 privilege it is that he invites us to come boldly into his presence. We're so glad that you're with us today on Hope Today. I'm Anna, and I'm here with Tom and Sydney. Sydney, we've got a great conversation coming up. We truly do. You know, coming up in a moment on Hope Today, when prayer meets medicine, miracle, and mystery, you don't want to miss our upcoming conversation with Dr. David Chaka, who's going to reveal how you can experience God's healing prayers through biblical principles. We have them here in the studio. He's from Canada, and we are super excited, Tom. You know, this is something that I know so many people that call into Cornerstone and call into our prayer line asking for healing, asking for miracles. And he has experienced it firsthand. And I think it is something that all of us are able to access. Jesus modeled it perfectly for us, and we are called to walk it out. So we're just really encouraging you to just stay tuned, be inspired, be encouraged and just watch what God is going to manifest and watch what God is about to do in your life today. Well, you know, it's still our number one request that we get into the prayer line is for physical healing. It has always been. And 45 years later here with over 2 million calls to the prayer line, it is still the number one request that comes in. It is a need. It's something that we all can relate to and we all can have. So I'm really excited to talk to David. We were talking to him a little bit before the program, and he's just excited and we're excited to have him. I do want to say something real quick. Today is giving Tuesday and you know, if you have the opportunity to support the Ministry of Hope today through Cornerstone Television, we would love to have you on board as part of our team. We are so thankful to all those people who do give so many people give sacrificially to this ministry. We don't have one big supporter or anything like that. We have a bunch of people that are giving sacrificially that have enabled us for the past 44 plus years have this ministry going into homes and touching lives. And we hear a lot about how this ministry really ministers to people in their homes, right? Yeah, we were talking about the prayer line. Did you know that we get 60,000 60? Yeah, 60,000 calls in a year here through our prayer line, and it's incredible to just hear how people are ministered to how there is healing, how there's hope, how there's joy. And there is so much power in coming into the presence of the Lord. And we hear from you about our programs being in your home and filling your atmosphere with that joy, with that hope and that healing power of the Lord. And we can't do what we do without your generosity. So thank you so much for giving in to Cornerstone Television. Yeah, we are truly thankful for you, whether you're in Pittsburgh, you're in Florida, wherever you are across the country and even watching around the world if you're checking us out on YouTube. We are truly grateful for your partnership because when you give to Cornerstone, you enable people to experience the power and the presence of God, not only through television, but in all different ways, especially through our prayer line. And there's so many testimonies over the years that we have heard about healing. It is truly remarkable and incredible. Well, don't go away because when we come back, Dr. David Chaka is going to open up and just share with us about the power and the presence of healing prayer. You don't want to miss it. We'll be right back. In this month of Thanksgiving, we're excited to send you the special daily gratitude journal with your best gift. This easy to use journal will encourage you to bookend each day with short personal reflections that bring insight and intentionality to your busy and always changing life. How can six simple questions help you better navigate life's uncertainty? Best selling author Tish Oxenwriter invites you to lean into the rhythms that each morning and evening offers with a twice daily thought exercise focusing on gratitude, truth, grace and more. As you reflect on three key questions near the beginning and end of your day, you will be more poised and prepared for whatever God has for you in the hours between. Request your gratitude journal today when you give. Call 888-665-4483 or donate online at ctvn.org slash donate. Thank you for giving to Cornerstone Television. Do you desire to see miracles manifest but ever wonder how is it possible? How do I go about doing it? Well, today we're so grateful to have Dr. David Chaka joining us live in studio in person. He's been a pastor of Christian Missionary Alliance of Canada for more than decades and he has taught internationally on prayer principles. Dr. David, we are so grateful that you are here with us today all the way from Ontario. Yes, no, it's not that far. Yeah, I crossed the border in Detroit and I drove around underneath Lake Erie and came here. So about a four and a half hour drive. Yeah, well, we're super honored to have you with us today. And you know, you have written a book with Maxi Dunham called Healing Prayer, God's idea for restoring body, mind and spirit. And before we dig into that, because there's so many stories and so many principles that are in this work that you've created. