When I was a Labor and Delivery nurse educator in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I shared an office with Dianne, and the office was so small that she and I could not be in it at the same time. Consequently, whenever I worked in my office, I left the door open to feel less claustrophobic. Having a tiny office, and then leaving the door open, brought many God opportunities my way.

One such opportunity came on a Thursday afternoon, around 2pm, when I heard a lady in the hall, talking on the pay phone. “Please pray for Sherry. The baby hasn’t moved all day. They’re thinking of doing a C/Section, and they think something’s wrong with the baby. OK- OK- yeah- I’ll let you know how things go. Just pray. OK- Bye.” As she hung up the phone, I walked out into the hallway and asked the lady if she wanted to pray right now, in my office for her daughter?  “Yes- Oh yes. Please”

So, she came into my office and so did the Holy Spirit!  His Power and His Holy Presence filled us both up, so that we both prayed fervently, powerfully, and expectantly. Whew! She thanked me, and I asked her what room Sherry was in, and would she mind if I came down to her room and prayed for her? “Oh – please- come to her room. Pray for her and her baby.” “Ok,” I said,. “I’ll be down in just a minute.”

I called Laura, one of the labor and delivery nurses, and asked her if she could come to my office right away. She did. And I told her what just happened, and that I was totally filled up with the Holy Spirit, like the people were in Acts, in the Bible, on the day of Pentecost. I said that I wanted to go down to Sherry’s room and pray for her, but I felt so drunk in the Spirit, that I was afraid I would walk wobbly. “Watch me walk. See if I look normal.”

So, Laura watched me walk, and laughed, and said that I looked fine. She was a believer too, so it’s not like I asked a random nurse. Standing next to the wall railing, I carefully and deliberately walked down the hall to the young lady’s room. When I came into her room, another nurse was watching the fetal monitoring strip. She looked up at me and said, “Patty, what are you doing here?” And I told her I heard that the fetus hadn’t moved all day, and that I was gonna pray for Sherry and her baby. The nurse told me to make it snappy ‘cause Sherry was probably gonna have a C/Section soon.

I went over to the side of Sherry’s bed and introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Patty. Do you mind if I pray for you?”

“OK.”  I could tell she was worried.

“Do you mind if I lay hands on your belly so I can pray for your baby too?”

Now, as I’m doing this, the nurse is rolling her eyes and looking at me like I was a lunatic, but I felt so full of the Holy Spirit that I didn’t care what she thought. So I put my right hand on Sherry’s belly, and even before I prayed one word, IMMEDIATELY the baby moved- BIG TIME! We all saw it- and the increase in the baby’s heartbeat from moving could be seen and heard on the fetal monitoring equipment. As I prayed, the baby seemed to be having a good old time in there, jumping and rolling all around and the nurse looks at me and says angrily, “What did you do!? That baby hasn’t moved once all day! We’ve tried everything we know to get that baby to move.” (Why was she mad?)

“It wasn’t me. It was God- He did it. I was just His hands.”

“Yeah right- whatever you did, you’ve got the magic touch.”

Well, Sherry ended up having a normal delivery and a healthy baby, and the nurse kept telling everyone on our unit about my magic hands. How is it that some people can believe in magic easier than they can in God?