Healed of Asthma

Dear Ones,

We praise God for the healing that He has wrought in my body!

I have been sick with asthma for about seven and one-half years. It was a time of much growth for me in the Lord through sufferings. I have trusted God with my body and haven’t leaned to the arm of man for medicine, believing that God’s power is in no wise restricted today, that He heals just as He did when down here in the flesh. The Lord faithfully led me through those years, giving me promises that He would heal me.

Since I didn’t understand much about Divine healing, I remained sick in body. As the years passed, my heart ached and my hope became faint that God would heal me. I felt like He must mean to have me perfected through sufferings instead, possibly meaning for me to be a partial invalid for the rest of my life.

About the beginning of 2006, the Lord began to talk to me about my asthma. I had opened a book about Divine healing and started to read the truths in its pages. It stirred my heart deeply. God did have a purpose in suffering, but once that lesson was learned, we had the right to come to Him to remove the affliction. The Lord had better for me than just being perfected through suffering the rest of my life. I needed to be consecrated to be sick as long as He wanted me to, but God’s will was to heal those that were sick. It was a light sent from heaven.

I had been tempted to throw all the past promises God had given me away, but the scripture kept coming back to my mind “Cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of reward.”* (Hebrews 10:35) I went to God in prayer and in tears asked Him to be my guide. I told Him that I didn’t know what to do. I surely couldn’t heal myself. God confirmed to my heart His promise to never leave me alone. He showed me that He would be my guide (if I would let Him be) “even unto death.”* (Psalm 48:14)

We started reading the Divine healing book as a family and were much encouraged. As more light shone on our path, we realized that the devil had had an advantage over us. We were casting a reproach on God’s name by failing to press through and get a hold of His healing power.

The image of God healing me was rather distant and vague. My place was to not complain but to patiently endure these afflictions until, maybe someday when I prayed, God would remove it. Since I didn’t have a definite faith that God willed me to be healed at the present time, I couldn’t receive God’s healing.

Surely God has been bearing long with our slowness these past years. When I realized it, I confessed to the Lord that I had been rather slothful in getting a hold of His promises. I had often looked at that verse in Hebrews 6:12, but now God showed it to me in a new way. Just as it was a battle for the Israelites to get a hold of God’s “Promised Land,” just so we have to fight and press out to get a hold of God’s promises to us.

At this time the Lord also brought back to my mind several scriptures that He had given me in the past that pointed to a definite healing.

There were several pressing needs on the horizon and I felt impressed to ask God for a certain “token for good,”* (Psalm 86:17) to reassure me that He was still looking on and hadn’t forgotten my need. He encouraged my heart by answering my prayer. Also at that time He encouraged me in several other ways. One was in burdening my heart to pray for someone which later I found out had really needed special prayer at that time. The other was in answering my prayer for someone who was suffering from a severe headache. The Lord answered my prayer and relieved the pain so that in a few hours the pain was all gone, and the next day the person wasn’t feeling the frailness that usually followed such a headache. (At the same time the Lord touched me and relieved the pressure that I had been feeling in my head all day). These were a great encouragement to me.

One morning, as I was praying for one of the pressing needs, and feeling rather upset at the Lord for not answering prayer like I thought it should be answered, the Lord’s gentle voice spoke to me, “Doest thou well to be angry?”* (John 4:4) How humbling this was—what reason had I to be angry with God? I poured out my frustrations to Him and asked Him why I had this thing in me that got angry and upset so easily? I didn’t receive an answer right then. Later, I realized that in order to press through for my healing, I needed to get to the bottom of this anger problem. After much earnest prayer, the Lord showed me how this was something in my life that I would have to continually deal with, but that as I looked to Him, He would make it submit to His dealings and turn this same thing to work for my good (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

With this answer, the Lord reaffirmed to my heart that He had healing for me, if I would press out and receive it. Uncertain, I asked for a confirmation that this was indeed of God, and He wondrously gave it.

I still felt very weak (like Gideon) and asked God, in His mercy, to send me something to strengthen me to press through in battle for my healing (Judges 7:9-15). We encountered great opposition from the devil, and had to cry out with others in prayer that he be defeated, and for strength to keep standing on God’s promises to us. Different times the Lord would send scripture to me in the fight, reaffirming to me that He would help me and strengthen me to come against the devil’s fortress (Amos 5:9). The Lord also showed me His power. He, not the devil, held the key to my healing. He was in charge. Only “one little word”* of God’s, one small promise would fell the devil. The devil in all his anger was no match for God. The Lord also gave me the scripture about the man who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus (Mark 9:14-29). This man had come to Jesus with not enough faith for his son to be healed: “If thou canst do anything.” But when he cried out to Jesus to help him believe, Jesus didn’t send him away, but helped him believe and get a hold of the healing Jesus had for his son. I felt very much like this man; “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.”

One thing I want to mention here. The Lord had blessed me this past year with a tolerable bit of energy and strength, so that I was able to get about pretty well, as long as I stayed inside and didn’t push myself too hard. When I had begun to pray in earnest to be healed, I brought before the Lord something that was troubling me. “Lord, if You heal me now, others will only think that I just gradually got better.” I knew in myself that I wasn’t well. If I went outside in the cold, or pushed myself too hard I would come down with an asthma attack.

Not too long after this, the Lord saw fit to answer this prayer. One day I was out too long and though the day wasn’t too cold, I must have overexerted myself, for not too long afterwards I felt the effects. I lost most of my energy and was exhausted with just little tasks, but recognizing it was from the Lord, I was exceedingly glad. Now, I knew beyond a doubt, and others could see (if they would) that I didn’t gradually get better—God had healed me.

The Lord also impressed on the heart of a certain child of God to especially pray for me to get a hold of our healing. I hadn’t told them of my recent burden in the matter, and so it was a great encouragement to me that God was in the matter.

The devil continued to attack me very heavily. I had felt the need for the Lord to direct in the timing of my healing, but now realized that this might be something that I needed to let go of. Wasn’t God ready to heal me just as soon as I would ask Him in faith? I asked Dad and Mom to pray with me in this matter and the Lord showed us that my part was to keep my heart fixed trusting in Him. The Lord wanted me to press out on what He had already given me. Submitting to this, I determined to ask to be anointed the following Sunday (James 5:14-15).

The following Sunday, after I had shared how the Lord had led me to this point, a brother shared a verse that the Lord had given him. “Blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.”* (Luke 1:45) How good the Lord is to us! I was then anointed by the elders and the prayer of faith was offered. About all we could do was to thank God for the healing work which He did. “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”* (1 John 3:22) “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.”* (Psalm 119:89) Amen. I praise God! Surely the devil is no match for God.

It is so good to be able to eat more, get up with the family in the morning, enjoy the outdoors, etc. Truly the Lord is so wondrously good to us. It makes me feel very small and exceedingly grateful to God.

I appreciate prayer that I would use my health to glorify God and that I would be used in His vineyard wherever He places me.

The devil contests, but we stand on God’s unchanging Word—His promise.

God’s soldier,
Sister Kara