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My Head Was On Fire!
In March, 1997, on a Friday, I got sick and was very dizzy
and vomiting. By Sunday evening, I knew we needed to call the doctor. I had
already been prayed over, but I had not been able to keep anything on my
stomach, not even water, since Friday night.
The doctor said to get Dramamine for dizziness and come
in on Monday. I was diagnosed with an inner ear infection and was to stay in bed
three weeks and should be over it in six weeks. No medication, as it was viral.
Six weeks came and went. I could sit and get around the house some, but I
couldn't really do anything. Into the third month, I had some good days, but my
head always felt crazy and I couldn't think clearly. I couldn't look up or down,
or turn my head sideways. Lying down in bed was the worst. Everything would spin
until I would have to hold my head. I could not turn over in bed without being
sick. I was prayed for lots during this time.
After six months, I was referred to a specialist and
was diagnosed with Menieras Syndrome. No cause. No cure. I would just have to
live with it. I was devastated by this news. Although I knew God could heal me,
He hadn't.
I went to a women's retreat at Assemblies of God Center
in Hot Springs in the end of October. The first night, when altar call was
given, I thought, "I need to go," but I knew I would have a hard time
walking to the front. In my mind I said, "Lord, you can heal me right
here."
One of the ladies from our group put her arm around my
shoulders and began to pray. I felt other hands being laid on me and prayers
being prayed for healing by women who didn't even know me.
All at once, the left side of my head got so hot I
thought I was on fire! I even reached my hand up to see if I was on fire, but it
was the fire of God's healing power. I was healed!
Willa Sturdivant
My Home Burned
Thanks
We always feel a sharing of the sadness when we hear about
tragedies coming to people, but that seems especially so when bad things happen
during the Christmas season.
It was that time of year, the season of family and
friends gathering to celebrate, of joyful exchanges of greetings and gifts and
remembering God's great gift of his son. But tragedy came to us that year. Our
house caught fire and was completely destroyed on Christmas morning. Everything
we had went up in flames and that's a heartbreaking experience. Christmas was on
a Sunday. When our church gathered the next weekend for services, I took my
burden of loss to the altar. While I was praying, God spoke to me. Perhaps it
was not an audible voice, yet I heard it clearly, and the words were, "If
you put your trust in things, they will fail you. If you put your trust in
people, they will fail you. But, if you put your trust in Me, I will never fail
you or leave you."
I have found the truth in that lesson. God
has provided abundantly for all our needs and He has never failed us. It took a
tragedy to make me realize how protective, loving and unfailing His care for us
is
Mary Baker
What Woke Me?
My son worked a shift that left him driving home a long distance in the
late hours of the night. He came up a steep and winding mountain road with
dangerous curves and bluffs all along it. I'd gradually been accustomed to it,
tucked down my worries and managed to quit waiting up for him.
The night this happened, I went to bed at my usual hour
and was soon peacefully asleep. In the early hours of the morning, however, I
woke up with an awful sense of foreboding. I knew something was wrong with
Donnie and I began to pray even before I realized that he was not home yet.
When he finally did arrive home, he was surprised to
find that I was up, waiting on him. I told him I had been jerked awake out of a
sound sleep by fear for him. "Mother," he said, "I got so sleepy
coming home tonight. I fell asleep at the wheel and almost went off the road. I
woke up just in time and pulled off and took a nap before I came on."
What woke me that night? You can call it a mother's
intuition if you will, but I know it was more then that. Donnie was too tired to
pray for himself and needed protection. God reached out to warn me that my son
was in danger.
Alta Lea Hampton
Healing
I want to tell about a healing I got when I was a baby. When I was born I had
a hard time. I don't know what was wrong, but when I was three months old mother
put me in the hospital. I weighed less than I had when I was born and had
stopped eating and was undernourished and dehydrated. I don't know how long I
was there, but finally the doctors came and told mother to take me home; that I
was dying and there was nothing more they could do.
Mother took me to my Grandma McCracken's home that night.
Grandma told her to go to bed, that there was nothing she could do anyway.
Grandma took me into the kitchen, praying for me all the time, and cooked some
eggs and mashed them up and started feeding them to me and I started eating. She
said I ate like I was starved and I think she fed me everything in the kitchen
that night. From that time, I came out of it and was fine.
Another time, when I was seven years old, I got sores all
over my body. We didn't have much and mother didn't believe in going to the
doctor, so I don't know what kind of sores they were. We used an old tin washtub
mother washed clothes in for baths and at night mother would have to bathe and
soak me to get my clothes off and the scabs would come off the sores when the
clothes were pulled away. I wouldn't do anything because even taking a small
step hurt. I had always sung constantly, but I quit singing. Finally, mother and
my aunt put me in the car and took me to the farm, to my Grandma McCracken. They
gathered in a circle around me and anointed me with oil and prayed. The next
day, mother heard me singing and she knew God had touched me and healed me. From
that time, the sores began to heal and go away. Trudy
Parker
So many times, God has healed my body and
I thank Him and praise Him for it, but this one time was such a big miracle I
want to tell about it. I had been having chest pains and I went to a heart
specialist. He told me I had 80% blockage and would have to have open heart
surgery. I looked at him and said, "Doc, I'm going to pray to God that I never
have to have that done." He said, "All you have to have is a little faith." Then
he told me about how my father had a massive heart attack. "I prayed for him,"
he said, "and that was two years ago and he's doing fine."
