Lois Flewelling spoke in her quiet way, “I’d love you to bring your healing ministry to Maine, Joan, but Houlton is a small Canadian border town, way out in the woods; we aren’t in a metropolitan area. Joan Hunter surprised her. “I’d love to come to Maine!”
Lois was attending a Joan Hunter meeting in Prince Edward Island. As founder of Houlton’s Empowering Life Center, she is a professional counselor, speaker and teacher and has written two books. Lois was delighted to make the arrangements and spread the word. Meetings were scheduled for May 6, 7, 8, 2016, at the Houlton Full Gospel Church.
On May 6, Joan and husband Kelley Murrell with Norma and John Stibbs as helpers arrived with a van full of powerful ministry books and materials. Joan was ready to minister to the 150 Americans and Canadians who came from near and far.
Healing evangelist, author and teacher Joan Hunter has been on Sid Roth’s popular “It’s Supernatural” TV show 9 times. Sid says he gets more reports of healing when Joan is on the show than any other guest. And considering the many wonderful guests he hosts, that is a powerful statement.
Maine is the 50th state in which Joan has ministered. Significantly, 2016 is a Jubilee year according to the Jewish calendar, a year when God orders debts and obligations to be cancelled and people receive back what they have lost.
Revival is Coming
Joan started the meeting by praying for revival. She prayed for the anointing to shoot down the East Coast from Canada to the Florida Keys and then across the country. As she prayed, she saw a spiritual tsunami forming off the coast. She also declared that revival is about to break out in Canada. She has several trips planned to Canada and will be returning twice this year to Alberta where a devastating physical fire has just occurred. She asked for God’s Holy Ghost fire to burn the dross out of us and ignite us. She also decreed we would receive a Jubilee year cancelling of debts.
As she mentioned the word Jubilee, the cymbal on the drum set gave a large clang with no one even near the drums. Everyone laughed, delighted at the heavenly agreement!
All Should Pray for the Sick
Joan introduced healing by announcing that God has called every believer to be in the healing ministry. “His Word says that we will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.” She asked, “Does it say we will heal them?” A few no’s were heard from the audience. “No, God does the healing.” She also noted that if anyone says I can’t, it really means I won’t.”
This doesn’t mean that, like Joan, we are all to have big ministries and travel the world. Healing is a gift God has given to every believer to use for ourselves, our families and others in our sphere of influence. Joan recently heard someone say that God is looking for gloves He can put His hands into, and she heartily agrees.
Joan’s ministry is not just to pray for healing; the goal of her ministry is to teach us to do what she does and to take God’s healing power to the 4 corners of the earth. Her books and materials all have this focus.
Joan demonstrates that, as believers, our words carry God’s anointing power to create or recreate body parts and to remove stress and trauma. She is especially known for the knee replacements that people receive in her meetings. As they did in this meeting, many scheduled for knee replacement operations received new knee joints and regained full mobility with no pain.
At each of the four sessions, Joan did some teaching and then called people up for healing. At times she used words of knowledge. God shows her an ailment or condition that needs healing and she calls those people forward for prayer. No one was ever left out, however. At the end of each session, all others who needed healing were invited forward and Lois and John and Norma joined Joan to pray. John and Norma served Joan’s parents, visiting 39 countries with them and they now serve with Joan’s ministry. This quiet couple has served “Hunters” for over 40 years!
What is Feeding Your Sickness?
Joan asks us to determine what is feeding our sicknesses. She tells us to examine what is going on in our lives, what we are doing, thinking, saying. She says to starve our sicknesses – don’t agree with the doctor’s prognosis – cut off the devastating words and quote God’s Word. Say, “I am not going to die but will live and declare God’s glory” or pick one or more of the many healing scriptures to declare and repeat. We must be very careful of the words we speak over ourselves. If we say we always get a cold at this time of year, we are prophesying our future and will get what we expect.
By believing and declaring health, Joan tells us that she skipped menopause and her hormones are perfect. She tells us that she is presently “Pushing 70, pushing it as far away as possible.” She let us know that she was about to celebrate her 63rd birthday.
