by Gina Tillman-Young
Health Impact News
What does it mean to be healed? In Acts 3, we find Peter and John at one of the gates to Jerusalem, the gate called Beautiful. He is confronted by a crippled beggar who, resolved to being permanently disabled, is just trying to get enough money to make it through the day, to meet his immediate need. Without even looking up at them directly, he asks Peter for a handout.
Peter sees this moment as an opportunity for a sustainable solution in the life the beggar. He commands the man to raise his eyes to theirs, to look at them directly. He tells the man he has no silver and certainly no gold, but he will give him what he does have, which is healing.
Then, calling on the power of Jesus Christ, Peter issues a new command to the beggar, “Get up and walk!” Peter demonstrates his belief that the beggar can now walk by extending his right hand to help the man up. As he does this, the man’s feet and ankles are instantly healed and strengthened. First he rises with help. Then he stands on his own two feet. Next he starts walking. Suddenly he starts leaping. And then, with total abandon, he starts praising God. In the name of Christ, Peter gives the man a new lease on life.
By now, this nameless beggar has energetically made his way down the road from the Beautiful Gate all the way down to Solomon’s Porch, a covered courtyard attached to the temple. As it turns out, the beggar is not the only one who believes that his lameness will be a lifetime condition. Apparently, the community does too, for as soon as someone sees the guy who has been cripple all of his life standing as a strong, “normal” man, the news spreads like wildfire and villagers start finding their way to the temple courtyard so they can witness what has happened with their eyes and explain what they see with their intellects.
What does it mean to be healed?
I have the privilege of living in a small Christian community named Everything Jesus! Ranch, in South Central Texas. It is a place where God has provided the opportunity for everyone living here to lead an intentional, examined, God-conscious existence; a place where Jesus is conspicuous as He uses the simple lessons of everyday life to show us who we are and can be when we obediently surrender to Him and relax as He operates in and through our lives. It is a place where God has graciously healed several people from serious injuries and terminal illness.
My purpose in sharing the following stories of healing is neither to place undue focus on the ranch or the people who facilitated the healing of those who, like the beggar in Act 3 came here ill, received Jesus’ healing, and danced out the gate praising God. My purpose is simply to testify that Jesus is the same, yesterday today and tomorrow; that He is still at work in the lives of believers and non-believers, as he uses the healing power of his suffering on the cross and shed blood to provide sustainable solutions.
How Melissa found Jesus and reversed all diabetes symptoms in 30 days
Melissa (Missy) is a beautiful sixtyish Latina lady, with a humorous, laid-back manner and an original and natural style. Although she is a short, heavy lady, her energy level is high and her loose fitting ethnic and hippie-like clothing flatter her in a way that would never cause one to describe her in terms of her weight.
Chatting with Missy, you would think that she was a counselor or had a crafty, creative job. But the fact is she works at a major manufacturing plant assembling on-the-spot repair kits for technicians and heavy equipment operators whose machines have just broken. She logs about three miles per shift walking the concrete corridors of a huge warehouse and deals with frustrated and angry workmen five days a week.
It was in response to my request to pray for her one day when she was visiting our raw dairy that Missy shared she had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She told me that her A1C level was high and that her doctor told her she had no other choice but to take insulin for the rest of her life to control this condition. She said that “everything in her” was telling her not to follow a conventional medical path to treat her condition and not to take any prescribed drugs. I simply prayed that God would give her direction and put her on a path to healing.
After a lot of independent research, Missy believed she could kick diabetes naturally and permanently. She decided to join a group I had organized here at our ranch to participate in a 30 day raw food diet. When she shared her plans with her doctor, she (the doctor) laughed at Missy, and told her it was impossible to reverse this severe a condition through diet, especially since she was 100+ pounds overweight. In telling her story now, Missy says, “Thank God, I am a stubborn woman who doesn’t scare easily, even from the gloom and doom pronouncements of men and women in white coats.”
As one of twelve men and women who came together at our ranch to eat raw foods for 30 days, Missy was the only one there with diabetes. As weeks went by and she got to know people, she learned that one person was suffering with manic depression, another with high blood pressure, and another couple thought that the experience of doing raw together would make them generally healthier and help their relationship.
Some of the participants lived on our ranch and some commuted a few times a week to receive prepared products like raw butter, yogurt and milk, raw savory and spicy meatless burgers from sprouted seeds and nuts, salads and fruits, flaxseed crackers, cheeses, raw chocolate, other deserts, salad dressings, smoothie ingredients and so much more. Once a week everyone would gather for a cooking demonstration. Lasting friendships were formed during this time and Missy began attending church services at the ranch.
