Healed!

The year I turned sixteen was a significant one in my life. I experienced an overwhelming closeness with the Lord, having just acknowledged and surrendered to God’s call to full-time vocational ministry. Yet no sooner had I committed my life to the Lord’s call than He placed me under a severe test.

I was preparing for an upcoming mission trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, at school’s end. Just before our youth group was set to leave, inexplicably, my right arm because paralyzed. I felt nothing at all. It became all but useless. My parents took me to a neurologist. He ran tests and drew blood and performed whatever else neurologists do to determine the cause of paralysis—and found nothing. Medically, nothing seemed wrong with me. There was no physical reason my right arm, from shoulder to fingertips, should be completely numb.

With a shrug of the shoulder and a scratch of the head, the doctor saw no reason I couldn’t go on the mission trip; I’d just have to do everything left-handed. It was a frightening time. I decided that going to San Juan to minister to others was better than sitting at home in Dallas with nothing but my increasing anxiety.

We arrived in San Juan without incident and began ministering there. The days were busy, and learning to get by with only my left hand was frustrating, but after a while I stopped focusing on my paralyzed arm. The nights were another matter, though, and they became increasingly difficult to bear. So, one night as I was getting ready for bed, I cried out to the Lord to heal me—to bring feeling mobility back into my right arm. I lay on my bed and put into practice Jesus’s admonition in Matthew 7:7 to ask, seek, and knock, pleading with the Lord until I finally fell asleep. Later that night, I suddenly woke up. At first, I didn’t notice it, then it dawned on me that I could feel and move my right arm. I praised God through tears and went back to sleep.

The next day, I called home with the exciting news. My dad praised the Lord with me and then told me my mother was in the hospital for a procedure. Later that day, I called my mom’s hospital room to check on her and tell her the great news. She asked what time the paralysis had left, and I told her the approximate time in San Juan. She said that Dr. Criswell, our pastor, had paid her a visit and that she had asked him to pray for me because my arm was paralyzed and the doctors couldn’t figure out why. Dr. Criswell prayed with my mother at the same hour, Dallas time, that my arm was healed in San Juan.

I’m skeptical of faith healers, but I firmly believe in faith healing—that our great and good God, according to His purposes, can heal us. I have experienced His divine invasion in my life with a miracle of physical healing. Perhaps you have, too, or maybe someone you love has received physical healing. If so, I encourage you to praise God regularly for His grace and mercy in your life.

Not long ago, I stumbled on an interview my friend Lee Strobel did with pastor Roger Olson. Strobel summarizes a point Olson made: “Many American evangelicals have relegated the supernatural and miraculous to the past (biblical times) and elsewhere (mission field) rather than seeing them as an ever-present possibility in their lives.” Strobel then quotes Olson: “This is obvious from the way we react when someone gets sick. Of course, we pray for them, but what do we ask? That God would comfort them in the midst of their suffering. That God would guide the hands of surgeons. That God would give doctors wisdom and discernment. What’s missing?”

Strobel answers: “Asking God to supernaturally heal them.” “Precisely,” Olson says. “The Bible says to pray for their healing, lay hands on them, and anoint them with oil, but mainstream evangelicals tend to look down their noses at churches that do that.”

As for my healing, I am so grateful my mother and pastor asked the Lord to heal me directly. And I give Him all the glory for the healing I experienced.

Adapted from Divine Invasions: Experience God’s Miracles in Your Life Today by Dr. Robert Jeffress. Copyright © 2026 by Dr. Robert Jeffress. Used by permission of Baker Books. Listen to Dr. Jeffress’s programs on LIFE TODAY this Wednesday, October 7, and Thursday, October 8.