Healing also requires the breaking of generational curses and the soul ties we have created with others through allowing them to control us and/or through sexual intimacy. After a divorce, the marriage covenant needs to be broken, since covenants provide even stronger ties to another person.
Joan also told us that we are getting others’ DNA in our bodies, not only through blood transfusions and body part transplants but through human DNA which is now being added to our food. Knowing spiritual warfare and praying grace over our food is now more important than ever!
One of Joan’s important CD teachings is on stress and trauma. She teaches that any trauma we have experienced from an accident or tragedy in our lives becomes embedded in every cell of our bodies and needs to be removed. She describes a woman who had received a heart transplant who night after night saw a certain license plate in her dreams.
Finally, someone investigated and found that the woman whose heart she received had been murdered by an uncle. The last thing the woman saw as he pushed her into the trunk of his car was his license plate. From DNA evidence in the trunk, the man was caught and is now in prison.
Joan noted that trauma can cause sinus problems or lead to fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. She teaches us to identify each trauma and curse it. Medicine can’t remove it but God’s power in us can erase it.
Height Returns, Severe Pain Leaves
As attendees arrived, each received a blue card. On the front they filled in contact information and, on the back, Joan asked them to briefly list specific prayer needs. First Joan asked who was in severe pain and two women came forward.
The first woman had lower back surgery in 1998, had been divorced for 8 years, and was still experiencing a broken heart. Then Joan asked a rather strange question, “How much height have you lost?” She said about 1 inch. The woman was about to receive new discs in her back and recover that lost height. Joan admitted that watching this happen for the first time can be “freaky.”
Joan prayed. “I curse any and all forms of trauma in this life and body and command it to go in Jesus’ name. I command broken heart syndrome to go in Jesus’ name. I thank you, Lord, for giving her a brand new heart. Fear of being hurt again to go in Jesus’ name. She is free to love and to receive love.
“Father, right now I speak health and wholeness into this neck all the way down the spine. I speak in new vertebrae and discs, all degenerative disc disease to go. Every bit of pain and scar tissue to go in Jesus’ name.” She asked, “Did you see her grow?”
She asked the woman to say thank you, Jesus, and check her back. The woman happily acknowledged that the pain in her lower back was gone but she still noted some pain between her shoulders.
Joan asked her to hold out her arms in front of her, slightly apart. One was a bit shorter than the other. Misalignment in her upper back was causing the difference and the pain.
As she commanded the arms to become even in length, the remaining pain disappeared and the crowd applauded! Joan told us we can do this for ourselves.
Joan’s Rough Road
Throughout the meeting, Joan gave us bits of her life story. She didn’t just step into her heritage as daughter of popular healing evangelists Charles and Frances Hunter, known as the Happy Hunters. She has traveled a rough road to achieve the peace, popularity and accomplishment she now enjoys. Joan’s biological father left the home before she was even born, after attempting to shoot Frances and the child in her womb.
Frances was left penniless with a young son and baby daughter to care for. Joan often jokes about being “por,” so poor they couldn’t afford the other “o.” She tells how her mother would boost her brother into a dumpster to retrieve rotten peaches so she could salvage enough for a meal.
In school, Joan was an abject failure. Her teacher called her retarded and told her mother that she was the dumbest kid she had ever tried to teach. She declared that Joan would never learn to read or write. Joan has definitely proved her wrong. She has a world wide ministry and three of her 18 books were published in the last few months. Joan’s most recent book, “Prayers and Promises for Healing,” made the Amazon best seller’s list, one week after it was published.
Healing A Broken Heart
Joan married at age 20. She and her husband had four girls and together they co-pastored a church for 18 years. On the surface they appeared to be the ideal happy family. Joan had some suspicions but kept them buried. One day, after 25 years of marriage, she discovered her husband had been living a double life, a homosexual lifestyle on the side.
Joan and her daughters were devastated! The girls loved their father and Joan was devoted to her husband. She was also very co-dependent.
