n the fascinating discussion regarding healing, Scott asked for some first-hand experiences. I have been reticent to share the following experiences because they are personal. Yet, I think the time is right to include them in the discussion as my own first-hand experiences with both physical healings and provision of God.
Stretching Space - In May, 1995, I was preparing to move from New Jersey to Dallas, Texas to attend Dallas Theological Seminary. My parents offered to help with the moving expenses and to drive the moving truck for me so that I didn’t have to drive it and tow my car. I fully appreciated this offer, and accepted.
Based on the small amount of stuff that I had, I estimated that a 10-ft. U-haul truck would be sufficient, so that is what we rented. As moving day approached, I dragged my foot along the carpet in the living room of my small home to make a mark where the end and sides of the 10-ft. space would be. And I began stacking the boxes in that space.
The closer I got to moving day, the more I realized that my stuff was not going to fit in the space I had carefully measured and marked out in the living room. There was no way.
Driving to work a few days before the move, I was meditating on the passage where Jesus multiplied the bread and the fish to feed 5,000 people. Unaccustomed to asking for “miracles”, I began to talk to God openly.
“Lord, I don’t know how to ask for this, because I don’t even know if it is something I’m supposed to be asking you for. It seems silly. However, the reality is, my belongings will not fit in the 10-ft. truck we have reserved. If you were able to multiply a few loaves and fish enough to feed 5,000 people, I can’t help but believe that you can stretch the 10-ft. of space inside that truck to allow everything to fit.”
With that, I continued stacking boxes right up until moving day, extending past the line on the carpet. And I told absolutely no one about the problem or my prayer for provision. Instead, I just quietly trusted that all would be well.
Moving day arrived, and my parents went to pick up the truck. As I sat waiting on the front step, they backed the truck up the driveway. I sat there looking at it thinking, “That doesn’t look like the truck in the picture.” My parents got out of the truck, and I said, “Is that a 10-ft. truck?” They said, “Well, actually, when we went to pick up the truck, they were out of 10-ft trucks. Since that’s what we had reserved, the guy at the U-haul place told us that he would just give us a 14-ft truck at the same price.”
When we packed the 14-ft truck, my boxes and belongings came right to the very end of that truck with just enough room to slide the door down and latch it! God “stretched” the 10-ft truck to just the right size to meet my needs!
Throwing Away the Meds - I am normally in very good health. I am very grateful for that. But it didn’t look so good for a while. In May, 2001, I was working at my desk in San Marcos, TX coding away on a software project. All of a sudden, I started feeling dizzy. My hands started to shake, and I began feeling very nauseous. Without warning, I suddenly began vomiting. Everything began to feel very strange and out of sorts to me.
I got control of the vomiting and decided to try to make my way to the bathroom at the other corner of the building. Feeling very weak, I made my way to my feet and started down the hall. Everything was spinning, and I kept falling. I tried to lean against the wall for support, and slowly made my way to the other end and into the bathroom. Once there, I laid on the cool tile for a while trying to get the feelings to subside.
Eventually, I managed to get myself back up and make my way to a co-worker’s office. He took one look at me and said, “Are you ok????” I tried to talk, but couldn’t really get the words out. He left to call 911 and another co-worker tried to help me to a chair. Instead, I began to collapse, and ended up stretched out on the floor.
By the time the ambulance arrived, I was not sure whether I was staying conscious or not. I was hyperventilating. My feet and legs felt numb, and I was losing feeling in my fingers. I tried to talk, but was trembling so much that I couldn’t really get anything out. All kinds of thoughts were running through my mind.
I spent several hours in the ER, but they could not find anything wrong. Finally, they discharged me, and since I was too weak to drive, a friend gave me a ride home. I had no strength at all, and my head was hurting very, very badly.
To make a long story short, this began a period of almost two months where I endured a constant migraine headache that debilitated me. My job was kind enough to allow me to telecommute, but every day, I would get up, stumble to my home office, attempt to work, but within 15 minutes, have to lay back down again. The headache would not go away. I had no strength. I couldn’t hardly think straight, and I ended up just taking a huge amount of sick days (my employer allowed us to borrow from future sick days, so I took advantage of that at the time).
