Egg-sized brain tumors didn’t kill him

The parents of Jason Ong assumed he would wind up in jail or dead because he was such a poorly behaved boy, fighting and often getting into trouble. But God had other plans and purposes for his life.

Jason met the one true living God when his dad was dying. By his father’s bedside, Jason prayed to nearly all the gods he had ever heard of and nothing happened.

But when he invoked the powerful name of Jesus, Dad opened his eyes.

“Later on, there’ll be somebody in white.” he told his dad while his eyes were open. “He will stretch out his hand, so you can just take his hand and follow him, and you’ll be safe.”

Jason didn’t know what he was saying, but his dad closed his eyes and passed peacefully. Later Jason realized he had spoken prophetically, and the Good Shepherd, Jesus, had opened heaven’s door to his father.

“Jesus, You know that You saved my dad, so I owe You my life,” he said.

Jason went to church. That’s where he met Judith, a divorced mom with a special needs daughter, Joelle.

“We somehow knew that we are supposed to be together, so we prayed about it,” Jason says.

Two years into his marriage, he began experiencing dizziness and pain in his head, so he went to the doctor. The prognosis: an extremely rare brain tumor. It was so rare that there were no drugs and no protocols for treatment.

“Suddenly everything just went to darkness,” he says.

The surgeon removed 90% of it, leaving the optic nerves and main artery with a vestige of the tumor so he could still see, eat and not die from a broken artery. It was 2004.

The doctor told Jason he had six months to live.

The news was discouraging, but Jason and Judith decided to make the best of it. They decided to dedicate 100% of their efforts towards the Lord’s service. They launched a street food vendor business, working 12 hours a day, with profits destined for orphanages around Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Myanmar and the Philippines. The proceeds from the business allowed them to contribute to the care of 600 kids.

After six months, Jason showed up to see the doctor. He was surprised to see Jason alive.

The title of Jason’s testimony video is “If Tomorrow Never Comes” on the Hope Singapore channel.

Jason outlived the six-month prognosis. In 2007, the cancer flared up again. His new doctor said it was absolutely necessary to remove all the affected areas, including the nerves to his mouth and eyes. He would be blind. He would feed through a tube. And devastatingly for Jason, he would not be able to speak.

Jason declined the surgery. He needed to speak because his life’s purpose was to preach in the orphanages to the children about the good news of Jesus. He would rather die than lose his ability to preach.

“So there wasn’t an option for me because I still have to continue in the ministry and I said, If I cannot speak, that means I cannot share the gospel, I cannot teach, I cannot preach. So what is the point?” he says.

The doctor was grim, telling him: You don’t need to come back. You’re going to die. The cancer will eventually cause your brain to explode.

He took pain medications and kept hawking food on the street. He kept visiting orphanages with his wife and preaching.

“My encouragement to all the Christians was, ‘Even though I’m going to die, I still choose to stand and say God is good. I still choose to say: Jesus is my Lord,’” he relates.

By 2013, Jason sensed he was going to die. For his “last” birthday, he asked his wife to visit the orphanage once last time.

By 2014, he was bedridden and partially paralyzed. “Jesus, I’m coming home,” he declared.

But one night, Jesus spoke to him in a dream: I’m moved by the tears of your wife. I’m going to heal you.

Days later, he called the doctor to reorder morphine for the pain, and the doctor, a Christian and a medical professor, told him to come in. He got new scans and proposed another surgery. He would save the eye nerve, the voice nerve and the artery. He believed God would help him.

“It’s so amazing that you are still able to talk and sitting in front of me because looking at the scan, it has now grown to the size of two eggs,” the doctor told him. “One in the brain and one outside the cranium. Technically, it is supposed to have pushed your brain out of the brain cavity already. Or you should just get a coma or stroke and die. The fact that you are still alive and talking to me is a miracle.”

When Jason woke up from the surgery, he felt intense pain, couldn’t see or breathe.

“After 10 years of fighting cancer, that was my lowest point,” he says. “I just felt so tired.”

“I think I’m not gonna make it,” he told Judith. “Release me. I wanna go home.” Read the rest: Healed from brain tumors.

Healed from fibromyalgia

To combat her painful fibromyalgia, Nancy Johnson tried meditation techniques from Eastern mysticism. It distracted her for a time from the skeletal-muscular pain but provided no lasting relief.

