How to Heal Blind Eyes: 100% Dependence

This story from World Racer Nicole Wolf tells of a time when she was sick nothing made sense. She was in Nepal and at her weakest and then God used her in a miraculous way…

I’m on a seven-day trek up Himalayan foothills with my team. Objective: bring much-requested Bibles to the most remote hills of Nepalese villages. Share the good news to those who have never heard it. Pray for the witch doctors. Heal every sick person they bring to us.

It’s entirely God’s grace that I’m still sick for almost all of it.
I have nothing to give, and that means I’m dependent on Him for everything. 

We stop outside a mud and bamboo hut carved into the near vertical face of a mountain of rock and dust. The barefoot family that scratches out a living here stands before us, holding sick babies. They’ve never seen foreigners before. They’re all dehydrated, underfed and covered in dirt. 

I’m empty handed, covered in dust like them. I’m unable to speak their language, so I can’t even give a word of comfort. 
I have absolutely nothing to give them. 

If God does not heal, the people will stay sick.
All the pressure is on Him, exactly where it should be.

I didn’t think this is what I’d be doing on this trip. My fundraising platform said something about empowering communities to help themselves, through their own people. I didn’t picture that being desperately asking Jesus to radically heal random sick people. 

But I can see in this moment that introducing the people to Jesus who does all the healing is a very good strategy.

“Bring us anyone who is sick, and Jesus will heal them”, we said.
They bring us all the babies who are not growing. We pray for all the babies. We pray for all the little children with chest colds and headaches.

“You need to pray for our grandmother,” the family says, “she’s up making sacrifices on the mountain”.

The people here are mostly animists, worshiping all things in nature, and sacrificing often to keep spirits happy. The witch doctors promise healing, but the people are still sick.

Finally she comes. “What is hurting?” we ask. 
“My headache, my heart problems, my knees, elbows, my back hurts…” she tells us through the translator. We pray. She is immediately healed.

Unblinkingly, she asks for more prayer. “My cough, my eyes” she says. 
We pray. Her cough goes away.
“Can you see?” She doesn’t indicate an answer. The translator tells me, “She can only see black, like a black cloud”.

I have nothing more to give, but I’m completely convinced that Jesus is going to completely heal her, and make His name famous in these hills. I don’t know how He’s going to do it, it just know He is.
“Jesus is going to heal your eyes”, I tell her.

It’s a very simple faith. Foolish even, to believe something so bold.
A more dignified person might call it quits and save face. 

But being sick with a parasite made me lose a lot of dignity. I’m fresh off a week of having to wear an open-butt hospital gown, pooping myself, borrowing money and needing someone else to carry my backpack up the mountains. 

This is how God makes me desperate.

So I pray again, sitting on the dust with her, the crowd gathered around. I feel like putting my forehead on hers, so I do. I don’t know why, I just do.
There doesn’t seem to be a change, but I don’t feel like it’s over.

“May I draw your portrait?” I ask.  “I want to remember you”.
She nods and squats in front of me, hands holding her head. She doesn’t move the whole time I’m drawing.

It feels a little silly to just draw someone who you didn’t see healed. Why would you want to remember that? 
But in the moment, it made sense. I felt like my work was done. I’d asked my Father for a gift of healing for her, so now I just needed to wait and see what He did.

This image of her beautiful face was the first thing she saw

When I finish, I turn my sketchbook around and hand it to her. 
She holds it for a moment, and then pokes it with her forefinger.

“Eyes. Nose. Mouth” she grunts.
Her family gets really excited. “She can see! She can see!”

“Can you see?” I ask her. I really want to make sure. I ask her several times.
The translator relayed the excitement back, “now she can see white, and lines. She can see her own face, her eyes, nose and mouth.”

And for the first time since we met her, she smiled. A big, gummy smile.

I got the mountain top experience. 

The path there was downhill. This is how the Kingdom works. Up is down. Down is up.

I have nothing. I did nothing. Jesus did all of that.
God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise: God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. 

I’m a fool bound by love to Jesus.