LEARNING THAT THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH
This is the testimony of Roy Page

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At the time of displaying these testimonies, I have been a Christian for almost twenty four years. During that time I have had many trials of faith, and I have always tried to trust God. I have never had to consult a doctor about anything that has afflicted me since the day I became a Christian, because I have always tried to trust Jesus to see me through to divine healing. It has not always been easy, but it has always been interesting. These testimonies are only a few of the many trials that I have had, but I hope they will help some Christians who are trying to trust God for divine healing. I can only say that God has never failed me yet.

TESTIMONY OF HEALING OF ACUTE ACID BURNING IN THE LOWER INTESTINE

When I was nineteen years old, and not a Christian, I experienced a sudden and very bad acid burning in my lower intestine. It felt like burning and worms crawling about inside of me. It was awful pain, and I was soon visiting the doctor. He tried various treatments, but could not cure it, and eventually sent me to a specialist. He changed my treatment to an ointment which had to be applied via the back passage, because acid was being discharged from there and burning the skin area nearby. It did relive a little, but no cure. After a few days it would return again. Years went by with a number of nights of broken sleep, for it often woke me up, but there was no improvement. Another specialist visit found no answer either. In my early twenties I remember one night lying awake in bed, not able to sleep because of the pain, and considering suicide as a way out. But it was cold outside, and I really did not have the courage to do anything so drastic and final, so I shrugged the thoughts off. In my mid-twenties I got married, moved to a different area, and a new doctor. He changed my treatment, and gave me something that removed the pain for two or three days. For me this was a big improvement, because now I could get better sleep, but it always came back after several days without treatment.
This went on until I was forty two years old, and in December 1987 I became a born again Christian, and committed to follow Jesus. My new Christian friends were people who believed in divine healing, and I began to study the scriptures to find the truth of it for myself. I began to pray and tried to believe God for miracles, but I had lived with this condition for so long it was hard for me to believe God would instantly remove it. People prayed for me to be healed, but there was no immediate effect. After one week with no improvement I was discussing the situation with a Christian brother, and he told me I needed to act on my faith, by which he meant that if I believed that I was healed then I no longer needed treatment. This was all new to me, but I was desperate to see my new Christian faith produce results, so I did something that many people thought was really stupid: I emptied my medicine cabinet and threw away every medical treatment that I had put by for anything that I had suffered from before. I thought this would work, but I knew if it didn't all I would experience was some pain, but my life was not in danger through it. As often as I could I was now studying divine healing, and meditating on the scriptures over and over to build my faith. I was also listening to faith messages on tape that people had obtained for me, so I pressed on hopefully. After one week my dream was shattered, because I went to bed one night in terrible pain. I remember kneeling on the floor in my bedroom to pray to God, and I said something like this, "God, if I had any treatment here that would remove this pain I would certainly use it, but I haven't got any." At this I burst into tears, and cried for a while. Then I said, "So I am going to have to trust you." And I cried again. I went to bed very sorrowful that night.
When I woke up the next morning the pain was easier and I determined to continue to trust God. The years went by with continual struggle, and I prayed for God to reveal to me the cause of the problem. There were times when it was really hard. Acid burning on my skin where the acid discharged was really a problem. I found that by washing the acid from my skin on a regular basis helped, but it did not stop. It caused itching so intense that sometimes I would rub it with a rough towel until it bled, but somehow God kept me going. Eventually I understood why it started. When I was nineteen years old I used to run round a local park at night, and I began to get pains in my lower back. Thinking that it was my kidneys, I decided to drink more fluid. I started taking large quantities orange squash to work to drink, and this was my mistake. I began to consume somewhere around four or more litres of orange squash during the day. It was this gluttonous consumption of acid fluid that caused the acid burning in my intestine to start, but it continued even after I stopped drinking squash. Now I had the opportunity to repent and deal with the root cause of the problem.
I remember in November 1993, almost seven years since I became a Christian, I prayed one day about the situation. I told God that seven years was nearly up, and after seven years in the bible all the slaves were let go free, and I asked him to set me free from this problem. The next day I had a big release. The occasions of intense itching stopped completely. This was a great improvement and I was much encouraged to press on. From then on all I had from this problem was a minor discomfort, but compared to what I had been through it was relatively easy to live with. This went on for another four years, but at a time when I was fasting and praying for someone else to be healed, God delivered me altogether. I remembered the scripture that Job was set free from his captivity when he prayed for his friends (Job 42:10), and the same thing had happened to me. Why did it take so long? I really cannot say for certain. If I had been blessed with faith like Jesus I could have had an instant miracle, but I didn't, and I had to struggle through. James 1:2-4 does come to mind. Since then I am free from the problem as long as I do not drink too much, but when I over drink, symptoms return to remind me. I look back and wonder how I ever got through it all. I know that God was keeping me. All thanks and praise be to him.