“I wаs оn this seаrсh,” Nancy told CBN. “What am I going tо dо?’ There’s sоmething emрty inside оf me. There’s а seаrсh fоr, Whо аm I? What am I? Аnd hоw соuld anybody love me? because I felt like such а failure аnd sо weak.”

At age 24 after delivering her first child, Nancy developed the mysterious disease, whose causes continue to elude medical science.

By age 40 after delivering their fourth child, Nancy essentially became a shut-in who, befuddled by exhaustion, couldn’t keep house or raise her kids.

“I felt so much shame about that,” she says. “I couldn’t be perfect for my kids or my husband.”

“Оne оf the dосtоrs sent me away with, ‘It’s all in your head,'” says Nancy. “And that was just devastating.” She felt hорeless, facing the grim reality she would have to live with her condition.

At the same time, she developed food allergies that depleted her body. At age 49, she had dwindled down to 82 pounds and was admitted to a trauma center with a temperature of 83 degrees, a hair’s distance from her organs shutting down.

“I very neаrly lоst her,” her husband Riсh told CBN. “Her bоdy hаd just deрleted. She was literally hours аwаy frоm her internal organs shutting down if we can’t get her stаbilized. I did some real soul searching that week.” Read the rest: healing from fibromyalgia.

Brian Birdwell’s flesh melted off after the jet struck the Pentagon

Christ and a Coke saved Brian Birdwell’s life.

Just moments before a terrorist-hijacked American Airlines plane slammed into the Pentagon where he worked, he had stepped away from his office – the precise impact zone — to use the bathroom because of an early morning Coke that filled his bladder.

“When you are 15 to 20 yards from an 80-ton jet coming through the building at 530 miles an hour with 3,000 gallons of jet fuel and you live to tell about it, it’s not because the United States Army made me the toughest guy in that building but because the toughest guy who ever walked this Earth 2000 years ago sits at the right hand of the Father had something else in mind.”

He was seven steps into returning from the bathroom when Flight 77 impacted the Pentagon at a 45 degree angle, the third of four coordinated terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The first two leveled the World Trade Center twin towers in New York. A fourth attack planned for the White House or the Capitol building was thwarted due to delays at takeoff. As passengers became aware of what was happening, they attacked and overpowered their hijackers, saving the White House; the plane crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

402136 05: Lt. Col Brian Birdwell who was injured at the Pentagon on September 11, attends a ceremony for the six month anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, March 11, 2002 at the White House, in Washington, DC. Ceremonies were held at the White House and the World Trade Center disaster site in remembrance of the victims of the attacks. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

“I was thrown around, tossed around inside like a rag doll, set ablaze,” Brian remembers on an I am Second video. “The black putrid smoke that I’m breathing in, the aerosolized jet fuel that I’m breathing in, the temperature of which is somewhere between 300 and 350 degrees.

“You could see the flesh hanging off my arms. My eyes are already beginning to swell closed. The front of my shirt is still intact. My access badge is melted by still hanging covered the black soot of scorched blood. The flame was consuming me and I expected to pass.”

Brian had no escape. He didn’t know which route to take out of the hallways he was intimately familiar with.

“I did what I was trained in the military to never do, which is to surrender,” he says. “I crossed over that line of the desire to live and the acceptance of my death recognizing that this was how the Lord was going to call me home.

“Jesus, I’m coming to see ya’,” he screamed loudly.

But as he lay expecting his spirit to leave his body and be welcomed into Heaven, he didn’t die. Read the rest: how Brian Birdwell survived 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

Padina found God in Islamic Iran when her mom had MS

Growing up in Iran, Padina memorized the Quran before she started school. She faithfully recited her prayers every day.

“I hated Christians and I became very happy when I found out that they were being persecuted. They always told us that if they killed a Christian, we had a one way ticket to heaven,” she told Hormoz Shariat, president of Iran Alive Ministries.

She was fastidious about applying the Quran to her life. If she forgot the ceremonial washing before prayer, she would stop mid-prayer, go back and wash correctly and start all over again.

“I was a very strong Islamic believer,” she affirmed.

But all her religious piety was in vain. She grew depressed to the point of wanting to commit suicide.

