I’m so thankful to God for allowing me to serve Him for 75 years. God has been so faithful to me. From childhood, I wanted every day and every part of my life to be under the direction and control of the Holy Spirit. Now when I look back over 75 years of ministry I know with absolute certainty that there has been both purpose and direction in my life. God has been in control of all my days and all my experiences. Everything that has happened in my life was foreknown in His plan.
the healing power of Jesus
In December 2002, as part of the process of getting a resident’s permit in Ukraine, in order to prove I did not have TB which is endemic out there, I had to have a lung X-ray. But the doctors called me back, took more X-rays, and then told me I had a shadow on my lung and that I had pneumonia. Probably I had already had it for over a month, because I remember a fever had started on the last day of October while I was evangelising in Siberia.
Back in England I was treated with antibiotics, but after two courses of treatment I went again for X-rays and the patch on my lung was bigger. The doctors became extremely worried, they didn’t want me to travel overseas and they set up exhaustive tests in a hurry. They said bluntly, ‘It’s not pneumonia, you have lung cancer.’
I prayed about it, and I did go overseas to carry out my ministry, but the day after I got back the hospital process started. On the Thursday I had the CT (computer tomography) scan and it showed the cancer.
I believe in prayer and in a God of miracles. But I am faced with a challenge: do I really believe God or not? On the following Monday I had to go for a bronchoscopy when they would put a camera down my lung and take a sample of the growth. The doctors had already fast-tracked me into a process which would lead to an operation to remove all or part of my right lung – on the Wednesday I was booked to go in for the final verdict. The only question, how much of my lung they would take away?
I said, ‘Lord, how can I go back into Russia and preach like I preach and say that You are a mighty God of miracles who’s got power to do everything, including healing cancer, if I have got half of my right lung cut out, followed by chemotherapy? If You have finished with me, if my ministry is over, then don’t heal me, because if I can no longer evangelise I might as well die, I have no other reason to live! But if You want me to go back into Russia and Ukraine and finish the work You gave me to do, then I want You to heal me completely!’ But I only had a few days, from Thursday to Monday!
God said to me, ‘David, you’ve got a mountain in your life that you’ve got to move, and that mountain is to get that cancer out from your lung. If you can believe that without an operation you can be completely healed, then nothing will be impossible from there on.’ Now desperately seeking God’s answer from Scripture, I was reading from Jeremiah 33:6, ‘I will bring health and healing’; and Jeremiah 33:20-21, ‘I will not break my covenant with David’; and Psalm 89:35, ‘I will not lie to David’; and ‘Is anything impossible with God?’ (Jeremiah 32:17&27).
On the Monday I was in the hospital, tubes down my lung looking for cancer – but God had already given me the answer, I knew it was gone. The doctors looked at me in amazement and said, ‘You have no cancer!’
I didn’t go to a healing evangelist, I went to the Word of God and God completely healed me – no operation, no treatment – I only had God and the Bible, and that’s all I needed to confound the doctors. They were shocked, they didn’t believe God. But I do, I believe in a God of power, of miracles.
The Bible is very clear. Isaiah 53:5 says Jesus was wounded for our sin, bruised for our iniquity and with His stripes we are healed.
Walking step by step with Jesus
God is always a God of miracles! Yes, I have experienced the power of God in my life! Not some emotional experience in a conference, but step by step walking closer to God – my teenage cry for fire, the cancer, the prison – and many other problems and miracles. What will it be next time, what will happen this year? I still don’t have enough power, still not satisfied that God has answered me fully, what will it be next? All I know is that it is step by step by step, and I have not reached the end of the road yet!
That’s why Peter said we have a living hope, an inheritance which is incorruptible that cannot be defiled, that does not fade away but goes on increasing and increasing until that moment when we see Jesus in all power and all Glory – 1 Peter 1:4. Every step is another miracle towards experiencing the power of God in our lives! As for me, I will seek a fresh baptism in the Holy Spirit every day until I am in the Kingdom of God.