TESTIMONY OF HEALING OF AN ACUTE CHEST INFECTION (1991)

During the winter of 1991 I worked in a fabrication factory in Wolverhampton U.K. During a time of snow, I was sent upon the factory roof to repair some holes in the roof, because the snow was coming into the factory. It was cold and slightly windy, and I didn’t have a coat, so I got quite cold. After the job was finished I began to get "flu" type symptoms. I resisted them using the name of Jesus and continued working, but the next day when I got up I felt quite ill. I would always rebuke such things and act my faith out by continuing to work, and this is what I did. The following day the same thing happened, and work was becoming more difficult, but the third day I didn’t wake up until about midday. I must have slept through the alarm clock going off, which I had not done before, I felt very bad, and it was obvious that I could not go to work, so I phoned in to tell them I would be having a few days off. What had persisted was pains in my chest, which felt very tight, and I felt very tired. I knew that it was a bad chest infection, because I had had chest infections before when I was younger, but they were not as bad as this one. In those days, before I was a Christian, I would call out the doctor, get a course of antibiotics, and have two weeks off work, but now, I had had four years of trusting God for all my healings, and I was determined to press on. I lay on a couch by the fire in the front room of the house where I was living alone. My chest was painful whichever side I lay on, and when I coughed it also hurt. I didn’t go to bed at night, I just stayed by the fire, sleeping a lot, eating and drinking when awake, reading some scriptures, and sleeping some more. One particular scripture which ministered to me was the conversations between God and the devil concerning Job (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6). As I meditated on these scriptures, I realised that the devil could not do anything to Job that God did not permit. When God said to Satan, "upon himself do not put forth your hand." (Job 1:12), the devil took all of his possessions, but he could not touch Job. When God said to Satan, "he is in your hand, but save his life." (Job 2:6), Satan struck him with boils, but he couldn’t kill him. This helped my faith a lot, because I realised the Devil couldn’t kill me either, unless God permitted it, and God wouldn’t do that to me when I was doing my best to trust him. A non-Christian acquaintance came to visit me, and after a short conversation when he got up to leave, he asked me if I had seen a doctor. I told him "No". He asked if I was going to see one, and again I told him "No". He said that I aught to see one, but I told him that I didn’t need to, and I would be alright, and he left. I didn’t really know what else to do. I had not yet learned how to take the offensive against the Devil, but I had learned from previous experience that if I kept on going, and refused to give in, eventually the Devil would quit, and leave. To do something positive, I decided to fast, so I stopped eating food, but continued with hot drinks. While I was fasting, the pastor of my church telephoned me to see why I didn’t attend church as usual. I told him I was ill, and asked him to come and anoint me with oil, and pray. This took away any opportunity for the Devil to cripple my faith, because now I had been obedient to God’s word for a sick person: (Jam 5:14-15) "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." The pastor came, anointed me with oil, prayed, and left. I continued to read and meditate on the scriptures. About a week after his first visit my unsaved acquaintance turned up again. By this time I must have looked a lot worse: I had not washed for days, I had lost some weight, and I was still lying on the couch. He asked me again if I had seen a doctor, I told him "No". He asked if I was going to see one, and again I told him "No", to which he replied, "You’re going to die!". Again I told him "No! The devil cannot kill me", and he left. By this time I had been fasting about five days, and although I didn’t feel any better, I realised that if the devil really could kill me, he would have done it already. This was a revelation that I really needed. I was now very confident in having the victory so I stopped fasting, and began to get better. The next week I went back to work, having had only two weeks off. Some symptoms persisted for a few days, and then disappeared altogether. Praise be to God for his faithfulness.

