God’s Faithfulness Through Holly’s Journey

The power and importance of praying without ceasing

Chapter 2

As believers, we know that God is alive and active today. God’s promises are for us now and forever, not just for the people who lived during the old testament days. Those promises are found in the scriptures.

We read in 2 Corinthians:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

In Jeremiah 30:17 we read:

“But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,” declares the LORD.

Philipians 4:19 says:

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus.”

I could go on and on and on. These are just a few of the MANY verses we repeated to ourselves over and over again the past few weeks. It was a reminder that no matter how dim things got around us, the hope and promises of God were always an anchor and firm foundation for us.

These promises kept us strong and operating in a state of positivity and faith instead of a state of fear and death.

So when the doctor told us his diagnosis, we knew that it was only the state of the situation in the earth realm. But we serve the one who is the GREAT Physician and we knew that He would be faithful to deliver Holly from this tumor one way or another.

SUNDAY

Holly continued to be monitored at the hospital on the Sunday following her MRI. Normally they would release the patient back home until the day of their scheduled surgery.

Given the size and the rapid growth of Holly’s tumor, they didn’t feel like it would be safe to release her and they kept her hooked up and full of strong pain medication to give her some sort of temporary relief.

Late Sunday night, they transferred her to yet another hospital. This move was to place her where a neurosurgeon worked who specialized in this specific tumor and tumor location.

So, off she went to her third hospital.

You’d think she’d be discouraged with doing her “tour of duty” of hospitals around Columbus, OH. Instead she just joyfully exclaimed, ”Just more people who will be exposed to what God does through our testimony!”

MONDAY

Monday morning I showed up to the hospital just before noon. As I mentioned in my previous post, due to c0vid restrictions, visiting hours were limited to between noon and 8pm.

As I walked up to check-in for the day, the lady at the front door reminded me that visiting hours didn’t begin until noon. She let me know that I was still six minutes early and needed to go back out and wait until 12.

The reason I bring this up is because under normal circumstances, I could have been with Holly 24/7, or at least from 8am until 10pm every day. With these new restrictions, she was forced to be alone (physically) in her room for 16 hours out of the day.

I’m not sure if this crushed me or her more, but either way, it wasn’t ideal. Just one more way for the enemy to attempt to tear us apart and keep us down.

PRAY WITHOUT CEASING

We got the news Monday afternoon that Holly’s surgery to remove her tumor would be scheduled for 9pm on Tuesday morning.

Of course we were still praying and believing that God could and would heal her before it came to surgery. We spent most of the day and evening Monday praying together. I would read healing scriptures to her and we would pray together out loud and silently.

One lesson I learned during this specific part of the journey was what the Bible means when it says that we should, “Pray without ceasing.” When I used to hear this, I would always think that it meant you were constantly praying out loud with your head bowed talking to God.

What I learned is that praying without ceasing is much more than that. When you pray in your head silently, you’re essentially thinking your prayers as you’re talking in your head. How many times throughout the day do you talk to yourself silently in your head?

As humans, we’re in a constant state of thinking. We think without even thinking about thinking. I would venture to guess that 99% of you are reading these words right now in your head. You’re essentially thinking as you’re reading. You’re talking to yourself about the words on the screen.

Praying is not much different, it’s just more concentrated. While there is so much more power in the spoken word of prayer, it’s paramount to allow your thoughts to work for you. If you’re speaking healing words and prayers and scriptures, but then thinking negative and fear and doubt in your thoughts, you’re really working against yourself.

We decided that we’d use this time to hold captive every thought we had and make it obedient to Christ. If we weren’t updating people on Holly’s status, we were reading the Word, praying out loud, praying in our head, and keeping our thoughts focused on faith, hope, and God’s promises. This allowed us to pray without ceasing and kept us operating in a state of faith instead of a state of fear and doubt.

Many healing scriptures in the Bible talk about how we should forgive our brothers and sisters or to confess our sins to one another as a prerequisite to our healing. We also spent this time in the hospital letting go of unforgiveness or bitterness we may have had in our hearts toward people in our lives. We confessed any sin that came to mind and asked the Lord to forgive us. I think this is one step we often forget about when praying for healing.

PRAYER WARRIORS

I know I’m taking a break from talking about many of the details many of you came here to read. There’s just so many crucial things we learned that we wanted to share with you all. I know this journey will spawn a bunch of blog posts on specific topics, but there’s just too many nuggets not to share with you all now.

One humbling experience came in the form of many of YOU! Holly and I have never really been that good at receiving help from others. I know this might not make sense to a lot of people, but we just always subconsciously try to stay in a state of not owing anyone anything. It’s nothing malicious, but we never want to feel like we’re in debt to people. So it’s often hard for us to ask or receive help.

Usually when we face a battle, we like to keep the situation “in house” and handle it on our own. I don’t mean handle it without God’s help, but just not involving a lot of people. I think part of it is because we hate to be involved in gossip. So when we have a situation arise, the fewer people we share it with —in our minds— the better. Asking for or receiving help can also make you feel vulnerable.

With this unique and special circumstance though, we really learned the power of calling on others to pray. I started a F@cebook group called Holly’s Prayer Warriors. I invited a handful of people, who invited a handful of people. I wanted to create a group of people who I knew would come together to lift up our situation and pray for Holly and her healing.

This was such an amazing experience as the 5-10 people I initially invited turned into 250+ in less than 10 hours. The group is now just under 400 people! We don’t even personally know everyone in the group. Many people invited a handful of people from their church or friends and family members who they knew were believers and would pray for Holly and our family. The response blew us away!

We’ve continued to turn to this page for prayer requests, as well as updates on how Holly is recovering. It has been an amazing resource to us over these past few weeks and I know Holly has enjoyed reading all of your prayers and words of encouragement!

NOT TODAY SATAN

As I’ve mentioned over and over, the hospitals all kicked me out at 8pm every night and Monday was no different.

It just didn’t feel right to me to be leaving Holly alone in her room the night before she had brain surgery. While the nurses told me I’d be allowed back in at 8am since she was having her surgery at 9, I knew we needed to have a group of people praying for my bride.

With the help of an amazing couple from our church, we organized a last minute prayer vigil outside Holly’s hospital room. We were able to gather on the sidewalk just below her window.

I didn’t know how many people would show up since it was so last minute, but I opened it up for all who were able to come down. I had hundreds of people reaching out and commenting on my posts on social media saying that they couldn’t make it to the live prayer, but they would set their alarms to pray right at 9pm with us.

About 10-12 people showed up and we had a prayer and worship session out in the parking lot of St. Ann’s Hospital. It was awesome! There was so much power in the body of Christ coming together and unifying in prayer.

It was one more time Satan tried to prevent us from being with Holly. While the invisible enemy prevented us from praying for Holly inside, we brought the spirit of God outside and prayed over the hospital, the nurses, the doctors, and Holly. I had her on speakerphone so she could hear everyone praying in agreement.

We probably looked a little silly to everyone who walked by in that parking lot. But just like in the scriptures, sometimes action is required for the healing to come. Sometimes you have to be willing to look stupid for Christ in order for his miracle to manifest.

It was truly an amazing experience and once again taught me so much.

To Be Continued...

After praying for Holly outside her hospital room, I headed home and tried to get some sleep before the big day.

Up to this point, I had remained as strong and solid as I could. I wasn’t going to give in now, as the job was not done yet.

I didn’t know what all the next day would bring, but I knew who would be bringing the next day forth. I knew God was still in control. He was still good. He was still faithful. I knew we were in His hands and He would not fail to bring the victory.

One more prayer before bed.