In the year 1981, I had a hemorrhage while I was in a worship service. There was no escaping the pain until the saints prayed for me. Their faith in God saved me from certain death. Yet, there was a certain awareness of something gone wrong.
On the way to my home, which was a hour away, my wife and I decided I needed to go to the hospital. On arrival, the nurses knew I had a hemorrhage in the brain area. The doctor confirmed the situation and I was taken by ambulance to Duke hospital. A sample of blood from the spinal cord showed a breakage somewhere in the brain area. I was immediately placed in the intensive care unit.
Wow! Things were happening fast. I remember thinking while waiting for a scan, “The doctors are looking for the break in the blood vessel, then what? They may want to operate. I could be a vegetable or die." Finally, the message we had recently heard from our pastor on “All things work together for your good" came to mind. “All things", the bad or good, worked for our good. The answer God was waiting for me to realize, "If I lived, I’m God’s - or If I died, I’m God’s." That’s it. I felt rest flowing over me. The peace of wholly trusting God in any situation. No bitterness or blaming others for what happened, or that the devil did it, no pointing fingers. God was my Father. That’s real peace.
The next twelve days in the hospital was full of testing physically and spiritually. Remember there were saints praying and God gave a vision or dream to a wonderful saint named Sister Atkinson. God had given her a dream that showed her where the hemorrhage had started. She and Jesus operated on me in the dream. She and others came to deliver the message to me with much thanksgiving. I believed it because the doctors couldn’t find the hemorrhage spot. No place to operate. The doctor told me, I was the worse case according to the statistics. History records showed it would happen again. That was 28 years ago. Praise God! We give God the glory. We know who gives us life and determines the length of days. Amen.
P.S. A special thanks to God for sending one of those saints, Uncle Joe Murray, to my hospital room. I had bought a pair of shoes before the trip to the hospital and he brought them to me with this message, "You will live 'cause you need to wear these shoes." That’s the kind of saints God put into my life. They were full of faith.