Miracles of Healing Ministry CBB 4-15-20
“As a very young child, perhaps 3 ½ or 4, I recall my Father taking me to see a relative of his in Barbour County, AL. My recollection is that it was his maternal grandfather’s second wife, whom family members called “Aunt Ari.” What I have been told of her is that she had been a very young woman, perhaps 15 or 16, when she married the widower, Mr. Carroll, who would have been in his 30’s, his first wife having died when my grandmother, Annie Elma Carroll and her older sister, Oma Carroll were young, perhaps six and eight years old. Ari Carroll was elderly at the time of our visit. perhaps in her 70s. I don’t believe she was very literate. She sat in a rocking chair on the front porch of a little frame house and my Father and I sat and talked to her. I remember her as very gentle and kind. I recall that she took my hand in hers and gently rubbed a wart that was on the back of my hand. Perhaps that is why my Father took me there. I’m not sure. But it seemed to me that I was told that she had healing touch and that she was healing me from the wart. All I recall is the next time it occurred to me to look, the wart was gone. She had had only one son by my great-grandfather Carroll. His name was Roy Carroll and the stories I knew of him were that he was rather eccentric, bordering on “not right.” I recall my Father taking me to visit Uncle Roy in his elder years, probably in his 80s, lived out in a veteran’s hospital in Tuskegee, AL after I was a young adult, perhaps between 17-20.”
More than a few times I have faced medical issues which required times of medical evaluation and testing and ultimately being told there was “nothing”. How do they know? I believe that in each case God healed me. That’s what I know. I’ve had “scares” with a black spot under my tongue that had to be cut out and biopsied. Another time I had a bout with boils that was so severe I thought I’d have them and the scars forever. Another time I had a dark spot in the retina of my eye that required referral to a specialist and careful observation for two years and still requires rechecks with my regular eye exams annually. Another time I had cardiac issues arise that necessitated several diagnostic procedures, including a cardiac catheterization. Another time I had sudden extreme unexplained urinary bleeding that, after a period of time, led to discovery of a renal cyst and also a benign bladder hemangioma which had to be surgically removed. I’d had a partial hysterectomy in my late 30s due to chronic health issues and afterward was told by the doctor that it was good that we had chosen that option, as the biopsy came back with clearly precancerous tissue. Still another time, years later I was diagnosed on the verge of kidney failure after a kidney stone and urinary tract infection and during which I had extremely elevated hypertension. Each time God was present and brought me thru with healing upon further investigation and appropriate medical response. Why would anyone write off such events off as “nothing” when conditions were there and then they weren’t or they were ameliorated and found to be an insignificant issues after the fact that resolved quickly or were dealt with totally and effectively in treatment. Prayer works! I have been the beneficiary of it too many times to count and some that only God and I know He did! Satan attacks us in the body to invoke fear when he can’t attack us in the spirit and soul. Many are the times God simply waits for us to ask and then flicks satan away like a gnat.
In about 1991-1992 my husband, teen children and I applied for life insurance policies. In the process of that I was told I was HIV positive and couldn’t be insured. I had had a blood transfusion in 1977. However, several years after the blood transfusion I had gone through a period of about six or seven years of rebellious, angry, and irresponsible behavior which could have made such a diagnosis within the realm of possibility. Also, just before that medical opinion, a few months earlier I had attempted to give blood through a local blood bank campaign. three medical technologists made five attempts and none was able to draw my blood which was very odd considering how many times I’d given in the past. So when I got the medical report from the insurance company it suddenly made sense why God would have prevented me from giving blood.
By the time of the insurance applications, my lifestyle had changed, however. I had dedicated my life to Christ. And I humbly asked God to heal me. I rejected the insurance company’s medical exam’s results and demanded a more specific and sensitive serological antibody test instead of the presumptive positive diagnosis of the Western blot rest. I had to go to the state health lab to be retested. In a few weeks it came back negative. I proved my negative status and was issued the insurance policy.
A few years later a situation arose that caused me to need to prove that I had not just been in an early stage or been latent with undetectable levels of the HIV antibody. So I went to the health department again to be retested. On my way there God clearly spoke in my spirit and asked me if I trusted his healing! Of course I said. But I also knew that we don’t always escape all consequences of past rebellion. Since I had already made an appointment and the lab had my name I knew if I didn’t show up someone would be looking for me to do a contact report. So I got tested again. It was negative. And I was left with the distinct impression that the first test by the insurance company probably had been positive and that God had truly healed me from what was, at that time, almost certainly a death sentence and a lot of shame.
