Heavenly Encounters: How God Healed a Broken Heart

The following testimony of emotional healing is from Stuart. It is a powerful story that I know will be a great blessing to many. Thank you, Stuart, for sharing your heart journey with us.

I recently went through a time of profound healing and it is my hope that the following testimony will encourage others who have experienced deep woundings. My own wounding centered around witnessing the suffering and death of my mother from ALS.

The Backstory

I had been a Christian for about seven years, having been powerfully saved in my late twenties. I enjoyed a passionate and committed relationship with the Lord and so when my mother received her diagnosis I was sure that God was going to heal her. We prayed, and I also prayed with Christian brothers and sisters. Many times I felt a tangible and weighty anointing on those prayers. God was answering. It was done. My mother was healed. Now we just had to wait for the manifestation.

But her symptoms did not fade. They grew worse. A disease that can take twenty years to destroy a nervous system, consumed my mother’s in less than a year. After being saved, I had the privilege of leading her to the Lord and so I was forced to watch this wonderful, graceful and gracious mother struggle as a new believer to understand her ordeal. Her great love in life was teaching and in spite of her huge limitations she continued to work, wheelchair-bound, as the disease took more of her mobility. She managed to finish out the year with her class. Two weeks later she was moved to hospice care. On her first night in the hospice, she died.

My Pastor's Perspective

My immediate reaction was shock. How could this happen? Where was God in this? Adding salt to this terrible wound, I had an exchange with my pastor the day of her death when, after seeing that her condition was so low, I had asked him to pray. He was a strong subscriber to the ‘Word of Faith,’ doctrine, (which to anyone who has properly studied it, contains both many wonderful truths and many applied excesses.)

His response had been to explain that he had already prayed for her, and that it was now up to my mother’s own faith to heal her. This obviously incomplete perspective, perfectly timed and delivered, dealt a massive blow to my relationship with the Lord. The passion that I had felt daily was smothered. I still believed in the reality of God and His Kingdom, but emotionally I had contracted. I became a withdrawn son who although he knew that his heavenly Father was real, no longer fully trusted that Father. God had become distant, unknowable, even capricious.

I’d heard about these kinds of wounds before. I’d read about them, I’d seen them in other people. I knew they could be lifelong and severely limiting and so it was frightening to feel myself succumbing. No matter how much I tried to rationalize the hows and whys of my mother’s death, no matter how much I gave mental assent to my situation, my core emotions continued to disconnect from God.

Years went by. Then my wife and I came across Mark Virkler’s teaching: ‘Prayers that Heal the Heart.’ Until then I had done everything I knew to do. I had prayed, sought prayer, confessed my anger and bitterness to the Lord and watched my heart warm and cool toward Him a dozen times. We listened together to Mark’s teaching. We prayed about it, and then God opened the door for Mark to minister personally to me. He encouraged me to pray, placing myself in the days and events surrounding my mother’s death. The following is a brief description of that experience.

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Inner Healing Scene: At the Office

I picture myself in my office on the day my mother died, receiving my pastor’s email. I see Jesus standing beside me as I read the email. I am overwhelmed by the insensitivity of my pastor’s words, incredulous that anyone could be so uncompassionate.

Jesus places His hand on my shoulder. “Those words are not from Me,” He tells me.

“How could he write this? A leader? A spirit-filled man of God?”

“He is speaking out of his own brokenness, his own loss.”

That simple statement allows me for the first time to understand. And with that understanding comes an immediate peace. From my heart I am able to forgive and release my pastor.

I see the Lord place His hand on my heart. I feel a warm, healing flow. We both smile together—I’m smiling because whatever I’m receiving, it’s tangible. It’s changing me, rearranging my emotions.

Inner Healing Scene: With My Mom

Mark then leads me to picture my mother’s room in the hospice. Again, I see Jesus in the room. He is sitting beside my mother’s bed, holding her hand, attentive and fully engaged. He sees everything that is happening.

“She wanted to go,” He tells me, narrating the scene even as He is part of it. “She was not in pain at the end.”

I can see that He has her. Truly has her. The grief that I felt because her death came so suddenly—and that she was also alone when she died, begins to fade. She was not alone. I see her spirit sit up in bed. The next instant she and the Lord are both standing in a heavenly garden. Children run to her. They are young: seven, eight, the same age as those that she taught during her earthly life.

The Lord looks at her. “They need someone to teach them,” He says. She gives the largest smile I’ve ever seen her give.

“Your earthly life was all preparation for this,” He tells her. “This is your heavenly calling.”

Her eyes fill with tears. She sees the grand purpose of her life, and now her eternity. The children crowd around her.

“I’m home,” she tells me, overjoyed. “I’m whole.” She smiles once more, another huge smile, and waves excitedly. “I’m so happy!”

“I release you into His heavenly plan,” I say. I’m laughing, crying. I take a deep breath and shout, “Have fun, Mom!”

The Result

As I pictured these events unfolding the most powerful aspect was the accompanying emotion. What I saw, the interactions I had with Jesus and my mother, unlocked an emotional vault that I had previously been unable to access.

Afterwards I felt extremely fragile and physically exhausted, but also clean and supernaturally peaceful. The effects of this ministry time were extraordinarily tangible and real. Most importantly though was the fruit. I felt I could lift my head towards my Father in heaven and for the first time in a long time, genuinely smile.

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Throughout the Bible it is clear that God speaks repeatedly through subjective and semi-mystical experiences. Dreams, visions and revelation through meditation are the apparent norm and we are admonished to expect such encounters. In the secular arena, techniques such as visualization and 'placing yourself' in situations are standard cognitive tools used in many counselling and psychology practices. They are used because they have been empirically shown to yield powerful restorative outcomes.

It seems the world has taken biblical wisdom and is running with it, while Christians stand on the margins, shunning ‘New Age’ methods for fear of encountering a counterfeit. Jesus tells us that if we ask for the Spirit He will not give us a counterfeit. That being the case, I believe there is much room in the Kingdom for such methods. If God spoke to people this way in the past, (and without the benefit of the ‘promise,’ the Holy Spirit,) how much more should we who claim the indwelling Spirit be open to such things?

Stuart

Cambridge, Massachusetts