Touched by the Spirit

When she heard the call for someone willing to participate in a demonstration of healing prayer, Maggie Hollis had no intention of going forward during the Embers to Flames prayer training session at Calvary Christian Reformed Church in Holland, Mich.

Prayer had been important to her for many years and, says the mother of 11 children, she had prayed over other people on countless occasions.

But she had always been reluctant to allow anyone to pray for her. She had built a wall around herself, hiding behind her own experiences of rejection, and didn’t want anyone to break it down.

She knew she wanted healing that night. She was in terrible arthritic pain. Other pains—of how she had been treated and at times how she had treated others, of past abuse and of losses in her family life—ached inside of her as well.

But she stayed in her seat at the back of the sanctuary for several minutes, waiting for someone else to answer the call to walk up to the front.

“It was strange what happened to me. I can’t explain it,” Hollis said later. “I sensed the Holy Spirit nudging me and saying, ‘Get up and go.’”

Finally, Maggie Hollis made her way up to the front, where Embers to Flames teachers Mary Sterenberg and Mary Swierenga, and Jeff and Sarah Hoos, prayer coordinators at Calvary CRC, waited.

This was Monday, March 9, the 10th week in 13 weeks of training sessions for Embers to Flames, a program of the Great Lakes Team of Christian Reformed Home Missions.

Between 60 and 70 people from churches across West Michigan turned out every week for the two-hour training on such topics as Personal Preparation for Prayer, God’s Pattern for Prayer, Intimacy with God in Prayer, and Prayers of Forgiveness and Blessing.

Other topics included Hearing God’s Voice in Prayer, The Empowering of the Holy Spirit for Prayer, Christ’s Authority in Prayer, Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Breakthrough Warfare Prayer, Prayers for Healing, Revival Prayer, and Starting Prayer Ministries and Small Groups for Prayer.

Hollis, a member of a Christian Reformed Church in Holland, wasn’t sure what to think when she started to attend Embers to Flames.

She says she had been familiar with the Holy Spirit leading her in prayer for many years, and she had prayed that way, at times a little reluctantly, in her own church.

But she was surprised that the training fit in so well with her own style of prayer, a form of Spirit-led prayer not used very often in a traditional Reformed setting, she said.

“I was excited to find people in the CRC and RCA (Reformed Church in America) at Embers talking about prayer in ways that I’d already been talking about,” she said. “I’ve always felt that prayer should come first, and I felt like I fit right in.”

“Prayers for Healing” was the topic of the session on the night that Maggie Hollis, who works as a house mother in a home for abused women, went forward.

When Maggie reached the front and sat in a chair, Sterenberg asked, “What do you want Jesus to do for you tonight?”

“I’m in terrible arthritis pain all over my body--in my back, in my legs,” said Maggie.

“How long have you struggled with arthritis?”

“A long time. It just gets worse and worse. I just thought I was supposed to have it.”

Gathering around and laying hands on her, Sterenberg and the others prayed for healing from the arthritis. But they also sensed that Maggie was experiencing deeper wounds--emotional, spiritual, and psychological wounds that needed the healing touch of the Holy Spirit.

“It was incredible what happened,” reflects Sterenberg. “There was a definite change in Maggie, when her pain turned to joy and a smile came across her countenance, and she sang and prayed. The transformation was glorious.”

Other participants in the training session prayed and also sensed the powerful movement of the Holy Spirit.

“People’s lives were changed in a huge way that night,” said Natalie Tenbrink, a member of Calvary CRC. “To see the Spirit in action in Maggie reminded me that the Spirit is not a fable. It is real. This was not about learning about prayer from a book.”

Jeff Hoos, the prayer coordinator from Calvary, said that to have been there and prayed with Hollis, to hear her express her pain, and to see the change in her was deeply moving for him as well.

“Embers has been important because it brought so many people together to learn about prayer—and then especially we saw it demonstrated so dramatically in Maggie’s life,” said Hoos.

As it turned out, because of what happened to Hollis during the healing prayer session, an additional week was added to the training so that the class could have an extra week in which everyone could discuss and discern Maggie’s powerful experience of healing, said Sterenberg.

“Maggie’s experience touched everyone. We knew we needed the extra time to debrief with Maggie and discern together if we were in step with the Spirit and let others express their feelings as well,” said Sterenberg.

Maggie Hollis says powerful emotion poured from her that night, arising from deep places she had always tried to keep hidden from others.

In the days since the experience, she says she has felt like she is floating, still putting together the pieces of all that happened. Her friends and family tell her she seems different. She appears calmer and kinder.

In particular, her arthritis pain has eased, allowing her to move her hands and legs more freely.

“I’m a different person. I see things in a different way,” she said. “I’m blooming out. The Spirit is flowing all out onto my family.”

“Maggie experienced the physical healing she came forward to receive, and so much more. ... We praise God for what he is doing in Maggie,” says Sterenberg.

As she reflects on that night, says Maggie Hollis, she sees how the wall she built to keep people at bay has been breached. She is more open to God’s leading, and she feels more connected to other people.

Especially, she says, she has come to realize how important it is for her as a black woman to see beyond race and to embrace people of different races, to work against her own prejudices.

“I see how much hatred and not being willing to forgive is a big sin in our lives,” Hollis says. “God wants us to love one another in love. God is here, inside of me. I experienced revival that night, and it is all about the Lord.”

Esther Brower, evangelism chairperson for Comstock CRC in Kalamazoo, Mich., said she thinks the experience she and others shared with Maggie will having lasting effects on people.

But the Embers to Flames training itself will have an impact, given all that it offered about types and manners of prayer. Brower said she is grateful that this comprehensive prayer training was available.

“I’ve grown personally in my prayer life as a result, and we’ve been challenged as a group to take what we have learned and share it in our own churches,” said Brower.

The Embers to Flames training series was captured on videos and has been posted for people to view and study together in small groups.