Gwilym Hesselman

Last year Gwilym was a student in my Life Group at the seminary. A young man in his twenties, he was in his 2^ndyear of studies for a degree in Bible and Theology. He told me a story about something that had happened to him and several of his friends who had been reaching out to their community by going from house to house preaching and ministering to the people. That particular area was extremely impoverished and he said many of the people live a hopeless existence and are addicted to alcohol.

He and his friends would meet and pray together every week and God had opened doors for them to minister in different homes. On this particular occasion, he and five of his friends were invited to a “very old” woman’s home to preach the Word. Her name was Aunty Monica and one of her friends was with her. I asked him how old he thought she was and he said she was very, very old—probably 60. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was 64 at the time. After he preached the Word, they sang a worship song and Aunty Monica stood up shaking and told Gwilym she had a lot of pain in her chest. She told him she had gone to the hospital that day and had gotten three packets of tablets and was intending to kill herself.

The next thing he knew, she took his hand and lifted up her breast and shoved his hand against her chest and told him to pray for her. After praying he looked up into her eyes and she had a startled look on her face and was crying. When he left, he promised to return the next day at 5:00 PM to check on her.

When he arrived he was surprised that she was sober and waiting in anticipation for him to come. He told me that the people in this community are so addicted to alcohol that they start drinking first thing in the morning and continue all day long. He assumed that when he arrived she would be drunk, but instead, she was waiting for him to come and minister the Word of God to her again. That was when Aunty Monica told him what had happened the evening before. She told him that when he prayed for her, she felt fire from his hand when he touched her and she knew she had been healed. She then said that when she looked into his eyes, she saw Jesus and that’s why she was startled.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul told the believers, “…my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:4, 5). We are called to a lost and hopeless world and we need the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit along with the preaching of the Word to penetrate the darkness that is impossible without it.