In this Witness Wednesday episode, Catherine shares a powerful story about her grandfather who survived a brutal home invasion in which his throat was nearly cut from ear to ear. Despite the severity of the injury, he healed far faster than doctors expected, which they described as miraculous. She also reflects on her experience in the Encounter School of Ministry, describing how the program focuses on identity in Christ, hearing God’s voice, physical healing, and inner healing. Catherine explains how inner healing helps people identify lies formed from past wounds, replace them with God’s truth, and experience greater freedom. She encourages listeners who need prayer or healing to reach out and reminds them that the freedom God desires for them is available. Music: "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Witness Wednesday #201 Catherine D
When I was praying about what to witness about today, the Lord brought to my mind my grandpa, my dad's father. One night, we were sitting around the kitchen table, and we got a phone call from my grandpa.
He said he was watching TV and all the lights in his house were off. He just had one light on in the TV room. So somebody thought he wasn't home and tried to break into his house.
They were trying to break in through the door with a screwdriver, and the screwdriver hit the window, and my grandpa thought someone had knocked on the door. So he went out, and he opened the door to see who it was, and the young man pushed his way in. Then he asked my grandfather for his money, his wallet, and anything else he had.
My grandfather didn't have much cash or many valuable things. The man pushed him down, and he took the screwdriver, and he cut my grandpa's throat from one ear to the other almost. His whole throat was cut.
Luckily, my grandfather didn't die, and he was actually able to call my parents. He called our house, and my sister was on the line with her boyfriend, but we had call waiting at the time, thank goodness. So she clicked over, and it was my grandpa, and my parents kept him on the phone until the ambulance could come.
Then they went to meet him at the hospital. My brother Danny also went to meet him at the hospital. As my grandfather was recovering, he actually got a visit from not one but two bishops in the area.
I'm not sure if they were there visiting other people, or if they went there just to see my grandpa. Although I do know my grandpa helped out a lot at the church. When the doctors were examining my grandpa, they said that his neck healed faster than they had ever seen before.
They didn't expect him to recover as quickly as he did. I was in seventh or eighth grade at the time, so I'm not sure how long he was in there. It probably felt like forever for me because he's my grandpa and he was in the hospital.
I did go to visit him once while he was in there, and it was scary for me because it looked like he had staples in his neck. I don't know, it could have just been stitches. But for me, as a kid, it reminded me of Frankenstein, and it was a little scary, especially since it was my grandpa. I wanted to witness about how quickly he healed, and the doctor said it was miraculous because it should have taken him much longer.
Then, when I was out for my run this morning, I felt like God was telling me to witness about my Encounter Ministries class. I know I have talked about it on here, and you can go back and look. I testified about an Encounter Ministries healing session we did.
At least one. I think I might have witnessed about two. But today I just want to tell you how great the program is in general, and I also want to talk about inner healing in particular.
The program itself is really good. The first quarter is all about identity, and so it teaches us who we are as children of God. Who we are in God's eyes, in the eyes, and spends eight weeks reinforcing our identity as Christ's children.
Then, the next eight weeks, we spent listening to God's voice and hearing words of prophecy, words of knowledge, and words of wisdom, hearing blessings, and then being able to share those with other people and those blessings to bless others.
After that, the next eight weeks we spent on physical healing, and we got to pray over people with physical ailments and see them healed. We got to see them feeling better, and it was so amazing.
One testimony about this quarter was that we had a priest who was taking the class with us. He had one leg slightly shorter than the other, so he had to wear a lift in one shoe. However, at the end of each class, we do activations where we put into practice everything we have learned. That day, we learned that it was possible to pray for people with uneven legs, and that God can grow their legs to be the same length. We saw a video of this happening at a healing event in Mexico. My classmates prayed over the priest, and his leg grew out. He no longer needed a lift in his shoe! God is so good!
And then the last eight weeks were on inner healing, and those eight weeks were the most transformative for many students, because as we went through and learned about the various exercises, we also got to practice them on each other, and so we got to experience that inner healing. And inner healing is all about freedom. God doesn't want things weighing on you.
He doesn't want us to close our hearts off and not let anyone in, just so we don't get hurt again. He doesn't want our past trauma and our past wounds to affect our future. He doesn't want depression and anxiety weighing down on us and making us miserable.
God wants us to be free, and he wants to help us become free. When we're in a difficult situation, as we're growing up, things happen, and then we form a lie about that thing. We tell ourselves something that's not true, and then it informs every decision after that. Many times, we don’t realize we have formed a lie. We didn’t consciously do it, and we don’t know it is there, but it informs all our decisions.
During an inner healing session, you talk about what has happened in your past. You ask God to bring up any memories that need healing. You ask God to show you any lies that you might have developed over the years, and then you renounce those lies, and then you ask God to replace those lies with truth, and then you declare those truths.
We just had an inner healing practicum, and several people said after their session that they felt so much lighter. They said they literally felt a weight lifted off of them. They felt lighter, and they felt freer, and I just want to offer to all of you listening, this is available to you, too.
If you need prayers for physical healing or for inner healing, reach out to me. I'm happy to pray with you, and if you know me really well and you want to pray with someone you don't know well, I'm happy to point you to one of my fellow students. Everybody in the class wants to help people be free.
We want to share what we've learned with everyone we know because we want everyone to be able to live the life God intended for them, free. I'm going to be talking more about the Encounter Ministries class and the physical healing and the inner healing and all the things we've learned in the class over the year more on my Facebook page because I feel like the Holy Spirit's prompting me to share more about the class and about what we've learned and about the freedom that people can have if you're not already following me on Facebook and you want to learn more about Encounter Ministries. Also on Facebook, you can look up the Encounter School of Ministry Boston campus to see all the cool things they're doing, and if you're local, you can go to some of the events they're hosting.
Okay, that's it for my witness this week. I just want to ask again if anyone would like to give a witness. Please let me know. I know that everybody really loves listening on Wednesdays because they get to hear from other people, not just me, and because they get to see the cool things God's doing in other people's lives.
So please share your witnesses. Love you all!