| A few months ago I received an
e-mail from a woman asking how Beverlee could be healed when so many
others are not, and asking how and why faith was imparted to her for her
healing. Regretfully, I did not answer right away and then I accidentally
deleted the woman's e-mail message. So hopefully she will read this. The
best advice I can give about imparted faith is to read Charles S. Price's
book, The Real Faith for Healing. Dr. Price wrote
this book after some 20 years of ministering in great healing campaigns in
North America. During those years he gained tremendous insight into this
matter of imparted faith. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested
in healing others or in being healed.
Just before my wife, Beverlee, and I left Philadelphia to come to Cincinnati in 1966, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Her doctor told her that she would not die from the arthritis, but she would certainly die with it. He told her that she would be in a wheelchair by the time she was 40. She was 30 at the time. His time factor was a bit long, the arthritis quickly invaded her hands and spine, and by 1971, the year we became Christians, her spine was often twisted by the pain and her hands had already began to distort. We had moved into a new house in 1970, and God was gracious to build a small Nazarene church just around the corner from us. Beverlee's religious background was Baptist, and mine was Roman Catholic, but neither of us had been to church for over 20 years. In the summer of 1971, we decided that our children would benefit from religion, and since there was a new church around the corner from us, that was the logical place to go. We knew so little about going to church, that Beverlee called the pastor to find out if it would be all right if we attended his church. It was, of course. We did not know at the time that some members of the church had been praying for us, especially for me for certain reasons, and that the entire church had been praying for a family from the neighborhood around their new location to join their church. The church's prayers were answered the first Sunday morning we went there, and the prayers for me were answered about six months later when I received Christ. Over the next eighteen months, Beverlee's arthritis got increasingly worst, until she could no longer walk and was forced to remain in bed. After about a week in bed, however, she decided to try to walk on crutches. I ordered them through a local drugstore, and the next week they called on Friday and said they had come in and I could pick them up any time. I told them I would be down Saturday morning. But God had something else in mind, and what happened that Friday night changed everything. From the time I became a Christian, I had read about $20.00 worth of Christian books a week, and my Bible almost constantly. It was the time of the charismatic renewable, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit were being highly emphasized in many new books, especially healing. Although the Nazarene Church did not agree with anything Pentecostal, there were individuals within the church that we attended that did believe in healing. The Friday night before Beverlee was to take up her crutches, a brother and I spent the evening at the altar in the church praying for her healing. After about three hours of praying, the brother turned to me and said, "God is going to heal Beverlee." He sounded so certain, that I believed him. Nevertheless, the next morning I went down to the drugstore and got Beverlee's crutches. I put them in the living room, and then went up to our bedroom and helped Beverlee down the stairs. While she held on to the railing at the foot of the stairs, I handed her the crutches and she positioned them under her arms. She took about three steps with the crutches and stopped. Then she removed the crutches from under her arms and handed them to me, and said, "Take them back to the drugstore, I'm not going to use them, I'm going to walk by myself. God is going to heal me." She sounded so certain, that I believed her, especially since I hadn't told her what the brother had said the night before when we were praying. So I took the crutches back to the drugstore, and Beverlee never did use them. And she was so certain God was going to heal her that she also never returned to her sickbed. It's important here to understand that Beverlee's healing did not start as a result of her putting away the crutches as some kind of act of faith. Faith was imparted to her, and it was the imparted faith that enabled her to put her crutches aside. Faith for healing never comes because someone performs an act; the act is performed because faith has been given. The person who God wills to heal will always be given the grace and faith for their healing. Beverlee wasn't instantly healed, it took about three years. But that Saturday morning the rheumatoid arthritis reversed itself and began to leave her body—as did the lupus. It took a lot more praying and a lot of discipline on Beverlee's part, but every day there were small signs that God was on the scene and the healing was taken place. Some times there were fierce battles. One night we were driving up I-71, returning home from a meeting, when Beverlee suddenly screamed in terrible pain. She was clutching her right hand, and I quickly pulled off the road to see what was wrong. When she held her hand up, it looked like the hand of a woman who had had rheumatoid arthritis for many years. All the knuckles were completely swollen, and the fingers were literally bent backwards. When I touched her hand, it was hard as a rock. I cupped her hand between mine to pray for her, and when I did I felt faith and power being imparted to me. I attacked that rheumatoid arthritis as if it was the devil himself, and commanded it to leave her hand. I fought it with the name of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, and a great indignation that it should dare to attack a child of God. The battle went on for about five minutes, and suddenly her hand relaxed, and all the pain instantly left. There was a great sense in the car of the presence of the Lord, and we traveled the rest of the way home praising Him and thanking Him for the power of His name and the faith He had imparted to us. There was no further sign of the rheumatoid arthritis for about three months. Then one night when we were again returning home from a meeting, and had just driven into our driveway, her hand was attacked in the same way it had been before. And when I took her hand to pray, the same faith and power were imparted to me again. Because we had experienced this once before, it only took about two minutes this time to drive the spirit of rheumatoid arthritis away from her hand. It never returned again. For the 30 years since that final battle Beverlee has been completely free of rheumatoid arthritis—and of lupus. The doctor in Philadelphia had been right about the progression of the disease, but one day the Great Physician said, "No further, and now go back from where you came." And back it went to the glory of Christ's name.
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