Copyright © 1993 by Celebration Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured

from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this

book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or

articles.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the

NEW KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible. Copyright ©

1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Printed in the United States of America.

Scripture quotations noted KJV are from the KING JAMES

VERSION of the Bible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hinn, Benny.

Lord, I need a miracle! Benny Hinn.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-8407-6251-8 (hard)

1. Miracles—Case studies.

I. Title.

BT97.2.H56 1993

231.7'3—dc20

92-44727

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

2 3 4 5 6 7-97 96 95 94 93

Contents

Foreword............................................ .............................7

Part One: The Miracles Needed

1 "You've Got Thirty Days". ....................................11

2 Kathie's Environmental Attacks. .........................15

3 Forever Blind?. ...................................................21

4 Hand in Hand. ....................................................25

5 Marsha Needed a Miracle. ...................................31

6 Charlie Had Another Plan. ..................................35

7 No Relief in Sight. ...............................................39

8 Is There Hope for Timothy?. ................................41

9 "I've Got to Talk to God' . .....................................45

10 Too Frightened to Speak. ..................................51

Part Two: The Bible's Teaching About Miracles

11 The Start of Your Miracle. .................................61

12 It's God's Will. ...................................................71

13 Your Wall of Protection. ....................................79

14 A Harvest of Healing. ........................................85

15 Claim Your Inheritance. ....................................91

16 Farewell to Fear. .............................................109

17 Forever Healed. ...............................................115

Part Three: The Miracles God Provided

18 I'm Soaring Now. .............................................123

19 "Here, Read This' . ...........................................131

20 "You're Going To Florida!". ..............................135

21 A New Marsha. ................................................139

22 "Charlie! Look at Me!". ....................................143

23 It Happened in a Flash. ...................................147

24 Timothy's Transformation. ..............................149

25 The End of the Road. ......................................153

26 Celebration of a Miracle. .................................161

Afterword Healing: An Act of Faith............................. ...167

FOREWORD

I do not understand why some people are healed

and others are not. That is a mystery that will

remain until the Lord returns. Benny Hinn is a man

with an extraordinary gift at encouraging other

people's faith, and he also has a very unique

anointing of the Holy Spirit. He would be the first to

tell you that he can heal no one, but it is through

the power of the Holy Spirit that people are healed.

The viability of the medical files I have reviewed

on each of the stories included in this book are

extremely impressive. David Lane, in particular, with

the diagnosis of adenocarcinoma of the rectum

which was proven by rectal biopsy, was found to be

free of all cancer when he went in for an emergency

appendectomy. This information is documented by

Mr. Lane's colorectal surgeon. I have talked at length

with Mr. Lane regarding his testimony and reviewing

the medical reports concerning him and am

overwhelmed in how the Lord took a man with less

than thirty days to live and performed a great

miracle.

I have also personally talked with Marsha

Brantley who was suffering from lupus, Raynaud's,

Sjogren's and ankylosing spondylitis. Mrs. Brantley

related to me the many years of pain and suffering

that she experienced due to her lupus and other

ailments. Since she received her dramatic healing on

October 18, 1991, through the word of knowledge at

the Benny Hinn crusade, her medical doctor

documented that her physical exam was normal

except for some increased pigmentation which was a

7

8

Lord, I Need a Miracle

result of one of the medicines she had taken. This is

quite a dramatic healing since lupus is medically an

incurable disease. After talking at length with both

Mr. and Mrs. Brantley and discussing the many

signs and symptoms of her diseases, it is truly a

miracle to see this lady standing totally transformed

by the power of God.

The other miracles that you will read in this book

are carefully documented by the patient's physicians

and each testimony documents a dramatic change in

the patient's condition. This dramatic change in

their conditions can only be explained as a

miraculous touch from God.

This book will certainly inspire one's faith to

believe God for their miracle. With God, all things

are possible to him who believes. In the testimonies

that follow I believe that your faith will soar as the

Holy Spirit encourages you to believe in miracles.

DONALD COLBERT, M.D.

DECEMBER, 1992

Part One

The Miracles Needed

Part One:

Chapter 1

"You've Got Thirty

1

Days"

"You have two choices," the doctor told Dave

Lane. "If we do the surgery now, you will survive

about three months. Without it, you've got thirty

days to live."

Those words came as a total shock. At nearly six

feet tall, with dark black hair and a black beard,

Dave was the picture of health. He was forty-one

years old, but felt like twenty. "I loved life more than

anything," he said.

It was the summer of 1990. Dave Lane and his

wife, Rebecca, had spent more than a decade

developing a successful Arabian horse farm near

Cookeville, Tennessee. Their farm is home to

"Muscats," a well-known champion stallion, and over

twenty purebred Arabian horses.

Then one day Dave's body began telling him that

something was not right. "I felt an unusual swelling

in my stomach. There was a lot of pain. And I was

passing blood."

"It Doesn't Look Good"

On Friday, June 15, 1990, he made an

appointment to see his doctor. The examination did

not last long. Immediately, the physician said, "Mr.

11

12

Lord, I Need a Miracle

Lane, I need to call the hospital and schedule more

extensive tests. I'd like to do it right now."

Dave Lane will never forget that day. "When we

got to the hospital my physician introduced me to a

surgeon, and they prepared me for a complete

examination of my colon."

"Mr. Lane," one of the doctors told him, "it doesn't

look good."

The physicians found a tumor so large they could

not get past it to examine the rest of the lower colon.

They rushed the biopsy through the lab. The results

confirmed their greatest fear. On his surgical

pathology report the final diagnosis read: "Large

mass (biopsy); Adenocarcinoma of Colon." That's the

technical name for a malignant tumor.

Says Dave, "They expressed their concern about

the considerable size of the cancerous growth and

the length of time it had been there."

The tumor the doctors found was a little larger

than a baseball. What they hadn't found concerned

them even more. They had to be honest with Dave

and explain that there could be additional tumors

past the blockage, in areas they could not see.

It was Friday and one of the physicians had

planned to be out of the city that weekend. But he

was ready to rearrange his schedule because of the

urgency of the situation. "We need to remove the

tumor as soon as possible," the doctor told Dave.

More Bad News

After discussing the matter with the physicians,

Dave decided he should make an appointment with

another doctor to get a second opinion.

That's what he did, but the prognosis was the

same. He even went to a third clinic and received the

same dreadful news.

"You've Got Thirty Days"

13

Says Dave, "I was told that if I did nothing about

the cancer it would invade other vital organs of my

body." The doctors were especially concerned about

it spreading to his liver and causing cell

reproduction to stop.

The more Dave talked with physicians, the more

distressed he became. He learned that because of

the extensive surgery he was facing, and the tumor's

possible involvement with his spine, he could be

paralyzed from the waist down. He was also told that

he would likely lose all bowel and bladder functions.

The prognosis was poor, and he was completely

overwhelmed by what he faced.

"One day I visited my doctor with what I

considered a minor problem, and I was told the

awful truth that I had cancer and was going to die,"

he said.

The words of the doctor kept ringing in his ears.

"You've got thirty days to live. You've got thirty days

to live."

"No Surgery for Me"

At home, Dave told his wife, Rebecca, "Honey, the

doctors say I'm going to die with or without the

surgery. I have decided not to have it."

Instead, he made plans to spend the last days of

his life with his family. He began the task of getting

his personal affairs in order.

The doctor became concerned at Dave's

reluctance to discuss the situation. So he wrote his

patient a letter.

"Dear Mr. Lane: I have tried to call you on several

occasions, but you have been out of town or

unavailable. I understand from talking to your son

that you have not had anything done about the

cancer in your rectum and I would urge you most

strongly to have this problem dealt with as soon as

14

Lord, I Need a Miracle

possible. Cancer of the rectum is a serious,

potentially fatal disease if left untreated, and you

can expect it to spread to other parts of the body if it

is not removed. If it is left unattended and spreads,

then it is unlikely that you will recover," the doctor

wrote.

To Dave Lane, there was only one hope for

survival. It was something he was certain the

physicians and surgeons would never understand.

Early in his life, Dave had become a Christian.

He was active in his church. For the past year Dave

had been serving God faithfully in a prison ministry.

As a result of their meetings in local jails and area

penitentiaries, he had seen scores of inmates

transformed by the power of God.

The church in which Dave was raised, however,

believed that God's power to heal was limited to New

Testament times. But the more he read the Word,

the more convinced he became that the Lord is the

same "yesterday, today, and forever."

Now, there was nowhere else to turn. The doctors

had pronounced a death sentence.

"Lord," he prayed, "I need a miracle."

Chapter 2

Kathie's

2

Environmental

Attacks

On May 19, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted in the

state of Washington. It spewed enormous volumes of ash,

darkened the skies, and polluted the environment for

hundreds of miles.

Kathie McGahuey remembers it well. At the age of

thirty-three, she lived with her husband and children in

Milwaukee, Oregon, a suburb of Portland.

Kathie doesn't blame her problems on the volcano,

but she marks that date as the time she began to know

that something was drastically wrong. "All of a sudden

when I would eat, I would get very ill," she said.

A Life-Threatening Reaction

Nothing like this had happened before. "Oh, we

all have things that make us itch and scratch as

children, but my health had been basically good all

of my life," recalls Kathie.

The reactions became worse. She was rushed to

the hospital by ambulance four different times. "My

family thought I was having a heart attack," Kathie

recalls.

15

16

Lord, I Need a Miracle

By the time she reached the emergency room, the

symptoms were subsiding, and the doctors found it

impossible to diagnose or document her condition.

Finally, the fourth time she had one of her unusual

attacks, the reaction was severe enough that the

physicians were able to diagnose her problem

through testing her blood and monitoring her heart.

Kathie was told she had "anaphylactic shock," a

rare, severe, frightening, and life-threatening allergic

reaction.

In most people this reaction occurs most

commonly after an insect sting or in response to a

particular drug like penicillin. In Kathie's case, the

doctors had no idea of the underlying cause.

The McGahuey's family physician, a general

practitioner who had seen her since childhood, did

not know which way to turn. "He was a wonderful

doctor, and I will never forget the day he wept with

me because of my condition," says Kathie.

She was referred to an outstanding allergist, but

because so many antidotes caused a severe reaction

he was extremely cautious. He was fearful she would

die from the tests. It seemed that almost everything

the doctor tried made her condition worse because

(as he would later learn) of the dyes and the

chemicals. "I was told I am a universal reactor; I am

allergic to almost every stimulus," she says.

Years of Frustration

For the next several years Kathie, her family, and

her doctors worked diligently to find an answer. It

was a matter of trial and error as they searched for

the cause of her Type I hypersensitive reaction. Was

it tree pollen? House dust? Yeast? Specific foods?

They tried gradually increasing the doses of various

allergens to promote the formation of antibodies to

block certain reactions.

Nothing worked. After countless tests, the

Kathie's Environmental Attacks

17

medical community was still puzzled about the

cause of her symptoms. One allergist said, "Kathie,

you are the one-in-a-hundred that we cannot help."

On some days, following an attack, she would

have huge lumps in her throat. Says Kathie, "My

throat would slam shut, and I would have that

terrible reaction that causes the muscles around

your heart to spasm. I also experienced severe

oxygen loss to my brain. I would simply black out."

Kathie became confused and discouraged about

her condition. "If it was caused by something I was

eating, why couldn't they tell me?" she wondered. "I

simply didn't understand."

Later she learned that part of what she was

reacting to was not necessarily the food, but what

was on the food. But that was only a part of her

problem.

In documenting her condition, one of her doctors

wrote, "This patient has suffered from extreme

environmental illness, or chemical hypersensitivity

syndrome for several years. She had anaphylactic

reactions after exposure to certain substances and

has required emergency hospitalization on

numerous occasions."

The report continued: "She has had food allergies

and sensitivities so extreme that her diet was

reduced to potatoes (all other food caused a

reaction). She could not tolerate soaps, detergents,

perfume smells, synthetic clothing, vinyl, city tap

water, diesel smoke, and numerous other allergens.

There were residues of viruses in her system from

previous illnesses that her weakened immune

system could not eradicate which led to flare-ups in

various organs."

Living in a Controlled Environment

With no solution to her problem, in 1985 Kathie

McGahuey had what can only be described as a total

18

Lord, I Need a Miracle

metabolic breakdown. "When most of my vital organs

—liver, kidneys, spleen, and adrenal glands—began

to shut down," she said, "the doctors believed I was

dying."

Her condition became so severe that her skin

peeled off in sheets from head to toe. "I was like a

snake shedding its skin," she says. "People would

see me and turn their heads. AIDS was becoming a

household word during this time and people were

obviously thinking the worst."

The trauma Kathie was experiencing was equally

difficult for her husband, Kenneth, who was pained

to see her in this condition. "At first he didn't

understand and wanted to run from the reality of it,"

she says. "But as my problems grew more critical, he

became a tower of strength."

As time progressed, Kathie became reclusive. She

learned that if she controlled her environment, the

reactions would not be as frequent. "I literally had to

lock myself in and stay away from the things that I

felt would bother me."

Any work she did was confined to the home. "I

had to learn that I could not live like the rest of the

world," she said.

"People don't understand what it is like to be in a

location where there are cleaning chemicals, food

and other odors," says Kathie. "It's like the entire

environment attacks you. Everything you smell, or

touch, or eat, makes you sick. It would be easier to

die than to live."

"Will I Ever Be Healed?"

There was one public place she did go—her

church. Since the day she gave her heart to Christ at

the age of eight, the Lord had been at the center of

her life.

The people in the congregation were deeply

Kathie's Environmental Attacks

19

concerned about her problem and did everything

possible to create a healthy environment. "They were

a wonderful group of people who provided

tremendous emotional and spiritual support," she

says.

Her friends watched Kathie's condition go back

and forth like a pendulum. "They saw me become

gauntly thin and then all of a sudden swell up

because of an attack of gout."

Three different times Kathie lost her hair. "It was

as if my body was going through chemotherapy," she

explains. When her hair did grow back, it was totally

gray.

As a Christian, Kathie believed that it was not

God's will for her to die, but she admitted, "It would

have been easier for me to die than to live. It's

difficult when you have been battling an illness for

so many years."

Kathie McGahuey is a woman of faith, but it was

difficult for her to continue to say, "By Jesus' stripes

I am healed" and have other people look at her and

say, "There must be something wrong. It's taking too

long."

Kathie wondered, "Will the Lord ever answer my

prayer? Will I ever be healed?"

Chapter 3

Forever Blind?

3

For over two years, Lynn Whitmore suffered with

migraine headaches. "The pain was almost

unbearable," she recalls. "And they were becoming

more frequent and severe."

Lynn had lived in east Tennessee for only three

years and didn't know where to turn. She had a

college degree in music and planned a career as a

concert performer.

In 1989 Lynn was admitted to the East

Tennessee Baptist Hospital in Knoxville for extensive

tests.

While she was lying in her hospital bed with

another of her terrible headaches, she suddenly

called out to the nurse on duty. "Please get a doctor,"

she cried. "I just went blind in my right eye."

The doctor came immediately, and he checked

the platelets and the disks in the eye. The disks in

the right eye were swollen and puffy, indicating

excessive pressure on the optic nerve. He also knew

that serious damage was taking place.

"I Had No Vision at All"

Lynn was diagnosed as having what is known as

pseudotumor cerebri, a condition which causes the

brain to feel there is a tumor or other object in the

body that does not belong there. The body combats

21

22

Lord, I Need a Miracle

the condition by creating spinal fluid pressure. In

Lynn's case, the force was three times what it should

have been.

The pressure was on the optic nerve that goes to

the eye. As the doctors explained it, the body was

trying to get rid of something it felt was there. In the

process, it was creating a far greater problem.

"They rushed me into surgery and put a lumbar

shunt in the lower spinal cord to relieve the pressure

and to keep me from losing my sight in the other

eye," says Lynn.

She had hoped that her sight would return after

the operation, but she still could not see anything

with her right eye. "Even with a bright light shining

in my eye I had no vision at all," says Lynn.

The shunt, she soon learned, was unsuccessful.

The doctors explained to her it was not the eye

itself that had been damaged. The damage was in

the optic tract connected to the brain. Actually there

are two separate optic tracts, one for the left eye and

one for the right.

In Lynn's case, the pressure on one of the tracts

was so great that it was destroyed and she lost her

vision. Then came the saddest news of all. "I was told

by the doctor that the damage was irreversible," said

Lynn, shaking her head.

The tract will not regenerate.

A Laundry List of Medical Problems

After the surgery, she continued to have intense

headaches. Lynn told the physician, "I don't know if I

can handle the torment my body is going through."

"We don't have many options," he told her. "You

may have to learn to live with the pain."

Lynn slowly began to lose the vision in her other

eye. "I felt so helpless," she recalls.

Forever Blind?

23

Her physician wrote in her medical report:

"Yesterday she had the onset of facial twitching. She

has undergone a lumboperitoneal shunt. She suffers

from persistent headaches. She also has visual loss

secondary to pseudotumor cerebri which involves

the right eye only. She subsequently lost vision in

the left eye this weekend. She has light perception in

the left eye, but could not see forms. She has

numerous medication allergies."

Then came a laundry list of medical problems:

"Systemic lupus erythematosus, cortical blindness,

pseudotumor cerebri/status post lumboperitoneal

shunt, right occipital neuralgia, oral moniliasis,

hypokalemia, urinary tract infection."

On March 28, 1990, Lynn's report from the

neurology clinic noted, "Our patient's headaches

have gotten worse. Her left eye seems to be fading in

and out more than before. She has dizziness,

particularly when she stands up. She has no light

perception of the right eye."

Many nights Lynn would cry herself to sleep.

"Lord, please don't let me become totally blind," she

prayed. "Please help me!"

Chapter 4

Hand in Hand

4

Dick and Judy Gadd were on their second

honeymoon. After years of taking their children on

vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, they

decided to sell their small business in Elkins, West

Virginia, and move there permanently.

One night, walking hand in hand along the

beach, Dick squeezed his wife's hand and said, "You

know, life doesn't get much better than this."

Then in June 1991, something happened to

shatter the dream. Dick noticed that he was passing

blood. Immediately he went to a local doctor for an

examination. "I was told there were suspicious

growths in my bladder," says Gadd. "The doctor

wanted me to see a urologist for a second opinion."

The findings were confirmed.

In July 1991, biopsies showed numerous

malignant growths. Some of them had already

penetrated the muscles and wall of the bladder.

Again, the physician recommended that Gadd get

other opinions before discussing his options. Dick

says, "I was told that my bladder must come out as

well as the prostate. I hoped to avoid having an

ostomy bag."

Dick and Judy, Methodist and Baptist by family

background, summoned all the faith they could

muster. Judy looked at the doctor and said, "He will

be healed. Maybe not by your hands, but he will be

25

26

Lord, I Need a Miracle

healed."

The Prognosis

The couple drove back to West Virginia to visit

with a urologist the family knew quite well. He

agreed with the doctors' findings. At the advice of

several doctors, Dick went to the Duke University

Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

The doctors concluded that Dick's bladder,

prostate, and appendix must be removed. "If all goes

well," they told him, "we can reconstruct a new

bladder from a portion of your intestines." This

would mean that he could avoid having an ostomy

bag.

In September 1991, Gadd returned to Duke for

surgery. On the evening of the operation, an

intravenous feeding tube was inserted into his wrist.

"Somehow the IV damaged a nerve and infused into

my arm," he says. "My entire left hand and arm were

swollen. They looked as though they were going to

explode."

Orthopedic surgeons worked on Dick's arm while

he was in the operating room. For nine hours

surgeons performed the removals and did

reconstructive surgery. "They took two feet of my

intestines and constructed a new bladder," Gadd

says. "Then they installed a catheter."

The surgery was ruled a success. When the

pathology reports came back, the doctors told Dick,

"You're home free. There is no more cancer."

On the day Dick got the good news, his body

suddenly told him something entirely different. "My

temperature spiked to 105, and I began to

experience extreme pain," says Dick. "The doctors

rushed me to x-ray thinking I might have

pneumonia."

The test did not reveal the cause of the fever or

Hand in Hand

27

the pain. "The high temperature continued, and I felt

as if all the energy had been drained from my body,"

says Gadd.

Finally, the medical team diagnosed the problem

as Candida, a yeast infection that developed from

the surgery. It had affected his entire blood stream.

"The physicians informed me that the infection was

life-threatening since it could shut down a vital

organ at any time," Gadd says. "They gave me a

powerful medication that produced many side

effects. I had severe chills, my body was shaking,

and my fever continued."

To Dick, the new problems were much worse

than the surgery. "I felt I was wasting away in a

hospital bed and was begging the doctors to allow

me to go home."

