Jenifer's Knees,
Northfield, MN
My husband and I were attending a small church a while back. On a
Saturday morning a visiting pastor was to do a short teaching on
healing. We stayed for the teaching and then he said we would
have a short break and then come back and practice healing. I
figured this was our opportunity to leave. I did not want to stay
for “practice,” (in fact a red flag came up when I heard this) so I
told my husband that I was going to the lady’s room and then we could
leave.
I came back from the lady’s room and my husband was
still in the room with his head bowed, praying. I sat down beside
him and he said, “we are supposed to be praying asking the Lord what He
wants to heal today.” I no sooner got my head down when the
pastor asked if anyone had gotten anything? As I was
putting my head down “knees” came in my head. It was all so quick
and I was certainly not into this, so I shrugged it off.
There were some responses but the pastor kept
saying, “no that’s not it, that’s not it.” Finally, after about
15 minutes of this, I spoke up and said, “if you’re looking for
something you can see, I’ve got bad knees.” The pastor
immediately said, “that is one of the things the Lord has told me He
was going to heal today.”
Oddly enough, on the Tuesday prior, I woke up
in the middle of the night with very severe pain in my knees. The
pain was so severe that I could not move them at all. I was
alarmed but realized it was night so there was no need to worry about
them. So I prayed and went back to sleep. The next morning
I could move again, but there was a burning sensation in both of my
knees. I’ve always had some kind of pain in them so I just
ignored it. (I had been in a car accident in my early twenties
where my knees were both crushed as well as being pigeon toed since
birth.)
I went forward and the pastor had everyone come
forward to pray over me. He instructed me just to receive, not to
pray. So I stood there as the people gathered around me and
started praying. After praying for a while the pastor
stopped and asked me, “Do you feel anything? What's
happening?” I thought I would have a heavy presence of the Lord,
but I just felt stupid, while those around me were visibly being
touched by the Lord, I wasn’t feeling anything. I told him I was
still feeling the burning. So the pastor instructed everyone to
continue praying.
My son knelt in front of me and put a hand on each
knee. It was a miracle in itself that my son had his hands on my
knees. They always hurt, so no one could touch my knees nor could
I ever kneel. But my son was on his knees with his hands on my
knees. As people began praying again I began feeling something
happening in my knees. My son began to feel the movement
and adjusting along with hearing the popping and cracking going on
inside of me. (My husband explains the sound as if someone had
two walnuts in their hands trying to break them.) The sound was
so loud that everyone could hear it. I could hear the sound but I
really couldn’t feel anything (other than the burning).
The pastor stopped again and asked me if
anything had changed, I said, “the burning is gone from my right
knee but my left knee still burns.” I felt kind of silly saying
this but I knew I had to be honest. So the pastor told everyone
to keep praying. The people praying for me were really being
touched by the Lord--they were weeping and I could tell that God was
really moving, but I wasn’t feeling anything (other than the burning in
my knees). I was really feeling like there was something wrong
with me. As the people prayed I began to feel the burning in my
left knee subside.
Once again the pastor stopped everyone and asked me
if I felt anything. I struggled answering this time. I
wanted to say that everything was fine. I was really feeling
stupid thinking I was doing something wrong. I didn’t want to
tell him the truth because I felt like I was saying God doesn’t do a
good enough job. After a bit, I finally touched the area of my
knee that was still burning (a very small area in the upper left hand
corner of my knee cap), and said “All the burning is gone except this
one spot here.” The pastor told everyone to continue
praying. I felt really stupid and foolish at this point. I
felt like I wasn’t doing something right.
Then the Lord spoke to my husband telling him:
“take a tear from your cheek, and put it on the place your wife has
pointed to.” My husband’s flesh rose up and he began explaining
to God why his tear was not needed for the healing. God could
heal all by himself, He didn’t need my husband’s help. He also
tried to explain to God that someone may see him place a tear on my
knee, and they would think he was weird--he was concerned what other
people would think of him. The truth is no one would even see him
do it since everyone was praying intently. This reasoning went on
for a couple seconds, but felt like 5 minutes to him.
He finally succumbed to being obedient and placed
the tear on the spot I had pointed to. Instantly I was healed,
all burning was gone, all pain was gone. The sounds could still
be heard but the pain was gone. I was even able to kneel and pray
for someone else. The Lord spoke to my husband and said, “there
were two healings today, your wife's knees and your faith--you learned
to be obedient."
