Ever since I was a little guy of eight years I have been excited about God's mighty power to perform physical healing. I believe HE heals through doctors, climate, diet and also prayer. But HIS healing power through prayer has greatly awed me.
When I was a little guy I was a strong skeptic, that is until I saw a goiter the size of a volley ball disappear right before my eyes, and all the loose skin on the lady's neck, that was stretched around that goiter, fall in four rolls on her chest. WOW! That got my attention. In those same meetings, that my Mom took me to, I saw a man who had been deaf, who was restored so effectively that he left two big hearing aids behind, not needing them anymore.
So, from then on I was hooked. I became a healing junky. Some people watch football....but I watch people get healed. I cry, I laugh, I weep... I shout "HALLELUJAH!!!" I love to see the look on their faces when our wonderful Heavenly Father fixes the unfixable!
I've seen people healed from cancer, deafness, Multiple Sclerosis, asthma, arthritis, blindness, AIDS, wrong spirits, broken backs, ruined knees, fibromyalgia, diabetes and on and on.
In this essay I want to share a little healing miracle that God did for me some years ago.
As a young man I had trouble with my feet. I caught a contagious virus in my feet at the school gymnasium. I went to the doctor and got it cured. But after that my feet were susceptible to such things, apparently. After I was cured of the initial attack, I would have another type of growth attack my feet. One of those growths was very persistent. Getting my initial cure had cost a lot of money. And so I just got used to living with one on the ball of my foot. I had to trim the hard, dead top off with a razor, in order to walk without discomfort.
When I was 26 years of age, living in Kansas City, my wife Jan saw this growth one morning when I was putting on my sock. It had grown, over the ten years I had lived with it, from having only one center to having over twenty centers. It was about an inch in diameter. Truly it was a awful looking thing!
Now Jan is a very practical girl and she confronted me immediately. "Clint, that could be a cancer! You are going to the doctor!"
So off to the doctor I went. The nurse took one look at that growth and she opened a drawer and pulled out a huge needle and a super sharp scalpel. She laid them on a stainless steel tray, before my cringing eyes, and said, "The doctor will be with you shortly."
My heart went into overdrive, pounding like a hammer in my chest. I don't like seeing blood. I thought that maybe the doctor might freeze the thing off, or have me apply some kind of prescription, to burn it off, over a period of time. But that nurse, when she saw that thing, knew what had to be done. I could just imagine myself limping out of the office. Worse, I could imagine the doctor slowly and carefully running that scalpel, while I prayed that the massacre of that growth came to a speedier end. As you can see I was not born to be a doctor or a nurse!
I sat in that examination room for 90 minutes looking alternately at those sharp instruments and back toward the ticking clock on the wall. My heart kept banging all around my chest...but no doctor appeared. Time had run out. I was supposed to be 20 miles North to pick up Jan at work. Why hadn't the doctor come in?? An hour and a half is too long to be looking at an unmanned needle and scalpel. No way was I going out in that hall to look for the Doctor!
So I just walked out of that office. No body saw me. It was like I was invisible! I never got a bill. The doctor never wrote or called to say word one. It was like I was never there.
On the way home I cried out to God. "Lord, I believe in your healing power. Please don't make me go back and get cut on. Please heal me."
I made a deal with Jan. I got her to agree to 30 days of prayer. But if God didn't heal me in 30 days I promised I would go back and face the scalpel.
So every morning a ritual began, just before I put on my socks. I would lay my finger on that ugly, wicked thing from the pit of Hell, that lived on my foot. I would speak to it saying, "You foul growth, I curse you in the Name of Jesus Christ. I command you to leave my foot. I bless every good cell in my foot. But in Jesus Name I curse this growth. Die, you wicked growth!! Be gone in Jesus Name."
This little ritual took place every day. I could see no changes as the days wore on. About the 26th to the 28th day Jan walked in as I was going through my ritual and said, "Remember, you promised. You know that God has given us doctors, too. You need to make another appointment, soon!"
Jan is so practical and level headed. She is the logical one in the family. I'm the emotional one. And she believes in God's power too. But she knows how we men sometimes are...sometimes we are the biggest babies when it comes to doctors.
I told Jan that I would keep my promise. I was becoming a little down because it was beginning to look like, in the natural, that God was going to use the Doctor to fix me. And the doctors, as wonderful as they are, are butchers compared to our marvelous God. Our God can fix anything without any blood getting all over everywhere.
The next morning or so I lifted up my foot to go through this ritual, and I gasped out loud, "Oh NO!!! It's getting worse!....OR,.... maybe it's getting better?????"
Jan came into the room, having heard my outburst. There as we stared at that wicked growth I saw something very concerning. The growth had gotten all swollen up. It was all wet, like it had been soaked for days in a hot bath. It had turned white and pruney. It was awful looking. For a moment I wondered if I was going to have to rush right in to the doctor's office for immediate cutting, chopping, and blood letting.
I asked Jan if she minded if I waited just two more days, while I watched and prayed, because the more I looked at this awful sight, the more I began to see that this thing was dying before my eyes.
And sure enough the thing dried up and disappeared. All the foot print lines went back together and joined, lines that had not met for a decade!! There was no scar. There was no mark that would tell you that anything had ever been wrong with my foot. My foot was restored to a better condition than it had ever been in. And after that I didn't see anymore of those kind of growths come to abide on my feet. God broke that curse!
I distinctly remember driving down the road, in my car after that, praying. And in my prayer I was awed at the power of the Name of Jesus. For it was that Name that changed everything. That Name defeated that awful growth.
It was after that, that I realized why people, when they curse and swear, don't curse in the name of Buddha or Mohammed or Allah. Even pagans and sinners who don't know the Lord, somehow realize that there is no power in any other Name, but Jesus Christ of Nazareth. And I determined that I was going to always and ever give glory and honor and great worship to the living Name of God Almighty: Jesus Christ.
Remember, there is power in that Name of Jesus! When Jesus uttered those three words from the cross, "IT IS FINISHED," it meant total salvation of the spirit, mind, soul and body had been paid for. All that Satan robbed from Adam and Eve and mankind, had potentially been restored to those who will believe. Jesus paid a great price so that I could have abundant life! HE saves me from my sins. And HE heals me from diseases. God is so good! I want to live a holy life for my God!
clint