God’s wonder-working power does not depend on our level of faith. Although most of us would affirm that truth, do we live as though we believe it?
God brought it home to international evangelist Tamryn Klintworth in one of her first crusades.
“My faith wasn’t mustard-seed faith; it was maybe even a quarter of a mustard seed,” she tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of Greenelines on the Charisma Podcast Network. Yet out of even that tiny faith came the fruit she needed to build her ministry in kingdom ways.
“Barely anybody was in the tent; I was terribly disappointed,” she says. And I remember it like it was yesterday. A lady walked into the tent with a crutch and a knee guard. And she came, and she sat in the very front row. And of course, she sat in the front row because not even the front row was full.
“And the Holy Spirit started speaking to me, ‘Tamryn, pray for her.’
“And I started arguing with the Holy Spirit,” Klintworth says. “And I said, ‘Please, Lord, let me call one of the big pastors, one of the big bishops, someone who’s been in ministry for decades, someone who’s prayed for the sick for decades. You can’t use me to work a miracle this mighty, Lord; I must call somebody who knows this stuff.’ And the Holy Spirit kept pushing me.”
Eventually, Klintworth stopped mid-message and went over to the woman. Out of respect in the African culture, she used the term “Mama” when speaking to her.
“Mama, what is wrong?”
“My knee, my knee; I cannot put weight on my knee,” the woman told her.
“OK, I’m going to pray for you, and Jesus is going to heal you.” Klintworth says she then prayed two prayers because “I wasn’t sure which one would work.
“In my first prayer, I tried to sound as if I had a lot of authority: ‘In the name of Jesus, knee, be healed!’ … And then my second prayer was more of a plea to all of heaven: ‘Please, Jesus, please, please.'”
At that stage of her walk, Klintworth says she still thought she had to “feel some sort of electricity or presence” for God to move.
“I felt nothing,” she says. “I looked at that woman; what was even worse, it didn’t look like she had felt anything. She just kind of looked back at me.”
“I said, ‘OK, Mama, you and I, we’re going to walk together.”