“I felt so distant from Allah,” she confided to Hormoz.

Meanwhile, her mother, afflicted by multiple sclerosis, grew deathly ill.

Padina confided to her mother about her suicidal tendencies. Instead of discouraging her, she shocked Padina by asking her to kill her also — a double suicide!

“I will do this for you, and we will both die,” she told her.

But then one day, mom in her deathbed tuned in to the satellite broadcast of Hormoz Shariat, who has been called the “Billy Graham of Iran.”

“If you are hopeless, if you are oppressed, if you are planning to commit suicide, the Lord says, ‘Stop.’ He has a hope and a future for you,” Hormoz said on the broadcast. “If you’re planning to kill yourself, stop and call me right now.”

Padina’s mother was so desperate that she didn’t care that Islam punishes with death those who convert to Christianity. She didn’t care that the Koran dooms all “apostates” to hell. She didn’t care, so she dialed.

After conversing for half an hour with Hormoz, she repented of her sins and received Jesus into her heart with the prayer of faith.

Meanwhile, her daughter was watching from the kitchen with alarm. Read the rest of how Christianity revival in Iran.

The four answers to prayer

1. Slow. Confused for a “no,” but God is working on something first before giving the answer.

2. Go. The answer is yes. Do all your part now.

3. No. You don’t want to twist God’s arm into granting you something that you want but He knows is not truly good for you.

4. Grow. Also confused for a “no,” but God first must mature you for the blessing. You wouldn’t be able to sustain the blessing yet.

Praying is like giving birth to something in our lives. But we ought to recognize that prayer, more often than not, is NOT instantaneous. We need to develop maturity to recognize these four answers to prayer.

God still heals…

bodies, hearts, minds, souls

Healed from cancer in Santa Monica

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, Lori Ayala was first horrified.

Then she gathered her courage and faced it with faith. She did surgery and treatments — and she prayed and strengthened herself in her faith in the church. She didn’t waver, even when it recurred a year later.

Lori Ayala, healed of cancer, with some of the kids she cares for.

“I wasn’t afraid because I knew God had healed me,” said the 51-year-old director of the Lighthouse Christian Preschool in Santa Monica. “I don’t know why God wanted me to go through this. It wasn’t an immediate victory.”

I remember coming back from Guatemala for a break from missionary work one year and talking with Lori. She was laughing about how wonderful it was to have cancer because everybody in the church cooked meals for her. Her attitude made a profound impression on me.

Today, Lori is a source of joy at the Lighthouse Christian Preschool. And she is a great testimony of how to not cow in fear before the C-word.

With her husband, who has stayed by her side through thick and thin.

For the hundreds of people like her facing daunting disease and pain, the Lighthouse Church is staging a healing crusade at the John Adams Middle School in Santa Monica at 7:00 p.m. this Saturday. It’s free. In past healing crusades, notable miracles have been performed. Why not give it a try?

How to pray? Surgery and Rehab

How to pray? Bible prayers

Rob’s teammate came to visit him.

Is there life after death? Definitely. Is there life BEFORE coffee? Hardly.

LOL! Last week I spent the night in the hospital with my son. He got operated on his torn ACL, a soccer injury. The doctor harvested from his hamstring to reconstruct the ligament. The next day, he was in pain, I was groping for coffee.

Through the pain of injury… through the pain of life… we must seek healing. Prayer heals the spiritual and emotional hurts.

Robert is facing six months of rehabilitation before jumping onto the pitch again for Santa Monica United U16 blue.

After the operation

Excuse the pun, but we live in a fallen world. They get injured — both physically and spiritually. Prayer is a spiritual surgery to reconstruct after the damage is done. Continued prayer is the rehabilitation that brings you back to striking strength.

And coffee? Coffee is good for morning prayer. Otherwise, I would be mumbling incoherent drowsiness instead of caffeine-invigorated, forceful, pressing prayers.

 

It’s the same God

from soumyav

Commander Joshua receives his marching orders from God: As I was with Moses, so I will be with you — Josh 1:5 NIV. You’ll have no less success, God says, because I’ll be with you in no less measure.