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how God has put you on this path of prayer, healing prayer specifically. Well, the path of prayer began way back in the day when I first got saved. I was the first one saved in my family. And I just didn't know how to pray and there were nobody's teaching there was no one teaching me how to pray. And so you might be a bluster, you blunder, you make bad mistakes, you you pray kooky things. And in the course of time, I wound up having magnificent mentors and one of them was Maxi Dunham. He wrote a book called The Workbook of Living Prayer, and it assumes you know this much about the Bible or on this much about prayer and he walks you gradually through and the book itself was designed as a workbook and it has the scripture and italics. So as a new believer who didn't know where Genesis and Malachi was, I had no idea. It was a guide that brought me to a place of understanding how to begin to pray. And by the time you get to week four of Maxi's book, you actually know what you're doing. It was a privilege from the Lord to meet the man and now to co-write with him. So this is an incredible kind of a thing. Yeah, it's truly incredible. And you know, one thing that I love about is just the stories and testimony and just going into the first wide love just how you encountered healing prayer and it was unexpected because it was with somebody you weren't too fond of. No, that's right. So so I was so I started training for the ministry and I wound up at this very, very liberal school and I believe that Moses split the sea and that Jesus walked on water. The miracles were true and many of the faculty did not. And there was a guy in the class. He was actually a radio host who used to do comedy, stand-up comedy. And this guy, any time I defend the authority of scripture, he would make a classic marvelous, magnificent joke that would put the whole room laughing in fits of glorious laughter. But it was always in mockery about what I just said. I mean, we'd laugh so hard we'd cry, but the trouble was it hurt. And it went on for months and I had a very sweet wife, you know, very sweet. And when she was in the room, he wasn't nasty. He also had a mutual friend and I called her Susie in the book because I didn't ask her permission, but she was one of these do unto others, you would have them do unto you kind of people. And whenever she was in the room, the nasty didn't happen. But if I was in a class with this guy and I said, Oh, by the way, Moses did, in fact, split the sea. The Red Sea did part, you know, the miracles did happen. There would be this terrible joke, et cetera, et cetera. And it would hurt. And I just started to avoid the guy. Anyway, here's what happened. I was walking across a plaza to get to my Greek class. And who shows up but that very nice Christian girl. We call her Susie in the book. And she said, Oh, by the way, our friend, he's, he's, he's ill. I said, Oh, I'm terribly sorry. And said, Yeah, he's in the hospital. And Sidney, I didn't feel bad. I had to repent on the moment I had to repent. And so I said, What's wrong? And she said, He's got phlebitis. Now, if your guests don't know what that is, it's where a clot or an embolism forms in your arm or your leg. If it's in your leg, it's called deep vein thrombosis. If it's in your arm, it's called phlebitis. But if the clot breaks free and goes to your lung or your brain, 95 people out of 100 die. And the 5% who live are terribly impaired. So it's a very serious thing. So this girl says to me, he's, I said, Where is he? And she, she pointed down the road. It was a hospital about six blocks not far from where we were studying. I said, Oh, he's getting good care. And she said, Yes. And I said, Oh, okay. She said, Yes, he has a request for you. I said, Really? What's the request? She said, He wants you to come and pray for him. I said, What? No, no, that's crazy. You've heard him. He's mocked me. He's made fun of me. He doesn't believe the Bible. He wants to make fun. And she looked at me and she said, He's been cruel. I said, Yes, you've seen it. He said, I'm going to talk to him. I said, Thank you very much. It went off to my Greek class. Now, it talks about two in the book, but actually it was three times. I said, No. Next day in the coffee lounge, the same girl walks up and says, He's terribly sorry. He wants you to come and pray. I said, I'm not going. I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. She said, He's waiting for you. You need to go. And the next day was walking across the same plaza because it was three times a week Greek class. And this girl looks at me and she said, Did you go and see our friend? I said, I'm not going. And I have to tell you this. I don't know if you've ever been told off by your mother, but she uses your middle initial when she's mad. And this girl stood up fire coming at her. And she was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest girl I knew. She stood up. She stomped her foot in the concrete and she said, David, our Chotka, aren't you going around this school telling everybody the Bible's the word of God needs to be obeyed? I said, Well, yes. And she said, How about this scripture? I was sick and you visited me. And I went, Oh, no. Oh, no, I'm going to have to see the guy and I looked at her and I said, Sick and visited, I'll do sick and pray. I won't. I was there. There was reasons for my being terrified. I'd never met anyone who had been healed through the prayer of faith. I had never met anybody train people to do this. And I had never seen it, except I'd seen some kind of iffy testimonies on television. And I met people who said it was charlatanism and so on and so forth. And but I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. I