Every day Melissa sent me an email with a food log, detailing what she had eaten for the day. Every day I wrote her back. I would always start by reminding her that I’m not a doctor and I wasn’t trying to treat her diabetes. We would send prayers via email and pray together when she visited the ranch. Just before the last week of our 30 day adventure, Missy accepted Jesus as her personal savior during a church service. This was the most important healing of all!
Throughout the 30 days, Missy’s blood sugar levels dropped dramatically and so did her weight. When she was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes last December, her blood sugar was in the mid-200s; in other words, she should have been blind or comatose or dead. Within a week of starting raw, her blood sugar dropped almost 100 points. I remember Missy sending me an email that her blood sugar was down 162, which was still in Death Valley Zone. Ten days after we started the raw diet, her blood sugar dropped to 97! In two weeks it was down to 84. By the time she finished the 30 days raw, her blood sugar was consistently in the 80 to 90s range, and her weight was just dropping off naturally. Everyone in our group agreed that she was “The Biggest Loser”, even though at the end of the 30 days, each person who did the raw diet had a personal testimony of healing.
A month after the thirty day regimen was over, Missy, who was still eating about 70% raw, went back to the doctor and she tested her A1C levels. This is supposed to be a more precise measurement of blood sugar levels over a three month period. Originally, Missy’s A1C number was 12.4. This time it was 7.4 and she had lost about 40 pounds!
Fast forward to today. It has been a few years since Missy did the 30 day raw regimen. She isn’t as disciplined as she expected to be. But the good news is that Missy’s diabetes is reversed! Even though an occasional drive through the fast-food lane is a part of her lifestyle, her blood sugar levels are consistently in the 100-120 range. Missy knows that there are other detrimental effects from eating unquestionably unhealthy substances (we can’t call it food here) and is actually looking forward to doing another 30 days raw to get back in line. But in the meantime, she credits Jesus for not only healing her body but for graciously using the occasion to heal her soul, through helping her find and embrace Him as her personal savior.
Matthew: Simple healing for a simple believing young man
Matthew is a mid-thirties single Christian man, college educated with a promising career in retail sales and management. He professes love for Jesus and is active in his church. Over the course of a year, Matthew developed congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, memory and concentration disorders and began having seizures.
At first Matthew went to conventional doctors, often spending up to twelve hours a week, seeing one specialist after another. After several weeks of blood tests, ultrasound, a spinal tap, x-rays and scans, the cause of Matthew’s sudden illness was still undiagnosed, yet he found himself taking nine strong medications per day. He was listless, depressed, and overwhelmed by a brain fog that disabled him from listening or concentrating on anything for more than a few minutes without drifting into a stupor.
In spite of failing health and extended absences Matthew was able to keep his job. Once, while on his way to work, he experienced a severe seizure, which caused him to lose control of his vehicle in the middle of six-lane traffic. His car was totaled, but miraculously he escaped injury and didn’t injure anyone else. It was this incident, Matthew said, that caused him to cry out to Jesus for solution and healing. What happened next is predictable to everyone who knows from personal experience that Jesus is a promise-keeper.
The next part of Matthew’s story is so simple. A friend of his was a former student of Genesis Christian Academy. She had graduated from our school twelve years earlier, when it was located in the Caribbean. By now she was serving as a public school teacher in the Dallas area and was aware of the work of our ministry at Everything Jesus! Ranch. She encouraged Matthew to contact us.
Matthew called, asked if he could take a time-out in his life and come visit us for a while. Within a week of our first communication, Matthew obtained a leave of absence from work and showed up at the ranch looking like a sick and tired fifty year old man. He had no agenda and neither did we. The only commitment he had in his life was the promise he had made to his church community at a New Year’s Eve service to read through the entire Bible, front-to-back, again that year. He had been faithfully doing this and continued to for the duration of his stay here.
After a few days, Matthew had joined the regular ranch routine. This included getting up at five, herding cows into the barn, washing them and milking them. He turned his cell phone off, ate three meals a day that included a lot of raw fermented foods (he didn’t like them at first, but he ate everything placed before him). He played Scrabble and other memory and problem-solving games with our students. He participated in our several times per week Bible study and our church services.
