? And I said, Oh, I just don't do that. And he said, on the phone this afternoon, he said, You would be praying in English, and all of a sudden you would be praying in tongues. He said it was the most beautiful prayer I've ever heard in my life. I've never heard people praying in tongues like you were praying on the phone. And I said, Me? I was praying in tongues on the phone? He said, Yes. I said, I thought I had fallen asleep. And he said, No, he said, three times during that prayer, you would be praying in English, and all of a sudden you'd be praying in tongues, and it was so beautiful. She got much better. We were having a healing service weekend, a Holy Spirit weekend at First Methodist in Tulsa, and I was not able to get back out to the hospital for about three or four more days. When I went out there, she had been moved to a different room, and I was visiting with her, and she said her heart, and I probably don't have the terminology right, but her heart was now operating instead of at 19%, it was now 50%. And I said to her, let's just go ahead right now and pray for God to do the rest of the healing. And so sitting in that room, I was across the room from her, I was looking at her, she was in the bed. I said, Let's keep our eyes open, let's look at each other as we pray. And as we prayed and asked for God, I felt God's presence in that room. And then later they said they ran another test that I don't know, within a couple of hours, I think, and her heart was perfect, and the amount of blood her heart was pushing through was perfect, and it was like God took over the prayer at various points, and it was like, Pastor, you can pray, but right now I'm gonna knock you out in the spirit, you're gonna rest in the spirit, and I think the praying in tongues, which I was oblivious to, didn't know I was doing it. I think that was God Himself pouring out prayers uh on behalf of this young lady and this whole family. They had great, great faith. And it I look back and say, that was just an amazing time. That's the story that I shared with you uh on some occasion there as we were having a training at the healing rooms.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah, that was so incredibly impactful. I I just walked away going, oh my word. Just to get to see something like that happen in real life is is amazing. So can can you speak to any other healing testimonies that you might have had?

SPEAKER_03 33:47

Um so in in my job, I um I became the prayer room for people for a while there. Um God used me for inner healing and healing of memories. And that was fun um because um one lady I was praying with, and and what I do is is said, you know, God may give you a memory, and you're you know, when you get it, tell me. And so we usually ask the Holy Spirit to enter into her and where God wants to heal those memories. Um I I think of several one one lady um we were praying, I said, um, and she said, I know what this is, and I said, What's the memory? And she said, Well, it has it has I see Jesus by a clock. And she said, One day I stayed my husband was very abusive, and I stayed home and cleaned the house. I got dressed real nice, I I was all ready. He comes home and he sees the clock is crooked, and he starts abusing me. And um so we we asked God to enter in that memory. And usually at those places, I'll say, you know, there'll be there'll be a time you need to forgive. This may not be the time. And she said, you know, I've been so angry, we're we're now divorced, I'm married to another man, and I just see that these this has made me not be able to get into my relationship with my husband now. And so um usually I there's a prayer that I do that, you know, you say what the person uh doesn't like about you and you don't like about them, and just being able to verbally say that, and then you in it you pray for what your desire for them is, and um you know, a lot of it's it's like God is already working in their life, and she said, I want him to have peace, I want him to go on with his life, and um and then uh what's the desire that she has for herself? And um it was it's so beautiful, and uh we do that, and she forgives him, and she comes back after a couple weeks and says, you know, my husband my husband's now is changed, and he's accepted Jesus as his savior. And um it's amazing what God wants to restore in people's life. Um you know, one of the the amazing ones I've ever seen is a lady that um her I knew she was sexually abused as a child, and but her memory was her her mom trying to drown her as a toddler. And um so I say, you know, where's Jesus? Where do you see him? And she said, She's talking to my mother, and I said, Can you tell what she's saying? And and what he's saying to her, and she said, He's telling her to put me down. And she puts her down and she runs out to go get help. And um in that I um you know there were you know other things, it was over a couple of years that we got together, and that there was other things that that happened that she need to go through this, but I always tell them, usually with inner healing, a lot of times there needs to be a forgiveness component, but it's always up to the person when they're ready because sometimes they aren't. But what has what has happened in those times I've been part of that, it's like they're ready. She said, you know, I am so mad at my mom. My mom's dead, I'm tired of it, I'm tired of living like this. And so we we got together, you know, probably um several weeks later, and we went through that forgiveness prayer. And this woman got transformed, and she came back a few months and she said, I was cleaning my closet and I found this letter from my mom, and she said, I don't know, I hadn't read it or anything. And and it says, it's she's saying, I'm sorry for what I did. I was not the mother you I was supposed to be for you. Please forgive me. And I just it was so beautiful when those relationships um happened. So I, you know, I really I found myself a lot doing the inner healing and um breaking the bondage of you know, Jesus is not is interested in all parts, um the spirit, the mind, the the everything. And um and you know, God does it. The funnest part is I don't have to do anything, I just let God do what he wants to do for a person's life, and it's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