knew it was in the Bible, but I'd never been trained. I didn't know what to do. Anyway, eventually I wound up in the room. I finished my class. I went down the street of six blocks and he's wired for sound. You know, there's there's there's all these wires and monitors and it's obvious this is a very serious thing and he's pale as a ghost. And I go in there and I talked about the weather. Then I talked about his classes. And then I said, well, I visited you now. I'm going to leave. And he looked at me and he said, wait, aren't you going to pray? And I stopped and I looked at him and I said, before I do, I have to ask one question. Every single time I've said the historicity of the scripture is accurate. The stories are true. Faith in Jesus is required. You have made me a laughing stock to our peers. Why do you want me to pray for you? And he burst into tears. 27 year old man cried in the room and he said, I am so sorry I did that to you. But you're the only guy I know who actually believes the Bible is true and I could die. I want to live. Won't you please pray for me? And well, what are you going to do? I mean, but I had not a clue what I was doing. So I thought, I guess I'm going to have to pray. But I remembered from the Bible, Jesus put his hand on people when he prayed. And so I said, where's the clot? He said my left arm. I said, can I put my hand over the spot? He said, yes. So I went in the room and I put my hand over his left arm. I put my other hand on his head. And Sidney, I prayed, I don't know what I prayed. Some honest prayer about God making him well. Some, my words stumble. I'm sure I tripped over my lip. And as we started to pray, the room filled with the manifest presence of God. It was like we were inhaling compassion. And what happened to me was I felt this fire come inside my being. Suddenly the only person I could see was him and the clot in his arm. And I became aware that God himself was flowing through me. The power of the Lord was flowing through me. And the fire flowed down my hand and went into his arm. And then he looked at me and he said, presence. What is that? I said, it's the power of the Holy Spirit. He's touching your physical body to make you well. And then I ran out of the room. I had never felt that before. I didn't know what it was. Actually I was afraid he was going to make a joke and mock me. And I ran right out of the room as a nurse was walking in. And I found out later, as soon as I exited the room, the nurse came in and he said, I can go now. My friend from the Bible school came and he prayed for me and Jesus healed me. And the nurse of course said, we don't do that around here. We've got to run some tests. And so she said, I'm coming to get you for the test anyway. And at four o'clock in the afternoon the next day, there he was in the coffee lounge. And I looked at him. I said, you're here. And we were in a 19th century building with those fluted columns, you know, and they had these columns that would stick out. And you had to watch where you walked on a terrasif floor. He pulled me into a corner. And then he looked in every direction. And then he said, dad, prayer changed my life. I said, oh, and I ran away because I was so afraid. So the next class, this part's not in the book. This is beyond the book. The next class that I was in, that he was in, I said something to defend the authority and the integrity of the scripture. And he stood up and I thought, here it comes. The mockery is going to come. And he made fun of unbelief and the whole room exploded in laughter at the people who didn't believe the Bible was true. And this went on for months. And I kept meeting people after that who told me this guy would stand up in the class and defend the scripture. When I went in my first, we had summer fields in those days. He walks up to me and he has a piece of paper in his hand. He shoves it in my hand. He gives me the Pentecostal handshake, you know, the paper in the hand. Usually it's money but. So it said, what's that? I said, that's my phone number. I said, why are you giving that to me? He said, if you're in trouble, call me. I will defend you. I said, okay. So I had this marvelous summer field. I came back to school and he raced up to me and he said, you didn't call me. I said, I had a marvelous summer field. They didn't have any trouble. If you're in trouble, you call me. So I don't know. Two months later, we were having a party for this. All the class was there. We're all having a social thing. We're doing harmless chit chat and his wife and this nice girl and him are all standing together. And they elbowed him and they said, tell him, tell Chotka what happened. And he said, I don't want to. And the elbowed him, tell Chotka what happened. So finally he said this. When he was released from hospital and went home, he told his wife that Jesus had healed him. And they went to sleep and he had a dream. And in the dream in the night, he heard the Lord speak to him. And the Lord said, my servant David, defense the integrity of my word. When he speaks, defend him. That's the end of the story that's not in that book. And so 30 years after, I was trying to figure out if I should change churches. I was in Western Canada trying to figure if I should, if I'd done my bid, it'd been 10 years in that congregation. And I ran across his name. So I googled his name. I found his stuff and I emailed him and I said, it was 30 years ago. He said, yeah, was. The Med people got really mad at me when I