I recall the first time that I was called upon to “heal” someone through the “gift of healing.”  I was teaching an introductory computer course at a local community college at the time to a very large class of 100 students or more.  

During the course of the semester, a “vision” of one of the students came to me during meditation late at night. The vision was of me laying hands on the student’s head healing her, although I didn’t even know her name.  I found it curious but essentially dismissed it from my mind.  

However, in the next few days, the vision reappeared to me vividly twice more on different occasions during meditation.  After that, I shared my vision with my wife and also asked the student about her and her family.  She related that she was in her early thirties, with two small children, she lived in a rural area and her passion was horses. 

She told me that she had recently been diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and was to undergo surgery after the final exam of my class. Because of my visions, numbering three now, this medical knowledge sent me into a great deal of fright and questioning of my own sanity. 

I strongly resisted the idea that I could be used to heal anyone and, more likely in my mind, I was taking on a “messiah” complex. Nevertheless, I had learned to trust what I received from God in meditation, so I was struggling with a real dilemma.  The dilemma was soon resolved for me.  

As I was putting my five-year-old son to bed saying his prayers and asked that we pray for a student of mine, a woman who was sick, he said, “Did God come to you in a dream and ask you to heal her, like He came to Saint Joseph in a dream?” After this astounding word from the mouth of a babe, I could no longer deny what God was calling me to do. 

After the last class of the term, I asked the student to stay after and told her the whole story of what I had experienced and asked her if she wanted me to pray with her for healing. In an otherwise empty classroom of more than 100 seats, I prayed with her for healing and lay my hands on her head as I had seen in my visions. 

The day after the operation, I visited her in the hospital and she relayed that the surgery had gone well according to her doctor. A week or so later she stopped by my off to excitedly tell me that she was back horseback riding. 

The doctor had examined her a few days after the operation and could find no evidence that he had operated, no cancer, and could not understand her “miraculous” recovery from the operation.  He agreed that she could go immediately back to horseback riding.