The following testimony was passed on by my Pastor. It is from the doctor who performed emergency surgery on my Pastor's wife, Mary Gaye, after she gave birth to their daughter. Though this happened 21 years ago, it still speaks volumes today of how great our God is. Pastor Freddie and Mary Gaye are a great ministry team, their different talents but same Spirit complement each other well in serving the church and God. This testimony proves God had a plan, not just for their lives, but for their doctor's as well. Hope you enjoy:
I was newly and happily remarried. My medical practice was healthy and growing and very satisfying to me. I really had no sense of need, no sense of sin, and while I believed that there might be a God, He certainly didn't seem to have a whole lot to do with me.
There were, of course, some problems in my life. My teen age daughter and I had something of a strained relationship at times, but I felt that I was making an adequate effort to be a good father.
One day as I was taking care of a patient who had just delivered a baby, a dramatic thing happened. The patient, a woman who had just given birth to her first child, began to bleed very heavily. This post partum hemorrhage is not in itself unusual, but the degree and severity of her bleeding was. After going through a series of treatments, manuevers and surgeries, it became quite clear that she might die. During this time she and her husband displayed remarkable faith and calmness. As this young woman recovered from her ordeal, first in ICU and later in a regular hospital room, it became apparent to me that she and her husband were Christians. Because of the strength of their faith, I started reading the Bible.
Over a period of several months I began to read the Bible very intensively. I considered what had happened to the young woman to be something of a miracle, in the sense that I certainly recognized and felt God's hand in her ultimate survival and return to normal health. The special characteristics that I had witnessed in my patient was described very well for me in Psalm 34:
"Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame."
My main stumbling block in all this reading was the uncertainty that God did care enough to speak to us through the Bible, though I could clearly feel His presence in reading it. Coming across the following passage helped alot:
For God does speak, now one way, now another, though man may not perceive it.(Job 33)
This opened up a whole new way at looking at life and at the Bible for me and it was only shortly thereafter that while reading Romans chapter 10, I was able to say in prayer,
"I accept you, Lord Jesus, as the Son of God and believe that you died on the cross for my sins."
After this, things began to change rapidly in my life. A friend stepped in to help discipline me, using the Design for Discipleship Series by Navigators. Since turning away from what I now realize to have been a sinful life and my New Birth in Jesus Christ, God has worked in a powerful way to change my entire world view and approach to things.
I continue in my medical practice, though the way I look at it has radically transformed. My relationships with friends and most especially with my family have been dramatically renewed. My marriage, which was good, now became meaningful to me on a completely different plane, as I saw Jesus Christ working in my life and that of my wife. She, of Jewish descent, became a Christian a few months after me, also through studying the Word. We are involved in a church planting in Charlotte, North Carolina, seeking to establish a gospel preaching, Bible teaching church in a part of this city where we feel it's needed. The Holy Spirit, who led me to saying faith in Jesus Christ now fills my whole life, produced in me a desire to serve God and to know Him.
I love this testimony because it says alot, not just about us using our faith in difficult situations, but God using our faith to reach those around us who may be watching.
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