said you came in and prayed for me. So here's what they did. They did a scope of both arms. You see, he had phlebitis on his other arm. There was scar tissue there. There was no scar tissue at all on his left arm. None, not a trace of it. And the Lord healed him. So that's how I started on this process of prayer. But I didn't want to pray for the guy. Because I didn't know what I had. Not a sweet clue. Nobody told me or trained me. But Dr. David, I love that so much as that was like the entry way of God was just showing you the power of healing prayer. And I know throughout your life and you share so many, you have so many stories and so many testimonies of what he did. Can you even share with our audience and our viewers because there's a there's a relationship between the power of healing prayer and medicine, miracle and mystery. Well, yes, I'm the recipient of much medicine and I do believe that they're like this. So medicine has a scientific trajectory. And so somebody who's a medical doctor is receiving the benefit of somebody who's dedicated 25, 30 years to looking at a trajectory of a disease. And sometimes they lost their kids' sister to leukemia. Some neighbor got killed in a car accident and medical or medical intervention saved somebody's life and it changed them. And they dedicate decades and decades of life to discovering a cure. So medicine has what I call an empirical thought trajectory and miracles outside the realm of time and space. And sometimes there's a pathway to a remedy and sometimes God guides a person there and my favorite text for this is in Isaiah, chapter 38. It's the story of Hezekiah, King of Judah. So Isaiah, the prophet shows up and he says, King, your toast, put your house in order. It's over. Ka Putski, you're done. So Hezekiah puts his face to the wall. He cries out, he prays. It's in Second Kings as well. He prays and he doesn't pray to be healed. He says, oh, God, remember what I've done to lead your people. Now, Isaiah, the prophet, the big guy, you know, the 66th chapter, he's walking out of the court and the Lord lands on him and says, go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people. I'm adding 15 years to his life. And so he goes in and he says this to the king and the king says, oh, isn't that nice? Prove it. So then he says, what do you want? Do you want the shadow to go up 10 steps or down 10 steps? He said, wow, down's easy. I want up. And so Isaiah cries out to the Lord. The shadow moves contrary to the destiny that's supposed to go ordinarily. And then when it's done, he says, there, you've got your proof. Now, get yourself a fig poultice and put it on the boil and suck the poison out. What do you do? You're going to be just fine. So he gets a prophetic word saying he's going to die. That's followed by a prophetic word saying it's going to live. It's followed by the unbelief of the king asking for a miracle. He gets a nature miracle and then he has to take his medicine. That's a do it all. Well, it's just, it's in the Bible. It's just there's no conflict. So here's what happens. If you cut your finger, of course, you clean it off. Sometimes you put on an antibiotic cream, you cover it with a bandage. You don't even think about that. And there are seasons and we thank God that somebody developed that antibiotic cream. But you do the ordinary. And when you have, when medicine runs out, you start seeking the Lord and the power of the Lord overlaps the medical and sometimes supersedes it, sometimes works in partnership with it. And sometimes they're in separate channels. And I don't see any conflict between medicine and miracle at all, especially because of that story. I love that so much. And there's this quote that it's from the book that it was like really hit my spirit. And so this is, prayer does not limit the power and sovereignty of God. It is a vibrant means ordained by God through which God's grace unfolds. God used the praying of the faithful to reshape reality. So my phrase for that is God initiates and we respond. And so you cannot bluff a miracle. You can only cooperate with one. And when the Lord commands us to pray, the spirit bears witness with our praying and prays through us. I mean, it actually says it in Paul. I don't know if you've ever noticed this. In the scripture, we believe, Jesus is God, the Son. Do you believe that? Absolutely. Do you believe that? Yes. You believe that too? What's he doing praying? He's talking to himself. Well, here's what happened. God gave the planet to humans. Everything that the Lord ordained through the structures of creation remained intact after the fall. When God separated the light in the dark, it remained intact after Adam was an idiot. Well, Eve was an idiot too. I don't know if it's dumb and dumber. I'm not quite sure. Anyway, they were both a bunch of pack idiots. Regardless of this, all of the structures that happened in the six days of creation remained intact. And the last day, God puts the human in charge of the planet. Why did God become a human? Because God put humans in charge of the planet. And so the prayer of Jesus reshaped reality based upon God's prior decision that he would reshape reality through the oversight of the human. That's why prayer does it. And so he became a human to save us so that every aspect of what it means to be human could be infilled by the presence and power of the Lord. And it includes God's prior decision that the human would have oversight over the creation and the prayer principle does that. In