God has allowed me to experience different challenges throughout my life, which have been used to prove the power of prayer. By the time I was born in December 1947, my father had already accepted a call to become the pastor of Beulah Temple and Mom was his biggest supporter. Then when I was four years old, Mom became pregnant with her fourth child. The pregnancy went well at first. But in a few months she became so ill that she couldn’t get out of bed. No one realized she had developed toxemia and that the baby inside her had been dead for several weeks. Finally my mother lapsed into a coma. I can still remember the night the ambulance came for her, can still hear the strange rattling noise In her throat as they rolled her away on the stretcher.

My mother delivered the baby shortly after she was admitted to the hospital. After that her body began to mend but during the following years she suffered from periodic seizures that would rob her of her memory and weaken her considerably. And there was no telling when they would hit. Sometimes I Would come home from school and find her in the middle of a horrible seizure. Mom would emerge from these episodes so dazed that she couldn’t tell you her name let alone the names of her six children. After a few days, normalcy Would return, but we knew it wouldn’t be long until she suffered another seizure.

Years later, a dear friend and prayer partner came over to the house after one of my mother’s attacks. This was a woman who was blessed with a kind of immovable faith. “Listen, kids,” she told us, “your mother and I are going upstairs, and we are going to shut the door and pray. Don’t worry if we don’t come down for a while, because we are not coming out until she is healed.”

So Mom and her friend staved in that room all day and all night. Then another day and night and another day after that. For three days, they didn’t eat a thing as strong cries and petitions went up to heaven. Finally, Mom opened the door and walked out. She never suffered another seizure in her life.

Cymbala, Carol. He’s Been Faithful. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan publishing House, 2001, p. 46-47.