That is another awesome story. Don't ya just love those "right in your 
face" ya know that ya know God's hand was on you? haha.

Brad


on 10:50 PM 6/17/2006, Phil Scovell said:

It Sounded Like God But It Wasn't


By Phil Scovell






      I had, over the years, experience lower back pain before but
this was different.  Normally, the pain would dissipate each day
until, two weeks later, it would be totally gone.  this time, when
I bent over to pick up something too heavy, nearly my entire back
spider webbed, like a smashed windshield, and the pain was
everywhere.  The next morning, all the pain had settled in my
lower back so I figured it would heal as quickly as before.  It
didn't.

      Three weeks later, after injury my back three more times by
simply bending over slightly, I had to go to our family doctor.
His diagnosis was sciatica because the pain that originated in my
lower back now radiated through my hip, and down my leg, and
sometimes reaching even to my ankle.  Two weeks later, I was in
the doctor's office again due to the pain.  It wasn't going away
and it wasn't diminishing.  I was in agony.  More pain pills and
muscle relaxers were prescribe but I was also sent to a physical
therapist.  By this stage, I had little hope that even a physical
therapist could help and had resigned myself to the idea that I
would probably end up on an operating table.  by this point, I
would have done anything I was asked to do if only the pain would
go away.

      The physical therapy seemed to help but the overall pain
wasn't going away.  Finally, I asked my wife to make a third
doctor's appointment because I had to find out why I wasn't
getting better.  Later, I had her cancel the appointment because
the pain was gone.

      Standing in the kitchen one Wednesday afternoon, I heard a
voice in my thoughts.  It said, "You won't be healed until your
wife is."  We had been going through some horrendous financial
difficulties and some physical problems, such as a broken foot my
son experienced, and other related situations relating to my
ministry, our church, and just a lot of things in general.  My
wife had been experiencing a great deal of discouragement and I
wasn't doing much better.  My back pain only compounded the
problems.  So, the voice I heard in my thoughts sounded legitimate
but something about it made me question the validity of the
statement.

      A few minutes later, I was sitting at my office desk and as I
contemplated what I thought was the voice of the Holy Spirit, I
suddenly realized I had been deceived into believing a lie.  Jesus
would never conditionalize my healing based upon another's.  I
knew instantly the voice I had heard, as much as it truly sounded
like the Holy Spirit, in fact, was the father of all lies; the
Enemy himself.  I sat at my desk, bowed my head, and began to
pray.  I exercised my authority I share with the True Lord Jesus
Christ over the lying spirit that had attempted to fool me into
believing a lie.  When I was finished praying, I went back to
work.

      Perhaps a half an hour later, or more, I stopped working at
my computer because I became aware of what I was feeling.
Actually, I took stock of what I wasn't feeling and what I wasn't
feeling was the deep throbbing pain of my hip with which I had
become so familiar over the past few weeks.  The pain was gone.  I
stood up and walked around my office to test my leg.  The
stiffness in my lower leg was still there but that didn't hurt nor
did my hip.  I went and walked up the stairs and around the house.
Still no pain.  I figured it was a fluke, my hyper Christian
imagination playing tricks on me, and any second now, the pain
would come roaring back.  It didn't.

      When I awakened the next morning, I thought the pain would
surely return because it always did within thirty seconds of being
out of bed.  It didn't.  Hesitantly, I went to my physical
therapy appointment that day.  I worked out on the stationary
bicycle for awhile, learned a few new stretching exercises, and
the physical therapist worked on my lower back for a few minutes.
I left thinking the pain would probably start up any minute.  It
never did.  Each day went by and the pain refused to return.  The
stiffness in my leg also began to reseed and there was no pain of
any kind in my lower back.

      there are the extremes when it comes to God's healing power.
I was raised that God didn't do miracles any more.  why?  they
weren't needed.  Now that I look back on it, I frankly have no
idea why I was taught they were no longer needed.  Especially
when you consider the fact that I lost all my sight at eleven
years of age.  That certainly seems like a good time for a miracle
to have occurred as far as I was concerned.

      Closely related to this theological fallacy, was the idea
that God could do miracles today but only when He wanted to do so.
In my doctrinal realm of theological thought, we had a problem:
He never seemed to ever want to do any miracles and when it
appeared that He did, it was very difficult to distinguish the
miracle from medical intervention, if you get my drift.

      Then, of course, we had the hard core Bible Believers who
insisted that no miracles were ever done by God today because that
died out with the last apostle, whoever that was.  This was a very
convenient belief because this way, you could simply say that
Jesus never did anything other than saved a lost sinner.  From
then on, you were on your own.  Oh, sure, you could pray until the
cows came home but it wasn't His will for you to experience a
miraculous event.

      So what was it I heard standing in pain in the middle of our
kitchen?  Quite simply, it was a lying spirit attempting to gain a
foothold in my thinking.  The Bible is pretty clear about taking
every thought captive.  What I did a few moments later was one way
of doing exactly that.

      The question then becomes, who gave me the back pain in the
first place?  I can prove from Scripture, and from the mouth of
Jesus Himself, that some sickness and disease and infirmities are
from Satan.  In my case, I was over weight and out of shape and I
simply tried picking something up that was way too heavy and I
paid for it.  That wasn't the Lord's fault.  Who healed me is the
real question.  You may believe what you like.  I, on the other
hand, know exactly what happened and I thank God for what He
taught me as I acknowledge Him in my life.

Has He Ever Crossed Your Mind?
www.SafePlaceFellowship.com