By His Stripes, I Am Healed

To say it was a Sunday like any other would be a lie. In truth, I should have realized something was different early on.

Though my husband made no comment to me, he didn’t even want to go to church that morning. Even I lacked the usual energy and excitement that I usually had in going to my place of freedom.

The music didn’t reach me the same. I barely sang, and I could only manage a sway while everyone danced and clapped around me. I still had no idea of what was to come.

Though my body was only a few feet from the alter, my mind was elsewhere.

That morning, I had experienced yet another nosebleed. It was the third day in a row, and fear kept trying to creep its way in.

But why worry? Everybody gets nosebleeds at some point in their life – even though I had never personally had them before. Surely, this was such a petty reason to want to message my doctor.

But the thing was, I wasn’t “everybody”. I was a person with a rare, unpredictable neurological condition. To have blood dripping from an area so close to my damaged brain was not something I wanted to see.

So of course my mind wasn’t on church. Of course my mind wasn’t on the music. My mind was set only on my mind, my brain, my body. What was wrong with it now?

He heals the brokenhearted
And binds up their wounds.

– Psalm 147:3

As I stood on that church row with the worship playing in the background of my thoughts, I was approached by our senior pastor.

My pastor didn’t know. Only my husband knew, and even he didn’t know the full extent of my concern.

My pastor proceeded to briefly ask me about my condition, simply making sure he understood that the condition I had was an issue of spinal fluid imbalance.

He then called me to the front.

The music quieted as he grabbed the microphone and walked towards me to speak to the congregation. The Holy Spirit had a Word for me.

Though this pastor didn’t know about my latest symptom, though he didn’t know about me sleeping the day away Saturday or the extra medications I had to take Friday, the Holy Spirit had told him that there had been a change in me – and not for the best.

But now, this moment, this Sunday, the Holy Spirit wanted to touch His servant, April. And not just a touch. He wanted to bring complete wholeness. He wanted to heal me to where I would never have to worry about too much or too little ever again. He wanted to bring restoration to my body, to bring it back to what it once was.

As my sister and brother-in-law stood behind me at the alter, this pastor laid his hand upon me and began to pray over me in the Spirit.

And just as Jesus said before He died for us on the cross, it was finished. I was healed.

“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.”

– Isaiah 53:5

While everything in me knew that this was a reason to celebrate, to jump up and down for joy and proclaim my victory to the rooftops, I must admit I stayed calm. The reality of what had just happened, what was happening, had not fully hit yet. In fact, I can’t explain why I never expressed the full excitement within me as visibly as I was feeling inside.

But this does not mean I didn’t accept the Word and miracle spoken over me.

The truth is, I had been prayed over more times than I could count. This was not the first time that healing was spoken over me. Prayers for healing had actually become so common that I had simply just begun to believe that I had already received it – just not on earth.

After almost four years of battling this sickness, I had grown to accept God’s Will for me, regardless of what it was. I had reached a place of contentment that my healing was simply in heaven, and that was still ok.

Don’t get me wrong. I received every prayer that had been spoken over me. Trust me, I wanted to be the testimony of the person who dumped all of their pills out and became whole. I claimed every ounce of healing that God wanted to give. But I more so felt that my symptoms were just gradually being shaved away with each prayer as opposed to complete healing altogether.

But this was different.

“But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’
declares the Lord,”

– Jeremiah 30:17

As Monday morning came, I thought of my bucket of medications waiting for me. And for the first time in almost four years, I chose not to take them.

As lunchtime approached, and my alarm went off for my next dose of medications, again, I chose not to take them.

Instead, I filled myself with thanksgiving for the miracle God was performing in me. This was it. I was healed. I wouldn’t need them anymore. And as our pastor said, my next testimony would come from the doctors.

But the devil was angry. By evening, the aching and inflammation began to build. But I stood on the promises of the Word of God. The same God Who commanded the waves on when to start and when to stop could command the pain within my body to stop.

As night approached, anxiousness was next to creep in. There was still one more round of medications due, and one in particular was far more uncertain in cutting cold turkey.

I prayed hard. I fought the anxiety. I fought the thoughts of the flesh and of the natural man. I fought the fight between wisdom and foolishness on what to do in this situation.

And in the end, it boiled down to one thing: if I was healed, if I was truly standing on the fact that I was no longer sick, then why would I take a medication meant for sickness?

“O Lord my God, I cried out to You,
And You healed me.”

– Psalm 30:2

That Monday was my first day in almost four years of not taking any medication whatsoever. And I was fine.

On Sunday, November 15, 2020, I was healed of a rare, debilitating neurological condition – a condition with neither cure nor end.

I was healed. I am healed. And now God will continue to use His healing power through me as a testimony to the God of miracles.