by Jon Banks
Juvenile
Rheumatoid Arthritis not only cripples, it also can cause blindness and/or death
(it attacks organs as well as joints). There is no cure.
Years
ago when the Lord revealed He was going to heal my son of Juvenile Rheumatoid
Arthritis, I told several of my friends. Almost without exception they all
told me I needed to 'face reality'. They meant well. My son's
condition was continually growing worse. They reasoned that even if the
illness went away he would still be crippled to the extent he was at the time it
went away. They didn't want me to get my hopes up only to be let down.
Bless their hearts, they couldn't see beyond what they perceived as 'reality'.
One
afternoon during this time I was in prayer and the Holy Spirit said, "Jesus
is the way, the truth, and the life, and that word 'truth' means
'reality'." I knew someone who had an Amplified Bible and gave him a
call to verify this. Sure enough, I had unknowingly been doing what
my friends said I should do after all – I had been facing reality. I
wasn't doing it the way they thought I should; I was doing it the way God
ordained it to be done – I had been facing reality in the face of Jesus.
A
few months after that day I was privileged to witness with my physical senses
what my spiritual senses already knew. My son's kidneys had been damaged
by the medicine he had been taking and they were excreting protein. We had
to check his urine every morning and evening, and keep a record of the protein
levels for the doctors. My wife always did this. One evening she was
gone and I decided to do it. I went into the bathroom and took the lid off
the bottle of urine and put it back on faster than I've ever put a lid on in my
life. I didn't know it, but apparently the damage to his kidneys caused
his urine to have an extremely foul odor. It was absolutely horrible.
So I decided to leave it for my wife.
I
went back to the living room and started to read the Word. While I was
reading I was all of a sudden filled with faith, and blurted out, "In the
name of Jesus be healed, be whole, be well." (These words literally came
out of me without any thinking on my part.) Fearful that I had spoken out
of turn, I fell to my knees and began apologizing to the Lord. The Lord
listened to my apology and then spoke very tenderly, "Go check your son's
urine."
I
returned to the bathroom to check the urine. Because of the foul odor I
didn't want to leave the lid off the bottle any longer than absolutely
necessary, so I positioned everything I needed (we had to dip sticks of
some sort in the urine – the protein levels showed up on them). I then
held the bottle as far away from my face as my arms would allow, removed the
lid, and put the stick into the bottle. Before I could remove the stick I
noticed that I didn't smell anything, and I slowly, very slowly, pulled the
bottle up to my face. I pulled it so close that I actually got urine on my
nose. To my surprise, the stench was gone. There was no odor
whatsoever. I looked at the stick and for the first time in months it
registered negative for protein. (We continued to check it twice a day until the
doctors released our son, and the protein never showed back up.)
[My
son's kidneys and eyes were healed instantly. (He had fluid building up
behind his eyeballs. JRA attacks organs as well as joints and had affected
his eyes in that way.) All that was gone. He still suffered from a
lack of mobility in his knees and back. However, I believe the Lord
touched them as well that night because he started regaining mobility in both
his knees and back. Within weeks he had regained all mobility. All
the doctors could say was "whatever caused the JRA is gone."
They were dumbfounded and confused at his turnaround. I felt sorry for
them. They were all good men and were doing the best they knew how.
(He was under the care of a team of specialists for 15 months.)]
So
there I stood, a man with a notoriously weak stomach, with tears now mingling
with the urine on my face. And, dear ones, as God is my witness, that
mixture was as sweet as honey; the Lord had touched my son's kidneys, and his
eyes, and his knees, and his back. And I didn't realize it at the time,
but He had also touched me; He had touched me where I had never been touched
before – in the very depths of my being. Seven years later I came to
realize this.
One
day I was thinking about that night seven years earlier and it suddenly struck
me that there was no apparent reason for God to have taken the stench and the
protein out of that urine. It had absolutely nothing to do with the
healing of my son's body. That urine had come from his diseased body.
It was the urine that came after his healing that counted. While these
thoughts were going through my head, I heard words that I'll never forget,
"I did it for you." When I heard this, I became thoroughly
immersed in the truth – He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up
for us all – how will He not also, with Him, freely give us all things?
For as a lover sends flowers to his beloved on no particular occasion, or as a
husband gives his wife a hug for no apparent reason, our heavenly Father changed
the urine in that bottle for no particular purpose, other than to say, "I
love you."
Dear
friends, beyond the realm of our physical senses, beyond the limits of physical
existence, there stands One who was born of a virgin, walked on earth, was
crucified and buried, and raised from the dead. To this day that
resurrected One stands in the corridors of eternity, His arms of the cross
outstretched, proclaiming to all that God is love. He stands – the way,
the truth, the life. He stands – the image of I AM THAT I AM. He stands
– the revelation of reality.
May
we always be so fortunate to face reality in the loving face of Jesus.
[In
response to the query of Bernie Koerselman on 21 May 98 as to whether this story
was really true, Jon said: "Yes, it's entirely true. It
happened just the way I wrote it."]
Postscript:
I always let my wife read these letters before I mail them. After she read
this one I noticed that she was troubled and asked her about it. She said,
"Words can't describe the pain we endured. They won't have a clue how
painful it was."
You
see, we watched JRA attack our son for over a year. We endured the first
five months without a word from God. After He revealed his allergy to
onions, we literally hoped against hope for another nine to eleven months in
God's faithfulness to confirm His word to His most unworthy servant.
At
the time of the revelation our son could straighten his legs all the way, but
couldn't bend them all the way. By the seventh or eighth month he could
bend them even less and was beginning to lose the ability to straighten them.
By the tenth month his ability to straighten his right leg had decreased quite a
lot and his ability to bend both legs had drastically reduced. He was
slowly but surely becoming crippled right before our eyes.
But
we walk by faith and not by sight – and the Lord had said to trust in Him –
and we did. Each day we endeavored to look past what our eyes saw and unto
the hills from whence our help came. And by the grace of God, the darker
the night became – the brighter His light shone; the more deeply our
pain stung – the more compassion His presence exuded. To our most kind
and gracious and loving and wonderful Father be glory and honor and praise
forever. Amen. He is so good, so wonderfully good.
We
are forever indebted to Him for this kind work He did for us and in us –
so indebted and so thankful.
Jon