During his first week here, he had found a pharmaceutical manual and researched the side effects of the prescription drugs he was taking. Matthew is a quiet man, but remembering his loud, animated expression of horror one Sunday afternoon as he sat in a common area reading reported side effects of the drugs he was taking– permanent loss of smell, impotence, seizures, arrhythmia and other frightening conditions—makes me laugh now. He made a personal decision to wean himself from his medications over the course of a week. He never experienced any seizures during his time here.
It was amazing to see Matthew regain body tone, the ability to concentrate and stamina; Matthew literally turned back into a young man, right before our eyes! There is no more to tell. Matthew returned to his family, church and job after about 10 weeks here at the ranch. That was three years ago. Matthew sends me email greetings on Christmas and Mother’s Day and occasionally sends me an email to ask my opinion of certain scriptural interpretations. From these interactions, I know he is well. He is engaged to be married soon, is still very active in his church, and is happy with his job. Jesus heals!
Maria: God’s gift of extra time for a new believer with stage 4 cancer
One of the stories of healing that is hardest to tell about is a woman named Maria, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who was brought to the ranch directly after being released from MD Anderson Cancer Center with stage 4 metastasized cancer. She had been released and sent home to die. When she came to us, she was 28. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer at about 23, had a mastectomy, did chemo, and was pronounced cancer-free at about 25. For the next year, she lived on public assistance in Houston. At 26, during a routine 6-month check-up, her doctor told her she was cancer-free and qualified for reconstructive surgery. Of course she jumped at this. Shortly following the reconstructive surgery, the cancer returned in full force in all of her major organs.
In the meantime, my dear friend and neighbor Susan, a strong believer and inventive doer of the Lord, had been involved with her brother-in-law’s battle with pancreatic cancer. This illness had landed her brother in MD Anderson Cancer Center at the same time Maria was there. My friend Susan is a Romans 8:28 woman, the kind of woman that makes Jesus smile. She looks for and finds the opportunity to serve God in every circumstance of her life.
As a result of her brother’s ordeal, Susan established a prayer network to pray without ceasing for cancer patients from MD Anderson, and I was part of this group. While at the hospital with her brother-in-law, Susan would visit and pray for other patients who were there. Then she would send us profiles of each person who had expressed a desire for prayer from our network. Susan’s profiles were brief, but her ability to include kernels of interesting information about each patient made them real personalities who could be prayed for personally.
In one email, Susan included Maria’ profile. Susan had met Maria earlier during the course of another outreach ministry, and Maria had accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior. When I read about Maria, the Holy Spirit moved me. I sent a one-line note to Susan: “Do you think she should be here?” Within a few days, ministry sisters were bringing the frail, 80 pound body of this nearly dead young woman into one of the cottages on the ranch. What’s more, Maria was an unmarried mom, and she had her three year-old daughter with her.
Maria and her child stayed by themselves here on the ranch; the ladies who delivered them returned to Houston. It took a couple of days of green smoothies before Maria could eat. The first meal she ate was very rare wild salmon, lacto-fermented cabbage and raw crackers that had been prepared low temp in our dehydrator. Maria improved steadily, getting to the point that she could walk from the green house to the guest house a few times a day.
She began eating meals with the community, attending Bible study and church and spending several hours each day outside. After several weeks, personal and family problems caused Maria to decide she should return to Houston, so she arranged for one of the ladies that brought them to come and pick them up. The same Maria who had to be carried into her cottage when she first came carried her own large suitcase to the car when she left the ranch! By then she had gained about twenty pounds.
Despite doctor’s prognosis that she only had days to live, Maria lived well for the next 2 ½ years. Susan’s prayer email not only contained prayer requests, but also praise reports of survivors. A few lines were regularly dedicated to reports of Maria’s progress: how beautiful she looked at a quinceanera (debutante) celebration of a friend; the birthday party of her daughter, I started calling them “Maria spotting”.
After about three years, Maria’s condition began to deteriorate again. Last spring, I took a day to go to Houston and visit her; she was on her deathbed and being well taken care of by relatives. We were there in mid-afternoon, so her little girl, now in the first grade, came home from school during our visit. Maria had been unconscious for days, but she woke up, gestured, talked a little bit, prayed with us, and shared communion with us. Although she had lost weight again, she looked strong and beautiful, like she had the will to fight and live. But when I asked her if she was ready to go home to Jesus, she said yes. She died a few hours after we left her, a confirmed believer who had enjoyed a steady three-year walk with Jesus Christ.