Finally, the physicians gave their approval for

Gadd to return to Myrtle Beach. They arranged for

home health care and a doctor to monitor his

serious condition. Dick continued to take

intravenous medication, but the suffering would not

subside.

Why the Pain?

Even before he left the hospital for home, Dick

began to feel severe pain in his back. The numerous

scans, however, revealed nothing.

In October 1991, Gadd returned to Duke for

removal of the catheter and to learn how to control

his reconstructed bladder. But the doctors could

find no cause for his continued back pain.

Adding to his growing list of problems, Dick's left

hand had grown steadily worse. "I could not control

it," Gadd says. "My fingers were numb, and my hand

trembled uncontrollably. The fingers would not

straighten out."

By this time Dick had lost fifty pounds. The high

28

Lord, I Need a Miracle

temperatures continued. Says Judy, "For several

months he was either in bed, on the couch, or in a

recliner."

In February 1992, when Dick returned to the

hospital for a scheduled checkup, there was no

improvement in his hand, and he continued to

experience excruciating back pain. "It was almost

impossible to use my hand. I was told that most

likely it was permanently impaired," Gadd recalls.

During that visit, the medical specialists

conducted one final test—a chest x ray. Then, two

days later, Dick received a phone call. "Mr. Gadd, we

need you to have an MRI as soon as possible."

When he questioned the urgency, Dick was told

that he could be totally paralyzed at any moment.

The specialists explained that his vertebrae were

compressed, but they did not know the cause of this

problem. "Be extremely cautious, and have the test

immediately," they said.

After the MRI, a second identical test was ordered

the next day. "Mr. Gadd, we want you to return to

Duke as soon as possible for additional

examinations and to see a cancer specialist," he was

told.

Gadd returned to the medical center, and for two

full days he had test after test. The diagnosis: a

malignant mass in the back that had crushed the

eighth and ninth thoracic vertebrae. He was told,

"We need to start six weeks of radiation treatment

immediately. We will follow that with chemotherapy."

Dick was told he could stay at a local motel and

go to the hospital for his treatments. He told the

doctors, "I can't do that. We have a teenage son at

home, and I need to be with him."

There was another problem. The Gadds'

insurance had expired, and they already owed nearly

$50,000 in medical bills.

Hand in Hand

29

Dick and Judy returned to Myrtle Beach. "I was

determined that any treatment I got I would get close

to my home," Dick says. Judy told the doctors, "You

don't understand how much faith we have. Dick is

going to make it."

As she had done so many times, Judy reached

out to hold Dick's hand. This time it was disfigured,

but that didn't matter. "It's going to be all right," she

whispered.

Chapter 5

Marsha Needed a

5

Miracle

Marsha Brantley, from Lawton, Oklahoma, had

been sick for as long as she could remember.

"Since I was eighteen months old I have

experienced severe pain in my legs, back, and joints.

My mother recalls that I would constantly cry

because the pain was so intense," she says. "I lacked

the energy to participate in activities with other

people. I simply learned to live with the chronic pain

and fatigue."

The doctors were unable to diagnose Marsha's

illness for thirty years.

Naming the Monster

In 1989 she went to the doctor with a skin rash,

but tests revealed a far greater problem—lupus, a

form of arthritis. Lupus directly affects a person's

joints, causing swelling, severe pain, and stiffness.

In Marsha's case, the disease affected the

circulation in her fingers. They would turn blue and

would feel cold.

The lupus also touched other parts of her body.

Her eyes were extremely dry. So was her mouth. It

reduced her energy level, leaving her weak and tired

most of the time.

31

32

Lord, I Need a Miracle

"I didn't even know what lupus was when they

told me I had it," says Marsha.

Marsha's condition deteriorated rapidly. "I just

couldn't function. I was trying to finish my degree

but had to drop out of classes."

A Trio of Illnesses

As the medical testing continued, she was

eventually diagnosed with Raynaud's disease,

Sjogren's syndrome, and ankylosing spondylitis,

which are all related to connective tissue disorders.

Raynaud's disease is a condition of the blood

vessels in which exposure to cold causes the small

arteries that supply the fingers and toes to contract

suddenly. When this happens blood stops flowing to

the digits, causing them to become pale. That is why

Marsha's hands, feet, and nose would turn blue,

cold, and numb. Then as the circulation was

restored, these areas would be quite painful.

She also had Sjogren's syndrome, a malady that

causes the moisture-producing glands of the body to

atrophy, resulting in limited and sporadic

production of saliva and tear secretion.

Ankylosing spondylitis causes bones and

ligaments to fuse and become stiff. It can lead to a

permanent curvature of the spine.

"My hips and shoulders were slowly fusing solid!"

she says. "And lupus was causing severe pain and

swelling of the rest of my body. Additionally, it had

left me allergic to bright light, causing me to run

high temperatures."

Bleak, Bleaker, Bleakest

Marsha reached the point where she could barely

function. She had moved to Broken Arrow,

Oklahoma, and her mother came to be with her.

Marsha Needed a Miracle

33

"I had to spend from sixteen to eighteen hours a

day in bed," she recalls. "I could not take care of

myself. My hair was once very long, but it had to be

cut when I could not even hold a hair dryer after

washing it."

When she could no longer hold a purse, she

began wearing a belt pack.

"I walked with a cane because my right knee and

my right hip could hardly move. It was not long until

I regressed so severely I had to use a wheelchair, if I

got out of the house at all," she says. "My doctor said

it would only be a matter of time before my hips

fused completely, and I would have to use a

wheelchair all of the time."

The doctor also felt that the lupus had involved

the connective tissue in the brain, affecting her

memory. "It was like I was being tortured daily, not

knowing how severe the pain would be or what part

of my body would not work."

The doctors had done all they could. Her family

and friends had done all they could. Despite their

love and compassion, Marsha felt helpless and

alone.

"There was only one place left to turn," she says.

"I placed my future in the hands of the Lord."

Marsha needed a miracle.

Chapter 6

Charlie Had Another

6

Plan

Charlie McLain believed that when he won his

battle with cancer, he would never again have to face

such an enemy. But he didn't know what was

waiting just ahead.

In 1984 the Tulsa, Oklahoma, mortgage and loan

officer was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, a

malignant disorder of the lymphoid tissue. He began

a two-year ordeal with the cancer that included

three surgeries and massive chemotherapy and

radiation treatments.

"With the help of some marvelous physicians, the

Lord brought me through," says Charlie.

His Hodgkin's disease was diagnosed as 4-A,

which rarely goes into remission. When it did, he

thought his health problems were over. After five

years without a recurrence of cancer, Charlie was

enjoying the best health of his life.

Then, in the first week of December 1990, McLain

suddenly felt very ill. "I was unable to eat and had

severe pain in my stomach," he says. The condition

appeared without warning. He hoped the pain would

subside, but it didn't. He knew something was

wrong.

Two Unsuccessful Surgeries

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

On Wednesday evening, December 12, 1990,

McLain went to the emergency room of Saint Francis

Hospital in Tulsa and was admitted with abdominal

distress.

The diagnosis was an intestinal blockage of the

small bowel.

Three days later McLain had surgery, but the

surgeons could find no blockage so they closed him

up thinking everything would resolve itself. It didn't.

"Nothing would pass through my system," he says,

remembering it as if it were yesterday.

Following an exhaustive battery of tests, they

finally found the blockage in an extremely unusual

location. The emergency surgery which followed was

assumed to be successful. The physicians discovered

substantial aftereffects of the massive amounts of

radiation from his earlier bout with cancer. These

large doses had caused massive internal damage.

His intestines were full of adhesions. As one of his

doctors described it, "The radiation treatments from

his lymphoma had left his intestinal walls scarred

and thickened, causing them to stick to each other

and twist and turn."

Charlie calls it being "fried."

That surgery, too, had been a failure. Charlie still

had a blockage. His fever climbed to 104, then 106.

His lungs began filling with fluid and his kidneys

began to shut down. His bowels no longer

functioned.

"Christmas Eve is not the ideal time to have

surgery," says Charlie, "but that is when they

opened me up again."

The surgeons did not like what they saw. Said

one of them, "The bowel was so thick and inflamed

we just couldn't do the bypass, which was pretty

rare. I was very concerned he might not make it."

They knew Charlie was an extremely sick patient.

Charlie Had Another Plan

37

His team of medical experts included an

oncologist, a gastroenterologist, two nephrologists,

and surgeons.

Says Charlie's wife, Cyndii, "At that point we

knew he was close to death."

First, they used a balloon catheter to enlarge the

intestines to their normal size. Then they inserted a

feeding tube and a waste drainage tube. The

physicians hoped Charlie would become strong

enough for another surgery. They knew they could

not do it immediately, or he would not survive. Said

an attending physician, "We hoped to do the next

surgery in a couple of months if humanly possible."

"Get Me Home, and I'll Be Healed"

About forty-eight hours after the Christmas Eve

surgery, the blockage remained unchanged. Charlie

says, "I stayed in the hospital for about two more

weeks while they tried to build my strength and

increase my weight."

The doctors didn't express much optimism. One

of them told McLain, "Don't get in a hurry; you will

be fighting this for a long, long time."

The surgeons told Charlie, "We've operated twice

and the problem is still there. We can't do anything

else, and frankly, even if you could get your body

back in shape where we could operate again, we

don't think you have enough intestines left that we

can even bypass. We may have to remove your entire

intestinal tract.

Charlie had another plan. "No," he told the

doctors. "We don't need to do that. Get me home,

and I'll be healed."

Since patients often make a quicker recovery in

their own environment, the medical team decided to

allow McLain to leave the hospital. It was the middle

of January 1991 when Cyndii welcomed him back to

38

Lord, I Need a Miracle

their home in south Tulsa.

Instead of weighing his usual 228 pounds,

Charlie now weighed only 170 pounds. "I was

extremely weak," he recalls. "I couldn't raise my arm

above my shoulder. It was almost impossible to

comb my hair."

At home, Charlie was hooked to an IV for fifteen

to eighteen hours a day. "I was thankful that during

the last operation they had hooked up a feeding tube

to my intestine and placed a gastric tube in my

stomach. The blockage was between the two."

McLain doubts that the doctors paid much

attention when he said, "Get me home, and I'll be

healed." But Charlie believed that was about to

happen.

Chapter 7

No Relief in Sight

7

"They said the problem was in my head, but I

knew it was in my arm," says Sarah Knapp, a

licensed practical nurse from Johnston City, a small

community in southern Illinois.

Every day, as part of her job, Sarah lifted heavy

people and pulled heavy equipment. Then one day

she told her husband, Donald, that she was

beginning to feel unusual pains in her shoulder and

arms. The pains got progressively worse.

"I remember the time I was helping lift a patient

in bed when my hand started swelling," she says.

It took nearly nine months for doctors to

determine what was wrong. She was diagnosed with

thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition in which the

nerves going out of the arm sockets are pinched by

the bones and ribs. It causes severe pain and a "pins

and needles" feeling in the fingers. One's grip

becomes weak, and other hand movements are

affected.

She was told that the major cause of the disease

was the repetitive nature of her work.

"Surely, There Must Be an Answer"

"When you are hurting as much as I was, you will

do almost anything to get rid of the pain," she says.

"I had a football-shaped swelling on the back of my

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

shoulder blade. One side of my chest was swollen

nearly half again as big as my other side. I couldn't

lie on my back, or on my right side."

Sarah was not able to hold a fork to eat. She was

not able to shake hands.

At the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky,

Sarah had surgery for the problem. The surgeons

removed her top rib, removed muscle from her neck,

and performed a nerve release on her arm.

The surgery did not relieve her condition.

"The pain kept getting worse, and I continued to

lose strength in my arm. The muscle in my right arm

was deteriorating, and my hand began to curl up

and lose its usefulness," she says. "The doctor told

me I would probably never get better."

After Sarah returned home from the hospital, she

felt more pain and increased numbness in her arm.

"Day after day I would sit and hold my arm and cry."

Sarah wondered, "Will I have to spend the rest of

my life in this condition? Surely, there must be an

answer."

Chapter 8

Is There Hope for

8

Timothy?

Timothy Michael Mercer was not supposed to

live.

He was born on July 11, 1990, four weeks

premature at Florida Hospital. Doctors diagnosed his

condition as "hypoplastic lungs with persistent

pulmonary vascular hypertension."

Timothy's medical chart listed several additional

problems: bilateral pneumothorax (a condition in

which air leaks into a space between the lining of the

lungs and the chest wall), bilateral hydronephrosis

(the kidney becomes distended with urine due to a

blockage or narrowing of the tubes that carry urine

from the kidneys to the bladder), and distended

urinary bladder.

Getting Off to a Bad Start

His grandmother, Ann Mercer, well remembers

the day he was born. "His skin was blue when he

was born. They rushed him out of delivery

immediately after his birth. After examining Timothy,

the doctor told his mother, Wanda, and me that

there were so many things wrong with him that he

wouldn't live through the night."

Little Timothy's lungs were not yet developed.

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

When he was born, they were so small that the X ray

would not pick them up. Because of an extremely

high mortality rate in infants with hypoplastic lungs,

not to mention all of his other complications, the

doctors had virtually no hope for his recovery.

A Possible Solution

When a doctor from another hospital became

aware of Timothy's condition, he suggested that

Timothy be taken to Arnold Palmer Hospital and

placed on a machine called ECMO (Extra Corporeal

Membrane Oxygenation). It is essentially a heart and

lung bypass machine, very similar to those used in

heart bypass surgery.

The family members decided to move him, but

his condition was not stable enough for the transfer.

Doctors placed Timothy on a respirator in an

attempt to expand his lungs. However, the respirator

was set too high for his little body and his lungs

suffered further damage.

Within a short time, however, the transfer was

made. When Timothy arrived at Arnold Palmer

Hospital, a baby had just been taken off the machine

that Timothy needed making it possible for him to be

evaluated.

The family listened as the doctor listed several

criteria the baby must meet to be placed on the

machine. The physician told them, "We will let you

know in a couple of hours."

Timothy met only one of the criteria, but the

doctors decided to try the machine anyway.

At 10:00 p.m. Ann Mercer was standing beside

her grandson's bed. "Suddenly his heart stopped,

and he quit breathing," she recalls. "I was hurried

out of the room."

Immediately, they began CPR. They were able to

resuscitate him. Timothy was stabilized and put on

Is There Hope for Timothy?

43

the machine. The doctor told the family that blood

thinners were used on babies on ECMO, and if the

brain, kidneys, or lungs started to bleed, he would

have to suspend treatment. He also said that

Timothy could only be on the machine for twenty-

one days maximum.

When Timothy was on the ECMO unit, there were

two large tubes that came out of his jugular vein.

The blood was brought out of his body into an

artificial kidney, up through an artificial heart,

through an artificial lung, back down to a warming

process, and back into his body. It did the work of

his lungs.

Every day, it seemed a new and more challenging

problem developed. On day five Timothy experienced

a level one brain bleed. He survived that

complication. However, the family was given no hope

for Timothy's survival or well-being unless his lungs

grew.

Which Way is Home?

The day finally arrived when Timothy was

released from the hospital. He was on oxygen and a

heart monitor constantly. Recalls Ann, "Someone

had to be with him around the clock because we

couldn't let him cry. If he cried, he would burn

calories needed for his growth. Unless he gained

weight, his lungs wouldn't grow."

After only eleven days he was rushed back to the

hospital with respiratory failure. This happened

again and again. Says Ann, "We had many midnight

rides to the hospital, where he was turning blue and

was not breathing."

It was almost as if the baby had two homes. After

twenty-two days, he was discharged. Six days later

he returned. This went on until the middle of

October. When he was home he was attended by a

nurse twice a day because of the severity of his

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

condition.

At the end of October 1990, Timothy was in the

hospital again. This time the doctors were going to

return him to the respirator.

In November 1990, following release from the

hospital, one of the doctors told his mother, "Take

Timothy home and enjoy him as long as you can. If

he goes into respiratory failure again, I doubt that

his lungs are strong enough for him to pull through."

At that moment they had no idea what would

happen to Timothy in the next few days. It would

forever rewrite the medical history of his life.

Chapter 9

"I've Got to Talk to

9

God'

"You've got to be kidding," said Doreen

Maddeaux.

In November 1987, she went to the doctor

because of an eye infection. As part of her exam he

did a routine electrocardiogram (EKG) and what it

revealed was startling. "I don't like what I see," said

the doctor. "It looks as though you have had a silent

heart attack."

Doreen, who lives in Willowdale, a suburb of

Toronto, Ontario, couldn't believe the report. "It was

a shock for me because I had rarely had a sick day

in my entire life," she says.

A Family Trait

Her first thought was that she had been

misdiagnosed. "I remembered that the machine had

stopped once. They had to reload it and paste the

pages back together," she recalls. Doreen had once

been a medical lab technician and knew that

mistakes could be made.

"Actually, I took the news very lightly," recalls

Doreen. "I even had a stress test, and it did not show

anything unusual."

After the original EKG, her doctor gave her a

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

prescription that he wanted her to continue to take.

She told him, "Why should I spend my money for

medication when I'm not sick?"

Her physician, however, believed she should have

additional tests. In December 1987, she had an

angiogram, a procedure that enables blood vessels to

be seen on film after the vessels have been filled with

a substance that is opaque to X rays.

The angiogram showed that Doreen had coronary

artery disease.

"Again, my reaction was one of unbelief, but it

should not have been," says Doreen. "I came from a

family with a history of heart disease on both sides.

The average age of death was fifty-eight." She had

just celebrated her fiftieth birthday.

Coronary artery disease afflicts the arteries that

supply blood (and thus oxygen and food) to the heart

muscle itself. The disease (atherosclerosis) causes

the arteries to become laden with fatty deposits,

harden, and become partially obstructed. This

reduces the amount of blood that reaches the heart

muscle and can lead to chest pain called angina

pectoris, or worse, a heart attack that kills part of

the heart muscle.

A Frightening Experience

Doreen and her doctors believed she could live

with the disease. The physicians prescribed light

medication and told Doreen to avoid excessive

physical activity. The next month she took a trip to

Israel without incident.

In October 1988, she traveled with a group to

New York City. "On that trip my body began to tell

me I had a serious problem," she remembers. "I was

with people who were eighty years old, and I couldn't

keep up with them."

Doreen was frightened that she was not going to

"I've Got to Talk to God''

47

make it back to Toronto. On the way home from the

airport she went to a medical clinic for an exam.

Within a month she was rushed from her job to

the emergency room of the hospital with unstable

angina. Doreen spent the next fifty-two days in a

coronary care unit and in intensive care. The next

year she was under constant medical supervision. "I

was told I would never be able to work again," she

says.

"Lord! Help!"

The waiting list for bypass surgery was so long

the doctors decided to do an angioplasty on two of

her arteries. Angioplasty is a technique for treating

the narrowing or blockage of an artery by

introducing a balloon into the constricted area to

widen it. Within three months her doctors had to

perform the same procedure on other blocked

arteries.

Her condition became serious enough that in

October 1989, Doreen had a single bypass operation,

because the other arteries were too small to be

bypassed. The doctors went into her leg to find a

small artery to bypass the others, but could not find

a suitable one.

Coronary artery bypass graft surgery is an

operation in which a section of vein is removed and

sewn onto the aorta, the large artery leaving the

heart. The other end of the vein is then attached to a

branch of the coronary artery. In effect, this

procedure detours the blood around the damaged or

blocked areas of the coronary arteries to increase the

blood flow to the heart.

"The surgery was the scariest thing I had ever

experienced," says Doreen. "I woke up to a machine

pumping my heart, and I was hardly able to speak or

think. I tried to pray but could not seem to say more

than one word at a time. I said, 'Lord! Help!'"

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

A Deteriorating Situation

The next year Doreen was rushed to the hospital

with severe breathing difficulties. "I was always short

of breath and found it getting more and more

difficult to shop for just one small bag of groceries,"

she said.

When the cardiograms showed a lack of oxygen

in the bypassed areas her doctors ordered a

Thallium Stress Test. In this procedure, radioactive

metallic elements reveal areas of heart muscle that

have poor blood supply or that have been damaged.

Her condition seemed to stabilize, but in May

1992, Doreen had to call 911 and was again rushed

by ambulance to the hospital. Tests showed that her

heart condition had deteriorated.

The doctor's report states: "Mrs. Maddeaux has

serious coronary artery disease. Unfortunately she

has not done particularly well with bypass surgery

and with angioplasty. Certainly her problem at this

moment could not be solved by angioplasty, and she

would require bypass."

He also wrote, "She had a very bad stress test

suggesting a limited exercise tolerance and of course

this is happening in her day to day life."

