When Life Gets Challenging!

Dear Friends,

Being one that is called to the healing ministry it is especially challenging to stay up and positive when sickness strikes me. For the last couple of months, I have been dealing with overall weakness and lack of endurance. The doctors are doing tests to see if they can determine what is going on, I’m receiving lots of prayer from friends and taking the steps I know to stay active and functioning under these circumstances. I’m sharing this with you to ask for your prayers but also to share the lessons I am learning while in this place. I have lived a life blessed with good health and energy so being in this place where there is limited energy is a new challenge. I know this is temporary because of the prophetic words I’ve received over the last twenty-five years that God has much more in store for me and I have faith and trust that He will indeed accomplish through me what He has promised. I am trying to stay alert to what He wants me to learn as I go through this time.

I remember many years ago as a young man in excellent health I had little patience with people in chronic pain. I was in ministry at the time and when these people would come for prayer week after week for the same thing, complaining and depressed I would pray for them but on the inside I would sometimes be thinking, “You need to just get over it and get on with your life.” Obviously, I did not understand chronic pain and that you don’t just “get over it!”

But then one day in 1985 all that changed. I was an avid snow skier and loved speed and taking jumps as I headed down the mountain. I was skiing down a ski run at one of our ski areas here in California. Near the bottom of the run, I went over a small jump but when I landed my skis stuck in the snow, I somersaulted out of them and landed on my back in the snow. I was momentarily knocked unconscious. When I came around I reached out to grab my ski pole and realized I had no feeling in my hands. That freaked me out but shortly the pain hit like hot needles down my arms and in my hands. It turns out I had broken some bones in my hand, done some damage to my neck, and severely pulled and tore some other muscles. After a trip to the hospital and numerous tests the doctor came in and said, “You are fortunate to be walking, you came very close to breaking your neck and being completely paralyzed!”

While I was immensely relieved to be walking, from that moment on I have had to deal with chronic pain down my arms and in my hands. The only thing that keeps me functioning is medication that makes the pain tolerable. I am well aware that God did not cause this accident but I was trying to figure out what good could possibly come out of this. One day the lights came on and I realized, “This is what it’s like to deal with chronic pain, you don’t just get over it!”

My attitude towards those dealing with chronic pain changed dramatically. As traumatic as this skiing accident was to me personally, I can see how God has used what happened to help me understand better those dealing with chronic pain that I did not have before this accident.

$$$ Finances have taken a dive the last couple of months. Can you help?
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Thank you,

Mike

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