It hasn’t only been in my childhood that the Lord has healed me, but I’d like to share with you the following two stories because of the lifetime impact that healing makes upon a child.
When I was one year old, I was supposed to die. When I was born, there was something wrong with my neck that the doctors couldn’t fix, and it was inevitable that with the passage of time, the condition would have eventually twisted my neck and I would die. The doctor knew there was nothing he could do to change it.
Five months, three times a week my mother took me for treatments to temporarily relieve my pain. But the doctor was so sure there wasn’t anything that could be done to correct it, he only charged my folks for six treatments even though he administered somewhere between 50 and 60.
My parents didn’t know the Lord. My mother’s cousin didn’t know the Lord either, but she’d heard about the Foursquare Church in Long Beach, California. She’d heard that at that church, Jesus healed people, and she wrote down what was wrong withme and took this note to the church. There she found somebody and asked, “There’s a little baby that’s dying, and I brought this note. Will you pray for this baby?”The people said, “We will.” They brought it into the Wednesday night prayer meeting of that church.
The next day, my parents began to notice that things had changed. My mother’s cousin had told her she’d taken a prayer request over to the church. Within the next few days, the doctor said, “This baby is well. There is nothing wrong with him.” And not only did the doctor declare me well, he refused to take the money from my parents for the few payments he was going to charge, because, he said, “I had nothing to do with the healing of this baby. This has to have been something God did.”
I tell that story for two reasons. Not only do I know that it’s in the Bible that Jesus healed during His ministry,and that He’s the same today as He ever was, I know I would not be alive and I wouldn’t be able to talk about Jesus to other people today if He hadn’t healed me when I was a baby.
I yearn for parents to learn to teach their children about the healing power of Jesus because once a child is healed by the power of Christ, no matter what happens in the years to come, that child will never forget that he is the Lord’s. He will never forget that God touched him, that God has a private, personal investment in him, that God’s healed him and that God loves him.
When I was three years old, I contracted polio. Most kids today have had a shot or a pill to vaccinate them, but when I was a little boy, they didn’t have those shots and pills. Polio was then like cancer is today—there were great epidemics, hundreds of thousands of people afflicted. Their lungs wouldn’t work, they needed a machine to help them breathe, they couldn’t use their legs so they’d have to wear braces if they could walk at all, or live their whole life in a wheelchair. Children who had nothing wrong with them at all, suddenly would be struck with what was called “infantile paralysis” and could no longer be able to walk.
It was happening to thousands of children, and I too became afflicted. My parents took me to the doctor who examined me. I remember him tapping my leg to see if it would respond and it didn’t. Every time I tried to walk, I fell down. The doctor told my folks: “Take this child to the hospital. It’s another case of polio.” By now, my parents knew the Lord, and they told the doctor, “We’ll take our son to the hospital, but first, we want to take him by our church for prayer.”
My grandfather, who didn’t know the Lord, had come with us, and he was embarrassed when my parents said that. The doctor got mad. He said, “You get this baby to the hospital.” My folks said, “We will do what you said, but we feel he must first go by the church.”
They called and asked our pastor, Dr. Teaford, if they could bring me over. They didn’t want to bring in a baby with polio if our pastor thought it was dangerous. Dr. Teaford said, “Bring the baby and there will be elders here.”
So they left the doctor’s office and went by the church. There I was anointed with oil and prayed for. After they prayed for me, my parents asked Dr. Teaford what they should do next. “Shall we take him to the hospital?”
Dr. Teaford said, “I’ll tell you what. It’s just a matter of a couple of hours. First take Jack home and let him lay down and go to sleep. Don’t let him try to walk right now. Right now he’s afraid to try because he’s fallen down every time. Take him home and let him lay down and go to sleep. When he wakes up, he’ll forget the fear, and he’ll get up. And he’s going to be all right.”
And that’s exactly what happened. When I woke up, I walked.
It’s important to note that my parents weren’t believers when I was healed from my birth defect. They weren’t members of that church, but the church prayed for me anyway. Later, my father accepted an invitation to attend a church service where he and my mother received the Lord. They didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the same church that had prayed for my healing as a baby.
Every year I write out a check to support research into birth defects to show thanks to God by helping people who don’t know of the healing power of Jesus, and all they’ve got is what the doctors can do. God’s given us doctors, and what doctors do is so great. But God’s given us His Son Jesus and He wants us to come and receive His healing. We’ve got to make up our mind if we are going to be people who let Jesus heal through us today.
Try God.
Also Read:
- Men in the Bible: A Man of Considerable Goodwill
- The Myth of Omnipresence (1): The 5 Places God Always Is
- Overwhelmed
- Great Truths Adults Learned
- I Passed a Professional Exam and Got a Job After 10 Years
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