She had only one narrow artery being supplied

by small collateral arteries feeding the heart.

Another cardiac surgery seemed to be the only hope,

but the doctor left that decision to her.

Doreen dreaded the thought of another

operation, but she didn't know what else to do. "I

was turned down by two excellent surgeons," she

says, "because they didn't want to take the risk." She

finally saw a surgeon who believed the surgery could

be accomplished, but he told her, "We cannot

guarantee how long it will stay effective."

In July 1992, she was again taken to the

emergency room because of a lack of oxygen. "I lost

"I've Got to Talk to God''

49

my ability to speak," says Doreen.

Her cardiogram showed trouble. She was put on

morphine and nitro drip and sent to the coronary

care unit. "The doctor begged me to consent to the

operation right away, but I said, 'No.'"

"You Have to Give Me Three Weeks"

Doreen, who had been a Christian since 1961,

began to exercise her faith. "I knew that God was

going to heal me," she said.

After several days in the heart ward she knew the

physicians would not let her out of the hospital until

she consented to the operation. "I knew it was a life

and death situation," she recalls.

Her sister, Pat, came to the coronary care unit

and told her, "Doreen, it's too late. You have no

other choice."

She told Pat, "If the operation is not going to last

more than three months to a year, why do it?" Then

she added, "I'd rather just go to be with the Lord."

At one point there was a "red alert" when medical

personnel came from all parts of the hospital. "They

began to hook me up to special equipment, and I

became frightened."

Doreen remembers looking up and asking, "Am I

going now, Lord?" She prayed, "God, either take me

or heal me." She was prepared to die if that was

what the Lord wanted. "But somehow God gave me

the courage to fight back," she says.

She told the doctor, "I didn't say I'm not going to

have the operation, but you have to give me three

weeks."

The physician looked puzzled. "What do you want

three weeks for?" he asked.

"Because I've got to talk to God," she told him. "I

can't die before I talk to God."

50

Lord, I Need a Miracle

He said, "Talk to God here."

She responded, "I can't. I've got to get out."

Doreen Maddeaux couldn't possibly tell him what

she was about to do.

Chapter 10

Too Frightened to

10

Speak

"It's all right," the teacher said. "Just take your

time."

The little boy standing in front of the class was

having a horrible time reading a story to his

classmates.

"The h-h-house was p-p-painted white," he read

from his schoolbook.

He suffered from a stuttering problem that would

flare up when there was the slightest amount of

tension or pressure. And standing before his

classmates was humiliating.

After school, the children would mock and taunt

him until he wanted to run and hide.

That boy was me.

A Painful Experience

I was born and raised in the historic

Mediterranean city of Jaffa, Israel. My parents were

of Greek and Armenian ancestry, and I was taught

by monks and nuns in Catholic schools.

At the age of five or six it was apparent to me,

and to those around me, that I had a serious

problem. When I was calm, or with a friend I knew

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

very well, I could speak for a period of several

minutes without stammering. Then, when fear or

tension came, the condition would be triggered

again.

The stuttering was especially pronounced when I

was in the presence of an authority figure or in a

public place. Usually, I would stutter over one or two

words. But there were times when it seemed to take

me forever to say a complete sentence.

As a young boy, when people would come to see

my father, I would hide under a table or under the

bed so people would not make fun of me. I couldn't

bear the thought of having them laugh at me

because of my impediment.

In school, as the years went by, I rarely ever

volunteered to answer a question. When I was

required to make an oral presentation, it was a

painful experience. It was especially difficult during

exam times.

I remember how the teachers would threaten the

students with punishment if they laughed at me

when I spoke. I got through it, and so did my

classmates. But after class one or two of them would

pass by and mock me, pretending to stutter.

The children didn't know how deeply they were

hurting me. I'm sure they did not mean any harm. At

times I felt so angry I wished I could retaliate.

My teachers, especially the nuns, were

supportive and understanding. One day some of the

sisters placed their fingers on my ears, thinking that

if I didn't hear any external noise I might be able to

speak without stuttering. If it helped at all, it didn't

last long.

The most devastating aspect of stuttering was

what it did to my self-image. To me, it was as

crippling as a physical problem. I could almost feel

my personality being destroyed.

Too Frightened to Speak

53

"Yes, Sir!"

As a child, or even as a teenager, there was never

a time when I could sit down and have a

conversation with my father. People who have been

raised in a Middle Eastern family will understand

what I am saying. He was the ultimate authority

figure in my life.

Father would say "Do this!" or "Don't do that!"

I would only say, "Yes, sir!" or "No, sir!"

When I needed to approach my father about

something, I became frozen with fear. He would

usually say something like, "Speak it out, son."

He was not the type of person who would ask,

"What happened in school today?" or "Tell me what

you have been doing."

Wham! It Hit Me

In 1968, one year after Israel's Six Day War, our

family emigrated to Toronto, Canada. As a teenager

at Georges Vanier Secondary School, my stuttering

continued.

Then in February 1972 my life was transformed

by an encounter with Christ at a morning prayer

meeting conducted by students at the school. Later

that day I opened the pages of a big black Bible that

had not been used in our home for years. After

reading the Gospels nonstop for several hours I

found myself saying out loud, "Jesus, come into my

heart. Please, Lord Jesus, come into my heart."

I thank God He did.

Later that week I went with my newfound

Christian friends to their church. It wasn't a typical

church. The people who attended were an exuberant

throng of Christians who met every Thursday in St.

Paul's Cathedral, an Anglican church in downtown

Toronto.

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

As a teenager, I found clever ways to disguise the

fact that I stuttered. Sometimes I tried to use mind

over matter. I had discovered that if I didn't dwell on

my problem I could speak quite a while without

stuttering. But when the stammering hit me, it was

out of my control.

I did everything possible to avoid conversing with

people who might cause this nervous reaction.

Public speaking, of course, was out of the question.

As a new Christian I became totally involved in

the services. I even joined the large singing group on

the platform. When you sing, you don't stutter.

One night, the pastor's wife, asked me to take

part in the service. "Benny," she said, "I'd like you to

read the twenty-first chapter of Revelation."

She had no idea that I had a severe stuttering

problem.

There were more than two thousand people in the

service that night. I wanted to say "No," but didn't

want to disappoint her. My eyes closed and I

thought, "Oh, dear God, I am going to get up there

and make a fool out of myself."

That evening I walked to the microphone and

began to read aloud. After about two or three lines,

"Wham!" It hit me. Tears began to fill my eyes, and I

was paralyzed with panic. Everything seemed to fall

apart.

Fortunately for me this was a very sensitive

woman and she recognized my plight. She quickly

began leading the audience in singing rather than let

me stand there any longer. I walked back to my seat

totally humiliated.

They didn't ask me to read Scripture again.

During those days I attended a Bible study that

met every Saturday morning. There were about

twenty of us who attended. As part of the teaching,

the group leader would start on one side of the room

Too Frightened to Speak

55

and ask each student to read a verse or two of

Scripture. Then he would comment on it, and move

to the next person in the circle.

Just about the time it was my turn to read, I

would quietly get up and go to the restroom. Week

after week, for nearly a year I used the same routine.

I would wait outside the door of the classroom until I

knew my turn had passed. Then I'd return to the

group.

Finally, the teacher took me aside and talked

with me. I could tell he was a little upset. He said,

"Look Benny, this is a class. You're always going to

the bathroom at the same time." He said, "Nobody

cares about your stuttering."

He knew what I was doing. They all knew.

"But Lord, I Can't Talk!"

Just before Christmas 1973, I traveled to

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to attend a meeting of

evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. When I returned home

that night, in my bedroom, I had a personal

encounter with the Holy Spirit unlike anything I had

ever experienced. If you have read Good Morning,

Holy Spirit, you understand the depth of what

happened.

Someone recently asked, "Benny, did you notice

any difference in your stuttering problem after the

Spirit came into your life?"

In April 1974 after four glorious months of my

continuing encounter with the Spirit, the Lord spoke

to me in an audible voice. He said, "Preach the

gospel."

My response, of course, was, "But Lord, I can't

talk."

In the months that followed, the Lord continued

to speak to me through the Word, through visions,

and through the Holy Spirit. Finally in November

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

1974, I could no longer avoid the subject. I said to

the Lord, "I will preach the gospel on one condition:

that You will be with me in every service." And then I

reminded Him, "Lord, You know that I can't talk." I

worried constantly about my speech problem and

the fact that I was going to be an embarrassment.

Then one afternoon, the first week of December, I

was visiting the home of some friends.

It was the first time I felt led to tell anyone the

full story about my encounters with the Holy Spirit.

Since these people were my friends, and I was totally

relaxed, there was little trace of my stuttering. Even

before I had finished, one of them said, "Benny,

tonight you must come to our church and share

this." They had a fellowship of about a hundred

people who met in a local church.

That night I was introduced to the group, and for

the first time in my life I stood behind a pulpit to

preach.

The instant I opened my mouth, I felt something

touch my tongue and loosen it. I began to proclaim

God's Word with absolute fluency.

Two of my friends who knew of my stuttering

problems were at the service. After church they both

said to me, "We couldn't believe how well you talked.

You didn't even stutter once."

I knew what they meant.

Later that night in my room I thought, "The

stuttering must have left because the presence of the

Lord was on me tonight. Surely it will come back."

But it didn't. From that moment the stuttering was

gone. All of it.

"I'm Going to Die"

My parents, especially my father, had no idea

that I was healed because there was virtually no

communication between us in the home. They had

Too Frightened to Speak

57

practically disowned me when I gave my heart to the

Lord almost three years earlier.

Even my brothers and sisters were forbidden to

talk to me. My mother was the only person I had

limited conversation with, but I rarely stuttered in

her presence anyway.

From the moment I first began to preach I started

to receive invitations to minister. Week after week I

was speaking at churches and special meetings. If

my parents had known what was happening, I'm

sure they would have thrown me out on the street.

Several months later, in April 1975, my mother

and father somehow saw an advertisement in the

Toronto Star that I was preaching in a Pentecostal

church on the west side of town.

I was sitting on the platform that Sunday night

when suddenly I looked up during the song service. I

could hardly believe my eyes. There were my mother

and father being ushered to a seat. I thought, "This

is it. I'm going to die."

That night I preached under the power of God's

anointing, but I couldn't bring myself to look in the

direction of my mom and dad. Just before the end of

the service they stood up and walked out the back

door.

I drove around the city until two in the morning,

hoping my parents would be in bed when I got home.

As I quietly unlocked and opened the front door, I

was startled to see my mother and father seated on

the couch in front of me.

I was stricken with fear and looked for a place to

sit down. My father was the first to speak. "Son," he

said, "how can we become like you?"

My mother began to cry. And for the next two

hours I shared the plan of salvation with them and

was able to lead my parents to Christ.

My daddy said, "Benny, do you know what

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

convinced me?" He told me that when I began

preaching, he turned to my mother and said, "That's

not your son. Your son can't talk! His God must be

real." He didn't know that I had been totally healed

of stuttering.

The Scars Were Gone

Several months after my parents were saved, the

Lord began dealing with me in a special way. He

said, "Benny, I want you to forgive your father for

everything he has done to you."

As a child I was so destroyed by my stuttering

that it was almost impossible to face the world—or

myself. I could still remember my father saying, "Of

all my children, you are the one who will never make

it." His words only added to my problem.

That night, the Lord spoke to me about

"forgetting it all." It was painful because suddenly all

the memories flashed back, and I said, "Lord, I

can't."

The anger that surfaced inside me was far greater

than I imagined. "Lord, I love him," I cried, "but I am

still so hurt by all the things he did and said."

The Lord told me, "You make the decision, and I'll

do the rest."

I said, "I don't feel forgiveness in my heart, but I'll

trust You to release me from all my past anger and

hurt."

That night I made a decision to forgive my father.

The moment I did, I felt as though a hand reached

into my being and pulled things out of me that I

cannot describe or explain.

From that moment I felt a total release. I was at

peace with my father, and the scars that had

crippled me were totally erased.

My healing was complete.

Part Two

The Bible's Teaching

Part Two:

About Miracles

Chapter 11

The Start of Your

11

Miracle

From the moment I was healed of stuttering, God

gave me an unquenchable appetite for the Word. I

had a hunger to know everything possible about the

Lord's miracle power.

Day after day, night after night, I devoured

Scripture. The more I read, the more I realized that

God did not intend for His children to live with

infirmities. He wanted them restored, made whole.

The day came that I prayed, "Lord, just as You

healed me, I give You my life so that others may

know Your salvation, Your Spirit, Your anointing,

and Your miracle-working power."

Did I have questions? Yes. There was much I

needed the Lord to reveal through His Word.

• How did disease first enter the world?

• What is the relationship between sin and

sickness?

• Is it God's will for us to be healed?

• What happened on the cross for healing?

• What is the role of the blood of Christ in

healing?

• Why did Christ's body need to be broken?

• Can a person lose his miracle?

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

• Is forgiveness required for healing?

• What is the relationship between our soul and

our health?

• Does the Lord have any conditions for a

miracle?

• What is the connection between healing and

worship?

• What is the role of faith?

• What does the Word say about keeping our

healing?

The story of creation leaves no doubt that God

formed a beautiful world that was free of sickness

and disease—even death. "Then God saw everything

that He had made, and indeed it was very good"

(Gen. 1:31).

How did sin enter the world? Scripture makes it

clear that when God created Adam he was not a sick

man, but was full of health and life. But because

Adam sinned every man and woman is a partaker in

that original sin. Adam's actions brought both

sickness and death to the human family. "Therefore,

just as through one man sin entered the world, and

death through sin, and thus death spread to all men,

because all sinned" (Rom. 5:12).

Sin brought sickness and death. And since that

moment of Adam's transgression there has been a

penalty associated with man's failure to obey God.

Israel, for example, suffered sickness because of

their sins. God said through the prophet Micah,

"Therefore I will also make you sick by striking you,

by making you desolate because of your sins" (Mic.

6:13).

More Than a Ransom

God's plan to redeem man was to send His Son to

be born as a man and to die on the cross for our

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63

salvation. But what happened at Calvary was even

more. As we will discover, Christ not only brought

redemption but provided for our healing.

You may ask, "Since sickness came to the earth

through Adam, doesn't that mean that every person

must experience illness?"

Not at all. Sickness may be all around us, but it

is not God's will for His people to live in sickness.

The Cross made provision for both our salvation and

our healing. Jesus shed His blood for our sin, but

His body was broken for our sicknesses.

The prophecies of the Old Testament foretold

what Christ would endure for our healing.

Who has believed our report? And to whom has

the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For He shall grow up before Him as a tender

plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no

form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is

no beauty that we should desire Him.

Isa. 53:1-2

Jesus, the "arm of the Lord," was to come out of a

spiritually dead Israel—as a "root out of dry ground."

Before the crucifixion the Lord was whipped and

beaten. As was prophesied in Isaiah 50:6, His beard

was torn from His face. His form was so disfigured

and His face so distorted the people could not

recognize Him. Psalm 129:3 goes on to say, "The

plowers plowed on my back; They made their furrows

long." So we can see from this description how badly

our Lord was beaten. That is why Mary Magdalene

did not know Him in the Garden. The last time she

saw Him He had been beaten so badly she could not

believe it was the same person.

The prophet wrote:

He is despised and rejected by men, A man of

sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it

were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our

sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by

God, and afflicted.

Isa. 53:3-4

Then we learn why this must take place.

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He

was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for

our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are

healed.

Isa. 53:5

Many people fail to comprehend what really

happened at Calvary. When we talk about salvation,

we cannot ignore that God also provided for our

healing.

The great ransom that was both prophesied and

fulfilled was for more than spiritual salvation.

Scripture tells us in Job 33:24 KJV:

Then He is gracious unto him, and saith, 'Deliver

him from going down to the pit; I have found a

ransom'

So, God sent His Son to be a ransom and to

deliver us from the pit of sin. But there's more! Look

at Job 33:25 KJV where we are also promised healing

through the same ransom:

His flesh shall be fresher than a child's: He shall

return to the days of his youth.

I believe God's plan includes salvation as well as

provision for our healing.

Believing and Behaving

The New Testament is filled with accounts of

miracles that accompanied the ministry of Christ

and His followers. When healing came, however, it

was almost always tied to both salvation and living a

The Start of Your Miracle

65

righteous life.

When Jesus healed the man at the pool of

Bethesda who had an infirmity for thirty-eight years,

"Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to

him, 'See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest

a worse thing come upon you'" (John 5:14).

You may say, "Please Lord, I desperately need a

miracle!" But are you prepared to live according to

His Word? When Christ heals you, He asks that you

walk uprightly.

Should we expect to remain healed if we continue

in our sin?

I recall the story of a woman in Los Angeles who

was healed of deafness. God opened her ears in a

healing service conducted by Aimee Semple

McPherson during the earlier part of this century.

Several weeks later the deafness returned and

the woman came back to one of the evangelist's

meetings. Through a friend she asked, "Why is it

that I only heard for a few weeks?"

Aimee asked the person who was with her, "Well,

what did she do after she was healed?"

"Oh, she went back to work," the friend

answered.

"Where does she work?" the evangelist wanted to

know.

"She is a barmaid in a local tavern," was the

reply.

Said Aimee, "Do you think God opened her ears

to go back and listen to filth again?"

We should never forget that after Christ met the

woman caught in adultery, He told her, "Go and sin

no more" (John 8:11).

Who Is to Blame?

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

When we say that sickness came into the world

because of Adam's fall, we should also realize that

not all illness is the result of sin.

I have met many people who became sick

because of their foolishness—and blatant disregard

for the basic laws of health. They were ill, not

because they had sinned, but because they did not

treat their bodies properly. This is true of Christians

and sinners alike.

Your physician, for example, may tell you to

avoid fatty foods because your arteries are being

clogged. If you fail to heed the warning, don't blame

Satan for causing a heart attack. By the same

measure, a person who knows that smoking causes

lung cancer should not be smoking three packs a

day.

It has always seemed rather presumptuous to me

that people expect God to heal them when their own

disobedience was the cause of their problem.

Prerequisites to Healing

I am always thrilled to read faith-building

Scriptures that talk about our healing.

But many people fail to recognize that there are

prerequisites to healing. In other words, the Lord will

do His part when we do ours.

How can we become ready to receive a miracle?

Here's what the Word says.

Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is

within me, bless His holy name!

Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all

His benefits:

Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all

your diseases....

Ps. 103:1-3

The LORD promises us even more. He is the God:

The Start of Your Miracle

67

Who redeems your life from destruction, Who

crowns you with loving kindness and tender

mercies,

Who satisfies your mouth with good things, So

that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

The LORD executes righteousness And justice for

all who are oppressed.

Ps. 103:4-6

When does your miracle start? When you begin

to "bless the Lord" from the depths of your soul—

from all that is within you.

It is understandable that when we are in the

midst of a personal crisis, we can only think about

crying out for help. Some people call on the Lord as

if they were dialing "911" in an emergency. They

approach the Lord by focusing on their problem. "Oh

Lord," they say, "I know I am not worthy, but I

desperately need you now."

Instead, we need to spend time praising and

worshiping God for who He is. We should be saying,

"Thank You Lord for shedding Your blood on the

cross. Thank You Lord for redeeming my life from

destruction. I praise You for Your healing power."

After blessing Him, Scripture tells us to "forget

not all His benefits" (v. 2).

Look, there are seven benefits we are to

remember! We serve a God who:

1. Forgives our iniquities (v. 3)

2. Heals our diseases (v. 3)

3. Redeems our life from destruction (v. 4)

4. Crowns our life with loving kindness and

tender mercies (v. 4)

5. Satisfies our mouth with good things (v. 5)

6. Renews our youth like the eagle's (v. 5)

7. Defends us (v. 6)

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

As the Word makes so obvious, the benefits not

only deal with our salvation, but with our health.

And we are told to remember all of them.

When people forget what God has done, they

limit His blessing. The children of Israel learned that

lesson.

Yes, again and again they tempted God, And

limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not

remember His power: The day when He redeemed

them from the enemy.

Ps. 78:41-42

Don't let another moment pass without pausing

to bless the Lord and to remember His benefits.

The Keys to Your Miracle

In addition to praising a merciful God and

recognizing what He has given us, there are some

specific things we can do that will prepare us for

God's healing touch.

First: Turn away from those who reject God's power.

How can we expect to be healed if we surround

ourselves with people of unbelief? If you read God's

Word, there should be no question of the action you

must take. Scripture tells us that in the last days

there would be people "having a form of godliness but

denying its power. And from such people turn away!"

(2 Tim. 3:5).

