WOW!
Ok, way too long since I posted in here. I last said that I had something big to share and then never came back....(lots going on outside the internet world! LOL!)
A few other things since I last posted here:
1.) A man in our church was diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer and given less than a year to live. We prayed for his healing, laid hands upon him, and and 9 months later his tests revealed that all cancer was gone. That was almost a year ago...
2.) A student in our youth ministry had a friend who had been diagnosed with brain cancer, had already had the biopsy confirm the diagnosis and had begun chemotherapy. We joined together in a prayer of faith for his healing and the mom went for a second opinion after our prayer. No cancer was found.
3.) But what I want to share now is a very personal story, beyond the students or adults in our church, or even my neighbors and inlaws that I've shared in this thread.
My son Lucas was born 4/25/08 at a gestation of 22 weeks. He weighed 1.2 lbs.
If you know anything about preemies, then you know what his chances were.
We were told that he had a 10% chance to be born alive, that most likely he would be stillborn. When he did survive the birth, we were told that he had a 10% chance for survival. Point of fact, the doctor told me to my face his first night that he wouldn't survive.
He was born without his outer layer of skin, with an open artery in his heart, without the ability to breathe on his own, maintain his own body temperature and a host of other issues.
He was also born with bleeding on his brain. This is classified from grades 1-4, with 4 being the worst. Lucas had a grade 4 bleed on BOTH sides of his brain.
We were told that this meant that even if he somehow beat the 1 in 10 odds for his survival, that his bleeding meant that he had a 97% chance of severe handicaps and that he would be blind, deaf, mentally retarded, have cerebral palsy and be a vegetable in a wheel chair for all of his life.
We were asked if my wife and I would like to unplug him and hold him until he passed away.
I've posted on these forums for years, and if you know me then you might not be too surprised when even in the face of these seemingly insurmountable odds, we looked our doctors/social workers/hospital adminstrators straight in the eye and declared, "Our God is mighty to save, and we will not allow Lucas life to be taken from him. He will be healed by the power of God and in the name of JESUS!"
He was in the hospital for 5 months.
Today, he is nearly 2 years old.
He has NO, repeat NO ISSUES from what he went through!
He's our little warrior and every day I see him is a testimony to the miracle working power that Jesus purchased for us on the cross.
Amen.