TESTIMONY ABOUT THE HEALING OF A CUT BY RUSTY STEEL (1995)

I was working in a steel mill as a general labourer and cleaner. It was a very dirty place, and black dust from the mill was continually settling everywhere. Part of my job was to sweep it up, and I would start at one end of the mill, work through to the other end, and then start again. One day I was sweeping one of the entrance ramps with my head down looking towards the floor, when I walked into a piece of rusty steel angle which was sticking out from the wall. The corner of it hit me sharply, and dug into my head between my left eye and left ear. When I pulled away and and put my hand to it I saw the blood. I looked at the steel angle; it was brown with rust, and the surface was covered in flakes of it. Before this time my practice of dealing with cuts was simply to wash them with soap and water, perhaps cover them with a plaster to keep them clean, pray, and believe God to heal it. It had always worked, but I had never had a cut like this from rusty steel. As I headed towards the washroom, I wondered what to do. I was thinking lockjaw, tetanus, infection, and I will admit I was a little afraid. Nevertheless, as I sat considering the situation in the washroom, I soon settled it in my mind; God was able and he had not failed me yet. I washed my head with soap and water and began to confess, "I will get no lockjaw, no tetanus, and no infection in the name of Jesus Christ." When the bleeding stopped I left the washroom and went back to work. Not only did I not get any of these, but as far as I can remember it didn’t even swell up. Even to this day, I have a black scar between my left ear and left Eye, because I don’t think I cleaned the cut properly, but thanks be to God for his faithfulness. This was divine healing; Jesus is alive!

TESTIMONY ABOUT HEALING OF DISLOCATED KNUCKLE JOINTS 1995

I was working in a steel mill. My job was to remove red hot metal strips from a conveyor by grabbing one end of the strip with metal tongues, and this involved a lot of gripping and squeezing with my right hand. This continual gripping and squeezing, sometimes as much as ten hours a day, eventually caused the third finger on my right hand to come out of its socket at the knuckle. I persisted working for a while, but when it became too difficult to continue I worked with my left hand. After some time the third finger on my left hand came out of its socket also, so I spoke with the manager and went back to my cleaning job for a while. I did the cleaning job for several days, but it proved to be too painful so I took a few days off to pray. I never consulted a doctor. Although after about three days my left hand went back to normal without much trouble, the joint on my right hand continued to dislocate regularly. I did not believe God for an instant miracle, because I thought that the bone of the knuckle joint was badly damaged, and I had caused the problem myself. So I prayed for God to grow the bones back to perfection, but for a long while I continued to have problems. Whenever I gripped anything small with any pressure it caused severe cramp in the muscle of my finger which would pull the finger out of joint. This would happen regularly when I would try to tie my shoe laces. I began to rebuke the cramp in the name of Jesus Christ, and after a short while the cramp stopped happening, although my finger would still come out of joint when I tied my laces. I continued to work, sometimes with difficulty, but from then on it was a question of regular prayer and believing God to restore the damage. As the years went by the condition gradually improved and the dislocating became less frequent, but I still had pain sometimes. In February 2005, after coming back from a 3 month visit to Africa, teaching in the churches, I took a job in a paper factory. This place handled large rolls of paper with thick cardboard cores at the centre, and I worked in the core shop. My job was to lift the used cores out of a rack, clean the loose paper off with a knife, and shove the core through a machine to clean it up. Gripping a knife in my right hand all day and cutting loose paper of was something I definitely wanted to avoid, as this would cause my finger to dislocate again. However, I came back from Africa in debt and desperately needed to work so I continued with the job, putting three gloves on my right hand so that I could not close it up very far. This seemed to work and I was able to do the job without pain in my hand. The job was totally exhausting, as it was very physical, and I was over 60 years old, but I desperately needed the money, so I prayed continuously for strength, and God kept me going. After about 6 months my hands were much strengthened, and my right hand completely restored to normal. This obviously took several years to heal, but praise the name of Jesus name he did it! After that I did regular manual work without any problems, and my hand now is perfectly normal. Trusting God is a different way of life.

This is the end of this testimony of Roy Page.