CATHOLIC Charismatic Renewal Brisbane is experiencing an increased demand for healing prayer as pandemic restrictions ease.
With some people having turned to CCR prayer ministers online during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s face-to-face healing prayer they’re seeking now.
“While we offered healing prayer online following COVID lockdown and some took up that opportunity, during the last month, the number of people seeking prayer face-to-face has increased,” co-ordinator of CCR Brisbane’s healing prayer centres Jenny McCormack said.
“The pressures experienced during the past nine months have often caused or exacerbated issues in people’s lives and they are turning to the Lord for help, which is a wonderful thing.”
Mrs McCormack said there had been a flood of requests for face-to-face appointments since restrictions began to ease.
“We’re praying with people right up until the 19th of December,” she said.
People were seeking healing prayer for all sorts of reasons.
“It can be health issues. Some of it’s difficulties within the family, domestically,” Mrs McCormack said.
“For everyone of them it’s a different reason … We do have some physical healing but we concentrate on the inner healing because usually there’s a reason that traces back, traces back to an inner healing time – a time in their life where they’ve maybe been through a shock or a trauma or a shaming time, and that really affects the physical life of the person.”
And prayers are being answered.
“These people (coming for healing prayer) change during the appointment,” Mrs McCormack said.
“It’s just amazing; when Jesus shows up it’s just an amazing thing.
“They walk in maybe all burdened and weary and stressed, and with inner healing prayer we invite Jesus into the situation and he reveals Himself to them.
“This is the big thing about it; it’s all about evangelisation as well and relationship with the Lord.
“We don’t give any prophetic words or anything; we ask Jesus to speak to them and He would give them a memory or something to re-frame the situation.
“You see it happen before your eyes – once they have that assurance that Jesus was with them, or that He is with them, or that He will be with them they leave a different person.
“They’re full of hope and promise, and it’s not what we tell them so much; it’s what they experience in the session.
“We are forever grateful to the Lord for the way He works in people’s lives, many of whom have been carrying spiritual and physical wounds most of their lives.
“To witness the Lord bring healing to those wounds, leaves one just to marvel at the power of God and to praise Him for His goodness and His personal interest in our problems.
“We are also grateful to our prayer ministers who exercise their faith and gifts on a voluntary basis, in this ministry.”
CCR members began training for this ministry in September 2011, with the first group of prayer ministers graduating in 2014.
“Since then, well over 700 appointments have been made for healing prayer through the prayer centres, approved by the Archbishop, at Northgate, Jindalee and Petrie,” Mrs McCormack said.
During November, an additional 16 interns completed their prayer ministry training with a further 10 interns to graduate in February.
CCR Brisbane chaplain Fr Leonard Uzuegbu commissioned 14 of the interns via Zoom and two at CCR Brisbane’s end-of-year Mass on November 28.
Training for new prayer ministers will begin on Saturday, March 27, and run over three Saturdays including April 17 and May 29 next year.
Mrs McCormack said a good prayer minister needed to be able to listen well.
“The main thing is listen, love and pray … listen, love and pray,” she said.
“There’s no room for judgement; there’s no room for criticism or anything.
“Your mind needs to be just focused on listening, loving and praying.
“It’s a beautiful experience, it really is; it’s a real privileged place to be as a prayer minister.
“It really is a ministry of the heart … and there’s a lot of hurting people out there; they’re walking around in pain; and it’s not physical, it’s emotional stuff.”
Anyone seeking healing prayer at Northgate or Petrie can contact Jenny at 0432 968 892 or, for Jindalee, contract Audrey on 0435 558 390.
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