Traded Sickness for Help

While attending a prayer meeting in March 1988, I suffered a stroke. A battery of tests revealed that the cause of it had been a brain tumor.

During surgery to remove the tumor, some of my spinal nerves were severed, leaving me totally paralyzed on my right side. Problems with my equilibrium made me feel as though I were always falling; often I fell out of my wheelchair onto the floor.

My health declined to such a degree that I needed oxygen, breathing machines, inhalers and 15 different pills. I suffered respiratory and intestinal diseases, along with unbearable pain and migraine headaches.

I fought depression and anxiety constantly, but I attended church when I could. I read and listened to the Word of God, and I was anointed with oil and prayed for by preachers, evangelists and other men and women of faith.

I knew that God could heal me, but I questioned whether or not He would. I accepted the doctor’s report that I would never walk again and that eventually, my health would fail.

Then in 1997, an evangelist from Bath, South Carolina, Marvlene Branch, held revival services at our church. She preached the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit filled me with faith.

When she finished her message, she anointed me with oil, laid hands on me and prayed. I felt faith as I never had before.

The next night, the evangelist asked for me. She told the congregation, “She’s going to give that oxygen tank back to the devil, and he’s going to need it to keep up with what God is going to do with her.”

For three weeks we prayed and believed. I knew the healing I sought was there.

First, I came off the oxygen. God completely restored my lungs, and my breathing returned to normal.

On a different night, I was so lost in worship that I didn’t hear Evangelist Branch calling me to come forward. I was told that she anointed me with oil and spoke the Word of the Lord over me.

Then she said, “Dianne, that dead right arm is going to praise God!” Immediately, my paralyzed right arm went straight up, and both my legs went straight out from my wheelchair.

Pastor Bill Branch, the evangelist’s husband, unbuckled the seatbelt on my wheelchair. She reached for me, and I stood with assistance.

Evangelist Branch would not sit me down. Instead, she anointed me with oil, and I went out under the power of God.

She knelt down, began quoting the Word of God over me and then asked, “Dianne, do you want to get up and walk?” I knew I had received my healing. I got up from the floor and stood with no assistance.

My daughter was laughing and crying so hard that her tears were falling on the floor. I put my arms around her, and we walked together for the first time in 10 years.

Since that night, six years ago, I’ve taken no medication. God has used me to pray for others and see them healed, too.

I walked my daughter down the aisle at her wedding. And today I can visit with a granddaughter I believed I’d never see.

It didn’t take God 10 years to heal me; I believe it took me that long to receive the Word of God in my spirit.

When Evangelist Branch talks about this miracle, she says, “God did the healing. I was a vessel He channeled the anointing through. To God be all the glory.”