When you live in an atmosphere of unbelief it

does not take much to devastate you. The Bible says

"Wisdom is better than weapons of war; But one

sinner destroys much good" (Eccl. 9:18). How many

sinners does it take to cause destruction? One. Turn

away from such people.

When you realize the power of both the spoken

and the written word, you'll avoid those who would

destroy your faith. Where should you turn? "So then

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69

faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of

God" (Rom. 10:17).

Second: When you seek for a miracle, ask in faith.

We need to remove the "if" from our prayer. The

Word says:

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he

who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and

tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose

that he will receive anything from the Lord.

James 1:6-7

If you waiver, don't expect to receive much from

the Lord. Instead, ask in faith knowing it is His

perfect will to heal you.

Third: Turn your faith loose.

Many times when I'm ministering I can actually

see people's faith. I can see it in their eyes—they are

about to take some action to release their faith.

One night at a crusade I was in the middle of the

message when suddenly my attention was drawn to

a young man seated in the front row. He had a brace

on his leg and a crutch leaning on his chair. But I

could see a man whose faith was so alive that his

countenance seemed to be bubbling.

I stopped my message and said, "Sir, I want you

to stand up in the name of the Lord Jesus."

Not only did he stand, he tore off the brace and

began to run around the front of the auditorium. The

moment he heard the words "stand up," he turned

his faith loose.

That's exactly how it happened in New Testament

times. Once when the apostle Paul was preaching in

Lystra, there was a man present who was "a cripple

from his mother's womb, who had never walked" (Acts

14:8).

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

Scripture records that:

This man heard Paul speaking. Paul, observing

him intently and seeing that he had faith to be

healed, said with a loud voice, 'Stand up straight on

your feet!' And he leaped and walked.

vv. 9-10

Do you recall the story of the ten lepers who met

Jesus as He was traveling through their small

village? Standing at a distance, they "lifted up their

voices and said, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!'"

(Luke 17:13).

When the Lord Jesus saw them, He said, '"Go,

show yourselves to the priests.' And so it was that as

they went, they were cleansed" (v. 14).

When were they cleansed? As they went. They

turned their faith loose.

If I were to ask you to tell me your greatest need,

what would it be? Whatever the problem, it is vital

that you come to the Lord with praise, with

thanksgiving, and with faith that is alive.

It's the start of your miracle.

Chapter 12

It's God's Will

12

As a minister of the gospel who takes God at His

Word, I have spoken words of faith and healing

hundreds of times. From Sweden to Singapore, from

Bogota to Baltimore, I have seen people in pain and

despair receive miracles from the Lord. Instantly,

they were healed as they believed.

I believe it is not only God's will for you to be

healed, but it is His will that you live in health until

He calls you home (see Job 5:26).

If you are looking for a book to help you

rationalize and justify your infirmities, this volume is

not for you. I am not one who prays, "If it be your

will, Lord, grant healing to this person."

It is His will! You will never hear me pray such

faith-destroying words as "If it be Your will, Lord,

heal them." God intends for you to rise and be

healed. Today. Tomorrow. Always!

What the Lord desires for you has not changed

from the time He held the greatest "miracle service"

recorded in the Old Covenant. When God called His

people, Israel, out of Egypt, they were sick and

afflicted with infirmities. They were slaves who were

undernourished and had been cruelly treated. But

when God visited His people, something marvelous

happened.

He brought them out of bondage and instantly,

"there was not one feeble person among their tribes"

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

(Ps. 105:37 KJV). I believe this verse clearly states

that God's people were healed by one touch of His

mighty hand at that moment.

God has not changed. Millions today are leaving

their bondage and sin to find new life with Christ.

God wants His children not only to come out of

darkness, but also to come out of sickness.

When God delivered the children of Israel from

Egypt, they were a healed people. And something

more. The first covenant God made with them was a

covenant of healing. After the total healing of the

multitude, the first message they heard from God as

they crossed the Red Sea was: "I am the LORD who

heals you" (Ex. 15:26).

"Look at the Tree"

The lesson God demonstrated to the children of

Israel concerning healing is profound. The Israelites

had gone three days without finding water. And

… when they came to Marah, they could not

drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.

Therefore the name of it was called Marah (or bitter).

And the people complained against Moses, saying,

“What shall we drink?'”So he cried out to the Lord,

and the Lord showed him a tree; and when he cast it

into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There

He made a statute and an ordinance for them. And

there He tested them, and said, 'If you diligently

heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is

right in His sight, give ear to His commandments

and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the

diseases on you which I have brought on the

Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you'

Ex. 15:23-26

They came out of Egypt healed! But they began

murmuring and complaining about their

circumstances. God gave them a warning and said

that murmuring would produce sickness. What He

It's God's Will

73

meant was "if you will not murmur, I will not permit

sickness to come on you," which means they were

already healed.

The symbols found in this story carry an exciting

message. When Moses cried out to the Lord, God

showed him a tree. I believe it was because the tree

represents the cross. God commanded him to cast

the tree into the waters and immediately the water

became sweet, no longer bitter. In Scripture, water

sometimes represents people. "Sweetness" speaks of

healing and health.

It was as if God was saying, "Take the cross

(tree), cast it upon the people (waters), and they will

be healed (made sweet)." Today, without the cross,

there can be no healing. Before God Almighty healed

the waters, He showed them the tree. Before we can

receive our healing, we must look at the cross.

Did sickness ever return to the Israelites? Yes.

But it was not God who sent it. Sickness was caused

by their sin. In Numbers 21, the Bible says that

when they turned their backs on righteousness, they

were bitten by serpents.

The story of the Cross contains great symbolism.

I believe God sent His Son to Calvary for both the

healing of your soul and the healing of your body. As

the crown of thorns was placed on His head, He bled

for the healing of your mind and for your thought

life. As He was whipped, His back was torn for your

diseases.

If He bore, or carried away, our sickness, why

should we attempt to carry what has already been

placed on Him? It is gone. He has taken it away.

Often, in Scripture, when salvation came to a

man or woman it was accompanied by healing.

Do you remember the Lord Jesus saying to

Nicodemus, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in

the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted

up" (John 3:14)? He was referring to an important

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

story in the Old Testament that establishes this

principle: When sin enters, with it comes sickness.

And something more: When sin departs, it takes

sickness with it.

"Look at the Cross"

And the people spoke against God and against

Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to

die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no

water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.”

So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people,

and they bit the people; and many of the people of

Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses,

and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken

against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord

that He take away the serpents from us.” So Moses

prayed for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses,

“Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it

shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks

at it, shall live.”

Num. 21:5-8

When you and I disobey the Lord, we can expect

the serpents to bite (Eccl. 10:8). What God was

saying, centuries before Calvary, was that even if

you are bitten by the serpent, all you need to do is

look again to the cross.

First, in Exodus 15:23, God showed him a tree.

The second time in Numbers 21:8 the Lord told

Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole.

"Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Make a fiery serpent,

and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who

is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.'" Each time,

healing came by looking at the cross. Do you want to

be healed? Do you want to know God's divine power

that can give you life and health? Turn to Calvary.

The longer I study God's Word, the more

convinced I am that a Christian should not be sick.

If it is the will of God for me to be sick then Jesus

It's God's Will

75

took my sicknesses in vain.

Is it the Lord's will for me to live in sin? Of course

not. For me to say, "It is God's will for me to be sick,"

would be like saying, "It is God's will for me to live in

sin." But that's not His plan. I believe His perfect will

for me is health and healing for the rest of my days

just as I am confident He wants me to walk

righteously. Now, do I always walk righteously? No, I

make mistakes, repent and He forgives me. Do I

enjoy complete and perfect health? No, I get sick, go

to the Lord asking for His healing touch and He

heals me.

Forgiven and Healed

When God forgives He also includes the provision

for healing. The psalmist wrote: "Bless the Lord, O

my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives

all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases" (Ps.

103:2-3). With one touch, God forgives and heals.

When Jesus looked at the man who was crippled,

He said,

“Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Your

sins are forgiven you, or to say, Arise, take up your

bed and walk? But that you may know that the Son

of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”; He said

to the paralytic, “I say to you, arise, take up your

bed, and go your way to your house.” And

immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out

in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed

and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything

like this!”

Mark 2:9-12

Again, when the Lord forgives sin, He always

includes healing. That is why James said,

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the

elders of the church, and let them pray over him,

anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord

will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he

will be forgiven.

James 5:14-15

It is simultaneous. Just one touch, one breath,

from the Lord is all you need. God saves and He

heals. God forgives and He heals.

We need to personalize the words of the psalmist

and repeat them again and again: "He forgives all my

iniquities; He heals all my diseases."

He promised that "the inhabitant will not say, 'I

am sick'; the people who dwell in it will be forgiven

their iniquity" (Isa. 33:24). And He does not intend for

the problem to return. God has also promised that

He will actually remove sickness from our presence.

"So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will

bless your bread and your water. And I will take

sickness away from the midst of you" (Ex. 23:25).

My son, give attention to my words.... For they

are life to those who find them, And health to all

their flesh.

Prov. 4:20,22

Scripture clearly teaches that your body belongs

to God, and it was designed to glorify Him. "For you

were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your

body and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor.

6:20). He wants to make you whole in every way.

Let me ask again: Is it the will of God that you

walk in health? That's what the man with leprosy

wanted to know.

And there came a leper to him, beseeching him,

and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, “If

thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” And Jesus,

moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and

touched him, and saith unto him, “I will; be thou

clean.”

Mark 1:40-41 KJV

It's God's Will

77

And He is still saying, "I will."

Chapter 13

Your Wall of

13

Protection

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could build a

barricade that would shield us from sickness and

disease? What you are about to discover is that a

wall of protection has already been constructed. The

provision has already been made.

As a young man in Toronto, I knew I had been

converted and called to the ministry. But I had no

knowledge of what I am teaching you now. Actually,

I did not believe it. I thought that to be sick was to

be saintly, that if you lie in a bed of affliction, God

will use you for His glory.

I soon discovered, however, that our bodies were

created to exalt and honor God Almighty. "For you

were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your

body and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor.

6:20). This discovery leads me to believe that if the

Lord Jesus was bruised and broken for my healing,

then why should I carry that burden?

The Power of Believing

I firmly believe the Lord wants us to live in total

health. It is time to believe, proclaim, and start living

where you can say, "Sickness is not mine and I will

not tolerate it under any circumstances!" When that

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message begins to stir within your soul, sickness will

have to flee.

Four Simple Laws

God does not want you to be sick. In fact, in

Exodus 15 He makes a covenant with you and tells

you that if you keep that covenant you'll be healed.

He will build a wall of protection around you.

To be specific, the Lord has established four

simple laws—just four. If you obey them, you will

live in health. And when sickness comes, you'll

command it to leave your body.

God's four laws of healing are found in one

powerful verse of Scripture. He says,

If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your

God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His

commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put

none of the diseases on you which I have brought on

the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.

Ex. 15:26

For the first time in Scripture, God here

introduces Himself as our healer, and He presents

us with the four conditions we must meet to be

healed.

Condition Number One: Heed. You must

"hearken" to the voice of the Lord. In Hebrew, the

word means both to "hear and declare." You must

hear it, speak it, and confess it. The importance of

this first step cannot be overlooked.

Condition Number Two: Do. The Lord demands

that you do what is right in His sight. The word do in

Hebrew means "to make, to become, and to have

charge of." So, dear friends, the Lord demands action

on our part. And healing begins to happen as we

obey the Word.

Condition Number Three: Give ear. The meaning

in the original language is "ponder." God requires

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commitment on your part to meditate upon His

commandments.

Condition Number Four: Keep. The Hebrew says

"to guard, protect, and preserve" His Word. This is a

prerequisite to healing.

What does God promise as a result of meeting

these conditions? He says that He will heal you. If

you hear the Word, confess it, commit fully to His

laws, protect the Word, and make it your own, God

says you will live in complete health.

God has offered a covenant of healing, but He

gives you this warning: "Whoever breaks through a

wall will be bitten by a serpent" (Eccl. 10:8). What is

God saying? A wall speaks of protection. The Bible

says if protection is broken, a demon will bite. What

is your protection? The Word of the living God!

Do you want God's healing? Let the Word

saturate your being. Let it dominate your heart, your

mind, and your emotions. Love it, confess it, and

obey it. If the Word becomes your whole life, it will

totally surround you—on the left and the right, on

the front and the back. The Word will be your

protection and no serpent can bite you. But if that

hedge is broken, Satan and his demons will strike.

And sickness is one result of that attack.

Scripture declares that "whoever has no rule over

his own spirit is like a city broken down, without

walls" (Prov. 25:28). If you don't rule your life with

the Word, there are no walls of protection

surrounding you.

"Lord, Why Am I Sick?"

A man recently asked, "Benny, what happens if I

fail and sickness enters my body?"

My answer did not change. "Stand on the Word,"

I told him. "Stand on the Word."

Years ago, one of America's greatest healing

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evangelists, William Branham, a man who had

prayed for the deliverance of thousands, became

sick. Lying there with a high fever, he cried out,

"Lord, why am I sick? I have a meeting tonight and

here I am lying on a bed of affliction. Lord, You are

using me to bring healing to others. How

embarrassing that I should walk on the platform a

sick man. Heal me, Lord!"

The Lord would not answer.

"Heal me, Lord!" he said again.

Still no answer.

Suddenly, the Holy Spirit spoke and said, "The

Word is health to all your flesh. The Word is health

to all your flesh."

Branham began to recite Proverbs 4:22, but now

he personalized the words: "The Word is health to all

my flesh! The Word is health to all my flesh!"

Then he said, "Lord, if the Word is health to all

my flesh, I will stand on Your Word that says

'concerning the work of My hands, you command Me' "

(Isa. 45:11). The Lord did not say to "ask," He said

"command Me." And that is what Branham did. God

promised it and the evangelist commanded Him to

do it. He said, "My God, I command in the name of

Jesus that the Word will work for me!" And as he

began commanding the Word to work, he arose from

that bed and claimed his healing.

He said he still felt sick, but he refused to pay

attention to the symptoms. Half an hour later the

fever had gone, strength had poured into his being,

and he walked to the platform that night a healthy

man.

There's Healing in Worship

The prophet Jeremiah asked: "Is there no balm in

Gilead, Is there no physician there? Why then is there

no recovery For the health of the daughter of my

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people?" (Jer. 8:22).

This Scripture contains a marvelous truth that

holds a key to your healing. Jeremiah asks, "Is there

no balm in Gilead?" The word balm in Hebrew speaks

of healing. And the word Gilead speaks of worship.

He is asking, "Is there no healing in worship?" Of

course there is. And you need to act upon the

knowledge that your worship brings healing.

If you confess the Word and nothing seems to

happen, begin to worship the Lord God of heaven.

Worship Him for His promises. Worship and say,

"Jesus, You bore my sickness. I will not bear it.

Thank You because Your Word says, 'By Your stripes

I am healed.'" As you begin worshiping the Lord, you

will watch healing come into your being.

What happened at Calvary can even protect you

from pain.

In Old Testament times, if a person was sick he

received a pain killer—myrrh. "A bundle of myrrh is

my beloved to me, That lies all night between my

breasts" (Song 1:13).

When Christ was on the cross, He was offered

myrrh. "Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh

to drink, but He did not take it" (Mark 15:23). It was

customary to give such a drink to a person being

crucified so that he would not feel the pain.

Why did the Lord Jesus refuse it? Christ rejected

the myrrh because He did not want to die without

pain. He would die receiving all our anguish and

torment. Christ is your "pain killer," the one on

whom you call for assistance in your time of need.

He will lie beside you in your darkest hour to stop

the hurt and bring you healing.

The Lord is your shelter and your shield. He is

your wall of protection.

Chapter 14

A Harvest of Healing

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God's law regarding sowing and reaping is clear.

You will never celebrate the harvest unless you have

carefully planted the seed and cared for the crop.

This also applies to healing.

If you sow seeds of doubt and unbelief, your crop

will be a failure. That is why your mentality must

change. God wants you to plant with faith, hope,

and love.

In the New Testament we read that "God anointed

Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with

power, who went about doing good and healing all

who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with

Him" (Acts 10:38). Again, the devil in this verse

brings sickness, not God.

Instead of sowing seeds of doubt, look up to the

Father and say, "God in heaven, You promised that

healing is mine if I obey You. Now Lord, You know

that I am not perfect, but the Word says that

through Christ I am righteous."

You see, the law could never be totally obeyed

under the Old Covenant. It was impossible. Jesus

took your disobedience and fulfilled the law. For that

reason, you and I can obey the laws of God. That is

why you can pray with assurance, "Father, Your

Word says that Jesus took my pain, my sickness, my

sorrows, and my sin. Your Word says that I am the

righteousness of God, despite my shortcomings, and

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that sickness does not belong in my body."

"My Body Won't Obey"

Recently a member of my congregation told me

her story. She said, "When I was a child, I was

treated badly by my parents and for years have been

very sick." She went on to relate how she had been

in and out of hospitals more times than she could

remember, and that her physical problems

continued to that very day.

Her reason for wanting to talk to me was that she

wanted to tell me she had listened very carefully to

my messages on healing. And everything I preach,

she believes.

She said, "Pastor Hinn, I've done everything

you've said. In some cases I began doing it even

before you told me. I've been trying to practice God's

Word for years. I have faith that God wants me

healed. And I have trusted God to heal me as His

Word promises. However, my miracle has not been

manifested in a physical form. My body won't obey."

Then she looked at me with sorrow in her eyes

and asked, "Why am I still sick?"

I said to the woman, "Let's imagine there is a line

drawn across the floor. On one side of the line there

are people with the wrong concept regarding God's

Word and the wrong understanding of how God

heals."

Then I said, "Now let's suppose a person crosses

that line." Pointing to the imaginary line, I

continued, "Healing doesn't necessarily happen here.

There is all this space to walk on before you get it."

She asked, "What is that space?"

I responded, "When you sow a seed you can't

expect to reap the harvest tomorrow. You've got to

give the seed time to take root, to bear the fruit, and

then you'll reap the harvest. I believe you have

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crossed over the line. You have entered the area

where God can begin to do His work."

She said, "Pastor, you know that I should be dead

by now. My doctors are amazed that I am still alive."

I told her, "You are alive because your faith is

alive. You are trusting Him with every part of your

being. Remember that 'faith is the substance of

things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' Now

give your body a chance to follow and allow the

healing to be manifest. Don't give up! Your miracle is

getting closer every day."

Crossing the Line

When will you receive your healing? Today?

Tomorrow? The most important fact to know is that

you received the provision for your healing two

thousand years ago. It happened on the cross.

When you believe in your heart, soul, and mind

that the atonement for your healing has already

taken place, you have "crossed the line." You have

entered the fertile ground where the seed can grow

in good soil where God can produce a harvest.

God wants you to eliminate the negative, faith-

shattering thoughts Satan would have you believe—

doubts he attempts to plant in your mind. He wants

you to say, "I will not accept or tolerate sickness and

disease!"

What kind of seed should you sow? Jesus said,

"The seed is the word of God" (Luke 8:11).

Never forget the words found in Proverbs:

My son, give attention to my words; Incline your

ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your

eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they

are life to those who find them, And health to all

their flesh.

Prov. 4:20-22

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How does health come? Your healing comes

through the Word. But it's not always automatic.

Scripture tells us sometimes we have to find it. And

how does that happen? Three ways. First, by being

attentive. Second, by having a steadfast look. And

third, by keeping the Word in your heart.

You will find, or "catch," the Word by having your

ears open, your eyes open, and your heart open to it.

Scripture does not say you will find healing with a

little whisper, or with a glance, or with a little feeling

from your heart. It takes bold, decisive action!

Paul wrote to the church at Rome, "Faith comes

by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom.

10:17). One person said it this way: Faith comes by

"hearing and hearing." In other words, we need to

keep on hearing what God is saying and not rest on

what we read or heard yesterday. You will never

absorb the Word into your life by hearing it once.

You need to hear, and hear, and hear again.

You also need to have a steadfast look. Keep

looking, and looking, and looking. Then your heart

must love it, and love it, and love it. This is how you

will find—and sow—your healing.

God wants you to show diligence so that "you do

not become sluggish, but imitate those who through

faith and patience inherit the promises" (Heb. 6:12).

When the Word is sown, it's time for "faith and

patience." When you plant the seed you have

discovered, don't always expect it to bring forth life

in twenty-four hours. Have both assurance and

endurance. "Therefore do not cast away your

confidence, which has great reward" (Heb. 10:35).

"He's Right on Time"

Plant your seed and keep watering it. You will

never enjoy the abundance of your healing if you

allow your field to become parched and dry.

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Continue to water your faith with the Word and

never, never give up.

