An Experience With Healing

During my lifetime, I’ve witnessed many prayers being answered.  Too many to count, in fact.  Some of those answers have been nothing short of miraculous.  I will share one of them here. 

First, when I was fourteen years old, my mother started having serious back problems.  After going to the doctor, it was determined that she had a ruptured disc in her lower back and would need surgery to correct it.  The only problem is that she did not have health insurance.  So, the doctor sent her home and prescribed bed rest.  Several relatives, including an uncle who is a pastor, came to pray for her over the next several days, but she continued to lie there in agony.  Getting up to go to the bathroom was quite painful as were any sudden movements brought on from coughing or sneezing. 

About a week into the ordeal, she said that she couldn’t handle the pain anymore and was just going to have to have surgery, no matter the cost.  At this point, I felt such despair at the thought of her having surgery.  The despair I felt wasn’t over the cost, but just the fact that she was going to have surgery.  I had such a gloomy feeling, almost a feeling that if she went under the knife that something terrible would happen.  I prayed about it and asked God to heal her. 

After a few days, I started having this strong urge that my uncle needed to come pray for her.  One evening, I asked her to call him and ask him to come pray for her, but she reminded me that he already had and nothing happened.  I implored her to call him again.  I just had this feeling inside me that everything would be fine if he came to pray for her.  In fact, it reached a point where I was really becoming a pest about it.  Looking back, I know it was God speaking to my heart.

I recall my mother calling my uncle and going so far as to say that I just wouldn’t leave her alone about it unless she called him to come pray again.  Less than an hour later, my aunt and uncle arrived.  My mother, dad, aunt, and I all joined hands as my uncle placed his hands on her back and began to pray for complete healing.  After several minutes of intense prayer, she got off the couch, with no pain whatsoever, and walked into the next room, saying only, “Thank you, Jesus!”  She never had another problem of this nature with her back for the rest of her life.

One other item of note:  My mother was a smoker, but after this healing, she had no desire for a cigarette.  Several months later, I recall her saying that she wondered what would happen if she tried a cigarette.  She didn’t have the desire for it, but just wondered if it would make her sick or what would happen.  I told her that we shouldn’t tempt God.  He had delivered her from the addiction, so why tempt Him and risk having that part of her healing removed?  Wouldn’t that be like turning down a blessing from Him?  She tried a cigarette anyway, and of course, eventually ended up addicted again, but finally quit in 2000.

In the fall of 2005, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually passed away from it in late 2006.  There were also many prayers from people asking for her healing from the cancer, but it wasn’t to be.  I was at peace with it then and still am now.  My perspective is that my uncle prayed for “complete healing” and she was delivered from her addiction to cigarettes the night her back was also healed.  God is eternal and timeless.  I believe He healed her of her lung cancer that night so many years ago by taking away her desire to smoke.  Unbeknownst to her (or anyone else at the time), by tempting God and trying smoking again for no reason other than to just see if she would get sick, I believe that she rejected her healing.  Don’t misinterpret me here.  I’m not saying she deserved to get lung cancer and die from it, but that God is timeless and had healed her from it back then, by taking away her desire to smoke.  There are consequences for our actions, and her getting lung cancer was the consequence for her going back to smoking.

Throughout the years, I’ve often reflected on the significance of that night in my own spiritual walk.  My belief in healing was solidified by what I witnessed that night.  Not only that, but as I grew in my faith, I also began to learn to recognize when God is speaking to me.  Praise Him!