Wheelchair Healing Marks Outpouring in Wales
The Welsh Outpouring
Paul Haynes’ miraculous healing stunned the congregation in Cwmbran as he leapt from his wheelchair.
Taken from Direction August 2013
The Welsh Outpouring has quickly come to the attention of Christians all over the world, but for one man, the start was as significant as anything that followed. Paul Haynes’ miraculous healing stunned the congregation in Cwmbran as he leapt from his wheelchair and hoisted the cumbersome load over his head…
“At first I tried to fight against it, because my psychologist and my care worker told me, ‘You’ll end up in a chair,’” says Paul Haynes. “In the end, I had to concede and go in the wheelchair.”
Having spent ten years in a rather unwelcome sitting position, however, the former businessman found his feet in the most remarkable way. The 53-year-old had been attending Victory Church for over a year when his healing occurred, marking the beginning of the Welsh Outpouring.
Incredibly, Paul had been expecting something like this to happen. “A few weeks prior, while I was in prayer in bed, because my disability often put me in bed, I said to God, ‘If you will raise me out of that chair, I will raise that chair above my head as a trophy to you.’
“And it felt to me like a still small voice said to me, ‘I will heal you.’”
“I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, I didn’t know where, but for the next couple of weeks I went round the church telling people, ‘I won’t always be in this chair. God will raise me up out of it.’”
Things could have been very different if Paul had done what he wanted that Wednesday. “I knew it was coming,” he says, “but I had no special expectation that night. I nearly didn’t go to that meeting because I was feeling rough.
“In fact, when Pastor Richard was giving the altar call for people to come and get ministered to, I didn’t respond straight away. All I was thinking of was wheeling myself out to the car, getting my friend to drive me home, taking some Tramadol and hoping I could kill this pain.
“But my friend and my wife were sat with me and they said, ‘Go on, this might be your night.’ So I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing to lose. If I come back to the rows in my wheelchair, I’m no worse off, but I may very well walk tonight!’”
For Paul, Richard Taylor’s sermon based on the book of Esther that evening was of particular relevance.
“Richard was talking about bringing your Haman into the presence of the king, which is Jesus. Whereas Haman had power, like the enemy had power and was crippling me, Esther had favour. And I thought as I wheeled out, ‘Maybe my Haman will get lynched tonight on his own gallows!’” Having been persuaded by his wife and the friend who had driven them, Paul found himself at the front of the church with Pastor Richard and Executive Pastor Andy Parsons praying ‘strength’ over him.
“I felt a current go through my spine, through my hips, down to the back of my knees, right down my legs. My legs started shaking. I can’t duplicate how it happened,” he says, attempting to demonstrate. “Then my legs shot out. Straight up.
“I put my hands on the arms of my chair, and I didn’t need any help and I just went,” Paul explains, leaping up from the sofa he’s occupying for the interview. “I felt strength in my body. I felt I had become fortified. Then I just turned round. I think my wife guessed what was happening then because she started screaming. Up goes the chair above my head!”
Paul’s wife Lorraine remembers, “Paul had said that he was going to honour God by lifting that chair above his head and he was telling people in the church. And when his feet hit the ground out of the wheelchair, I knew this was it. I knew it was what God had promised. Oh, was I happy! I was screaming with joy and jumping up and down and running round the church myself.”
Paul’s life has been revolutionised. The manual wheelchair he raised in that meeting sits in the church lobby as a trophy of grace. “I’ve got a motorised one at the house as well,” he says. “That was given to me by the hospital, but that’s going back now, that is!”
More practically, he’s now slipping into his pyjamas with barely a hint of the osteoarthritis that was crippling his back, lumbar spine, knees and hips before the healing. “I was in a state of shock that night,” he remembers. “It seemed surreal to me at first. The reality dawned on me when I got home and I was getting undressed from my suit into my pyjamas and I called out, ‘Lorraine’. Now she knows, when I used to call before, that means I’m on the floor and I need help. She came upstairs and I said, ‘My leg has grown!’
“That leg was two-and-a-half inches shorter because of the damage I’d sustained in a car crash in 2003 on August 4. “My injuries were potentially life threatening,” he says. “I had a broken sternum, damage to my hip and my spine. I was badly hurt.”
For a long time, bitterness was a big part of Paul’s life. Unable to continue their ‘very together’ lifestyle as a couple because his disability and chronic intense pain prevented much going out, holding hands, and even resulted in Lorraine having to be careful how she turned over in bed, this success-orientated businessman took the blow hard.
But even the darkest of storm clouds had a silver lining. When Paul and Lorraine were in the car crash there were off-duty paramedics, doctors and nurses driving nearby. The police conceded that they had been expecting to find three bodies when they arrived at the scene, but the quick work of the professionals saved the Haynes’ lives. For Paul, though, this was as much a stumbling block as a cause for rejoicing.
“I asked God, ‘Why did you save me?’”
Having been out of church fellowship for 18 years, they joined Victory Church, where they’ve been for the past 18 months. Shortly after joining, Paul asked God that same question, and got an interesting response.
“I asked God why he saved me, not some other great men of God and he said, ‘What is that to you? But if you want to do one thing, consider your life not your own.’ Now, I don’t die easy, my wife will vouch for that. I’m a fighter to my own detriment. But when I said to the Lord, ‘Lord I offer all that I am unto you without reserve, do with me what you will,’ within a year I was raised up out of that wheelchair.”
