Healing a Lifestyle

Testimony: God Heals Today

The Lord Jesus came into my life many years ago.

I have seen Him transform my life in many ways, and I have seen Him heal a lot of sick people and deliver people tormented by evil spirits. I realized however that I had more faith when it came to praying for others than for myself, especially for physical healing. It is maybe due to my mathematical training, which enforces the Cartesian way of thinking, already very much present in our western French-speaking world, to quite a high degree. I need to understand, explain the why and the how.

But I have learnt that with God, this is the order to be followed:

1. First, believe in His Word and put it into practice.

2. Only then do you see the fulfilment of His promises and the explanations.

I have often prayed that this rational mentality would not hinder God’s work because my desire is to see His Glory shown, as much in our countries as in Africa or among peoples with a less complicated frame of mind, or even a less twisted one.

The Bible says “God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29)

Healed of hepatitis

This is how God, by His grace, allowed me to experience His divine healing in my own body. It happened in 1994, we had just moved with our four children to the region of Mons (Belgium) where God had called my husband and I to a pioneering ministry in church planting.

I had been feeling quite tired for some time, but I couldn’t stop; there were so many things to be done, what with the family, the house and the ministry.

One afternoon, we were out shopping at a supermarket when I just stopped dead, literally exhausted. My husband came up to me and saw that my face had gone quite yellow. We straightaway went to the doctor, a very nice lady, who gave me a blood test. It showed that I had hepatitis A. Everyone else in the family had to undergo a check-up with a blood test, but, praise the Lord, the results were all negative. I was extremely tired, to the point were the least effort sent me straight back to bed. I was unable to clean around or do any housework at all. Even just the smell of food was unbearable.

Throughout this first phase of the illness, I thank God for His provision in sending us sisters from the church to look after the housework, while others were preparing meals for our family. Many people were praying for my healing, not just in our local church, but all over Belgium and the North of France as well. In fact, we were in the middle of preparing a training day for Christian musicians and I was in charge of most of the administrative work and the welcoming. I for one, knew that God was Almighty and could heal me, but I didn’t want to refuse this enforced time of rest and as I wasn’t really involved, at least not in the beginning, in praying on my own behalf, the training day took place without me.

I built my faith through the trial

It wasn’t long before I began to be bored with staying in bed and I actually started to long to be healed. That is when I realized that my faith needed to be built up.

A servant of God was coming that next Sunday and I intended asking for a laying of hands on me, but I knew that if I didn’t come forward fully in faith, then nothing would happen “For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”(Hebrews 11:6b)

As “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Romans 10: 17), I decided to nourish my faith by reading the Word of God. A book guided me to all the passages that speak of God’s healing, in the Old Testament as in the New Testament. I re-read the Gospels and all the healings Jesus had performed and the things I discovered not only convinced my intelligence, but also my heart, of a profound truth: Not only was God able to heal me, but He wanted to heal me.

When the truth becomes “Rhema”

The truth became “Rhema”, i.e. the revealed Word, in my heart and when I woke up on Sunday morning, I knew deep down that I was healed.

When I came down to the kitchen that morning, I announced to my husband: “Honey, I’m healed”. My husband is a man of faith. Knowing how hard it had been for me to smell coffee or see chocolate, he answered: “Great, I’ll make you some breakfast!” And he poured me a big mug of coffee and made two chocolate-spread sandwiches (he likes to say just exactly how much chocolate-spread he put on them). I swallowed my breakfast without a murmur. I was well and truly healed and was able to testify at that morning’s meeting.

Definitive healing

A few days later, my husband went to the doctor with our daughter, Melody, for a vaccination. He told her of what God had done in my life and that He had healed me. Whilst glad to hear such good news, she still tried to make him understand that it was a cyclic illness and would come back every year. When he got home, my husband told me what the doctor had said and we refused her words in the Name of Jesus, proclaiming that the healing was definitive. At the time of my writing this, seven years have gone by and the illness has never come back. Praise the Lord!

I wanted to share this testimony at once, for easier reading, but many related teachings from the Word of God can be taken from it.

I would like us to look at them together, so that your faith would be strengthened and that you would receive, or rather, seize all that God wants to give you, especially divine healing.