Sciatic Nerve Pain and Teen Healers

My son competed in a district swim meet two weeks ago. I attended the first day of preliminary competition, but worked on the day of finals. I felt led to pray for him while driving the 70 miles to Longview, Washington where the meet was held. I prayed for him again while watching the events. He seemed to be in good spirits and swam well. He came into the meet ranked 2^nd. His qualifying time was 3 seconds slower than the leader’s time. In the preliminary round they each dropped half a second and qualified for finals in the same order. (OK, I'm pretty proud of him)

After the meet, I met with him and his twin sister. I told them to stay in prayer through the end of the meet, tomorrow. I felt like the enemy would try to do something to sabotage his effort. The kids got on the bus and I drove home. The next day while I worked, I felt a burden to pray for my son. I prayed short prayers to strengthen him and made declarations of victory over the schemes of the enemy. I sent a couple text messages to my daughter and reminded her to pray for him as the time drew near for his competition.

After the meet, my daughter filled me in on what happened. Danny began to feel weak and nervous as the morning went on. Ten minutes before his event, he was lying on the bench feeling powerless and scared. My daughter saw what was going on and realized it was a spiritual attack. She found another Christian who was a teammate and told him they needed to pray for him. After a few minutes of prayer, he got up with renewed strength. All his fear was gone. He swam the best race in his life and dropped almost 3 seconds off his previous best time. He finished less than 1 second behind the leader.

The kids are learning about the realities of spiritual warfare and the effectiveness of intercession. I’m glad they're taking it seriously at such a young age. I'm learning a little more, too.

I developed pain in my lower back that radiated down the back of my left leg. I’ve never had sciatic nerve pain before, but having seen many patients with this problem, I knew what it was. It came on while I was resting. I began to worry about a herniated disc in my lower back and all the things that might follow. But I decided to take action instead of allowing fear to overcome me. I asked my wife to lay hands on me and pray for healing. I also began praying, which was more commanding the pain and swelling to leave. I felt the pain begin to subside within a few minutes and told her to continue praying. After a few more minutes, I felt as though we’d gotten a breakthrough, even though there was still some pain remaining in my leg.

The pain left for about 30 minutes then returned. We went into prayer again, commanding it to leave and it did. As I went to bed, the pain increased to about the same level as before we prayed. I commanded the pain to leave again and it did. It returned again and being very tired and needing to sleep I commanded it to leave one more time. I said, "I am healed and I refuse to accept this pain". When I went to sleep, I still had some pain, but I ignored it. When I woke in the morning, all the pain was gone.

I’m a little surprised at some of the ways the enemy tries to sabotage my life and the lives of the people I love. I guess it’s time to stop being surprised and start being victorious. We shouldn’t let fear rule over us. Pain and suffering can be commanded to leave, and should be. I hope this testimony encourages you.