My husband knew about the first and second tests because of the insurance application. He also later learned about the incidences of rebellion and infidelity on my part. The requirement for the third test had nothing to do with any further risky behavior, but simply with a question that had come up about prior exposure to HIV. I know it was satan attempting to put doubt in my mind and frighten me. Satan seldom has to do more than cast doubt to create temptation to fear. But I faced it and I gave it to God and God is good. Always.
A few years after all of that, I experienced a psychotic break that required a voluntary admission to a psychiatric hospital. It arose after what was diagnosed as an extended period of depression that had not been picked up by my doctor a year before, even after I had told her I did not feel “right’, that I felt sad, tearful, and incapable of joy. She had attributed it to peri- menopause, suggested exercise and some herbal remedies and did not treat me for depression. So when the psychotic break came a year later it didn’t take long for the psychiatrist, counselor and me to put two and two together. While hospitalized, on the second night I was started on medication for the hallucinations and paranoia. I recall asking the male nurse who brought the meds in my room at bedtime to pray with me. I told him I didn’t object to taking the medications, but that I knew that my healing would come from God, not the medications. He said that he agreed with me and we prayed. I remained on the anti-psychotic medication for less than two years and have continued on an anti-depressant for most of the years since that experience without another hospitalization or feelings of despair that I experienced prior to the psychotic break and treatment. The years that I spent in therapy with a Christian counselor were good years during which I gained significant therapeutic insights about fears, insecurities, anger, and other behaviors of my past. They also led to another vocational change, the third significant one of my adult life, having already transitioned from medical technology to sales at thirty-two, and now to counseling in my late 40s and early 50s. It did not feel like a major change, however, as I recall as a seventeen-year-old in my first semester of college taking a psychology class and thinking I would like to be counselor. It was dismissed by my parents as a passing “fancy” and I was steered into what was perceived to be a more stable and job-secure career in medical technology by my Mother. I have remembered that fanciful “moment” on the campus of a small United Methodist College in Cuthbert, GA, Andrew College. I believe that God had this plan all along, but chose to delay it because of a spirit of rebellion and fears I was not yet in tune with or able to face to allow me some life experiences that would mold my counseling in some distinctive ways to fulfill his special purpose for my life.
Today as I mentor and counsel women in some of the most despairing circumstances of pain and woundedness, I am humbled by the confidence God has placed in me. I am grateful, too, even for the times of rebellion, anger and disobedience. In Hebrews 5:8, the Apostle Paul observes that “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” I know that Christ suffered greatly and probably in far more ways than just his passion, crucifixion, and death. But God used all of that. Nothing was wasted. And although Christ did not rebel against life, against the knowledge that there were things over which he had no control, he still learned obedience through his suffering. Christ’s submission and obedience to the will of God brought about the ultimate healing of humankind’s greatest illness – the human condition of sin and death.
About a third of the women who are brought to me for life recovery healing ministry have experienced psychosis. Many of them have medical issues, too, for which my medical background serves well in helping them secure referrals for medical help. I believe that God allowed my experiences in life to uniquely qualify me to relate to, understand, serve, and offer hope to the women whom he brings. In 1997 when I understood that God was calling me to a vocation in healing ministry, I asked him one morning in prayer what he wanted of me…. to speak, to write, to devote myself to missions, what? He was very prompt and precise in his answer, “Just get up each day and do what I have instructed you to do and I will bring them to you.” As Elizabeth Elliott has often phrased it, “Just do the next right thing.”
That is what I have sought to do in ministry and in my life since coming to know Jesus Christ not simply as Savior as a ten-year-old, but also as Lord, Master, Comforter, Companion, Provider, Trailblazer, Guide, Friend, and so much more in the years since then. Jesus Christ continues as he shows me more and more of the plan he has for my life as the adventure with him continues. And I experience the joy of being his servant in ministry, sharing in the call he knew on his own life and living into it for my life, as well:
(excerpts from Isaiah 61)
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
Because the LORD has anointed me
To bring good news to the afflicted;
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And freedom to prisoners……..
To comfort all who mourn,
To grant those who mourn in Zion,
Giving them a garland instead of ashes,
The oil of gladness instead of mourning,
The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.
So they will be called oaks of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.
But you will be called the priests of the LORD;
You will be spoken of as ministers of our God.
You will eat the wealth of nations,
And in their riches you will boast.
Instead of your shame you will have a double portion,
And instead of humiliation they will shout for joy over their portion.
Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land,
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,
And as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up,
So the Lord [h]GOD will cause righteousness and praise
To spring up before all the nations.
Luke 7:22
“Go and report what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached to them.