Yes, God wants you healed. But remember, it

took a long time for you to become as you are. And it

may take time for you to become a totally changed

person. The Lord cleanses your heart in an instant

at salvation, but being "transformed by the renewing

of your mind" can be a longer journey. In the same

way, your healing may take place over a period of

time.

Have you crossed the line? Are you in a position

for God to perform a miracle in your life? Don't give

up on God.

Some people like to pick a favorite verse from

Scripture and say, "If I'll just use that, God will heal

me." They may quote again and again,

He was wounded for our transgressions, He was

bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our

peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are

healed.

Isa. 53:5

It is a powerful verse, but don't try to base God's

healing power on just one Scripture. God says the

Word must saturate you. Only then will "health come

to your flesh." The Word of God from Genesis to

Revelation needs to permeate your life. Remember,

you've got to hear it and keep hearing it. See it and

keep seeing it. Love it and keep loving it. The Word

has the power to bring the healing for which you

have prayed so long.

The Word works wonders. Paul said,

When you received the word of God which you

heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of

men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which

also effectively works in you who believe.

1 Thess. 2:13

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Where Is Your Faith?

Some people, however, have faith in the wrong

things. They have great difficulty believing that God

will answer their prayers. They aren't sure the Word

works, and it shows in their behavior.

Remember, what you sow, you will reap. If you

plant seeds of unbelief, your harvest will be sad

indeed. But if your field has been carefully sown

with the Word, and with faith, your barns will be

filled to overflowing. And if you are in need of God's

touch, you will reap a harvest of healing.

Chapter 15

Claim Your

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Inheritance

Receiving a miracle is not something you earn by

good works. Nor is it a gift to show love and

appreciation. Healing belongs to you. It's your

inheritance (Ex.. 15:26).

Your road to health and recovery is clearly

marked. Scripture says that the Word must first be

"built" in you. And when that happens, you are

ready to receive what is rightfully yours.

And now, brethren, I commend you to God and

to the word of His grace, which is able to build you

up and give you an inheritance among all those who

are sanctified.

Acts 20:32

In an age of fast foods, instant photography, and

computer chips, people want everything now. And

they expect the Lord to respond in the same way.

But God's kingdom does not function with a

microwave mentality. The Word first builds, then it

gives.

Building takes time, and God's Word is what puts

the pieces together. The word build as used here is

the Greek word for "construction." It begins with a

solid foundation at conversion and grows brick by

brick, layer upon layer, until the structure becomes

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a masterpiece.

None of us like to wait. But if a farmer makes a

meal from his seed, there will be nothing left to

sustain him in the days ahead. He doesn't eat his

seed. It is by planting the seed of truth that you will

be set free.

You may be saying, "I'm still sick. I'm still

miserable and defeated." Perhaps you wonder, "Lord,

where is my health? My legs are hurting, my head is

aching, my body is in constant pain." You may even

conclude that the only thing worth rejoicing about is

that you have been born again. Physically, you are in

dire need.

Don't panic. You are on the right track. By being

built up in the Word, you are planting seeds that will

bring healing from your head to your toes.

As you walk the road hearing, seeing, and loving

the Word, the process of building continues. Steady

progress is being made day after day. Since you are

so close to what is happening, you may not be able

to measure your growth. Your spirit has been

changed. Your soul is being changed. In Romans

12:1-2, the Scriptures tell us,

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies

of God, that you present your bodies a living

sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your

reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this

world, but be transformed by the renewing of your

mind, that you may prove what is that good and

acceptable and perfect will of God.

So, in the new birth your spirit was saved, your soul

is being saved, and the body will be saved. In the

same way, your spirit was healed at the cross, and

your soul (emotions, intellect, and will) is healed as

the Word develops in you. And one day you will see

the transformation taking place in your body.

Suddenly you'll say, "It's happening. I feel better

and different than I felt three weeks ago!" The

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transformation of the inner man takes place in an

instant, but outward signs may take longer. The

Word begins to present you with your inheritance

deep on the inside. Before long your emotions are

healed, and your mind begins to think as the Father

thinks. It is a law of God and of nature that what

happens on the inside will eventually affect the

outside. The exterior will be touched by the overflow

from the interior.

A Question of Faith

Give the Word time to pour its life into you and

flood your body. Walk life's road saying, "The Word is

being built within me. Through faith and patience I

inherit the promises." His Word will give you

strength and endurance, even when your spiritual

legs are aching and you feel like giving up.

Allow the seed time to take root, to bring forth

life, and to bear fruit. As you journey, God is looking

for two important elements: faith and confession.

Is faith essential to healing? Absolutely. Your

faith must grow and increase daily if you want to

receive your inheritance.

The Lord often healed when men and women

approached Him in faith. At other times, being

moved by compassion, the Lord Jesus healed

without specifically being asked. And there were

other times in the ministry of our Lord Jesus when it

wasn't God's timing to heal.

I was recently asked, "Why didn't Jesus heal

everyone who came near Him? He only healed

certain ones and left many sick."

That is a good question. If the Lord walked

through the Gate Beautiful many times, why did He

not heal the man who had been sitting there who

Peter and John healed? And what about the others

at the gate who were crippled or blind and begging

alms? Why was only one of them healed?

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If you remember Acts 3:2, the Bible talks of this

man sitting at the gate asking for alms. Verse 6 tells

of the man's healing and, as a result, five thousand

men were born again (Acts 4:4). I believe the glorious

result of this miracle is the reason the man was

healed at this time rather than earlier. God is the

God of perfect timing, and this is a great example of

His perfect will at work but also remember that God

declared through Isaiah that His ways are not man's

ways (Isa. 55:8). There will always be something we,

as humans, won't know or understand. There will

always be secret things that belong to God (Deut.

29:29).

In services of my own ministry, repeatedly the

Holy Spirit has let me know that an individual has

just been healed. How did it happen? I did not go to

him and pray the prayer of faith. The Holy Spirit,

knowing he was ready, touched him.

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Pastor Benny Hinn, cured of his stuttering, now shares a message

of God's love around the world.

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After two unsuccessful intestinal surgeries, in 1991 Charlie

McClain was told by his doctors that "we can't do anything else."

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Marsha Brantley of Broken In 1990, Dave Lane of

Arrow, Oklahoma suffered with Cookeville, Tennessee was told

lupus from infancy.

"you've got thirty days to live."

In 1992 Dave and Rebecca Lane share their testimony of victory

over cancer at a Miracle Crusade.

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In July of 1991, Dick Gadd of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was

diagnosed with cancer.

Dick and Judy Gadd with their grandson, Justin, who was

baptized on Easter Sunday.

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Sarah Knapp of Johnston City,

Illinois was disabled with severe

muscle and nerve damage.

Timothy Mercer of Orlando, Florida was born with hypoplastic lungs

and a kidney disorder.

A happy and healthy Timothy after his miracle.

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Kathie McGahuey, shown with her family, was constantly

bedridden for years by life-threatening allergic reactions.

Kathie and hair dresser

rejoicing together over her

healing and the return of her

hair.

Kathie and Ken healthy again.

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After being diagnosed with heart disease in 1988, Doreen

Maddeaux took a trip to Israel.

In 1992, waiting for the train home, Doreen is beaming after her

healing in a Lansing, Michigan crusade.

Doreen telling others of God's grace in her native Canada.

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Pastor Benny Hinn sharing his message of healing with

thousands.

At a healing service, a silent reminder of God's

miracle-working power.

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The element of faith as a key to healing is beyond

explanation. Even though there will always be

questions about healing and faith, we can be certain

that faith is a key in God's healing process. What we

do know is that it is necessary. Repeatedly, before

Christ extended healing, He observed the person's

faith— He saw it. In the New Testament, faith is often

seen rather than heard.

At Capernaum, "they brought to Him a paralytic

lying on a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to

the paralytic, 'Son, be of good cheer; your sins are

forgiven you'" (Matt. 9:2). He saw the faith of those

men carrying the paralytic, and He was moved with

compassion. Moments later, the man was totally

healed but only after the man's sins were forgiven.

Furthermore, we have examples in Scripture

where we find individuals approaching Jesus

determined to be healed. The woman with the issue

of blood was faced with the opposition of the crowds

around Jesus. Yet she was so set on being healed,

she released her faith, fought her way into Jesus'

presence, touched His garment, and received her

healing. In the early days of my ministry, God

opened my eyes to this fact: People can receive

miracles because they are determined to receive

their inheritance.

"Lady, Sit Down!"

Several years ago in Phoenix, Arizona, while I was

preaching, I noticed a commotion in the audience of

several thousand people. I looked closely to see a

woman in a wheelchair trying to stand up. Suddenly,

she was holding on to the chair and began moving

her legs from side to side.

I continued to preach, but it seemed that people

everywhere were turning their attention to the lady—

and I was no exception. I had not yet come to believe

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what I am teaching you now, and I thought, "That

lady is going to fall and injure herself."

Immediately, I spoke to her from the platform and

said, "Lady, sit down because God is not healing

you."

As I continued my message, I glanced down and

saw that once again she was trying to move her legs

back and forth. It seemed she would not stop. I

repeated "Please take your seat."

At the end of the service, while dozens of people

came forward for salvation, I saw her again—out of

her wheelchair, moving her legs, and now the

wheelchair began to move from its position. As I was

concerned that she might fall and hurt herself, I

decided to get her back in that chair even if I had to

force her to be seated.

By this time I was a little upset at all the

distraction she had caused throughout my message.

I walked over to her and said, "Lady, I told you

during the entire service to stay in your wheelchair.

You could fall and really hurt yourself."

Suddenly, with great excitement, she began to

talk to me; every word was in Spanish. "Do you

speak English?" I asked. But she continued to

respond in her own language. She hadn't understood

a word I had said that night. She probably thought I

had been telling her that God was going to perform a

miracle.

I called for an interpreter and said, "Tell her to sit

down because God hasn't healed her. When she is

healed, she can get up."

She got my message, and I got her response.

Through the interpreter she said, "You tell that

preacher that I am going to get healed tonight

whether he likes it or not!"

I was stunned. I saw faith as I had never seen it.

Immediately I took her by the hand and said, "In

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Jesus' name!" The moment I spoke His name the

woman began to shout in Spanish! I didn't

understand a word she said, but I felt God's

presence as she spoke. Instantly, she jumped out of

that wheelchair and took off. All I could do was to

stand there looking at her in amazement. Across the

entire auditorium people began to praise the Lord

with a mighty voice.

It was a great lesson for me. The poor lady was

trying to get a message to me, and I was too dense to

see it! What was she doing? She was exercising her

faith. I saw it and could not recognize it. But Jesus

saw it.

I am certain that the Spanish lady had been

convinced through the Word that God would heal

her. I believe she had been built up through faith

and patience, and this was her moment to reap the

results. She exercised her faith and was waiting for

me to exercise mine.

When you reach that place of readiness, you will

hear the words of Jesus saying, "As you have

believed, so let it be done for you" (Matt. 8:13).

Words of Power

Faith plays a vital role in healing, and so does

confession.

You ask, "Why must I affirm the promises of

God? Why is it so important?" Confession without

the Holy Spirit is merely empty words. In Genesis

1:2 it declares "The earth was without form, and void;

and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the

Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the

waters." Verse 3 goes on to say "Then God said, 'Let

there be light'; and there was light." Imagine, God

Himself didn't speak until the Holy Spirit moved.

Speaking the Word of God without the movement of

the Holy Spirit is useless. Psalm 91:1-2 speaks again

of the importance of confession.

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He who dwells in the secret place of the Most

High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my

fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.”

Here we see that we must rest in God's presence to

affirm His promises.

I have discovered that confession gives the

lordship to your human spirit over your body and

your mind. Scripture warns us, however, that "you

are snared by the words of your own mouth" (Prov.

6:2). You are taken captive and dominated by your

words, and so is your spirit.

It is important that the right words take authority

in your life. You are to speak God's Word in total

accord with the Father. To confess His promises is

simply to agree aloud with Him.

You say, "I've tried that, but I haven't seen the

results."

We need to grasp our confession tightly and not

let go. "Seeing then that we have a great High Priest

who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son

of God, let us hold fast our confession" (Heb. 4:14).

The Word tells us to "hold fast the confession of our

hope without wavering, for He who promised is

faithful" (Heb. 10:23).

In Romans 10:10 we read, "With the mouth

confession is made to salvation." And that is where

many people stop. They believe it is only meant for

the time you profess that Jesus is Lord.

We are instructed to "acknowledge" our faith,

confess it," and "hold it fast." Even the psalmist

talked about it. "Whoever offers praise glorifies Me;

And to him who orders his conduct aright I will show

the salvation of God" (Ps. 50:23). Your conversation

must be in line with the Word. And when it is, you

will see His salvation.

However your words alone, apart from the moving

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of the Holy Spirit in your heart, will not in

themselves produce your inheritance.

Confession gives God's authority to your spirit

and you will know God's healing power.

Why should you keep confessing? Because God is

faithful to His promises. When you see the promise

far ahead, that is the time to confess it, believe it,

walk it, see it, and love it. Let the Word fill you and

build you. And one day soon you will receive your

inheritance.

Chapter 16

Farewell to Fear

16

God does not promise that the road to your

miracle will be smooth. The path is filled with

roadblocks and detours of every description.

Without question you will face one of hell's most

destructive forces. It came against the disciples and

the followers of Jesus. And it will come against you.

What will become your greatest challenge? Fear—

Satan's greatest tool.

The moment you begin living and acting on faith

and on the Word, you will be a target for attack. Fear

will come as surely as the sun will rise. You can

count on it. The question is not whether it will come,

but how you will deal with it.

The devil has no intention of leaving you alone,

especially when you walk by faith. He will try to

strike at you with every ounce of his evil energy. The

more you do for God the more Satan will attack you.

"It's Something You See"

He will come against you just as he harassed

Abraham.

God made Abraham a promise that he would be

forever favored. He said,

I will make you a great nation; I will bless you

And make your name great; And you shall be a

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blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will

curse him who curses you; And in you all the

families of the earth shall be blessed.

Gen. 12:2-3

Abraham, the "father of faith," came face to face

with the destructive force we are talking about—fear.

He collapsed with fright, and God had to correct

him.

The Lord said, "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your

shield, your exceedingly great reward" (Gen. 15:1).

Fear can thwart God's protection. The Lord was

saying "If you fear, I will not be your shield."

What was he fearing? God promised Abraham

that he would have children and be the father of

many nations. Now he was worried that he would

have no children. "Lord GOD, what will You give me,

seeing I go childless? ... You have given me no

offspring" (vv. 2-3).

Fear, like faith, is something you see. It's a

picture. Abraham saw himself childless and became

frightened. That is why God corrected him.

Abraham was in his tent, gripped with anxiety

and fear. God told him to get up and go outside. It

was night and the Lord told him, “' Look now toward

heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number

them.' And He said to him, 'So shall your descendants

be'” (Gen. 15:5).

God wanted Abraham to start counting stars

because faith is a picture. Then the Lord changed the

picture for Abraham from stars to children. He was

saying, "Stop seeing yourself with nothing, and see

yourself with a multitude. See your offspring. See

your future!"

When Abraham wasn't counting stars, he was

counting grains of sand. God told him, "I will multiply

your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as

the sand which is on the seashore; and your

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descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies"

(Gen. 22:17).

"One, Two, Three"

God took away Abraham's "fear picture" and

commanded him to see a "faith picture." He must

have counted for a long, long time. For fourteen long

years what do you think Abraham did? He counted

the stars and the sand. Why? Because fear kept

coming against him, clouding his vision. Proverbs

29:18 (KJV) cautions us that where there is no

vision the people perish. Fear does not run and hide,

nor does the devil take a vacation.

Can you see Abraham as fear came upon him,

counting, "One, two, three, four, five"? He probably

walked with a bucket full of sand. And at night he

counted as he scanned the heavens.

Without question, fear is the most destructive

tool of Satan. Scripture tells us that hell will be

crowded because of it. "But the fearful, and

unbelieving,... shall have their part in the lake which

burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second

death" (Rev. 21:8 KJV).

With fear being such a powerful force, it becomes

easy to understand why more people do not receive

their healing. A list of people's apprehensions would

fill volumes.

Recently, at a service in our church, a man was

miraculously healed. There was no question

concerning what the Lord did for him. But I was

shaken when he came to me a few days later and

said, "I'm afraid I am going to get sick again."

"Don't say that," I cautioned him. "Erase the

words 'I'm afraid' from your mind and from your

lips." I told him to "stop seeing yourself sick and see

yourself healed!"

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"Keep on Counting"

I believe it is much more difficult to count stars

and sand for fourteen years than to believe God for

the healing of your body. People must have called

Abraham "crazy." But when his son was born, God

said, "That's one! Keep on counting."

Today, Abraham must look down from heaven

and say, "Look at that multitude. It is still growing.

Stars are still being added."

Stop considering the barriers that surround you.

Start believing the Word. Start seeing and counting

the stars.

Glowing on the Sea

After the Lord Jesus miraculously fed five

thousand on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, late in

the afternoon, He asked His disciples to leave so He

could have some time alone. "Immediately Jesus

made His disciples get into the boat and go before

Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes

away" (Matt. 14:22). Then, "He went up on a

mountain by Himself to pray. And when evening had

come, He was alone there" (v. 23).

He prayed for ten to twelve hours, until the

"fourth watch," which was early in the morning when

it was still dark. We all know what happened next.

The disciples' boat was in the middle of the sea,

being tossed about by a great storm. Jesus came to

them, walking on the water.

Perhaps the greatest miracle was not that Christ

walked on the sea, but that the disciples could see

Him in the dark, and in the storm. How do you think

they saw Him? I believe that, after praying for ten

hours on the mountain, the Lord was actually

shining. There was a beam of light coming toward

the boat. Jesus was glowing with the glory of God!

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And when the disciples saw Him walking on the

sea, they were troubled, saying, “It is a ghost!” And

they cried out for fear.

v. 26

The Lord called to them, saying, "Be of good

cheer! It is I; do not be afraid" (v. 27). But Peter

wasn't sure it was Jesus. He said,

“Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You

on the water.” So He said, “Come.” And when Peter

had come down out of the boat, he walked on the

water to go to Jesus.

vv. 28-29

I don't believe Peter tested the water. He stepped

out of that boat and started walking. What he was

walking on was not the water. I believe he was

walking on the Word that said, "Come!"

But as Peter was walking toward the bright glow

of Christ, suddenly he felt a wind pass by him. He

panicked with fear. The Bible says, "When he saw

that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and

beginning to sink he cried out, saying, 'Lord, save

me!'" (v. 30).

It was dark and he probably could not see the

water too well. How could he "see" the wind? He saw

it in his mind. It was a fear picture. He had been

walking in faith, but he felt the wind and visualized

disaster. What happened? Peter began to sink.

He cried,

“Lord, save me.” And immediately Jesus

stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to

him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

vv. 30-31

Peter was so shaken that he did not answer. They

stepped into the boat, the wind ceased, and they

crossed safely to the other side.

The Lord taught Peter a powerful lesson.

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Anything is possible when faith is exercised. But

when "Come!" was replaced by the wind and the

storm, he began to sink.

Instead of having an anxiety attack, start

counting your stars, confessing His promises, and

walking toward the Lord Jesus.

Say "Farewell!" to fear.

Chapter 17

Forever Healed

17

I have frequently been asked, "Pastor Hinn, how

can I keep my healing?" Others have wanted to

know, "Why do some people lose their healing?"

These are both important questions because I firmly

believe the Lord wants you to be healed completely,

and permanently.

What you have been reading should make it clear

that the Word of God is the key that unlocks the

door to your healing. Some may wonder, "Do I have

to be a Bible scholar to be a candidate for God's

touch?" Not at all. Even a new Christian can receive

the Lord's healing power, and there are millions of

testimonies that prove it.

God is sovereign. He can grant healing when,

where, and to whom He chooses. But the moment a

person is healed, he should begin to immerse

himself in the Word without delay. The continuance

of his healing depends on it. The psalmist wrote, "I

will never forget Your precepts, For by them You have

given me life" (Ps. 119:93).

God's Word quickens you and keeps you alive.

That's why it is vital for you to be constantly filled

with the life of the Father, and not with the

destructive forces of Satan. "His divine power has

given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness,

through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory

and virtue" (2 Peter 1:3).

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How do you get that knowledge of Him? Through

His Word.

When God's knowledge permeates you, His divine

power and life leave no room for sicknesses. The

Word remains alive as you read it, hear it, and

associate with those who love it. That is why it is

important to stay in the atmosphere of the Word.

