Quadriplegic is Healed by Prayer
Pastor Roger Rickman, member of the Society for the Cure of Souls, shares this miracle report.
I believe the best miracles are the ones that create the greatest amount
of love.
As a pastor, each Friday evening, members of my congregation and I would visit a place called New Hope in Tracy, California. It was a convalescent home, and its residents were elderly, except for one younger man.
His name was Gabriel. For 12 years, he had been confined to a wheelchair. Because he was quadriplegic, he could not move his arms and legs. His head would hang down and occasionally swing from side to side or tilt forward and back. His face was a mass of scar tissue that looked like a puzzle someone had tried to piece together.
We first met Gabriel about two years ago. At the home, we would sing some songs, give a very short sermon, and then pray for each of the residents while laying our hands on them and loving them.
Seeing Gabriel would make me cry very hard. You know, the kind of crying that just makes you shake inside and out. My heart totally went out to him, and our prayers were from the heart.
I asked the attendants what had happened to him and how long he had been there, but none of them had been at the home as long as Gabriel. We all placed our hands upon Gabriel and cried out to God to heal him and make him well. I remember wrapping my arms around his head and kissing his scars, my tears running down my face and dropping onto his as I cried and pleaded to God to help this boy, to truly heal him in Jesus’ name. “Show these people here that You are real!” I prayed.
Every Friday, week after week and month after month, we prayed extra hard for Gabriel. And then, one Friday evening he smiled and made a funny clicking sound that he hadn’t made before. His head was staying in an upright position! We prayed harder and longer.
Several weeks went by before we saw Gabriel again. This time, he slowly raised his left hand, then wrist, then forearm, then his whole arm, slowly up, up, and up until it was high in the air with his finger actually pointing upward. With a beautiful smile on his face, he said in a voice just clear enough that you could not misunderstand him, “Jesus!”
We ran to him, loved him, wrapped our arms around him, and said,“Yes, yes, Jesus!” We were kissing his head and his scars and crying, laughing, and praising God because God had let us feel just a little bit of the wonder of heaven in Gabriel.
Gabriel continued to get better. Soon he could move both of his arms and move his legs a little. Once when he did not show up for our Friday sermon, we went searching for him in the home and found him pushing another man in a wheelchair and telling him, “You must meet Jesus!” He was evangelizing!
Several weeks went by before Gabriel spoke to me. He finally revealed how he had ended up at the home. He said in words that he was just learning how to speak, “I got hurt real bad when I was young. I was playing on my tricycle, and a car ran over my head, and they had to put my brains back into my head, and I hurt real bad, and I couldn’t do anything. But Jesus healed me, and now I’m OK. Jesus healed me.”
For the next two months, we were not able to visit New Hope because some of us got colds or the flu, some were traveling, and other events came up. When we finally got back to New Hope, Gabriel was no longer there. We asked the staff where he was, and they told us his family had come and taken him home because with the help of his family he could take care of himself.
We haven’t gone back to New Hope since Gabriel left. Somewhere out there, Gabriel is smiling.
