It was a dark and stormy night…
Nah, then it would be fiction.
It was a rainy Sunday evening, however, and I was in the back row of pews of our little church with the rest of our young people as we were having Camp Meeting
Our special guest was this giant black man who spoke broken English with an incredible thick, bassy, South American accent.
I was 16 at the time, 6′ 1″ and a gangly 160 pounds. I was every bit of what you pictured when you heard the word “nerd” and was an horrible asthmatic,
The preacher didn’t know that.
Toward the end of his message, to which I was barely paying attention, he stopped mid-sentence and looked right at me, sending goosebumps up my arms and making those tiny little hairs on the back of my neck stick straight up.
“You, you, der in da back. God’s telling me you have asthma and dat he wants to heal you. Come up here!”
I obeyed, barely. I have always rather spent my time in the back, being invisible, but, this was different.
This had to be God because only He and my friends knew I had asthma.
I made my way to the front of the church and, as I did so, the preacher stepped down from the stage and met me at the altar. He placed his hand, his absolutely massive hand, on my chest, covering it from one side to the other.
He looked me in the eyes and said, “Breathe!”
I breathed in, deeper than I ever had, and it felt as though I had breathed fire. Tears welled up in my eyes and I dropped to my knees there at the altar as the preacher moved on to the next individual God had placed on his heart.
From that moment on, I tried every sport and nearly every endeavor I could pursue physically and, though I was still very clumsy and still very much a nerd, I could breathe through all of it!
Recently, well, 10 years ago, I went to the doctor when our insurance changed over and I was offered a free once a year medical checkup. The doc did a little bit of everything including x-rays of my chest.
When he completed the first one, he came back into the room and asked if he could do a second. He brought them both in with him and placed the x-ray on the light wall and asked me if I knew what he was looking at. I told him I had no idea.
He told me that I had the largest lungs he had ever seen and I told him the story I have just told you.
I still have the x-rays and a few years back showed them to one of the Nineveh (a volunteer ministry of The House Modesto) medical staff. She said the same thing and I told her, too.
What is one of your testimonies?
Go tell someone. ;)
Revelation 12:11