Yeah, that was absolutely beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Yes, Nancy and I attended a large healing service in Tulsa, and um I won it was Randy Clark. I don't know if you've ever heard of Randy Clark or not, but um Nancy and I have had the privilege of going and learning from him in a school in Pennsylvania, and anyway, um at Tulsa, I don't remember what church it was, sort of on the south side or south of the interstate anyway. Um we went to this event, and I wanted to get a good seat. And so I didn't want to be way in the back. I wanted to be right where the action was, and so I got there about an hour early. They didn't even have the lights on when I got there, but the band was practicing, and they were getting ready for service, and I was just worshiping God and joined the band practice, and then people started filtering in, and then quite a few people came in, and Nancy came and sat next to me. We were in the second row, and somebody came over and said, uh, sir, we're sorry, but these seats here are reserved for for the dignitaries or something, and I I don't know what they said exactly, but it was fine because it was their church, and I was a guest, and so we went to the back and we started trying to find a place where we could sit down. We ran into a couple of uh we ran into a lady that was a friend of ours, and the three of us were sitting together. Randy Clark did some teaching and preaching, it was really outstanding, and and then they called people forward to receive healing prayer, and so you could get in one line if your uh knees were bad, you could get in another line if you had cancer, let's say, another line if you needed your eyes healed, uh, whatever. There were a number of different lines, and this went on. I mean, there were a lot of people going forward for healing in all these different lines, and one of my gifts is I gifts of the spirit is I like to talk a lot, and so I was talking to the people around us and saying, hi, it's good to see you, and how are you doing, or introducing myself, and then somebody came up and tapped me on the shoulder, and it was a uh a woman that I did not know. She came up and she said to me, I was in the line to get my back prayed for. And while I was in line, God said to me, Go back to that man back there, and he will pray for your back to be healed. And so she was saying about God said, Come to you. And I was stunned, and I said, He did, which was not the thing to say, because I could tell it caused her a bit of confusion when I was shocked that God would send this lady to me. And when she became confused, she then said, Well, you are a healer, aren't you? And I knew at that moment that I needed not to say something witty or pithy, I just said, Yes, I am a healer. And she said, Would you pray for me? And so I turned to Nancy and to our other friend, Carol, and I said to them, We are gonna pray for this woman for her back to be healed. And so I prayed for her. I anointed her forehead with oil, I had a violet oil in my pocket, and Nancy. Laid her hands on the woman's back, and Carol laid her hands on the woman's back. And as we prayed, she suddenly got taller and she said, I have just been healed of scoliosis. And she was so excited. And Nancy said, I felt her back move and become straight. And Carol said it felt like a snake was curved, and all of a sudden it just got in the right position. And that sort of thing is so amazing. I think God did that because he wanted the woman's back to be healed. Obviously, she had the faith to be healed. I also think God wanted to bless the three of us. And for us to be able to be partners with him in healing. And that is the theme of our ministry. Stir up the fire ministry. That's our theme, is that God works in partnership with us. He wants to be partners with us. He gives us gifts so that we can use those gifts of the Holy Spirit to be partners in his work of bringing healing and wholeness and salvation and forgiveness and new life to people. And I'm hoping that maybe even in this in this podcast that we're doing tonight, that someone might listen to it and say, God wants me, them, you, to be a partner with him and bringing his will and letting his will be done.

