Thursday: A Personal Testimony
WEEK 31
THURSDAY
A PERSONAL TESTIMONY
Psalm 84:5-7
We have seen that God can and does heal functional ailments; can and does God cure structural diseases?
The answer of the Acts is a positive yes. The man at the Beautiful Gate was lame from birth (3:2); Dorcas was dead (9:37); the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery, and Paul laid hands on him and healed him (28:8). These were structural diseases.
Today we find structural diseases being healed. A woman had a cyst on an ovary, and as it was growing; the doctor decided on surgery. There was special prayer for her in a healing service. She went back from the Ashram, prepared to undergo the operation; but when the doctor examined her again, the cyst was gone. Another woman with a similar cyst asked for special prayer and then forgot all about her ailment and began to seek the Holy Spirit. She found him; and with the Spirit she found healing; when she showed herself to the doctor, he said no operation was necessary as the cyst had disappeared.
I have told how, at the beginning of my ministry, I was suddenly healed and became strongest in the place where I was weakest, namely, in nervous energy. This healing was apparently functional. May I tell one that was apparently structural? Several years ago I was about to go on a round-the-world evangelistic trip and had a routine checkup at the mission-board medical department. They found sugar. They suggested a more thorough checkup, and that was done at Atlanta—a sugar-tolerance test. It did not turn out too well. The doctor there gave this verdict: “You have a mildly severe case of diabetes. It won’t get any better; it will probably get worse, and it will hasten your deterioration.” Which was lovely news! When this report got to the mission-board doctor, he called me up from New York, two days before I was to fly to Japan, and said: “If you were a regular missionary of the board, I wouldn’t let you go. But if a diabetic specialist in St. Petersburg will permit you, we’ll accept his decision.”
O Lord, we thank you that you are master of disease, all disease. Help us to open the depths of our beings, physical and spiritual, to your healing grace. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Since I can have all the healing I can take, I take all the healing I need.