On Faith for Healing
I had prayed for people and seen them recover. People with rashes. People on their death beds. This was by the Holy Spirit’s gifts of healings. The Lord would tell me to pray for them, I’d ask their permission and then lay hands on them and pray. The Lord healed them. Biker chicks, liquor store owners, old sweet Baptist ladies… He is no respecter of persons.
Then one day I broke my back. Kept working. Begging prayers when the pain was too much. My back and I settled into a rhythm of mutual tolerance.
Then I broke the other side of the same vertebra. More begging and pleading prayers. Tried to have faith, but fear gripped me. My hip started to go, from the unstable gait, I assume. Discs gone. Vertebra now disconnected and sliding around on my spine. Unbearable pain. My foot would go into unnatural positions during spasms. I closed my business and had the surgery. Surgeries.
They gave me a morphine drip and a Fentanyl patch after surgery and I quit breathing. I was on the outskirts of heaven when a voice called my back. This was followed by bone infection, a year of antibiotics, back brace and more pain as now the metal rods were sliding around due to my spine crumbling. My hip grated and squeaked when I walked on my walker. My fuzzy mind could no longer do basic math or recognize simple patterns. I was broke and mostly alone, except for the dog. She’d wake me up when I’d stop breathing. The Lord did send me people when I was most desperate. I never did without.
I did everything I could. I walked in the pool when the incision was healed, took “miracle” supplements and pleaded with God, hoping He might do something. Sometimes the X-rays looked like I might be healing, but the bones were hollow and they’d recrack. You could hear it.
I sat in the chair for hours, days, weeks and months listening to worship music. Singing along with Keith Moore, “I will live, I will not die. By the power of Your Word I’m kept alive…” The Lord was building faith in me. I needed my own faith for my healing.
One day, I was in my recliner with my crumbled spine and brand new hip looking at my toenails. I thought, ‘these need to be cut’. Then I heard Him! Glory to God! He said, very softly, “If I can grow you toe nails, don’t you think I can grow you bone in your spine”? And, “You can’t add one inch to your height by working at it.” Yes, Lord. Thank you! That was it, I quit trying to be healed and knew that I was healed. I had received my healing right then.
When I went back to the neurosurgeon, I told him I was healed. He rechecked the X-rays, standard procedure. “Well, it looks ok, but those bones may still be hollow”. No, sir. I’m healed and there’s no need for me to come back. I never saw him again.
References
1 Corinthians 12:9
to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit,
Acts 10:34
King James Version
Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
Job 4:14
Fear came upon me, and trembling, Which made all my bones shake.
Isaiah 51:12-16
The Message
12-16 “I, I’m the One comforting you.
What are you afraid of—or who?
Some man or woman who’ll soon be dead?
Some poor wretch destined for dust?
You’ve forgotten me, God, who made you,
who unfurled the skies, who founded the earth.
And here you are, quaking like an aspen
before the tantrums of a tyrant
who thinks he can kick down the world.
But what will come of the tantrums?
The victims will be released before you know it.
They’re not going to die.
They’re not even going to go hungry.
For I am God, your very own God,
who stirs up the sea and whips up the waves,
named God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
I teach you how to talk, word by word,
and personally watch over you,
Even while I’m unfurling the skies,
setting earth on solid foundations,
and greeting Zion: ‘Welcome, my people!’”
Matthew 8:26
But He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.
Mark 4:40
But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?”
Romans 9:32
Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.
Zechariah 4:6
So he answered and said to me: “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the Lord of hosts.
Habakkuk 2:4
“Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith.
Romans 3:27
Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.
Romans 10:7
so then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Mark 11:24
Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
Matthew 6:27
Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?