Don’t rely on your skills

On the day Stephen and Joy were to cross the border into North Korea for the first time, Stephen was sick. Or he wanted to say he was sick—sick and could not go. He was nervous, scared. All he could see was the childhood image of North Koreans with horns and tails. He imagined they would swallow him if he did something wrong.
On that day their assigned escort was late. They waited at the border for over two hours, anxious, freezing cold, and hungry from not having eaten lunch. When their minder finally approached, Joy said, “Wow, he’s so handsome.”
Something inside Stephen shifted. Oh. He is a good-looking man. He’s a regular person. Just like us. North Koreans are people just like us.
During the hour’s drive from the border into town, the minder asked questions, trying to make conversation. All Stephen could say was “Yes” or “No” as he reminded himself: Calm down, relax. He’s just making conversation.
Stephen was nervous, but for the first time in his life, he was able to break through the propaganda of his childhood and recognize the truth: North Koreans were people whom God loves.
And God wasn’t done stretching and challenging Stephen and Joy. They had prayed about this move and were convinced that God was calling them to go. They had even reconciled that if they had to die there to follow God’s call, they would do it. But even with that kind of faith, Stephen confesses that he never thought God was alive in North Korea. Every bit of news or information about North Korea was not of God. It’s all what the enemy and darkness have done to that nation.
That all changed when Stephen began treating patients.
When he first arrived at the hospital, his predecessor took Stephen aside to a private room. They prayed together, and then the older man said, “Today you are going to rely upon God. You cannot rely upon your medical knowledge or your skills here.”
In the beginning, all his patients were old with very difficult chronic issues.
He found himself saying again and again, “I’m sorry. You came too late. I cannot help you. You need surgery, and I can’t do that.”
Knowing they could not receive surgery in the country, he had to simply give them basic treatment and send them home. Stephen was disappointed. Why had God sent him here if he wasn’t going to be of any use?
But then, amazingly, his patients began to be healed. As a chiropractor, his treatment was all manual. He had to adjust people by physically touching their bodies. And as he laid hands on them in treatment and silently prayed over them, they began to see miraclous results.
A grandmother who hadn’t been able to move her arm for years suddenly could. A patient who had been brought in by piggyback because he was completely disabled by pain got up and walked out of the treatment room.
Stephen knew it wasn’t because of the basic treatments he was giving—his patients’ conditions were so severe. There was no explanation other than that God was healing them one by one. And Stephen received the message loud and clear: God is alive and well here.
He is the one who heals.
He is the one changing impossible to possible.