JOY HEALING IN CALIFORNIA

By Pastor Mary Matthews

In a very old book on healing by Dr. Lillian B. Yoemans, she refers to a “joy healing”. She was called on to pray for a young man who was in terrible pain due to kidney stones. He was scheduled to have surgery in a few days, but because his pain had become so intense, his wife would soon be compelled to call an ambulance. As Dr. Yoemans and a few other believers began to pray and worship God in the suffering man’s room, the Lord’s presence so filled the room that they all lost track of time. Soon the young man who had been in excruciating pain began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. When he could stop laughing he found that he was totally healed and never had another problem with kidney stones. We have seen many manifestations of the same method of healing that Dr. Yoemans describes. Healing through laughter is very scriptural because the Bible says that laughter doeth good like a medicine and that Jesus was anointed with the oil of joy above all His brethren. Religious people get offended when others laugh in church. They seem to think church is a place to be serious and to mourn and cry but we see from God’s Word that there is an anointing connected with Holy Ghost joy. Recently, we were holding services at the church of some dear friends in California. The pastor’s mother-in-law is a very godly woman and attends their church. She is generally happy and goes about the house praying and worshiping God. She has seen mighty miracles in her life and was instrumental in the salvation of many of her family members in their home country of the Philippines. Before we arrived for a series of meetings in their church, this lady had gone to the doctor and discovered that her heart had severe blockages. The doctor was surprised that she was still living with so little blood flow to and from the heart. She underwent surgery and had seven bypasses to the heart. The surgery was successful but left her with such severe pain that her expression had become drawn and her usually happy demeanor had changed to sadness. She was looking to the Lord for relief. In one of the evening services I was holding, the anointing of the Lord became very strong and it began to manifest in expressions of joy. This sweet older lady, who had been sitting through the services in such discomfort, suddenly began to laugh. She covered her mouth and tried to subdue the laughter so as not to disturb the service, but the harder she tried to be quiet, the harder she would laugh. Even though the pastor’s mother-in-law was a joyful person, she was generally quiet and introverted in public. It was not her custom to purposely draw any attention to herself. If she would quiet down a little and I would just walk by and look at her while I was preaching, she would break into loud peals of laughter and screams while pointing at me, covering her mouth and shaking her head back and forth. Her laughter came from so deep within her that it seemed to be shaking her internal organs. Her joy was so contagious to everyone in the service that soon the whole church erupted in Holy laughter. In the next evening service much the same thing occurred. After church we went out to eat with the pastor and his family and this woman was smiling and rejoicing. She gave us the testimony of the surgery and subsequent pain and how the Lord had taken away every bit of pain and restored her joy as well. We received testimonies of many miracles that occurred during those meetings, quite a few of them of them financial. Many people believe you have to die of some sort of disease of injury, but that is not true. No matter what your age, if you get sick you can be healed and go to heaven at a later time, healthy. The famous healing evangelist, Smith Wigglesworth, was 87 years old when he died. He was at the funeral of a friend. While sitting in the pastor’s office in the church, talking with some friends, he breathed his last breath and went directly to heaven with no sickness or disease. We can all believe God for that kind of home going.