There is a great difference between eating a

hamburger and fries at a fast-food restaurant and

enjoying a healthy meal with your family around the

dining room table. The environment makes the

difference, not to mention the great improvement in

nutrition.

It is vital that you find a church that gives you

the meat of God's Word. Both your spiritual and

your physical health are at stake.

Yours to Keep

The Lord not only wants you to receive your

healing, He wants it to continue. Here are seven

specific ways you can keep your healing.

1. Trust in God. "Cursed is the man who trusts in

man And makes flesh his strength, Whose

heart departs from the Lord" (Jer. 17:5). Those

are harsh and negative words, but they are

true. Then we read: "Blessed is the man who

trusts in the Lord, And whose hope is the Lord"

(v. 7).

Those words are followed by the promise of

healing. "For he shall be like a tree planted by

the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the

river, And will not fear when heat comes; But

her leaf will be green, And will not be anxious

in the year of drought, Nor will cease from

yielding fruit" (v. 8). God says that if you will

trust Him, you will stay healed.

2. Keep His Word. The advice found in Proverbs

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is worth committing to memory. "My son, give

attention to my words; Incline your ear to my

sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes;

Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they

are life to those who find them, And health to

all their flesh" (Prov. 4:20-22).

3. Confess your faults one to another. Healing

requires more than an anointing with oil. The

words of James make it clear:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the

elders of the church, and let them pray over him,

anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And

the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord

will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he

will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one

another, and pray for one another, that you may be

healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous

man avails much.

James 5:14-16

4. Speak God's language. "There is one who

speaks like the piercings of a sword, but the

tongue of the wise promotes health" (Prov.

12:18). If you expect to live in complete

health, you must learn to speak what God

speaks. "He who guards his mouth preserves

his life" (Prov. 13:3).

5. Stay in prayer. "He who dwells in the secret

place of the Most High Shall abide under the

shadow of the Almighty" (Ps. 91:1). The "secret

place" is prayer.

I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my

fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” Surely He

shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler And

from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with

His feathers, And under His wings you shall take

refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler.

vv. 2-4

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The psalmist then presents a tremendous

promise. "No evil shall befall you, Nor shall any

plague come near your dwelling; For He shall give His

angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways"

(vv. 10-11).

Prayer keeps you in health.

6. Resist the devil. "Therefore submit to God.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw

near to God and He will draw near to you"

(James 4:7-8). How do you push Satan away?

By submitting to the Lord.

7. Observe the laws of nature. Why should the

Lord continue to grant healing if you violate

His rules of good health?

Do you not know that you are the temple of God

and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone

defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For

the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.

1 Cor. 3:16-17

By keeping these seven rules of healing, you can

know continued health and life.

What Are You Eating?

The Word of the Lord is precise concerning the

foods we place in our bodies. In the law of Moses,

the Lord gave Jews rules regarding eating, but many

people laugh at these ordinances as old-fashioned

and irrelevant.

At the risk of being misunderstood, I want to

share my personal beliefs regarding foods we should

and should not eat.

You may think I am "old-fashioned," or out of

touch with reality, but I do not eat food which the

Bible forbids.

You might say, "Benny, you were born in Israel

where they don't eat certain things." That is not the

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reason. It's not cultural. I am not telling you what is

right for you, but to me the Word is the Word. If it

tells me not to eat it, I don't.

Isn't it amazing that nutritional experts and

medical doctors are now telling people to eat many of

the same foods that God commanded Moses to

instruct the children of Israel to eat? What the

church would not believe for years the world is now

embracing.

Discovery after discovery tells us that certain

foods cause cancer. Yet for hundreds of years people

have ignored what God said to Moses, and their

bodies have suffered.

Why do I stick to "Bible foods"? The argument

may be weak spiritually, but when you look around,

it is not. You may disagree, but I only share this out

of love and concern. I do not want you or your family

to suffer with sickness because of your eating

habits.

God can heal you right now, but you will not keep

your health if you take into your body something of

which I believe He disapproves. For example, I do not

eat rare meat. God said that we must not eat blood.

You say, "If it's not in the New Testament, I won't

listen."

James said to the Council at Jerusalem,

I judge that we should not trouble those from

among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that

we write to them to abstain from things polluted by

idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled,

and from blood.

Acts 15:19-20

God spoke much on the topic of food. Did you

know that if all the passages in Scripture regarding

food were placed together, they would make one of

the longest books of the Bible?

Some people attempt to find one verse that would

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negate hundreds of Scriptures regarding God's laws

of health. But I believe all His teaching is there for a

purpose.

You may disagree, but I believe I have an

obligation to the Father to eat His healthy foods. And

I have decided to live by His rules.

Without being legalistic about it, I sincerely

believe following God's dietary plan is the healthiest

way for me to eat. I also believe that we need to be

careful of the chemicals we allow to enter our bodies

through the processed and treated foods we eat.

Dear friends, please don't misunderstand me here. I

love each of you and only want you to take seriously

what you eat and consider that God's Word does

speak extensively about our eating healthy foods.

Take a look at the Scriptures for yourself. Consider

what you are eating and then make your own

decisions.

Now a brief word about exercise. In addition to

good eating habits, I'm convinced a regular exercise

plan is another way we can stay healthy. Regardless

of your age, or the shape you are in, there is some

kind of exercise which is right for you.

I try to do some exercise every day, and I always

feel better when I do. God blessed us with brains

and it sure makes sense to me to use them. In

addition to taking care of ourselves spiritually

through Scripture reading, worship, and confession,

I know God wants each of us to take care of

ourselves physically through proper diet and

exercise.

The Lord wants us to live a long, fruitful, and

healthy life. Healing is a vital provision of God's

covenant with us. I encourage you to commit

yourselves today to a daily walk with our Lord Jesus.

Let's enjoy the benefits of a healthy life and confess

God's provision for healing when sickness invades

our world. You can claim God's provision for healing

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right this moment and trust in His promise to

restore you to health (Jer. 30:17).

Part Three

The Miracles God

Part Three:

Provided

Chapter 18

I'm Soaring Now

18

To me, the miracle-working power of the Lord is

not a subject for debate. I'll leave that to the critics,

the doubters, the skeptics, and those who have

never experienced God's healing touch.

I only know that for years I had a severe problem

with stuttering, and suddenly I was totally healed.

But what about Lynn Whitmore in Knoxville? She

had lost her sight in one eye and was losing vision in

the other because of irreversible damage to the optic

track. Was it possible that God could somehow heal

her?

What would happen to Dick Gadd in Myrtle

Beach with a deformed hand and cancer in his

back? Was there hope for Marsha Brantley in

Oklahoma whose body was being tortured by the

effects of lupus? And what was the future of Charlie

McLain in Tulsa who was strapped to a tube-feeding

machine, and too weak for another surgery on his

blocked intestine?

Sarah Knapp, the nurse in Illinois, was still

suffering with severe pain in her arm and shoulder.

Little Timothy Mercer in Orlando, who was born with

hypoplastic lungs, continued to fight for his life.

Doreen Maddeaux in Toronto was facing yet

another heart surgery. And what would happen to

Dave Lane, the horse-breeder in Tennessee, who was

diagnosed with a baseball-size malignant tumor in

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his colon?

Kathie's Intolerable Life

Kathie McGahuey was still in Milwaukie, Oregon,

suffering from an extreme case of anaphylactic

reactions and "environmental illness." She was

hypersensitive to a countless list of odors, foods, and

chemicals that made life almost intolerable. Most of

her hair had fallen out.

When Kathie's ordeal began she weighed 250

pounds. Eleven years later her illness had reduced

her to 110. "I had lost a whole person," she says.

When our television program began airing in

Oregon in 1990, Kathie started to watch it. "It

seemed that day after day my faith became stronger

and stronger when I saw what the Lord was doing in

the lives of others," said Kathie. "I prayed, read the

Word, and believed God for my miracle."

When the announcement was made that we had

scheduled a crusade in Portland, Kathie's

expectations began to soar. "I believed with all my

heart that the Lord was going to heal me in one of

those meetings."

On July 25, 1991, the first day of the crusade,

Kathie had another serious attack, but she was not

about to let that stop her from attending the opening

service. She and her husband, Kenneth, drove to the

auditorium.

Kathie not only believed in healing, she believed

in the Healer. "Although I was sick, people would

come to our home to receive ministry," she says.

"They would sit on the side of my bed and I would

share the Word with them. It kept me from being

depressed and self-centered. I knew I should not be

focusing on my own problems."

Trying to Concentrate

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At the Portland crusade the McGahueys were

sitting toward the front of the packed auditorium.

Kathie specifically sat in the back row of the section

so she would not be penned in by odors. "The room

was fairly large and there wasn't anywhere to go to

get away from the smells," she says. "I sat as quietly

as I could. I closed my eyes so I could concentrate on

the Spirit of God through the praise and worship. I

did not want anything to distract me."

Kathie was praying for a miracle, but she had a

difficult time being specific. "Through the years I had

been diagnosed with so many illnesses, I didn't know

where to begin," she says. Any one of the disorders

would have devastated the average person. Doctors

had told her that her problems were the result of

everything from a blood disorder to mercury

poisoning. That night Kathie told the Lord,

"Everything I have and everything I am is yours."

As the service continued I began to pray that the

Lord would honor the faith of those who needed a

miracle. At that moment, something supernatural

happened to Kathie.

"Suddenly the power of God hit me so strongly

that I could feel it in the lower part of my stomach,"

she says. "It moved up into my chest and into my

mouth; my teeth and my tongue felt numb."

People who were seated around her began to ask

what was happening. "I couldn't speak," says Kathie.

"All I could do was cry."

When we began to ask for those to come forward

who had received a healing, the Lord began to speak

to Kathie. "I heard a voice inside me say, 'If you don't

stand up and go forward, you're going to lose what

I've begun,'" she recalls.

To that point in the service, Kathie found it

difficult to stay in the building because she was so

weak and emaciated. She could only describe it by

saying, "I felt there were many forces coming against

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me. I wanted to run and escape from all the smells."

The moment she started to stand, however,

something remarkable happened. "It felt as though

someone reached under my armpits and gently lifted

me up," she recalls. "And when I stepped out into

the aisle I don't even remember touching the floor—

even though I know I did."

Kathie walked forward to an area near the

platform and told some of the counselors and a

medical doctor what she felt had happened. They

wanted to be sure the healing had truly taken place.

"As a test, they sprayed perfume on me, to see if

there would be some kind of a reaction. Perhaps I

should say they poured it on me, because that is

what they did," Kathie says. "Normally, that would

have sent my system into shock, but nothing

happened."

A few minutes later, Kathie walked up the stairs

of the platform to testify publicly of the healing that

had taken place. I felt led of the Lord to tell her,

"Within ninety days your hair will be back. You'll be

gaining weight."

Another "First"

After the service, the McGahueys drove home

rejoicing at what had taken place. "That night I went

to bed and slept from a little after midnight until

3:30 A.M. When I woke up, nothing had happened—

which was unusual," she says. "Normally, from being

around odors, my colon would purge, I would vomit,

go into anaphylactic shock and perhaps end up in

the hospital."

When Kathie's eyes opened that night, the Lord

spoke to her and said, "I'm going to begin your

testimony now." She couldn't go back to sleep. "I

believe He woke me up to show me that there had

been no reaction to what I was exposed to that night.

I was a new person."

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When Kathie returned to the crusade the next

day, she began to experience what would become a

series of "firsts" for her. "I went into a public

restroom by myself for the first time in years," she

says. "I had to avoid such places because of my

reaction to hair spray or cleaning solutions. When I

walked out the door I was smiling—as thrilled as a

little child with a new toy."

From the moment of her healing, Kathie's body

has grown stronger week by week. "Even though the

healing of my allergic reactions was instant, my body

was so emaciated that it has taken time to build up,"

she says. "A person does not go from starvation to a

healthy weight overnight."

Once again Kathie can drive an automobile, work

in the yard, and do things many people take for

granted. "Every day is a new adventure for me," she

says. "I weep and weep for joy because now I can

attend church and I don't have to exit quickly when

someone walks in with fabric softener on their

clothing—or when someone is wearing a leather

jacket."

After so many years of running from her

environment, Kathie has had to retrain herself not to

automatically react and retreat. "Even after being

healed, my first response to the slightest hint of an

odor was to leave the room as fast as possible," she

says. "I had to force myself to sit down and

remember that the environment was no longer going

to plague me. It is as though I have been resurrected

and the graveclothes have been taken off."

"Something Has Happened!"

Although she received her healing in one of our

crusades, Kathie understands how God performs

miracles. "I am grateful for a ministry like Pastor

Hinn's, but I know that he is not my source. Jesus is

my source," she explains. "I realize that God uses

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people, and that He will allow you to be in a certain

place at a certain time, where there is a specific

anointing."

After her healing, Kathie couldn't wait to go back

to her doctor. She took her husband with her.

"Before the doctor even examined me, he said,

'Something has happened to you. What is it?'" Her

husband just beamed.

Says Kathie, "I was sitting on the examining table

and I told him what happened. And when he

checked me, I was even more thrilled. He could find

nothing wrong."

Even the woman who had been her hairdresser

for seven years knew something had happened. She

had seen Kathie's hair fall out and return nearly

white in color. "After her miracle, her hair has

almost completely darkened over three-fourths of

her head." And she added, "As a licensed hairdresser

I have never seen anyone's hair turn back to its

natural color without it being dyed."

Her doctor says, "It's not only a miracle that this

lady is still alive, but that she has recovered to the

degree she has. Since July 1991, there has been a

remarkable improvement. Kathie is no longer

sensitive to smells, her diet is no longer completely

restricted, her face has cleared up with respect to

the quality of the complexion. It is my opinion that a

miraculous healing is taking place."

After taking their first out-of-town trip together in

more than eleven years, Kathie says, "My husband

has a new wife." Kathie and Kenneth recently

celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Because of the pollution of the environment, the

illness Kathie suffered has been called "a sickness of

our time." As she says, "They call us the 'canaries' of

society because of the endless testing they have

done to people like us. In the olden days they would

put a caged canary in a coal mine to determine if

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129

there was any deadly gas."

After her miracle, Kathie said, "Lord, I'm no

longer a little canary; I am an eagle. I'm soaring

now."

She told the Lord, "If You can do it for me, You

can do it for anyone."

Chapter 19

"Here, Read This'

19

There was no hope that Lynn Whitmore, in Knox-

ville, Tennessee, would ever see out of her right eye.

According to her doctor, the blindness caused by

pressure on her optic track was irreversible. And

now the sight in her left eye was fading fast.

Losing her sight was only one of Lynn's problems.

Her body was filled with intense pain and torment.

"Please help me, Lord," she prayed.

In December 1991 Lynn and her adopted mother

drove from their home in eastern Tennessee to

Mobile, Alabama, where we were conducting a

crusade.

"All the way down there I felt something

wonderful was going to happen," she says. "I must

confess, however, that since I was told that my

blindness was permanent, I didn't pray for the

miracle of sight. I knew that just wouldn't happen."

Lynn's prayer was that the Lord would take care

of the pain in her body.

During the service, Lynn and her mother were in

the choir. "We thought we'd get a better seat if we

volunteered to sing," she said.

As usual in our crusades, during the first part of

the service the lights in the auditorium were out,

except for a spotlight on the platform where I was

singing a duet with one of our soloists, Steve Brock.

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Recalls Lynn, "It was the first crusade meeting I

had ever attended. What I was seeing, even with my

limited vision, was thrilling and exciting."

She Saw Angels

Lynn Whitmore says that she is not a person who

has visions or other unusual spiritual experiences.

That night, however, standing in the choir, she says,

"I saw two angels with golden vials in their hands.

They were huge angels." She turned to her mother

and said, "I see angels pouring gold glitter from vials

over the top of Benny and Steve Brock."

Her mother said, "Oh, that is wonderful. Where is

it happening?"

Lynn said, "Right over there. They are in the air,

hovering over both of them."

Then Lynn turned and exclaimed, "Mom! I can

see it with my blind eye!"

When she looked back to the platform the angels

she had seen were gone but her eye was healed. The

intense pain was gone, too.

She could hardly wait to get back to Tennessee

for another eye exam. "My doctor almost freaked

out," she recalls. "He said, "This isn't supposed to

happen.'"

Lynn told him, "It did. It really did!"

His response was, "I can tell"—as Lynn continued

reading the letters on the eye chart. The only thing

she could not do was tell the difference between the

O's and the G's on the last line.

She recalls what happened next. "My eye doctor

put up a new chart because he thought perhaps I

was playing a trick and had memorized the letters."

Then the doctor picked up a medical journal on

his desk and said, "Here, read this."

"He placed something like a spatula over my good

"Here, Read This''

133

eye, and I began to read," she recalls. "Some of the

technical words were beyond my comprehension,

but I was reading every word on the page and

spelling those I couldn't pronounce."

The report of the ophthalmologist on January 13,

1992, said, "Right eye 20/30 +2, Left eye 20/30 +2."

What would have happened if the Lord had not

healed Lynn Whitmore? "The doctors told me I would

have gone totally blind," she says.

Lynn believes in miracles.

Chapter 20

"You're Going To

20

Florida!"

Dick Gadd was not sure what to do next. His

reconstructive bladder surgery had been a success,

but now, in February 1992, he was at home in

Myrtle Beach with a hand that was deformed from

the complications. And now this. He was diagnosed

with cancer in his back.

The previous summer, however, something

unusual began to unfold. A few days after the initial

diagnosis of tumors on Dick's bladder, the phone

rang late at night. Dick's younger brother, John, was

calling from Elkins, West Virginia. "We want you to

know that we're praying for you," he told Dick's wife,

Judy. Then he asked, "Have you ever heard of the

services conducted by Benny Hill?"

"Do you mean Benny Hinn?" Judy asked.

"Yes, that's his name. A friend of mine told me

about him."

Dick and Judy had seen our television program

on a few occasions. John said, "If Dick will go, I will

drive him to one of the services."

The next morning, Sherry, Judy's niece, arrived

at the Gadds' home along with her husband. They

had driven all night from West Virginia just to pray

for Dick. Sherry handed Dick a shopping bag filled

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with cassette tapes. "You really need to listen to

these messages," she said. "They are from a minister

in Florida named Benny Hinn."

The couple stayed only about two hours and

drove back home.

That fall, in November 1991, Kim Eidell, a young

woman Dick and Judy had never met, called from

West Virginia to say she had heard about Dick's

condition from family members. Kim said she was

praying with Dick for his healing. In March 1992,

Kim called from Dick's mother's home and said,

"We're all coming to Myrtle Beach, and we are going

to drive with you to Florida to the Orlando Christian

Center."

Because of his deteriorating condition, Gadd

wasn't too sure about making the journey, but the

woman said, "You don't have a choice. You're going

to Florida!"

Dick says, "Since the name of this ministry had

been coming up so often, Judy and I decided to go."

Eleven people in two vans made the trip to Orlando

on the weekend of March 21, 1992.

She Took His Hand

"We attended the Sunday morning service. I had

never experienced anything like it," recalls Gadd. "It

certainly was different than any Methodist or Baptist

church I had attended."

On Sunday night, Dick, Judy, and their friends

were seated on about the third row of the

auditorium. "That was the first time I had ever raised

my hands to the Lord in church. My inhibitions

seemed to disappear," Dick says.

The service was almost over, and Dick was

beginning to think it was not his night to receive a

miracle.

After I finished preaching that night, I said to the

"You're Going To Florida!"

137

congregation, "We are going to pray for God to heal

you tonight. If you need healing, I want you to place

your hand on that portion of your body that needs to

be healed."

Dick placed his hand on his back. Judy reached

over and gently held his deformed hand. "As Pastor

Hinn was praying, I felt a cloud come over me and

envelope my entire body from the top of my head to

the bottom of my feet," says Gadd.

Dick walked to the front of the auditorium where

a large group of people had gathered for prayer. Dick

was standing with his hands raised to heaven when

an usher asked him, "Did you receive a healing?"

Gadd answered, "I'm not sure, but something

happened." Then he told the usher of how a white

cloud had surrounded him like a pillow case.

"What was your problem?" the man asked.

"Well, I had cancer in my back," said Dick.

The usher took Gadd straight to the platform.

Before I could pray for Dick, God's powerful

anointing touched him, and he fell prostrate before

the Lord. "Nothing like that had ever happened to

me," Dick recalls.

After the service, the Gadds and their friends

went to a restaurant to talk about the meeting, not

fully comprehending what had happened. During the

conversation, Judy turned to Dick and said,"Let me

see your hand."

Dick was so busy discussing the service he

thought, "Don't bother me; I'm talking."