After Women's Ministry at church one night I had a real bad
attack. The women gathered around me and prayed for me. My daughter got so
worried she called the doctor and they took me to the hospital, but I had
already started to feel better by then. They put me in ICU and they ran all
kinds of tests, but then the doctor came in and said they couldn't find anything
wrong and they were going to move me to a room. He still wasn't satisfied though
and they ran a dye test. When the report on it came in, he came to my room and
said, "Lillie, you do not have one bit of blockage and never will. Your heart is
fine!" I reminded him that he'd told me all I needed was a little faith and we
rejoiced in what the Lord had done. Lillie Vanderpool
The Mysterious Book
In part, this is a mystery story, a story about a book that
appeared from nowhere and then disappeared again, but not before changing my
life.
I was raised in a mainline Protestant denomination that
didn't teach the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, at least not in the sense
Charismatics know it, and emphatically did not believe in glossolalia, or
speaking in tongues. I knew the story of Peter's preaching at Pentecost, but
interpreted it to say that Peter was given the ability to speak in the various
languages of those present. Modern instances of speaking in tongues, singing or
dancing in the spirit, "shouting", and falling out in the spirit were written
off as emotional hysteria.
When God set out to break through my wall of unbelief, He
first used a teenager in the youth group I led to keep bringing it up. Because
we were a small town and teens go where other teens are, all the teens from all
the churches came to that group and we had quite a mix of backgrounds. I was
always careful to instruct the kids to read their Bible, pray, and let God lead
them when doctrinal questions arose. I was going to have to heed my own advice.
Although my teenage messenger was persistent, I was equally resistant. Then, one
week, the attorney for whom I worked left town and I was alone in the office all
week. By Friday, I was desperately bored. The attorney always had a lot of books
on much more than just law, so I wandered into his office, looking for something
to read. A sofa stood to the left of the door and on the end was a pile of
books. On top of the pile was a small paperback volume titled "They Spoke With
Other Tongues" by John Sherrill. Sherill's name was familiar from Guideposts
reading, but what probably made me pick the book up was that it was so out of
place there. The attorney was a practical-minded Christian Scientist who would
have laughed at such a book. I began to leaf through it and was intrigued to
learn that Catherine Marshall had challenged Sherrill to explore the phenomenon
of glossolalia, and that was the seed that started the book. Sherrill explored
the beginnings of American Charismatics in the Azuza Street Revival, went
through the scriptural basis, and visited credible researchers who were
examining it. Here was an intelligent survey of the whole history that was
enough to cause any reasonable person to begin to examine their beliefs.
I read the book through that day, took it home with me and
read it again that night. The next day, I was prompted to go to the Book of Acts
and read it through. I was amazed at all the instances of new converts to
Christianity receiving a powerful touch from God evidenced by speaking in
tongues. While Acts came pretty far down the list of my favorite books, I had
read it, but I had never before seen all this. I turned back and forth between
Sherrill's book and the Bible all weekend.
The next Tuesday, I had promised to go to a home Bible study
with the teenage boy who had been urging me to think about the Baptism of the
Holy Spirit. I would have backed out if he had not shown up at my house to go
with me. When the lady who was teaching the group announced she was going to
teach on speaking in tongues, I laughed inwardly. I could have taught it myself.
I'd been through it so much all weekend that I probably knew more about it, at
least with head knowledge, then anyone else. I sat through the teaching quietly,
however, but when she began praying for various people at the meeting who wanted
to receive the Baptism, I as quietly left, after saying a little prayer that
went like this, "God, if this is of you, I'm a hindrance to the work of the
spirit here and I don't need to be here. If it is not of You, I still don't need
to be here."
Yet, I could not shake my thoughts about all I had read and
heard. I began to read again and, at last, at midnight, I put my Bible down and
again prayed. This time, my prayer was, "God, Your word says this is an
outpouring of power to help the believer live for You. As a young journalist
with a hectic schedule and a heavy responsibility to more then 40 teenagers who
are trying to learn to walk with You, I really need power. If you have that for
me, and it is in this Baptism of the Holy Spirit, then I am willing to accept
it." My mouth opened and a strange language began to pour out. I prayed for half
an hour and could not have shut it off if I had tried. While the words and
sounds were strange to me, I knew what things were being lifted in prayer. When
it finally stopped, I had a deep sense of peace and joy. I got up and went to
the home of the teenager who had been my messenger on this, knowing it was a
ridiculous time of the night to be going visiting, but he was up and outside in
the yard. He started towards the car as I drove in, took one look at my face,
and knew. He ran up and hugged me without saying a word.
Strangely, I was going to take the book back to the attorney,
but he said he had no idea where it came from and had never seen it. A couple of
weeks later, I wanted to give the book to someone else, but I couldn't find it.
To this day, it has not reappeared. It just was there when it was needed to
reach me, then it was gone. God works in mysterious ways!
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