Healing ministry began after an Immersion in Love for Jesus: An Interview with Jack Sheffield
PneumaReview.com: When were you baptized in the Holy Spirit what differences did this experience bring to your ministry?
Jack and Anna Marie Sheffield
Jack Sheffield: In 1973, I was converted to Christianity out from a pagan background, and I was baptized in the Holy Spirit in the same moment I was saved. I spoke in a heavenly language not even knowing what was happening to me. It was quite overwhelming! My rage, fear, trauma and rebellion was turned to radiant joy and peaceful love with an extreme desire to please my Jesus in every way. One night, not too long after my conversion, I broke past remnants of fear into a powerful anointing to preach and minister to people in a Methodist Church. It’s like I became “another man.” My fiancé asked a friend, “Who is that guy?” Shortly thereafter, because of this baptism in the Spirit, I had an encounter where Jesus drove me from a nap into a cotton field behind my house. I tried to hide away because I was weeping profusely with groaning and travailing! After a while, I crawled out into the grass, and I heard these words out loud, “You are going to carry my gospel to the nations.” My baptism in the Holy Spirit was a complete immersion in love for Jesus, and eventually led my wife and I to many nations on six continents.
PneumaReview.com: Did you receive a specific call to the healing ministry?
Jack Sheffield: Healing was a very real experience for me from the beginning of my walk with Jesus. It began with me. I was healed in spirit, soul, and physically on numerous occasions. Fear, guilt, shame and anger were washed away in wave after wave of His mercy. My spirit soared in ecstatic encounters of weeping only to be followed by bouts of laughing in glorious joy! My scared little spirit was married to the Holy Spirit and was learning all about freedom in Christ. Heart disease ran rampant in my family, and through a very stressful business attempt, I developed a bad heart. God used this to bring me to utter surrender to that cotton patch call. Jesus completely baffled my doctor when she examined me for my physical and discovered my heart was totally normal. I still have the two disparate EKG readouts.
It was then I realized I had a very distinct call to the healing ministry in the United Methodist Church.
This happened in the Summer of 1978. Healing began to manifest immediately in my ministry.
PneumaReview.com: In your book, God’s Healing River, you mention that “presence” is very important in healing. Please tell our readers what you are referring to.
Jack Sheffield: In the Fall of Adam and Eve, what was lost to humanity was the “presence” of the Lord. Adam hid from His presence in fear and, I believe shame. Jesus could not wait to get it back for us. Moses basically told God he was not going anywhere unless God’s presence went with Him. He said it was the only thing that distinguished his people from all the other peoples of the world. Presence is everything when it comes to healing. Without it, very little happens. My criteria for discerning the true presence of God is this when He “shows up”: 1) There is clarity in the atmosphere – Words preached or taught become very clear. People perk up attentively. 2) Brightness irradiates everyone present. There is a glow in the room and on people’s faces 3) There is a cleanness that is felt and experienced as real and tangible, and 4) Great joy breaks out which is “unspeakable and full of glory.” How do we get into that atmosphere? Ruth Ward Heflin used to say in the 1990’s, “You praise your way into worship, and you worship your way into the glory.” When the glory shows up in worship, healing and miracles can abound. We have seen it over and over again. Therefore, we worship Jesus all the time, even in our cars. The greater the worship, the greater the operations of healing gifts.
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