That promise is for us, New Testament habitation of the Holy Spirit. God is with us. Our lives testify to the same outpouring as the Biblical heroes, the same kinds of miracles. It’s an error to think “that was then, and this is now.” The book of Acts does not end with the word “amen,” unlike most other New Testament books; this signifies that the “acts” of the Holy Spirit continue in and through us.

God offers no less for us than for them. Our only limitation is our own lack of faith. He responds to faith and is shocked by lack of faith. When you pray — whether it be for health, deliverance or finances — realize He is with you in the same way He was with Moses and Joshua.

Choose today faith

In Joshua’s day, it was a choice between Baal or Jehovah. In our day, it is a choice between doubt or belief.

Step up in your faith!

But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then CHOOSE  for yourselves THIS DAY whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. — Josh. 24:15 NIV my caps.

If you doubt, the hordes of naysayers will applaud you and show you the path of reckless abandon. If you believe, it will be a lonely, hard, uphill road.

The results of doubt are disaster. The much-admired atheist Frederick Nietzsche died insane (brought on by syphilis?), fighting against a carriage driver who was whipping his horses. A tree is recognized by its fruit — Matt. 12:33b NIV.

Aside from total doubt (atheist, agnostic) there is partial doubt. This is the “believer” who does not believe for healing or for answers to prayers. This is a midroader, neither an unbeliever, nor a total, radical, Bible-believing Christian. I find myself constantly trying to wrestle my way out of this quandary.

The addict struggles to believe he can be free. The failure struggles to believe he can be a success. The sick struggles to believe for healing. The pioneer pastor struggles to believe for people and finances. Write your circumstance here: ____________ struggles to believe.

Belief is a daily choice. It requires effort. To not believe, requires no effort. That’s why prayer and Bible-reading in the morning is such a good idea: it fills you with faith. Choose to believe today.

Christians are the bad guys now

This is me! I’m with Andres in Guatemala. (From some people’s reaction, you’d think I were Ben Ladin’s successor!)

Whoa! That was creepy!

I was handing out invitations at a park to our Miracle Healing Crusade. Somebody cut me with biting words: “I don’t believe in that nonsense! You’d better not hand those out to the kids. Mine are playing here.” (I wasn’t giving them to kids.)

From his harshness,

Let’s protect our children (from the “evils” of Christianity?)

you’d think I was passing out the first hit. For corruption of minors, I would soon be arrested. The First Amendment had been suspended. The reaction of some makes you feel like Mara Salvatrucha. “Steer clear of that man, Johnny! That’s a bad man!”

Has American come to this?

(Admittedly, Santa Monica and West L.A. are extremely liberal and anti-God.) It used to be that the

Maybe what people don’t like is that Christianity is a straight and narrow path. Photos thanks to First Touch Earth.

Christians were the good people on earth! Now, are we the evil ones?

My pastor was healed of leukemia a few years back. If you don’t think we’re the scum of the earth, you’re welcome to come to the Santa Monica Civic Center at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Nov.10. It’s worth a shot, especially if you’re terminal or chronic. The “nonsense” might work. You’d be surprised.

If you think we’re Hitler, forgive us.

You’re not disqualified

Intriguingly, Jesus employs racism to make a point. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast [it] unto the dogs. — Mark 7:27 KJV.

He addresses a Syrophenician who requests freedom and healing for her demon-possessed daughter. A lot of people miss the subtleties of the Bible. When Jesus offered living water to the Samaritan woman (John 4), at least she was half Jewish. But the Syrophenician is completely gentile, utterly excluded from the kingdom of God (under the old scheme of things). The Jews called them “dogs,” and Jesus testing her faith employs the same ugly, unacceptable term.

In other words, He says, “Don’t you know you’re supposedly disqualified from a miracle?” Whether it was hyper optimism or simply desperation, this lady would not be discouraged and the word “disqualified” was not in her lexicon.

Ok, she says, I don’t care if you insult me. Call me a dog, but even the dogs get crumbs from the table. Jesus’ subsequent reaction dispels the notion He’s a racist: “For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.” — Mark 7:29 KJV.29

It’s necessary to understand you’re not disqualified from receiving a miracle. That is faith. When you pray, banish from your mind that you are disqualified from receiving a miracle. A lot of preachers try to put requirements on a miracle. They’re trying to explain why some people don’t receive a miracle. I say, Let’s get rid of the requirements and bolster people’s faith.