More reports from Dave Diamond
Brother David Diamond ministers as a hospice chaplain in Lousiana. Dave has attended and hosted the Elijah Challenge Training on various occasions. Below is a testimony from Dave containing the astonishing report of what happened—not on the foreign mission field in a primitive country—but in a modern retirement home in America.
“Mrs. Lucy suddenly felt an unaccustomed strength in her legs, and she decided to stand.”
Every time I breezed into Slidell’s brightest “retirement village,” Mrs. Lucy sat perched in the same sun-lit cushioned chair positioned just left of the receptionist’s desk. Slim, alert and pretty as a songbird, Mrs. Lucy monitored everyone else’s frantic comings and goings from her chair, answered questions and blessed passers-by with her silver-haired ease and a radiant smile.
I strode right past Mrs. Lucy half a dozen times before I ever introduced myself, and another few times before I discovered she was crippled. In my ignorance one day, I asked her, “Mrs. Lucy, how can I pray for you?” She responded gently, -Pray God gives me my legs back.” I had no idea she was lame — and was stunned again when, after asking permission, I placed my hand on her calf Within h, r sunny yellow pant-suit, her legs had atrophied to a size more closely associated with broom-sticks than human legs. And so we prayed.
Just two weeks ago, Mrs. Lucy’s chair stood empty. “Where’s Mrs. Lucy?” I inquired of the receptionist.
You’d have thought I lit a fuse! Her eyes opened wide, lit up, and her lips started moving at a mile a minute! “Everybody’s saying it’s a miracle, Dave!” she gushed. “Mrs. Lucy’s WALKING!”
“What?” I rushed to her apartment and rapped on the door. She answered the door herself, broke into that glorious smile, and took four steps in a little circle. “Does God answer prayer?” I asked. Amid laughter and rejoicing, Mrs. Lucy explained. About ten days before, she had suddenly felt an unaccustomed strength in her legs. She decided to stand. It was easy. Holding her breath, she ventured a step, then two, and she hasn’t quit walking since. Her doctor ordered a walker “for balance,” but her gait is easy and graceful.
Our God is a God of compassion, refuge and power. More than anything else over these past six years, I have discovered that truly He answers prayer, that He knows no limits, no constraints, no impossibilities. I have dis-covered that, when He says, “If you ask anything in My Name, I will do it,” He means exactly what He says.
By restoring the lame, Jesus revealed His identity to Israel. In the same way, He is revealing Himself to all those who surround and care about Mrs. Lucy. God does not change.
More miraculous healings in Louisiana
On Saturday, August 15 I was blessed to baptize three teenagers and a woman named Sheryl who is in probably in her late 30’s. When I first came into the house where the baptism was supposed to take place, Sheryl was crying because she was in so much pain. She has struggled with pain for two years since a spill off of a horse broke several vertebrate in her back in an injury from which doctors have described her recovery even to this point as “a miracle.” They had to install a “cage” in her back and reconstruct at least three vertebrate from the pieces that were there.
Now she’s left with extremely bad bursitis in her left hip with pain radiating down her leg, severe abdominal discomfort that has prevented her from lying on her stomach since her accident, muscle contractions which knot up along her spine like “stones,” and impaired ability to move her legs in any natural gait or walk. Before the baptism, the teenage girls who were to be baptized wanted to show me their dad’s “man-cave” with his pool table and television, and Sheryl followed us there. While we were there, God suddenly whispered to me, “Lay hands on her here. Don’t wait.” So I did, inviting the teenage girls to take part with me.
We addressed the bursitis in her hip first, and she said, as we prayed, that she felt the Spirit of God come into her body like an electric current through her right foot, pass all the way up into her head and then leave through her left leg and foot. The pain instantly ceased, and she was bending, moving, massaging and poking her hip with no pain whatsoever. Then we did the same with her abdominal pain with the same result.
Finally, as we were about to address the issue in her spine, another lady and her husband entered the room, a lady whom God let Luke and I minister healing to about two months ago and whom He healed of back trouble which had plagued her for four years. I had instructed her, Michelle, and her husband, Daniel, two months ago in the principles of ministering healing, and so I invited Michelle to lay hands on Sheryl and witness God healing Sheryl’s back. She did, and He did. Sheryl was dancing, moving both her legs freely, laughing, went swimming after the baptism and experienced no pain for the rest of the day. I’ve had one report last night that she is still pain-free and had the best night of sleep Saturday night since before the horse incident.
(Another attendee at the baptism was a volleyball coach. Shortly after my first weekend seminar with you last year in Houston, I discovered this coach was visiting a surgeon to schedule arthroscopic surgery on his knee. Rodney Baldwin and I ministered healing to him, and God healed him there. His knee a year later is still healthy.)
As you said, the more we minister healing, the more dramatic the results seem to be. I’ve come to a point now where I simply expect God to act and for healing to take place.
It’s an amazing thing to talk to people about the love of Christ and then to be able to demonstrate that love by relieving them of long-held, torturous pain.
– Dave & Debbie Diamond
FAITH AND FREEDOM MINISTRIES
P.O. Box 4565, Covington, LA 70434