But after two more requests from his wife, Dick

placed his hand on the table. "We both looked at my

hand in total amazement. The fingers were no longer

curled, nor were they spread apart. My hand was

totally healed," Dick says.

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

The Gadds rejoiced all the way back to Myrtle

Beach. "I know I'm completely healed," Dick said.

"There is no need to go back to the doctor." Then he

added, "Why do I need to put God to the test?" Dick

did not believe the Lord would heal his hand and

leave a cancer to destroy him.

Several months later, on October 7, 1992, Gadd

was involved in an automobile accident. "I was rear-

ended by a Lincoln," he says. "After an x ray, the

doctors thought I should have an MRI to check the

damaged vertebrae. Since my automobile insurance

would pay for it, I agreed to the test."

Gadd prayed, "Lord, don't let anything show up.

Use the tests to glorify Your name."

The day after the tests, the doctor called Gadd

and said, "I have good news for you. The mass is

gone. It's hard to explain since cancer doesn't

behave like this."

The radiology report says, "The soft tissue mass

previously noted associated with the T8 and T9

vertebral bodies is no longer apparent. Also, the

signal characteristics in these vertebral bodies has

changed and is not currently compatible with

malignancy."

"That's medical talk to describe a miracle," says

Dick.

The future for the Gadds has changed drastically.

Instead of worrying about the future, Dick and Judy

are sharing their story of God's restoring power every

day. Dick has returned to work; he is building and

selling new homes.

Once again, Dick and Judy took a walk on the

sands of Myrtle Beach. She put her hand in his and

said, "You're right. Life doesn't get much better than

this."

Chapter 21

A New Marsha

21

In Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Marsha Brantley's

ordeal with lupus, Raynaud's, Sjogren's syndrome,

and ankylosing spondylitis, had left her in agonizing

pain. Most of the time she walked with a cane and

was often forced to use a wheelchair.

Marsha had suffered with pain since she was

eighteen months old, but her problem was not

officially diagnosed until 1989. The doctors offered

little hope and she prayed for God to heal her. "The

Lord let me know that I would be healed," she says.

"I just did not know when or how."

Her sister-in-law heard about an October 1991

crusade we would be conducting in Tulsa. She told

Marsha, "I believe you are going to be healed in

those meetings."

Says Marsha, "I had never heard of Benny Hinn. I

didn't know anything about a Miracle Crusade. I just

thanked her for her prayers."

Marsha was raised in a church that did not

preach healing. She recalls that "a month before the

crusade, my pastor preached a message that all

healings were psychosomatic and that there was no

documentation for any so-called miracles."

Marsha didn't accept that.

Standing in the Sun

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Since Marsha could no longer drive, her father-

in-law offered to take her to the crusade on Friday,

October 18. "When we arrived at the auditorium, I

was amazed at the huge crowds waiting to get

inside," she recalls. "Since my father-in-law was with

me, I decided not to take my wheelchair. That was a

mistake."

The crowds were so large that Marsha had to

stand in line for about three hours while her father-

in-law helped to hold her up and shade her from the

hot sun. "I could feel my temperature rising," she

says.

When the doors finally opened and they went

inside, Marsha was in a great deal of pain and was

crying. "But he would not let me sit down," she says.

"We walked from one section to another. He was

determined to get me as close to the front as

possible. Fortunately, we were allowed to sit in a

special section that had been reserved for the deaf."

During the service that night, the Lord impressed

upon me that several people were being healed of

specific ailments. At one point I said, "A blood

disease is being healed."

Marsha Brantley claimed that for the lupus in

her shoulders.

When I said, "A circulatory disease is being

healed," she claimed that for the Raynaud's. And I

said, "There is someone here with a shoulder pain. It

is leaving."

"At that moment," says Marsha, "all the agony in

my shoulder just vanished. The only suffering that

remained in my body was in my right hip. Then, a

couple of minutes later, Pastor Hinn said, "There is a

person with a hip pain. The pain is now leaving your

hip.'"

That must have been for Marsha, too. "I could

move my hip. Miraculously, the hurting was gone. I

was left with a feeling of total peace and was finally

A New Marsha

141

free of all my pain. It was wonderful," she says.

Marsha walked by herself over to an area where

people were giving their testimonies. "A lady asked

me to bend over," she remembers. "I touched my

toes. It was the first time I had been able to do that

since my high school days."

Later, when Marsha and her family watched a

video of that meeting, she heard me say, "A bone

disease is being healed," but by that time she was

already giving her testimony and praising the Lord.

Painting the House

When Marsha arrived at her home late that night,

it was a time of celebration. "My family had me

running around the house, demonstrating what the

Lord had done," she says.

Almost daily Marsha found that she could do

things she never thought possible. "The last time I

painted my mother's house was in 1988, and I could

just barely hold the brush," she says. "It took me

what seemed like forever to paint the inside walls.

But after my healing I painted her house again

and was rejoicing and praising the Lord because

there was no pain at all."

When she was examined after her healing, the

physician wrote, "On October 18, Marsha went to a

camp meeting. She had some form of sensation of

change in her body during prayer. Since that time

she has had sensations of warmth through her body;

her back does not hurt anymore. Her energy is good.

She feels well. Her Raynaud's is gone. She noticed

no change when she discontinued her medication.

Her exam is normal except for some

hyperpigmentation left over from the plaquenil. I

have never seen her with warm pink fingers before."

Although Marsha Brantley had a tremendous

physical miracle, she says, "I also received an even

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greater spiritual miracle. There is a new hunger in

my heart for God's Word. I experience the joy of the

Lord in my spirit and know what it means to have a

peace that passes understanding."

Says Marsha, "I'm a brand new person. I know

from experience that the Lord does not want His

people to live in sickness. He wants them to be

healed."

If the Lord can heal Marsha, He can heal you.

Chapter 22

"Charlie! Look at Me!"

22

Charlie McLain was too weak to face another

surgery. The Tulsa, Oklahoma, mortgage and loan

officer had survived cancer, but the massive

radiation treatments had literally fused his

intestines together. Now there was a major blockage

in the intestine.

The emergency operation on Christmas Eve 1990,

his second in just two weeks, was a failure. Charlie

was near death when they sent him home hooked to

an IV. The doctors hoped that somehow he would

gain enough strength so they could operate again.

"They told me the only hope was either to do a

bypass on my intestinal tract, or remove my

intestine altogether," he recalls. Charlie didn't want

any part of that. He told them, "Get me home, and

I'll be healed."

Is This Really You?

On Friday evening, February 1, 1991, McLain

was stretched out on his couch watching television.

He was connected to the IV and his wife, Cyndii, was

seated next to him. "I was so weak I could hardly

move," he says. "I couldn't even dress myself."

The McLains were watching the "Mighty Warrior

Conference" that was being broadcast nationally

from our church, the Orlando Christian Center. "We

began to watch the special telecasts each night as

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my strength would allow," he says.

Charlie describes what happened. "I watched as

Pastor Hinn prayed for people. To be honest, I was a

little skeptical because of many of the things I had

seen on religious television programs. I wanted to

know if what I was seeing was real."

Charlie believed that the Lord had the power to

heal, but as he watched the program he said, "God,

show me that this is really You. Let me know this is

valid; show me there is integrity here."

About that time, as I was ministering during the

last few minutes of the program, I spun around to

the camera and said, "This is the power of God. Do

you want it?"

Charlie, who had already been under the

surgeon's knife twice, did not take long to answer.

"Yes, Lord," Charlie said, in his weak and helpless

condition. "I want it. I need a miracle!"

What happened next was so astounding that the

McLains couldn't believe what they were seeing or

hearing. As McLain tells it, "Benny turned and

looked directly into the camera and said, 'Charlie!

Look at me!' Then he continued to pray for the rest

of the people who were in the service."

When it happened, Charlie's wife was absolutely

stunned. "I felt as though I was almost knocked off

the couch," she says.

Charlie was amazed, but he was too weak to

respond. "I really didn't feel any unusual sensation,"

he recalls. "There was no twenty-one gun salute, and

the stars didn't fall from heaven. But I knew what

happened was more than a coincidence. I took it as a

message from the Lord that He was beginning the

healing of my intestinal blockage."

Grits and Soft-Boiled Eggs

The next day Charlie and Cyndii looked at each

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145

other and he said, "Did Benny Hinn really say that?"

Fortunately, they had videotaped the program, and

they played that section again. There it was:

"Charlie! Look at me!"

Cyndii said, "Honey, I believe you are healed."

She went to the kitchen and cooked dinner.

Charlie ate some mashed potatoes—his first solid

food since December. "Then on Sunday morning I

ate some grits and some soft-boiled eggs," he says.

What happened on Monday? Charlie says, "There

is only one evidence that your intestinal tract is

working and Cyndii heard me screaming in the

bathroom. 'I'm healed! I'm healed!'"

Charlie had the physical evidence to know that

he was really healed.

That week some of McLain's friends who had

prayed for him in the hospital saw him. They

couldn't believe their eyes. "We were at a Mexican

restaurant and I was eating fajitas," he smiles. "The

next day we had Chinese food."

Then he went to the office of the gastro-

enterologist who had treated him for several months

—the one who had told him what a lengthy ordeal he

faced.

"Well, how are you doing today?" he asked,

surprised to see Charlie walking on his own.

Charlie told him, "It looks like I'm healed."

The doctor said, "Sure you are. What have you

been doing?"

"Well, I had a couple of soft-boiled eggs," McLain

responded.

The doctor said, "That's very good. That's smart."

Then Charlie added, "The fajitas were really good,

too. And I really enjoyed the Chinese food."

As the examination continued, the doctor became

more and more convinced that something had truly

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happened to Charlie. Further testing revealed that

the intestine was clear. The doctor said, "You know,

it surely wasn't anything we did!"

The Tulsa World documented McLain's healing in

a major feature article. "There are a lot of things in

medicine you just can't explain," one of his doctors

said.

Ten Thousand Charlies

Charlie McLain believes the Lord honors the faith

of those who look to Him for healing. "For quite some

time after my miracle I wondered why the words I

heard were, 'Charlie! Look at me!' rather than 'Listen

to me!'" he says. "I realized, however, that it was not

Benny Hinn who was talking to me, but the Lord. He

was telling me, 'Don't look at the circumstances and

fail to believe.' Jesus was saying, 'Put your trust in

God. Look at me.'"

As Charlie says, "There may be ten thousand

Charlies out there who were sick and got healed that

night, but I feel God spoke to me by His testimony

and by the blood of the Lamb." He adds, "There were

those who thought it was a coincidence, but there

were too many coincidences for it to be anything but

a miracle."

Says McLain, "When man couldn't help me, God

did."

Chapter 23

It Happened in a

23

Flash

Back in Illinois, nurse Sarah Knapp was still in

agony because surgery could not correct her

problem of thoracic outlet syndrome. Doctors said it

was caused by years of lifting patients and moving

heavy medical equipment. "The nerves were still

pinched and the torment in my arm and shoulder

was almost unbearable," she says.

For quite some time the Knapps had watched our

ministry on television. When they heard that we had

scheduled a crusade in Spartanburg, South

Carolina, they decided to attend. It was March 1991.

Even though the event was a great distance from

their home in southern Illinois, Sarah told her

husband, Don, "If I can just get over there, I know I

will be healed."

The journey was one of anticipation and

excitement. "We had never attended one of Pastor

Hinn's crusades."

The auditorium was much too small and

hundreds were turned away. But somehow the

Knapps were able to find a seat.

Sarah's faith was so strong that she did not have

to wait for the moment in the service when I prayed

for the sick and afflicted. Sarah recalls what

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happened during the song service. "My arm began to

vibrate like it had been charged with electricity.

Then, in a flash, my shoulder and my arm seemed to

open up. The pain vanished," she says.

Back to the Doctor

The trip home seemed short. The Knapps were

praising the Lord every mile of the way. "Even

though the pain and suffering had gone from my

arm and shoulder, it took a couple of weeks for the

muscle to return to my forearm," she says. "All of my

friends found out what had happened and they were

thrilled for me."

Most important, she went back to her doctor in

Marion, Illinois, for an examination. His report says,

"Sarah Knapp is a patient we have been following

over the last several years. The condition was

thoracic outlet syndrome. She has had a bilateral

first rib resection and bilateral scalene anticus

decompressions."

The report continued, "She had chronic pain in

her forearms and numbness in her forearms and

weakness in both of her forearms until recently

when she attended a crusade at Spartanburg, South

Carolina, and now is miraculously cured. She has a

normal neurological examination and is

asymptomatic. She has already assumed a job at a

nursing home in West Frankfort. She'll be

discharged and seen back as needed."

Sarah thanks God every day for her miracle.

Chapter 24

Timothy's

24

Transformation

Timothy Mercer, the infant who was born

prematurely with hypoplastic lungs and a severe

kidney problem, was not responding to medical

treatment. He had been in and out of Orlando,

Florida, hospitals since he was born.

His mother, Wanda, did not know where to turn

for an answer. Ann, the baby's grandmother, had

begun to attend services at our church, the Orlando

Christian Center. She was introduced to a man in

our congregation who was part of the hospital

visitation team. When he learned of her grandson's

condition he gave her a card with his phone number

on it.

A few days later, toward the end of October 1990,

Timothy was back in the hospital with respiratory

failure. Ann dialed the number on the card and said,

"Sir, I need you to pray. They're going to put Timothy

back on the respirator."

The man she called told her, "No, they're not. I'm

going to meet you at the hospital, and we are going

to pray that God will stabilize him so that he can

return home."

Soul Searching

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Ann Mercer wasn't raised in a church that

believed in miracles. This was all quite new to their

family. "I didn't know what to think," she recalls.

At the hospital the man prayed and said, "You

are going to see a definite change in Timothy

tomorrow. And when you bring him home we are

going to take him to church and have Pastor Benny

lay hands on him and pray that the Lord will

perform a total miracle."

When Timothy was born, his grandmother was

doing some serious soul searching. "I wasn't serving

God at that time," she says. "None of my family was.

I was raised in church, but when I moved away from

home I stopped attending the house of the Lord and

forgot about God." That's the way it had been for

twenty years.

Waiting outside a hospital room with her

grandson's life in the balance, she remembered how

to call on God. "I made an altar right there and

asked the Lord to come into my heart. I also made

some solemn promises to Him," she says.

Ann told God that if He would bring little Timothy

back to health and stabilize him, she would never

smoke again, and would serve Him for the rest of her

life. She says, "I threw my cigarettes in the trash can

just to prove I was serious."

Now Timothy was again fighting for his life.

The next morning the doctor phoned. He said he

didn't know what had happened, but Timothy was

improving and perhaps could go home in a few days.

The family took him home on November 8, 1990.

"The doctor said that if Timothy went into respiratory

failure once more, he would die because his lungs

just were not growing," his grandmother says. "Even

our friends were pessimistic after what the baby had

been through. They said, 'Prepare yourself; he

probably won't make it.'"

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151

Ann prayed, "Lord, I have to put my trust in You

because we have nowhere else to turn. I need to

know that You are real in my life and in this baby's

life."

That night she also had to answer some tough

questions. She thought. "Am I going to serve God,

even if the Lord takes Timothy from us? Could I still

believe in God if He didn't heal my grandson?"

It seemed that a battle was raging in the Mercer

household all day on Sunday, November 11, 1990.

Ann finally came to the place where she made a total

commitment to the Lord. She said, "If you choose to

take my grandson home, I will still serve You."

That night they brought little Timothy to church.

The grandmother knew that if God was real she had

nothing to lose and everything to gain. They were

seated in the back of the auditorium. Her friend

said, "I don't know how it is going to happen, but

Pastor Benny is going to lay hands on this baby

tonight."

A Brightened Face

In the middle of the service that evening, I felt led

to ask several people in the back of the auditorium

to come to the platform for healing. Ann Mercer

brought little Timothy forward. At the age of four

months, he weighed only eight pounds.

My prayer for that baby was, "Father God, in

Jesus' name, let the anointing of God flow through

this child. Bring healing and deliverance right now

in Jesus' name. Perfect healing."

Then I said, "Look, the child is responding!"

When I touched the little boy, his face just

brightened up. "Lady, take that child back to the

doctor. There's been a miracle."

"When Pastor Hinn laid his hands on our baby,"

she states, "a heat hit Timothy, and I could feel it

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spread through me. It didn't go away until the next

day."

On Monday morning they took him back to the

physician. It was obvious that a miracle had begun.

They even started his immunization shots, which

previously he had been too sick to take.

Within one month Timothy's weight had doubled,

and he was taken off oxygen and the heart monitor.

The doctors released him because they could not

find anything wrong with him.

That was tremendous progress for a child about

whom one doctor said, "Even if he lives, he is not

going to be like other babies because he lost so

much oxygen."

On his first birthday, his grandmother took him

back to visit the doctor. "He told me that Timothy

was the sickest baby he had ever put on an Extra

Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) unit who

had lived," says Ann. "His lungs began to develop

and he no longer needed to be on oxygen. He is able

to participate in activities normal for his age. It's

nothing short of a miracle." They ran every test

possible and couldn't find anything wrong with him.

They were concerned about his speech development,

but he learned to say "Praise God."

Through Timothy's healing, almost every member

of the Mercer family has accepted Christ as personal

Savior and is serving Him. Says Ann, "I am so

thankful to the Lord for giving me back my

grandson, for picking our family out of the pit we

were in, and planting our feet on the solid rock."

The December 18, 1990, report from the Orlando

Regional Medical Center included three words that

caused the Mercer family to stop again and praise

the Lord. It said, "Baby doing well."

Chapter 25

The End of the Road

25

What was Doreen Maddeaux to do? Since being

diagnosed with coronary artery disease in 1987, she

had already undergone bypass surgery. Now this.

In July 1992 she was back in the heart ward of a

Toronto hospital in a life-and-death situation. She

told the doctors, "I didn't say I'm not going to have

the operation, but you have to give me three weeks."

That's when the doctor asked, "What do you want

three weeks for?"

She replied, "Because I've got to talk to God. I

can't die before I talk to God."

He said, "Talk to God here."

Doreen told him, "I can't. I've got to get out."

As she describes it, "When you are surrounded

by so much doubt, you have to make a decision. And

I believed with all my heart that God was going to

heal me."

The heart patient knew exactly what she was

going to do.

One night Doreen was seated in the hallway of

the hospital reading my book The Anointing. She

read the question, "How much can I trust you with?"

"What do you mean, 'Trust me'?" she asked the

Lord.

The Lord spoke to her and said, "Are you willing

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to leave this hospital in the condition you are in and

take a step of faith?" He said, "You take the first

step, and I'll take the second."

At that moment she said, "I'll do it."

"That's Me!"

Doreen turned on a television set at the medical

center, and one of our programs was on. She heard

me say these words: "There is a lady in the hospital

who has been told she has to have an operation. She

has learned there is no hope for her either way." And

she heard me say these final words. "Honey, you are

not going to die; you are going to live."

Doreen moved to the edge of her chair and said,

"That's me! That's me!"

For many years she had followed our ministry

and was a regular viewer of our television program in

Canada. Now she felt that if somehow she could get

to one of our crusades she would be healed.

"I knew that Benny Hinn would be conducting

meetings in Toronto in September, but that was too

long to wait," she says. "The doctors were telling me I

wouldn't last that long."

One of our crusades was scheduled the last week

of July in Lansing, Michigan. "I made up my mind

that no matter what it took, I was going to be there,"

she said. "My situation was desperate. I had come to

the end of the road."

It was the first time in her entire life that Doreen

had to take such a giant step of faith.

After much discussion, the doctors allowed her to

be transferred to her home and arranged for

constant nursing care and supervision. She was

given two containers of oxygen—a small one for

traveling to and from the hospital and a large one to

be placed next to her bed. "It looked like a huge

bomb," she says.

The End of the Road

155

When a group of Christians came to pray for her,

Doreen told them her secret. "I'm going to Lansing,"

she said.

They couldn't believe her. "Why don't you wait

and go to the meetings here in September?" they

asked. "And who will take you? It sounds

impossible."

"You don't understand," she replied. "I don't have

many days left. Something must happen now. If I

have to take this bed and go alone, I'll be in

Lansing!"

Doreen thought to herself, "Why are you saying

all of this? How are you going to get there?" Then

suddenly a Jewish friend came for a visit. She told

him of her overwhelming desire.

"Is this really what you want?" he asked. Then

Doreen heard him on the telephone in another room

say, "How do I get a sick woman to Lansing,

Michigan?" He called travel agencies, bus stations,

air ambulance companies, and the train station.

At that instant Doreen knew she was going.

A Secret Journey

Doreen's first problem was the nurses. "How am I

going to get rid of them?" she wondered. Would they

consent for her to be alone? She told them, "I have

decided to go out of town for a couple of days. I need

a break from being sick."

