This weekend I had a chance to catch up with an old friend from Nicaragua. I got to tell him the lasting impact he had on my life in my last visit to his house in 2009.

We were up talking to about 1am, with my flight leaving early in the morning. Osvaldo had promised that his team would pray for me before I left, so he insisted on waking them up. Out came about a dozen young disciples, half asleep and stumbling into their Prayer Room.

They had me kneel, anointed me with oil, placed their hands on me and began to pray. It was all in Spanish so I didn’t know what they were praying. I was struggling to focus on Jesus. If I closed my eyes, I could only think about the oil running down my neck and inside my shirt. Opening my eyes didn’t help, as I didn’t know what to do with this sight:

In the midst of all this, in God’s abounding faithfulness, something happened inside me. It was like a background hum stopped.

Afterward I realized what it was. Some things happened to our family when I was growing up that made me afraid, not of being poor, but of forcing others to take care of me because of my choice to leave my job and go into ministry.

That fear was always with me. And when challenging financial thoughts entered my mind, my stomach would tighten up involuntarily. I mostly ignored it. I’m not even sure I could have articulated it, or admitted it. But it was always there.

After the prayer time, it left. Zero financial stress. And we were in the middle of a season as a family where we went ten years without knowing how we were going to get paid each month. It never bothered me again. And to this day, my stomach has not tightened up once around money issues.

The prayer team was half asleep. The room was weird. They used too much oil. I didn’t know what they prayed. I was distracted. But in God’s faithfulness, I was set free. Hallelujah! God is faithful.