Thoughtful

Welcome to Wednesday Witness!  Please read this week's testimony and be encouraged!  All comments on Wednesday Witness should be encouraging and uplifting. Be sure to email me at kirraantrobus@gmail.com if you want to have your testimony featured for Wednesday Witness.

Foundation

I grew up knowing and loving Jesus. I read my Bible every day. I loved the word of God. I told people about Jesus. I wanted everyone to be saved. I went to church and Sunday School. I memorized lots of Bible verses in our Awana club. I taught Sunday School as a young teenager. I played violin during worship service.


Rebellion

In my mid-teens, I began to rebel. When I was 16, I had a terrible year: a boy broke my heart, my parents got divorced, I rolled my car, and we had a house fire. I was beginning to rebel against the truth of the gospel, and I fell away.

For the next eight years, I experimented with and read a lot about other religions, reincarnation, new age, self-hypnosis, witchcraft. I was still reading my Bible, but I wasn't living it. I thought maybe Jesus was not the only way to God. I prided myself on having an open mind. I still considered myself a Christian, but I mixed it with all these other things.


Chastening

During those eight years, I had ungodly relationships, one right after another, always hoping I had found "the one," my soul mate. Spiritual and sexual impurity defiled me. Darkness and depression overwhelmed me. I started having night terrors. And then my hand...

I started teaching violin for a living in 1991 when I was 21 years old. My teaching studio grew incredibly fast, and within a couple of months, I was giving private violin lessons to between 40 and 50 students--that's between 40 and 50 lessons per week--God's undeserved blessing. After a year or so, I began to experience a horrible combination of pain and numbness in my left hand. It continued to worsen until the pain was terrible. It hurt when I was teaching violin, when I was playing violin, and the rest of the time, too. I am left-handed, so almost everything I did made my hand hurt, from washing dishes to shoveling snow. To lift a pot of coffee was an invitation to torture. I journaled a lot, and of course, that hurt, too. But to play violin, that was the worst. Excruciating pain, and yet I needed to be able to demonstrate all kinds of things to my students. So I demonstrated: I played through the pain.

I tried wearing special gloves--my hand still hurt. I tried a brace--my hand still hurt. I tried adjusting my playing technique--my hand still hurt. I tried Tai Chi--my hand still hurt.

A doctor tested me and said I had carpal tunnel syndrome, a pretty advanced case. The muscles in my hand were severely atrophied. Not a nice thing to hear when you are a young violin teacher counting on a teaching income to pay rent and buy food.

I asked the doctor, "So what do I do? How can I make it get better?"

The doctor responded, "If you keep playing violin, it will probably continue to get worse. If you stop playing, it probably won't get worse, but it probably won't get better by itself, either. The only way we know to get rid of it is surgery, and with that comes risk of coming out of it with less or no use of your hand--the risk is slim, but it is a possibility."

That was terrible news! I couldn't take the risk of having surgery. I couldn't afford to take time off of teaching, either, because I was already living from week to week with nothing saved. I had to pay rent.

So I kept teaching. I kept playing. And it got worse, until finally...


God got my attention

In December of 1994, while I was painfully playing my violin one day--that awful combination of pain and numbness--my hand just stopped working. I could not play my violin at all.

I felt panicked. I called my mom.

"Mom, what do I do?"

She said in her sweet mother's voice, "Well, I think you already know what I am going to say."

"What are you going to say?" I was already feeling a sense of dread.

"How about if I gather together a few people who can come over and pray for your hand to be healed?"

"Oh, Mom, that won't do anything."

"Well," that sweet motherly voice said again, "what will it hurt?"

She was right. What could it hurt?

So I said, feeling embarrassed already, "Okay. When?"

"How about tomorrow?"

We set up a time, and I hung up, feeling strange. What was I doing? There were people who were going to come into my house the next day to pray for my hand in the name of Jesus. Scary.


Repentance

That evening, I took a good, hard look at my life. I remembered from childhood the gospel of Jesus Christ. I remembered from church services about praying for one another. God had kept bringing Bible verses I had memorized as a child to my mind during all those rebellious years, even though I pushed the verses aside.

I was currently living in sin, my boyfriend was living in my house with me. I also had Tarot cards--witchcraft--and my left hand was my "flipping" hand. I knew that the people who would come over the next day believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and that Jesus is the only way to God. They were coming to pray over me in the name of Jesus. I knew the Tarot cards did not mix with Jesus. I couldn't have the Tarot cards in my house. I repented for using them and burned them in the fireplace. They were gone. Out of my life. I suppose I cried. I prayed. I asked God to forgive me.

I recommitted my life to Christ that night.


Prayer and Healing

The next day, Mom and four other people came over to my house, and together we read James 5:13-16.

Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.


We followed that scripture.

We confessed our faults one to another. I had quite a list. I was asked if I believed God could heal my hand. I said, "Yes, I believe God can heal my hand if He wants to, because God can do anything, but I don't know if He wants to."

A woman read to me from Matthew 8:2-3.


And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean." Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, "I am willing; be cleansed." Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (NKJV)

The woman said, "God wants to heal you."

I believed.

There was one more stumbling block that had to be removed, something I hadn't expected to be there. I put it out on the table:

"Now that I know God wants to heal me, I realize there is a part of me that doesn't want to be healed. There is a sick, twisted part of me that wants to have this as an excuse to not do some things that hurt my hand. There is a part of me that wants to be able to feel sorry for myself and have other people feel sorry for me."

After some tear-filled moments, I prayed and asked God to forgive me for not wanting to be healed. I asked Him to wash it away from me.

The stumbling block was removed. I wanted to be healed, with all my heart.

We stood and those precious believers prayed over me, anointing me with oil in the name of the Lord Jesus, according to what we had read in James 5.

God healed me in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I was healed completely, immediately, that very day.  The pain and numbness were gone.


Healed and walking with the LORD!

And there is no pain to this day. I had the privilege of teaching violin for 20 years and retired in 2011. Now I am a wife, homemaker, and writer. I still play violin, praising the LORD with song. What a joy!

I love the Lord my God. I know that Jesus is the only way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Him. I have been walking in faith ever since that day when I was healed.

Praise God for His faithfulness! Praise God for his mercy and compassion. He healed me and He saved me.

God heals--today! And God saves forever.

God bless you!


You can read more from Monica at her blog Presence.