There are many other stories of healings that have taken place here at Everything Jesus! Ranch and the list of healings from learning challenges and illnesses in children is amazing. Some of the healings that we experience with children will be shared through a documentary we hope to produce this year entitled, Better, Naturally!
Mark 16:17-18 states: These are some of the signs that will accompany believers: They will throw out demons in my name, they will speak in new tongues, they will take snakes in their hands, they will drink poison and not be hurt, they will lay hands on the sick and make them well.
This means that every Christian believer has the ability to heal. When Peter encounters the beggar by one of the Jerusalem gates, he doesn’t stop to wonder if he could help him. He doesn’t review his educational credentials to determine what his power as a Christian was. He doesn’t even stop to ask himself if he is a good enough person to be offering healing in Jesus’ name. He knows that one of the gifts that comes with surrender to Christ is the ability to heal. He takes an inventory of what he knows he has, offers it to the beggar, and the beggar is healed! Later, he encounters a dead girl, summons his healing authority through brief prayer, tells the girl “Wake up!” and she does.
We see from the example of Jesus, which the Holy Spirit equips us to follow and imitate, that healing doesn’t require anger or drama. When Jesus encounters a man whose body is riddled with demonic spirits, He exercises authority over them, calls them out, and out they go. In Matthew 8:8 a Roman soldier recognizes the long-distance authority of Jesus and essentially tells him, “You are an important man who doesn’t need to be inconvenienced by having to come to my house. Just speak healing into my servant, and it will be done!” Jesus speaks. Healing happens!
Healing can happen in an instant, or it can happen over time and through process. In Luke 17:11-19, we see ten lepers present themselves to Jesus for healing. The Bible tells us that Jesus regards their plight then sends them to the priests so that their healing can be documented. But the healing doesn’t take place instantly. The Bible says that they were healed “as they went”, and at least one of the lepers, the one who was most grateful, didn’t even realize he was in the process of healing until after it was over.
After commanding the beggar at the gate called Beautiful to receive healing, Peter addresses the astounded crowd. In so many words he asks them, “Why is it such a big deal for you to believe in the healing power of Jesus?” He goes on to remind them that they missed the healing of Jesus before—His death on the cross to heal the sin-rift between them and God. He encourages them to repent, to adapt a new mind-set that embraces the power and desire of Jesus to restore each one of us to total health. But what does it mean to be healed?
Jesus lived, died and was resurrected so that we can enjoy abundant life on this earth and eternal life beyond this earth. The prophet Isaiah explains clearly that through Christ’s suffering on the cross, we are healed physically and spiritually. Reading chapter 53 of Isaiah, we see that everything that Jesus accomplished during His ministry here on earth has a dual purpose of healing us now and healing our relationship with God through eternity: We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed.
Maria’s true healing was not the three year reprieve she received from death as a result of her recovery at Everything Jesus! Ranch. It was the opportunity she embraced to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior during the years of struggle with her illness. Missy’s healing from the effects of diabetes is real, but her encounter with and surrender to Jesus during this process was a sustainable healing that sealed her destiny with Jesus in eternity. Matthew certainly found relief from epileptic seizures when he came and took a “time-out” at the ranch. But reading his Bible and watching God heal him “as he went” reaffirmed his assurance of his healed relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
There is an ancient saying that “the illness is the cure”. For those who believe that “all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28)” this must be the case—that God allows the enemy to attack us with illness, but then flips the entire script and uses illness to grow us, refine us, get us to stop and reprioritize, gets us to put Jesus’ name back at the top of our ‘to do’ list. We can describe, as I have here, how healing takes place, but thank God we don’t have to fully understand it. Healing is a promise and a gift from God, effectuated on our behalf through Jesus’ death on the cross. I am so glad to be a proud member of the Fool School, those who take delight in the fact that our Potter knows so much more than we, His clay know. It is a with a breath of relief that when asked about technical details of healing that I can shrug my shoulders and repeat the words of the man who was born blind and later healed by Jesus: “But I do know one thing. I used to be blind, but now I can see.”
Gina Tillman-Young is a wife, mother, and pastor. She is also the director of Genesis Christian Academy. This year, the academy will be conducting a study and filming a documentary entitled, Better, Naturally. This project will chronicle the progress of children with juvenile-onset chronic illness who spend a year at the academy’s Texas ranch engaged in a holistic academic program that includes hours of daily sports, organic mostly raw diet, prayer and the use of non-invasive alternative healing techniques. Contact her at www.moojesus.com.