Three of the girls were in college and there was no alimony. Just after the divorce, Joan was diagnosed with breast cancer. She tells this story of heartbreak and healing in her book, “Healing the Heart.”
Although Joan and her husband had been part of her parents’ healing ministry for years, this stressful time in her life taught her a new aspect of healing. She had broken heart syndrome in which the physical heart actually exhibits shredding. The fear and emotional pain were so severe, she wanted to die. But with four daughters to live for, she chose life and determined to get her heart and body healed.
The family lost everything – income, home, church. Joan took a job in the secular world but it didn’t pay the bills. Against her CPA’s advice she continued to tithe and give as she had done since becoming a Christian at the age of 12. The girls got grants and scholarships and finished college and she found a new accountant!
Joan has completely healed from the trauma of those years. An echo cardiogram revealed the strongest heart her doctor had ever seen! And a recent diagnostic test showed no residual emotional trauma. Joan has only memory of the good times the family had together; memories of the heartache, sickness and struggle are completely gone.
Amazingly when her heart was healed, the breast cancer also disappeared. Other than a biopsy, she never had any type of surgery. She notes that Christ, not cancer, is the big “C.”
Despite (or perhaps because of) her packed travel schedule and many meetings at their Tomball, Texas, headquarters, Joan is healthy, happy and vibrant. She loves what she does and it shows. For 11 years, she has been married to Kelley Murrell who is a wonderful asset to the ministry. Kelley is also an excellent teacher and writer. Kelley has four boys and Joan has 7 grandchildren.
We Can Do What Joan Does
Joan told us about a young man named Lawrence who attended a meeting she held the previous week. He had studied Joan’s 7 Healing School books and was very helpful to Joan and Kelley, assisting them with various tasks. He told Joan that so far he has laid hands on 45 people and all were healed!
Lawrence wants to attend one of Joan’s ordination meetings but doesn’t have the funds. Joan prayed a prayer for finances and before the end of the meeting, someone gave Lawrence enough cash to pay for his trip to the September ordination meeting.
Joan emphasized that this young man has an amazing anointing. But she indicated that if we step out in faith, we will all see good results.
A woman attending from New Brunswick, Canada, agreed. In a testimony, she showed us Joan’s book “Healing the Whole Man” that is falling apart, she has used it so much. She belongs to a church that doesn’t believe in healing but felt called to healing. She has seen Jesus do miracles in others’ lives as well as her own. As her first assignment God asked her to pray for a woman with HIV and hepatitis. She was scared but believed and was obedient. The woman, who was near death, was healed and is still healthy and whole one year later. The woman herself, using the same principles, was healed of cancer.
Mother’s Day
Sunday, May 8th was Mother’s Day and Joan spoke at the church’s Sunday Service. This was a special day for Joan, it would have been Frances Hunter’s 100th birthday.
Joan started by noting that there were many incredible miracles during the previous services – three were healed of fibromyalgia and back, shoulder and neck and other problems healed. She estimated that there were perhaps two dozen knee replacements.
She also asked for testimonies. A man, formerly from Australia, told us that he was 2” taller than he was the day before. Active in sports in his younger years, he had done much damage to his upper and lower back and was in constant pain. As Joan prayed, he said he could feel his vertebrae realigning themselves and the pain left completely. That morning as he was walking past a mirror he noticed that his shoulders were broad and straight like they used to be. He said “I am 58 years old but I feel like 48!”
Lois Flewelling also told that her family got answers they were seeking. Her daughter and two of the daughter’s boys were affected by very rare blood disease and suffered for years with many health issues. Joan cursed the foreign DNA from their many blood transfusions and commanded Jesus’ blood to replace and purify their tainted blood.
Joan again emphasized that healing is a gift God has given to all believers. She encouraged us to step out and pray and watch as our anointing and confidence grow. If we dream of foreign missions, she said to start by going to superstores and malls. Her instruction to us, “If Jesus tells you to do something, do it!”
June 10, 2016 – DLH
For more information on Joan Hunter Ministries and the Empowering Life Center, see the following websites: