Jack Deere told this story during his talk “Healing and the Word of Knowledge” given at the Convergence conference 2019 in Oklahoma.

Jack Deere told this story “John Wimber became my mentor. We went to California. We attended the conferences. Eventually I ended up on his church staff. Early on in one of the church conferences – this would have been really typical – there were 3,500 in the room at the Anaheim Vineyard in California. We were praying for something (I don’t remember what) but there were hundreds of people down at the front of the church. John started to walk off the stage, but then he stopped. He came back and said to the conference, ‘There a lady here. You have cancer and you have not come forward for prayer. Would you please come down to the front?’ No one moved. John paused for a second and then said, ‘You flew in on Tuesday and you actually came here to be healed of cancer. You came here to be prayed for, so this is your time. Please come down. This is for you. We want to pray for you.’ Still, no woman came down to the front. Then John said ‘You’re wearing a pink dress and you’re sitting in the back. Would you please come forward ?’ At this point a lady in a pink dress who had been sitting in the back row got up and came forward. Her story was that she had flown into Los Angeles on Tuesday and she had come to be healed but, when John started calling her out to get prayed for, the devil said to her, ‘This is not you. You’re still smoking. This can’t be you. He’s not going to heal you.’ And that’s why she wouldn’t initially get up and come to the front.

I was standing beside John when all this happened. So afterwards I said, ‘John, that was amazing ! Hearing that from God must have been like a foghorn going off in your brain !’ He replied, ‘Oh no Jack ! It was so faint. If I hadn’t been paying attention I would have missed it. I thought the ministry was over and I was just walking off the stage and I had just the faintest impression there was a lady here with cancer who hadn’t come forward. So I walked back to the microphone and called her to come forward. Then I asked him, ‘But what about the ‘flew in on Tuesday’ bit ?’ John replied ‘Well, I just had this impression about Tuesday. It just floated through my mind. I thought, “Well a lot of people come here on Tuesday two days before a conference starts so that they can enjoy Southern California. That’s probably what she’s done.” ‘ Then I asked him, ‘But what about the pink dress and sitting in the back rows bits ?’ John replied ‘Well, when she didn’t come forward, for just a second I saw a bit of pink floating over the back row and then it disappeared. I just thought that it must have meant she was wearing a pink dress and she was sitting in the back rows.’

I said, ‘John, you just called out this lady in front of 3,500 people based on those flimsy impressions ?’ He replied, ‘Yes. I do it all the time.’ I asked, ‘Why ?’ He replied, ‘Because that’s how the Lord speaks to me. And I’ve had better luck adjusting to His way of speaking than getting Him to adjust to my way of hearing.’

So what I learnt from John Wimber was to pay attention to those really faint impressions.”