Every day was the same — attempt to get up and deal with the pain, endure maybe 15 minutes of being up, and then feeling like I was going to collapse again.
Several times, a friend took me to the doctor. They did blood tests. They did a brain MRI. They could not identify anything that was causing the pain. So they put me on some pain medication to try to make the pain subside some. Even that seemed to have little effect.
For almost two months, I stayed in this condition. It was actually during this time that I began to seek to understand what God’s heart was with regard to healing. I began to spend time reading the accounts of healing in the Bible. I had always been the one to argue, “Well, Jesus didn’t heal everyone when he was here.” Yet, I could not find support for that argument.
What I found, in fact, was the statement in Matthew 8 where it says that they brought the sick to Jesus “and he healed them all.” And then, this was the part that really intrigued me, Matthew ties that into Isaiah 53 and the prophecy regarding Jesus there.
When I read that, I was dumbfounded. Part of the prophecy of Jesus coming included physical healing? And that was right in there with “by his stripes we are healed”? Why had I never seen that before?
So, I said, “Lord, I have been thinking all along that there’s a chance that you don’t want to heal. That you may have brought this into my life for some reason. That I shouldn’t assume that you want to heal me. But your heart, as revealed in Jesus, appears to be quite different. I believe that you do want to heal me, and I want to accept that.”
With that, and I am not exaggerating at all in any of this, I got up, threw the medication in the trash can, walked out the door, got in my car, and went to work. The headache left, the dizzy feeling, the weakness, all began to go away, and I have not looked back since.
After two months of barely being able to walk, I can’t tell you how good it felt to move around and function in life again!!
He’s Not Hurt? - Sometime around November, 2004, a co-worker of mine got a frantic call from his wife. Some men had been working on their roof, and one of them had fallen off the roof. Since my co-worker didn’t have his car with him (his wife had dropped him off earlier that day), he asked me to take him to his house.
When we got there, we saw the situation. One of the workers had, indeed, fallen from a roof that was about eight feet off the ground. He lay on the ground, his head against a wheelbarrow and his body twisted. He was conscious, but complaining about a lot of pain.
The ambulance arrived shortly after we got there, and the EMT began to assess the situation. It did not look very good, and they medical personnel were being extremely cautious. It was hard to tell if anything was broken, but every time they tried to move him, he complained about severe pain.
As he lay there, I watched and prayed. “Lord, I don’t know exactly what I should do here. Do I walk up in front of all these people and lay hands on this gentleman? Will I make a fool of myself?” I didn’t want to, in any way, draw attention to myself. And so I quietly just kept praying. “Lord, you know the extent of injuries here. You know the fall that he has taken, and how hard he hit. You know how to make everything the way it should be, and I ask you to heal this man. Put together any bones that are broken and restore him.”
They finally managed to get him loaded into the ambulance and rushed off to the hospital. We spent a few more minutes with my co-worker’s wife who was quite obviously and understandably shaken by all of this. But finally, we went back to work. I continued to pray and wonder what would happen.
The next day, I asked my co-worker if he had heard anything. He said, “Yeah, actually. Believe it or not, they checked him out at the hospital and found nothing wrong. They released him, and he is fine!”
Now, I don’t take credit for any part of this. I just am testifying to what I saw. A man fell from eight feet, landing on his back (we found out later that he had experienced a seizure that caused him to fall), possibly even hitting his head on the wheelbarrow, complained of severe pain, and several hours later walked out of the hospital completely fine!
Scott, thanks for asking about the personal experiences. I’ve enjoyed revisiting these events in my mind and sharing them.
Until next time,
steve 
or those of you interested in following our adoption possibilities, you will want to read 
o, I’m not talking about getting laryngitis. I’m just referring to the lack of motivation I have had to post on this blog lately.