The nurses phoned the doctor and said, "Doreen

is asking to get away. She is getting overwrought

with this problem and just wants a break for a few

days. What do you think?"

The doctor told them, "She can go provided she

takes a wheelchair."

The nurses arranged for the chair, but they had

no idea that within a few hours Doreen would be on

a train bound for Michigan.

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

"My friend had ordered three tickets," she says.

"He wasn't going, but two other friends decided to

join me. They were the same ones who had earlier

cautioned me about the trip." It was a direct route

from Toronto to Lansing.

On July 23, 1992, Doreen and her friends went

to the station. With the help of an electric lift, she

boarded the train. The oxygen tank was placed just

behind her.

"The moment the train started moving, I felt

something begin to happen," she says. "Suddenly I

began to breathe without the use of oxygen. The

Lord had already started His work on me."

Their hotel in Lansing was across the street from

the train station and just one block from Breslin

Center where the services were scheduled.

"What's the Problem?"

On the first night of the crusade, Doreen was

seated in a special wheelchair section. She arrived at

2:00 P.M. and was there until the end of the service.

"I spent most of the time trying to encourage those

who were near me. Although my faith was strong,

nothing seemed to be happening," she says.

Late that night, when Doreen returned to her

room, the phone was ringing with emergency calls.

"What's the problem?" Doreen asked her Jewish

friend on the other end of the line.

"They are blaming me because you left town," he

said with great concern. Her sister, and even her

doctors, had learned about the nature of her trip and

were upset. They did not believe in miracles.

When she returned a phone call to her daughter,

Doreen was devastated. "She couldn't understand

how I could do such a thing, and she hung up on

me," Doreen says. "I thought my heart would break,

and I cried myself to sleep."

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157

On Friday morning Doreen returned to the

crusade for a special anointing service. "Seated in

my wheelchair in the balcony, my eyes were still

filled with tears," she says. "My spirit was broken

because of my physical condition and because of my

family."

As the service progressed, one of the soloists

began to sing the familiar words, "His eye is on the

sparrow, and I know He watches me." Doreen felt the

song was just for her.

What happened next was something she could

hardly believe. As Doreen recalls, "Benny said,

'Someone in the balcony was just healed of a serious

heart condition while the music was playing.' Then

he said, 'I only want those people I call to come

forward.'"

Doreen jumped out of her wheelchair and began

to run down the stairs with an usher. "At the front of

the platform someone asked me to run back and

forth and they checked my pulse. My heart rate was

normal!"

In the hospital, Doreen's pulse "had dropped to

thirty-five and had only come up to fifty-six," she

says. Now it was normal.

"I don't remember too much of what happened

that Friday morning," says Doreen. "I could feel the

power of God all around me." It was like a scene

from the book of Acts as she was leaping and

praising God. "I only know that God kept His word,

and I was healed."

Doreen knew that the Lord had broken the curse

of heart disease that had been in her family for

generations.

Waiting for Results

On the train back to Toronto, Doreen went from

seat to seat to share what God had done for her. "I

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

sent back the wheelchair as baggage," she exclaims.

"When I arrived in Toronto I walked from the train

and even ran up the ramps at the station."

When Doreen got home, she tried to reach her

doctors but learned that they would be on vacation

until two days before her operation was scheduled. "I

immediately called a cardiologist I had seen before,

and he arranged a stress test on August 4, 1992, at

Missisauga Hospital," she says. "He was informed at

the hospital of my condition."

That day's results were quite a contrast from the

results of tests taken just a few weeks earlier. "The

doctor asked to see me in the hall," she recalls. "He

said, 'The only thing I can say is that your problem

is in remission.'"

Doreen still likes to look at the letter from her

surgeon that says, "Arrangements have been made

for your admission to the Toronto General Hospital

on Tuesday, August 18, 1992, for surgery on

Thursday, August 20, 1992."

The surgery was canceled.

On September 17, 1992, her cardiologist sent a

report to her physician: "I saw Doreen in the office

on September 16. She continues to look absolutely

wonderful and is totally asymptomatic. She is

walking an hour a day; she is taking only an aspirin

a day. She has had virtually no angina and

shortness of breath."

The report concluded, "In summary, Doreen

presents a modern-day miracle. Several months ago

she was unable to exercise for much more than a

minute on a treadmill, but as you know, on August

4, 1992, she went for 5:42 (minutes) up to a heart

rate of 127, with no ischemic ST changes nor chest

pain. She achieved a workload of 7 METS."

Today, Doreen Maddeaux is living a normal,

healthy life. "I am doing things again I thought I

would never do. I still pause for a second when I see

The End of the Road

159

a flight of stairs because I remember how it was—not

because I have to."

One of her doctors saw her testimony on a

telecast and said, "When I saw you running up those

stairs, I could hardly believe it. I remember when

you could barely make it up the stairs to my office."

What about her Jewish friends? "They are

astonished at my healing and don't know how to

explain it," said Doreen. "I'm a living miracle that our

God reigns."

Chapter 26

Celebration of a

26

Miracle

"When you are told that you have thirty—and at

the outside ninety—days to live, you begin to put

things in perspective," said Dave Lane, from

Cookeville, Tennessee.

"Suddenly, my championship Arabian horses

didn't mean very much," he says. All he could think

about was how he was going to spend the remaining

days with his wife and family. His mind could not

escape the thought of the dreaded baseball-size

cancer that was killing him.

As Dave was walking through the den of his

home the day following his diagnosis, the program

on his big-screen television caught his eyes. "It was

Benny Hinn's Miracle Invasion and I felt compelled to

stop what I was doing and watch," says Lane. "I had

only seen the program once before. But that day it

was as if the presence of the Holy Spirit penetrated

the set and began to minister to me."

We announced that our crusade team from

Orlando would be conducting special services

Thursday and Friday of that same week in Rockwall,

Texas, near Dallas, at Church on the Rock. That was

in June 1990. Says Dave, "I felt God saying 'Go!'—

instructing me to drive to Dallas for those services."

Immediately, Dave's mind was filled with doubt.

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"Is it right that I should take a trip that will take

three days out of the thirty the doctors are giving

me?" he wondered.

The Road to Rockwall

Like so many Christians, Dave was raised in a

church that believed miracles were limited to the

time of Christ's ministry on earth. But the more he

read Scripture, the more convinced he became that

healing was part of the atonement and is for us

today.

The first part of that week the doctors continued

to call. They knew the urgency of scheduling surgery

and could not understand why Dave was avoiding

them.

"On Thursday morning my wife and I got in our

car and headed for Rockwall," says Lane. "It was

about a twelve-hour drive, and we had about

thirteen hours to get there." But when they arrived

in the area they found it impossible to find a motel

with a vacancy. "We had to stop to change clothes

several miles away, and we were about an hour late

getting to the auditorium."

On the way Dave and Rebecca prayed for three

things. He said, "I asked that the Lord would (1)

provide us with a good seat near the front, (2) delay

the preaching part of the service until we arrived,

and (3) let me be prayed for by the evangelist, so that

I would be healed of the cancerous tumor in my

body."

When the Lanes arrived there were many people

standing around the outside of the building who

could not get in. "But for some unknown reason,"

says Dave, "a gentleman walked up to us and invited

us to accompany him inside. He ushered us to two

seats near the front of the auditorium that were still

unoccupied."

When Dave walked into the crusade, all he could

Celebration of a Miracle

163

think about was his cancer. "But the moment I got

in God's presence and the anointing began to move

in that place, things changed," he said. "Just ten

minutes in that precious atmosphere was worth all

of the effort it took for the long drive to Texas."

That night in Dallas, Dave committed his life

totally and completely to the Lord. "I came to realize

that even if I died, my death would be just a doorway

into eternal life with Christ."

Suddenly Dave got his mind off of his problem

and onto Christ. "When I began to praise the Lord, I

completely forgot about my cancer," he says. "A

heavenly warmth seemed to wash over me."

When I called for those who felt God was healing

them to come forward, Dave stepped to the aisle. "I

had no physical evidence, but I knew beyond doubt

that God had done something awesome inside of

me," he said.

Suddenly Dave was ushered to the platform.

"Pastor Hinn laid his hands on me and said of the

cancer, 'I curse its roots and command it to die,'"

recalls Dave. "I knew right then it was leaving my

body."

All of his prayers had been answered.

"Was I Healed?"

Dave and his wife returned to Tennessee. Every

day he felt stronger and stronger, both physically

and spiritually. Thirty days passed, and he was still

alive. After ninety days, Dave was still claiming his

healing.

"The doctors who initially diagnosed my cancer

simply couldn't understand why I continued to

ignore their pleas to schedule surgery and begin

cancer treatment," says Lane. In October, about four

months after the original diagnosis, Dave told his

wife, "I'm going to a different doctor for a check-up—

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

someone who doesn't know my problem."

After the uncomfortable proctoscopic exam, the

doctor called Dave's wife into the room. "I'm sorry to

give you this report," said the physician, "but Mr.

Lane, you have a lesion the size of a quarter. And it

is malignant."

Dave and Rebecca looked at each other. They

were both thinking the same thing—"Praise the

Lord!" Then Dave began to smile.

"I'm sure that doctor must have thought I had

lost my mind," he said. "But I was excited that a

baseball had just been reduced to a quarter. That

was a miracle in itself," he says. "Plus, I believe we

don't serve a half-way God. What the Lord starts He

finishes."

Now there was another doctor calling Dave. "Mr.

Lane, we need to do something about this before it

gets any larger," he said. Lane placed the matter in

God's hands and kept on smiling.

The medical report from the October visit said, "I

looked at the lower G.I. tract in the office and

biopsied a suspicious area for a possible tumor. The

pathology report as described... revealed that this

was a malignancy showing what was called in-

tramucosal carcinoma. This is a recurrent cancer of

the upper portion of the rectum."

The letter continued, "I have had some difficulty

getting in touch with you and did want to review this

with you and discuss possible options. I am free to

discuss this and will be happy to see you at any

time. I would, however, like to stress to you that this

is a matter of utmost importance and that with the

finding of a rectal cancer specific steps need to be

taken in order to correct the problem and not allow

this to continue to an advanced stage."

"I had asked God to let me know beyond any

doubt that I did not have cancer. I felt healthy and

strong, but I continued to ask God for the assurance

Celebration of a Miracle

165

of my healing," Dave says.

"You're Free!"

In March 1992, Dave began feeling ill. "Lord,

what is happening? Am I losing my healing?" Lane

wondered.

Dave returned to a doctor at the Park View

Medical Center in Nashville who knew he had

cancer. He asked for a new examination and learned

that he had an abscess on his appendix that needed

immediate attention.

When they performed surgery, they did a

complete exam of Dave's body, including the area

where the cancer had been. The most important

discovery was what they didn't find. "Your body has

no cancer in it," the doctors told him.

Dave was rejoicing that the surgery for his

appendix proved beyond any doubt that God had

completely and totally healed his cancer. Further

ultrasound exams showed there were no tumors in

his colon.

As he looks back on his experience with cancer,

Dave says, "I realize that Benny Hinn had nothing to

do with the healing except that the Lord has honored

Benny with His presence. It's the Lord who

performed the miracle."

Before his healing, "God was something distant,"

says Lane. "Now I have a personal relationship with

the Healer. I know that the Bible says that God will

give you the desire of your heart. Now God is the

desire of my heart."

The report from the medical center in Nashville

on March 3, 1992, says,

1. Eight (8) regional mesenteric lymph nodes are

free of metastic carcinoma.

2. Additional rectal margin: no evidence of

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

malignancy.

3. Rectal side of anastomosis: negative for

malignancy.

4. Colonic site of anastomosis: negative for

malignancy.

On April 22, 1992, the same doctor who two

years earlier confirmed that he had colon cancer,

wrote, "There is no evidence of residual malignancy,

and he at this point should be considered free of

malignant disease."

Dave Lane had no radiation, no chemotherapy,

no colostomy, and no medicine for his cancer. He

was totally healed by the power of God.

AFTERWORD HEALING: AN ACT OF

FAITH

Since the beginning of my ministry, I have heard

the testimonies of thousands of people who have

received their miracle of healing. Because of our

television ministry and large crusades, some people

have said, "If only I could have Benny Hinn

personally pray for me, I know I would be healed."

But that is not the key to your miracle.

It is God's response to your faith that brings

healing. Let me illustrate.

Candy Brusseau was born profoundly deaf in

both ears. As a child she spent many frustrating

years learning to speak a few simple words and

phrases. Throughout her adult life she has

continued to cope with this handicap.

In mid-1992, Candy was summoned to jury duty

by the Los Angeles Superior Court. On November 3,

1992, in response to the summons, her physician,

the noted ear surgeon Dr. Howard House, wrote a

letter to the judicial court recommending that Candy

be excused from jury service. He stated that Candy

"has been followed intermittently in this office since

1954, because of a severe hearing impairment." Dr.

House further stated that, "Unfortunately, there is

no medical or surgical therapy that will restore her

hearing."

On October 22, 1992, twelve days prior to Dr.

House's letter, Candy and her family—as an act of

faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ—joined in

composing a simple testimonial for future use; a

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Lord, I Need a Miracle

testimonial of praise and thanksgiving for what they

felt certain would be her forthcoming healing by the

God with whom all things are possible, and who is

not limited to "medical or surgical therapy."

They wrote: "My story is not about being born a

profoundly deaf person; though I was born

profoundly deaf. It is not about my failed ear

fenestration surgery by one of the world's great

audiologists and ear surgeons. My story is about the

wonderful, miraculous healing of my deafness

through the grace of God on December 11, 1992, at

a Benny Hinn Miracle Crusade Service at the Long

Beach (California) Municipal Arena."

In her deafness, she claimed deliverance.

On Friday night, December 11, over fourteen

thousand people jammed the auditorium. At about

5:45 p.m., more than an hour before the service

began, wonderful healings were taking place all over

the auditorium.

As Mrs. Joan Gieson was passing along the

nearby aisle, Bill Brusseau, Candy's father,

requested of Mrs. Gieson that she join in a "prayer of

faith" for Candy. At the conclusion of that prayer,

there was an audible, spontaneous exclamation of

praise from those sitting nearby, as Candy removed

her hearing aid, turned to her father, and said "I can

hear!"

Later, in a letter to relatives and friends about

that Friday evening, December 11, 1992, her mother

and father wrote; "The Holy Spirit came upon our

dear Candy, and in a most profound and beautiful

manner she was miraculously healed of her lifelong

deafness."

When she was brought to the platform that night,

Candy was aglow with the presence of the Lord. Her

testimony was no longer future, it was now. Even

before I arrived for the service, Candy Brusseau was

healed. Her faith had made her whole.

Afterword Healing: An Act of Faith

My Prayer For You

It is exciting to hear the stories of those who have

been healed by God's power. But what about you?

What is your need? Perhaps you are saying, "Lord, I

need a miracle!"

Would you allow me to pray for you? Even now,

reach out in faith as I call on God for your healing.

Lord, I bless Your name today. You are the God

who forgives our iniquities, who heals our diseases,

who redeems our life from destruction, and who

crowns our life with loving kindness and tender

mercies. You are the one who satisfies our mouth with

good things, who renews our youth like the eagle's,

and who is our defender. Now, Lord, I pray for a

blanket of a healing to cover Your child. Right now, I

stand on Your Word and declare instant and total

restoration. Do it for Your sake. In Jesus' Name and

for Your Glory. Amen.

Claim God's miracle today. His Word was written

for you: "By His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5).

The Lord is waiting to hear your praise, your

worship, and your celebration. He is waiting to hear

you say, "Thank You, Lord, for my miracle."

If God has given you a miracle of healing as a

result of reading this book, I would love to rejoice

with you. Please send me your testimony along with

a report from your physician that documents what

the Lord has done. My address is:

Benny Hinn

Lord, I Need a Miracle

Box 90

Orlando, FL 32802-0090

Document Outline

- Lord, I Need a Miracle

- Contents

- Foreword

- 1 "You've Got Thirty Days"

- "It Doesn't Look Good"

- More Bad News

- "No Surgery for Me"

- 2 Kathie's Environmental Attacks

- A Life-Threatening Reaction

- Years of Frustration

- Living in a Controlled Environment

- "Will I Ever Be Healed?"

- 3 Forever Blind?

- "I Had No Vision at All"

- A Laundry List of Medical Problems

- 4 Hand in Hand

- The Prognosis

- Why the Pain?

- 5 Marsha Needed a Miracle

- Naming the Monster

- A Trio of Illnesses

- Bleak, Bleaker, Bleakest

- 6 Charlie Had Another Plan

- Two Unsuccessful Surgeries

- "Get Me Home, and I'll Be Healed"

- 7 No Relief in Sight

- "Surely, There Must Be an Answer"

- 8 Is There Hope for Timothy?

- Getting Off to a Bad Start

- A Possible Solution

- Which Way is Home?

- 9 "I've Got to Talk to God''

- A Family Trait

- A Frightening Experience

- "Lord! Help!"

- A Deteriorating Situation

- "You Have to Give Me Three Weeks"

- 10 Too Frightened to Speak

- A Painful Experience

- "Yes, Sir!"

- Wham! It Hit Me

- "But Lord, I Can't Talk!"

- "I'm Going to Die"

- The Scars Were Gone

- 11 The Start of Your Miracle

- More Than a Ransom

- Believing and Behaving

- Who Is to Blame?

- Prerequisites to Healing

- The Keys to Your Miracle

- First: Turn away from those who reject God's power.

- Second: When you seek for a miracle, ask in faith.

- Third: Turn your faith loose.

- 12 It's God's Will

- "Look at the Tree"

- "Look at the Cross"

- Forgiven and Healed

- 13 Your Wall of Protection

- The Power of Believing

- Four Simple Laws

- "Lord, Why Am I Sick?"

- There's Healing in Worship

- 14 A Harvest of Healing

- "My Body Won't Obey"

- Crossing the Line

- "He's Right on Time"

- Where Is Your Faith?

- 15 Claim Your Inheritance

- A Question of Faith

- "Lady, Sit Down!"

- Words of Power

- 16 Farewell to Fear

- "It's Something You See"

- "One, Two, Three"

- "Keep on Counting"

- Glowing on the Sea

- 17 Forever Healed

- Yours to Keep

- What Are You Eating?

- 18 I'm Soaring Now

- Kathie's Intolerable Life

- Trying to Concentrate

- Another "First"

- "Something Has Happened!"

- 19 "Here, Read This''

- She Saw Angels

- 20 "You're Going To Florida!"

- She Took His Hand

- The Radiology Report

- 21 A New Marsha

- Standing in the Sun

- Painting the House

- 22 "Charlie! Look at Me!"

- Is This Really You?

- Grits and Soft-Boiled Eggs

- Ten Thousand Charlies

- 23 It Happened in a Flash

- Back to the Doctor

- 24 Timothy's Transformation

- Soul Searching

- A Brightened Face

- 25 The End of the Road

- "That's Me!"

- A Secret Journey

- "What's the Problem?"

- Waiting for Results

- 26 Celebration of a Miracle

- The Road to Rockwall

- "Was I Healed?"

- "You're Free!"

- Afterword Healing: An Act of Faith

- My Prayer For You

Table of Contents

Foreword............................................

Part One: The Miracles Needed

"You've Got Thirty Days".

Kathie's Environmental Attacks.

Forever Blind?.

Hand in Hand.

Marsha Needed a Miracle.

Charlie Had Another Plan.

No Relief in Sight.

Is There Hope for Timothy?.

"I've Got to Talk to God' .

Too Frightened to Speak.

Part Two: The Bible's Teaching About Miracles

The Start of Your Miracle.

It's God's Will.

Your Wall of Protection.

A Harvest of Healing.

Claim Your Inheritance.

Farewell to Fear.

Forever Healed.

Part Three: The Miracles God Provided

I'm Soaring Now.

"Here, Read This' .

"You're Going To Florida!".

A New Marsha.

"Charlie! Look at Me!".

It Happened in a Flash.

Timothy's Transformation.

The End of the Road.

Celebration of a Miracle.

Afterword Healing: An Act of Faith.............................

Lord, I Need a Miracle

Contents

More Bad News

"No Surgery for Me"

Years of Frustration

Living in a Controlled Environment

"Will I Ever Be Healed?"

A Laundry List of Medical Problems

The Prognosis

Why the Pain?

A Trio of Illnesses

"Get Me Home, and I'll Be Healed"

A Possible Solution

Which Way is Home?

A Frightening Experience

"Lord! Help!"

A Deteriorating Situation

"You Have to Give Me Three Weeks"

"Yes, Sir!"