Testimony by Tom Hanlon

A Double Measure of Healing

On Sept. 9, 2005, my legs began having severe tremors. Over the next several days and weeks, I had a sensation of burning on my skin, deep aching in the thighs, lots of twitching and jerking, numbness in extremities, and other symptoms. I was exhausted and had no energy to move. I could feel the tremors 24/7, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet.

The worst part was in my legs. I did almost no work for two months, and I wasn’t able to drive for two months. For three weeks, I shaved sitting down, because my legs would be drained by the end of standing up for three or four minutes. There were many, many nights that I went to bed with a pounding fear in my heart, because I could barely drag myself into bed. I knew if I continued to go downhill in the night at the same rate that I had done during the day, I wouldn’t be walking the next day.

Yet as swift and severe as the physical problems were, I knew from the beginning that this was as much – if not more – a spiritual battle as a physical one. God made that very clear to me. I didn’t know what the battle was about, but I knew one was going on.

I underwent a myriad of medical tests, none of which revealed what I had. My neurologist was about to send me on to St. Louis for further testing. But before that happened, I woke up on October 30 and felt real improvement for the first time. That evening, a friend called and told me that someone had given a prophetic word in church: God was healing someone with neurological symptoms, with the main symptoms being in the legs. I certainly fit the description well!

I wanted immediate healing, of course, but in prayer God made it clear to both me and to my pastor (who partnered in prayer with me on a regular basis for several months) that immediate healing would not accomplish His purpose. In December I got the sense that it was going to take about a year, that it was for good reason, and that it was tied directly to the spiritual battle.

I, of course, was bent on physical healing; God was as keenly interested in healing what goes much deeper than that. He wanted to rid me of lies and misconceptions I have held about Him – about God the Father that is – since my childhood. Here are just a few of the lies that God wanted to cleanse from my mind and replace with His truth:

First, that God the Father doesn’t love me – not me personally. Second, that God the Father is cold and distant, not involved in the day-to-day cares and needs of His people. Third, that God is untrustworthy. That sounds horrible to say, point blank, but the truth is I needed desperately to grow in the area of trust. Fourth, that I have nothing to offer the body of Christ.

Many brothers and sisters gave me prophetic words and words of knowledge that were like clear, cold water to a man wandering in a desert. Through them, I heard that this was not a wasting disease, not a wasting time, but rather a time of sustaining, a time to be filled with His living waters. Through them, God told me that He loves me as a bride, just because I am me and I am His. He also spoke of the many imaginations in my head that needed to be cast down, the generational lies that needed to be hacked out at the roots. These times of prayer were powerful, holy, and sustaining. God was making His rivers flow on barren heights, turning parched grounds into springs, as it says in Isaiah.

God has healed me. While I have a few lingering, minor symptoms, I am back to running 6 to 8 miles, to working out hard, to doing everything I’ve always been able to do physically. And He is doing far more than that: He has ripped out the roots of the lies that had grown in my mind from childhood. He has replaced them with His truth: that He is a loving Father, that He is passionately in love with me, that He cares about my welfare more than I myself do, and that He thinks I have plenty to offer the body of Christ. Not because I am great, but because He has equipped me – as He equips each and every last one of His children – to do His work, as it says in Ephesians: "For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Where I had sickness, God brought me healing. Where I had fear, God gave me peace. In place of doubt, God is building trust in me. In place of lies, God supplied me His truth. In place of malaise and a feeling of worthlessness, God is leading me in a new way – His way, according to His purpose.

I want to close with this verse because for me it sums up what has happened to me, and what I believe He wants to happen for all of us: "I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth – praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the Lord." (Psalms Chapter 40)

Tom Hanlon