I never did feel the presence of the Lord--not like
everyone else did and not like I’m used to feeling when I worship
Him. That was an amazing thing to me, God gave me new knees and I
never felt His presence. I learned that day that if God wants to
heal you all you have to do is receive. And receiving doesn’t
have to have any sensation with it.
It’s not about feelings, it’s about faith and
obedience.
It didn’t really strike me what God had done,
though. That evening we had a small gathering for a concert at
our church. I had invited a woman from our property to go, when
the concert was over I looked behind me and she was there. My
husband and I turned and talked to her and she said that she was in a
hurry, she needed to get back home and call her mom. She
explained that her mother had had knee replacement surgery earlier that
week and she needed to see how she was doing. It was as if a
light bulb went off in my head when she said that her mom had just had
knee replacement surgery. At that moment God told me that was
what He had done for me that day. So I told her that I had knee
replacement surgery that morning. She looked at me very strangely
and was very confused. So I explained what had happened to me and
what God had done. She looked very surprised but seemed to
understand. She was the first one to hear of what the Lord had
done.
When I got home that night I tried some of my new
shoes on and discovered that they no longer fit me. I had gone
shopping for new shoes the day before. My left foot was a whole
size larger than my right and I had just bought shoes that actually fit
each foot. But neither foot would fit either shoe. I had to
go shopping for new shoes because none of my shoes would fit me.
I discovered that both of my feet had grown and now they were both the
same size. I don’t know why God did this, but I am not
complaining. It has made buying shoes a whole lot easier than
before. On Monday, a friend came into my office and noticed
that I wasn’t pigeon toed anymore. I looked in the mirror and
sure enough, my legs were straight and my feet pointed straight
forward. I had been pigeon toed since birth. I didn’t even
notice it anymore, I was so used to it. But when God gave me new
knees, He decided to straighten them out as well. That was a very
nice gift. You see, God didn’t just give me new knees, He
corrected my feet and straightened my walk. He gave me more than
what I and the people praying asked for. That is just like
God--always giving more than what we ask for.
It still didn’t really sink in, though. It
took a couple of months before that happened. I was rather
reserved about what the Lord had done. The Lord convicted me of
my ungratefulness when I was at a retreat worshiping Him. He told
me that I needed to share with everyone what He had done for me.
I was so convicted about the way I had handled what God had done for me
that I went up and told everyone there what God had done. I had
an excitement in my voice about it, finally. I couldn’t
believe how reserved I had been. I don’t think I was thinking
selfishly about it. But I wasn’t acting as if I had received a
gift. The Lord wants us to receive His gifts, but He also wants
us to share with others what He does for us. That is what I
wasn’t doing.
I now had to take hold of my healing and by faith
walk in that healing. I didn’t realize this though. I was
surprised when a few days after being healed I began to feel a twinge
of pain in my knees. I immediately thought to myself that I had
new knees and that there was no way I could have pain in them. So
I told the devil to get away from me, I told him that God healed me and
that’s it. The pain went away immediately. This happened to
me numerous times. I also would get thoughts in my
head like “your knees aren’t really healed” and I would have to reject
them. I had to stand firm and remind myself what the Lord had
done in my life. The scripture says to, “resist the devil and he
will flee.” I resisted the devil, and he fled quickly every
time. I know what the Lord did for me that day. I can kneel
before the Lord without any pain, I can go up and down the stairs and I
don’t have any pain anymore. The Lord healed me and no one is
going to convince me otherwise. I didn’t expect the tests, but I
grew in my faith because of them. I realized that God wants us to
know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He healed us. There is no
way we can have this faith unless we are tested and pass those
tests. The devil tried to steal my joy and my healing from
me. I wasn’t about to let that happen.
From that point on God has really worked with my
husband and I about being obedient and not putting God in a box,
expecting God to work in our time frame and in our preconceived, small
minded ways of doing things. I learned that our disobedience or
obedience can change not only our lives, but others can also be touched
through what the Lord has done for us. It’s our job to be
obedient and let God do His work.
God has a way of using testimonies like this to
bless others, trickling out like the rings on a pool of water after
tossing a pebble. This is just one of many examples of what
God has shown our family. He is faithful, but only if we are
willing to receive what God has for us instead of falling into the
world’s ways of believing, and the religious spirit of denying the
power and the truth of God. It is said in scripture that God is
the same yesterday, today, and forever, He has never changed or
moved--we have, and it brings destruction and denial into our life,
keeping us from the true joy God has for us all.
--Jenifer
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