May 31. RA Torrey. Torrey’s parents were Christians, but early on, he was not interested in the Christian life. He entered Yale in 1871, determined to become a lawyer. But God had other plans, and—after a dramatic conversion in 1875—he graduated and entered Yale’s Divinity’s School. Three years later, hearing DL Moody preach moved Torrey to give himself wholly to evangelism. So the not-interested-in-Christianity Torrey became an evangelist, pastor, educator, and prolific writer.
In 1889, Torrey became the first superintendent of Moody’s new Bible School. In 1902, he embarked on a worldwide evangelistic tour that lasted for 3 years. He embarked on another tour in 1911, and in 1912, he moved to the west coast where he became the dean of a bible college and started the Church of the Open Door, and he pastored that church until he was 68 years old, when he resigned to return to full-time evangelistic work.
When we let God interrupt our plans, He lets us take part in His.
One chilly, Minneapolis morning, Torrey arrived at his City Mission Society office and found a note on his desk from a family he didn’t know. They wanted him to visit and to pray for the family. Torrey never ignored such requests.
He traveled about four miles outside the city, and arrived at the family’s home. They were French and the husband and wife had been Catholic, but had become Protestants.
Now the wife had been sick for four years and had received care from nine different doctors, but none of them were able to help her. “She was helpless. She could move her hands, but she had to be lifted upon a sheet when they made the bed,” Torrey said. He sat next to her sickbed and asked her what she would like him to do.
She wanted to be healed.
Torrey read to the woman James 5:14-15, “Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven,” (NLT).
“Do you believe He will heal you?” Torrey asked the woman.
She said she believed God could heal her.
“But do you believe He will heal you?” he asked her. “Do you believe God will heal you?”
She did.
He read to her several promises of God from the Scriptures, explained to her that the anointing with oil meant that she was fully surrendering to God of all her physical powers.
One of the Catholic relatives in the room said she’d become a Protestant that day if the woman were healed.
Then Torrey knelt by her bedside. He anointed her with oil in the name of the Lord and prayed that God would come in with the healing power of His Holy Spirit and restore her to perfect health, then and there.
As Torrey prayed, God assured him that his prayer was answered. So he told the woman, “I expect you, as soon as I am gone, to get up and go about your work.”
Certain of this, when he returned to his office, he told one of the missionaries, “…I expect you are going to hear something tonight.”
“… and, sure enough, when the meeting was opened for testimony a neighbor of this woman arose and said that God had completely healed the woman, and that immediately after my departure she did get up, dress, and go out for a call,” Torrey said.
Torrey had the confidence in God and in his Word to risk a moment with the woman and boldly pray for her healing. “How often God has given me faith as I have prayed for some sick one, and healing immediate, complete and wonderful has followed.”
Years later he was speaking on the power of prayer in Los Angeles. When he recounted this story to the people, a man stood up from the crowd and said, “Mr. Torrey, that’s my wife … and [she] is a well woman.”
“So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most,” (Hebrews 4:16, NLT).
Where can you activate the power of faith and pray for someone in need? When we let God interrupt our plans, He lets us take part in His.
“Evangelism, Revival, and Healing” Healing and Revival. Accessed August 11, 2020.
https://www.healingandrevival.com/BioRATorrey.htm
“Reuben Archer Torrey.” Moody Bible Institute Archives. Accessed August 11, 2020. https://library.moody.edu/archives/biographies/reuben-archer-torrey/
https://www.truthfulwords.org/biography/torreytw.html, accessed 031419
Divine Healing, R. A. Torrey, New York/Chicago, Fleming H Resell Co., p. 21.
Story read by Nathan Walker
Story written by Abigail Schultz https://www.instagram.com/abigail_faith65