fact, it's astonishing. I mean, when I think about the difference between God and us, I mean, it's like you having compassion on an amoeba and a water trough. Would you want to abandon your prerogative to take on the life of an amoeba, to raise the amoeba to the highest place? It's crazy. But he does that to enter into our life condition to restore and transform us. At any rate, the point I'm making here is, God still humbles himself to pray through us. He says it in Romans 8. He says the Spirit prays through us with groanings that are too deep for words. And through that process, God causes all things to work together for good to those who love them and are called according to His purpose. It's not a predestinarian passage. It is a God pray through us to change the earth passage. That's what it's about. So let me ask you, David, for someone who's watching and they're struggling with their health right now. They're struggling there and they maybe don't have a good report. What should they do? What should they do to believe the Lord? Oh, my. Saturate yourself and read the Gospels over and over and over again. I would just fill my mind with healing scriptures. And then I would find people who actually believe that God still does that today. You know this. I've been at prayer meetings for, you know, I'm in the Christian Mission Airlines. And one of the articles of faith in the CMA is that Jesus is the healer of the physical body. And anybody who comes into the CMA has to say yes to that. And they have to say yes to James chapter five, where it's his call for the elders and have them pray. But I've been around some of those elders and they don't believe for a second that anything is going to happen. Even though they say it, actually getting your heart and your head together in the belief that the Lord wants to actually do something in real time, that's a very different matter than just nodding your head to say yes to what's in the scripture. There's this experience of the spirit that's required where God bestows a gift of faith when you're in the middle of the process. So I don't pray anymore if it be that will prayer. So let me just be clear on this. This is an answer to your question. I have been, I don't know how many thousands of prayer meetings. And here's what they pray. Oh God, Susie's sick. Healer, if it be your will. I'm sorry. I did a word study on that will thing. Tell us. I looked through the entire New Testament. So there's not one time anybody in the New Testament prays like that. Not one time. I mean, the thing that's closest is Gethsemane. Jesus is in the garden. He knows he's going to get killed. And as he's praying in the garden, he says, oh, Moses and Elijah told me I'm toast. I'm over. It's Kaputsky. I don't want to go that way. I'll do whatever you want. I know what the will is. Can you change the will? It wasn't, oh, by the way, get me out of this now. I'm submitted to what you're asking. Could you redirect the flow of history here? And so the if it be their will prayer was submission to what he already knew the will was. So when I'm praying for someone who is ill, I don't start off with that crazy line. I start off by saying, oh, we're going to pray now. Do you have any matters that you need to get off your heart? In fact, it's a story that's not in the book that makes the point. And I'll tell that story if I have time. Anyway, the point, I wait. While I'm waiting for the person, I put my hand on them and I say, Holy Spirit, show me how to pray. And as I do that invariably, the person who is struggling gets an experience of consolation. They don't know how the consolation worked, but there's this interior sense of presence. If the presence starts to increase, I say, okay, Lord, I want you to move now with your power and expand your presence inside the person who is afflicted. And then you wait as you pray for the increase of the presence to be manifested. So, we only got two minutes here. Yeah, we are out of time. We are like, actually, out of time. This is like so good, I know. But this is like, so, I just, we just so appreciate what you're sharing out of the stories and out of your experience. That what is dead is that it is we, the presence of God is that's what moves us to compassion, to pray for those. And we rely on the power of Jesus, what he did on the cross, because he is our example to see those prayers and the healing manifests like miracles like never before. So, we know we're running out of time. We wish we had three hours with Dr. David. Thank you so much for just sharing. The book is called Healing Prayer, God's Idea for Restoring Body, Mind, and Spirit. Yeah, it's released locally by Whitaker House. Pushed up the street. Yeah, we'll have a link on our website. Well, wonderful. We just want to remind you in this last minute that we have, that we do have a prayer line that is available to you 24 seven. Our prayer partners are incredible men and women of God that would love to pray for healing over your mind, over your body, over your spirit. Our phone number is 888-665-4483. We're just so thankful that Dr. David visited us today to share these stories of God's miracles of what he wants to do in our lives. It is his will. It is his way to heal. So today, get in his presence, connect with someone who will pray for you and believe that God wants to do a miracle for you this season. He loves you so much and he has such great plans for your life. Come before him, surrender to him and see what the Lord will do. Have a great day.