At 10:30 on a Saturday morning (October 1, 2016) during our visit in Alabama with Cross Country Evangelist Lance Rowe, a gentleman named John dropped by at Lance’s home in the rural town of Dutton. For the past two weeks John’s wife Carolyn had been struggling with symptoms of a heart condition, with among other things a heart rate in the 40s and feeling numbness in her face. Her cardiologist was going to perform tests on her the following Wednesday.
Lance Rowe carrying the cross
Saturday morning Carolyn along with a group of other ladies was singing praises to the Lord acapella at Shady Grove Baptist Church down the road from Lance’s home. Even though she had not been feeling well Friday evening, she nevertheless showed up Saturday morning at Shady Grove to join the others for the singing. But around 10:30 that morning, feeling terrible and unable to go on, she dropped out of the singing.
Soon after dropping Carolyn off at the church earlier that morning, John stopped by at Lance’s home nearby. He told us about Carolyn’s possible heart condition and asked us to pray for her. We asked him if Carolyn could drop by the house after the singing, but the singing was scheduled to continue until 2:30 in the afternoon when we would be gone. So we asked if we could go to the church just down the road to minister healing to her in Jesus’ name. But John replied that Shady Grove Baptist was quite a traditional church and likely would frown on that.
And so our only recourse was to minister healing to Carolyn at a distance—just as Jesus did for the servant of the Centurion in Luke 7.
Luke 7:1 When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion’s servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” 6 So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed.
Moreover, in John 14:12 Jesus promised that “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing…”
So sitting around the table in Lance’s kitchen that Saturday morning, we and Lance “said the word” to Carolyn who around that time had dropped out of the singing at the church. We exercised authority in the name of Jesus Christ, rebuking Carolyn’s heart condition and commanding her heart to be healed in Jesus’ name. She was of course completely unaware of this.
At about that time Carolyn (seemingly “for no reason”) suddenly felt strength return to her body. Feeling fine, she got up and joined the other ladies in the singing giving praise to God until they finished at 2:30 much later in the afternoon.
Later that evening at the weekly fellowship held every Saturday at Lance’s home, Carolyn (looking and feeling great) testified what the Lord had done for her earlier that morning. At the end of the evening the newly Elijah Challenge-trained believers laid hands on her in Jesus’ name with power and authority, and with a big grin she testified that she was suddenly able to inhale deeply for the first time in a quite while.
Received from Lance on Sunday, October 16
“Remember Carolyn who we prayed for at a distance at the house while she was at the singing? Last night she testified at our Saturday night fellowship that she went to the doctor for them to see how much blockage was in her heart, and when they were done they concluded her heart was 100% healthy, and her arteries have no blockage. She says she feels better than she has in a very long time.”
Cross Country Ministries with Lance Rowe
Lance has literally carried the cross through several states in the
United States sharing the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ
Lance & Michelle (1998) have 7 children