SPEAKER_03 46:25

And the thing about it is that we are the asking department and God is the healer. It's not us, it's God.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

That is so good.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

This morning, Nancy and I went and had breakfast at a little diner here in Bristow. We go there every once in a while. I cannot ever go into that little diner for breakfast without thinking of a day that Nancy and I were in there, and I began to look around the room. I was looking at every table and every person and the waiters and waitresses and the cashiers, everybody. And Nancy's watching my eyes, and she said, God is telling you to pray for someone, isn't he? I said, Yes. God's telling me to pray for someone, but I can't figure out who it is. And so I began to pray. God, who is it that I'm supposed to pray for? And after looking all around the room, it was a baby at the next table that was in a carrier, a little baby carrier, and was on the floor under the table, and it took me a while to even see the baby, but the baby had a tube, a feeding tube. And I said to the mother and the grandmother, my wife and I believe in Jesus. We follow him. And sometimes Jesus tells us to pray for people. And many times when he tells us to pray for people, they get healed. I said, I think I'm supposed to pray for your baby. Would that be alright? And tell me the baby's name and tell me what's wrong. And this little child had a birth defect and could not swallow, and food could not come down through the esophagus. And we prayed for that baby. A few weeks later, on a rainy cold day in Bristow, I was holding the door open at the therapy center where I was going for having my shoulder worked on, and I was holding the door open. This woman carrying a baby carrier, and another toddler in this hand came up and said, You're the man who prayed for my baby. And I said, I did, and I couldn't think of it and couldn't place it right away. And she said, At the at the restaurant, you prayed for my baby. And I said, Let's step in out of the rain. I am the man I remember. And we said thank you to God in that waiting room that we stepped into out of the rain. And she said, My baby was healed. My baby's now able to swallow. My baby's gaining weight, and the doctor says she's going to be fine. You never know where you're going to be. We pray for people at like last night we were at a church service. We pray for people at gas stations, we pray for people in stores. Wherever we may be, God may be putting us with people. And we need to, all of us, we need to keep our eyes open. And in John chapter nine, verse one, Jesus, it says, as he was passing by, he saw a man who had been born blind. My prayer is as I am passing by, I will see the people around me that God wants me to see, that Nancy will see, the people around her, and she's done all kinds of healing prayers as well, but some of it is planned, and sometimes it's just there's a person, and you know, or you think I may be supposed to pray for this person.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

I love it. Um, just because that is just such an amazing ministry to have. And I just think more people need to take the time to pay attention and see the people around them and who really does need prayer. If we would just get off our cell phones and take five minutes and say to the person at Walmart, How can I pray for you? It would it would change the world.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

So, final question is, and and after this, I would love for you to pray for us because you guys are amazing prayer warriors. But if you could tell someone to chase after Jesus and pursue redemption, what would you say?

SPEAKER_01 52:19

One thing I ask people, do you believe in Jesus? Or tell me about your story with Jesus so far. The idea of chasing after Jesus is an understanding that Jesus is already chasing after us. Jesus is already coming, desiring and yearning for all of us to have the full and abundant life that He wants us to have. Jesus wants us to have forgiveness of sin. Jesus is wanting us to have the abundant life. The Bible says that by the power of God that is at work within us, He is able to do abundantly far more than all that we can think or imagine. People have such need. And God loves them and cares for them. Last night we were at a service of a small church here in Bristow, a Wednesday night crowd of maybe thirty people or forty, forty people probably. And two people came to accept Jesus as their Savior last night. And we got to be there and see it and just be bathed with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely. God is as alive today as God has ever been. God is as loving today as God has ever been. God is as powerful today as God has ever been. The God that we serve loves us and is strong and chases after us and reaches out to us, and God is as healing today as God has ever been. He still wants to heal and make whole. You and I and every Christian should be speaking healing into people's lives, knowing we are not the healers. We are the asking department. God will do the healing if we will step out boldly and try praying and trust that God who is wiser and smarter may have just arranged this whole situation and put us in the position where we could be used by Him. Those are the two things that I think we would like to say. Our ministry is called Stir Up the Fire Ministries, and it comes from 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 6, where God does God's part. And Paul, when he laid his hands on Timothy, Paul did Paul's part. But then Paul is saying to this Timothy, it's up to you to stir up the fire to a full blaze, so that the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands will burn at a full blaze. God's not going to force us to do ministry. God invites us, gives us the opportunity. God wants to use everybody, every Christian's life to be partnership with him. But we have to stir up the blaze. So here's the prayer. I pray, oh God, for everyone who at any time will be watching or listening to this podcast. God, we will have no idea why you have brought someone to listen. But we ask for healing to happen in their lives. We ask, Father God, that you would stretch out your hand from heaven and lay it upon the heads, the hearts, the souls of those who you will bring to listen to it. We pray, O God, for miracles to happen through the lives of your followers. Because it's not our power, it's yours. In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

Amen. All right. Thank you all for coming on. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 58:56

Thank you for asking us.