Answers to Prayer

Chapter 9

A FLOOD OF HEALING GRACE

It is a medical miracle that I am still alive today.

My most recent brush with death began one Saturday night as I prepared to retire for the evening about 10:30 p.m. Going to the bathroom, I suddenly found myself passing blood. Instantly I called my wife, Hilda. Although surprised at the sight of all that blood, she is a nurse and managed to remain calm. Opening a closet door, she grabbed a disposable diaper from a box that we kept on hand for our little granddaughter. Then she rushed me to the emergency room of one of the three hospitals of the Triple Cities area of southern New York.

Because I am on a blood thinner as a result of a heart condition, the emergency room physician was not able to stop the bleeding until 2:00 Sunday morning. Then I had to wait until the results from my lab work came back.

An orderly escorted me back from the lab to a small room. Pointing to a high, wheeled table, he said, "Please wait here, and the doctor will be with you shortly." About 15 minutes later the orderly returned and found me still standing there. "Oh! Mr. Morneau, you should be sitting down. Please wait, and I'll be right back." Seconds later he brought a footstool about 10 inches in height, placed it by my feet, and hurried out.

"That's an awfully small thing to sit on," I said to myself, "but it beats standing up." Making myself as comfortable on it as possible, I sat with my back against the frame of the table and my feet stretched out horizontally. Another 15 minutes passed. Then a nurse appeared holding a syringe with a long needle. "Hi! How are you doing down there?" she said, looking at me. "Sir, you should have used the footstool to step up and sit on the table.

Realizing how foolish I must have looked, I burst out laughing. The nurse gave me the injection, then departed with a smile, probably unable to wait to tell her colleagues about her befuddled patient.

A week later I received a phone call from a specialist in urology named Dr. Wise. He had gone over my test results and asked me to see him in his office the next day.

When I arrived at his office, he told me with the utmost tact and concern that I had cancer of the prostate. A large tumor had been the cause of my great loss of blood. The cancer had progressed beyond the point where it could be treated with chemotherapy. The only option left was surgery. After discussing my heart condition, he said he would consult with Dr. Smart, my cardiologist, about the risks of me undergoing surgery.

As I have mentioned earlier, I had almost died in the intensive care unit of the Greater Niagara General Hospital back in December of 1984. Tests later revealed that a virus had destroyed a large part of my heart, leaving me disabled with cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle. Dr. Smart then told my wife that he did not expect me to live longer than a few months, a fact that I did not learn until about a year ago.

In such cases the heart usually disintegrates until it kills the patient. In my case the heart tissue instead turned into a hard substance that I can compare only to leather. But with 60 percent of my heart destroyed and my blood constantly thinned to prevent clotting, I was a very poor candidate for any kind of surgery.

About 9:00 that evening the phone rang. To my surprise, it was Dr. Smart. He told me that he had spoken to the urologist about my having surgery and wanted to make sure that I understood the great risk I would be taking with my heart in such a weak condition. In fact, he believed that it was possible that I might not make it through the operation.

Hilda and I had a long conversation about what we should do; then we prayed for God to help us make an intelligent decision. That night I didn't sleep much as I considered my possible death. Yet as I looked back over my life I felt comforted by how the Lord had repeatedly intervened through the years.

Constantly God had wiped away tears, soothed pain, removed anxiety, dispelled fear, supplied wants, and bestowed unending blessings. As I thought about what He had already done in my life, my faith strengthened, and I asked myself, "Why am I thinking about dying when I serve the living God, the Lord of glory in whom dwelled 'the Spirit of life' [Romans 8:2]?"

Verses of Scripture began to fill my mind. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust" (Psalm 103:13, 14). "By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist" (Colossians 1:16, 17). "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power" (Colossians 2:9, 10).
Then my heart thrilled with a joy born of heaven as I considered Matthew 4:23, 24: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them."

Encouraged and comforted, I began to pray. "Precious Jesus, You are my strength and my Redeemer. As I look to the Holy of Holies of the heavenly sanctuary where You are ministering in behalf of fallen humanity, I thank You for leaving the courts of glory to come to this land of the enemy. Your blood, shed on the cross, has washed away all my iniquities and my sins, the errors of my ways, and the evil of my fallen human heart. And for all the mercies of Thy love, and the blessings of Thy grace, I thank Thee, Lord, from the bottom of my heart.

"As You are well aware, my human capacities are at a low ebb. Death and him that had the power of death, that is, the devil' [Hebrews 2:14] approach to carry me to the grave. But I refuse to believe that it is my time for death.

"Five years ago You delivered me from death in the hospital. At that time You led me into a special prayer ministry, and I have seen You bless great numbers of people in response to my intercessions on their behalf. I do not believe that You want this work of mine to close at this time.

"You know, Lord, that I am not afraid to die. It is just that I enjoy praying for others so very much, and I see myself as a door opener. One who rushes from prison to prison asking You to release spiritual captives bound in shackles of sin. "Now, Lord, I am not trying to tell You what to do or how to do it. But as I see it, in 10 days I am scheduled to have surgery. If it is Your will, let Your great power of life permeate my being so that when the surgeon operates he will find no tumor or cancer present.
"Lord, I have so many individuals to pray for that I feel that I must not waste my time praying for myself. I will not speak again of my own physical needs. Instead my prayer is only May Thy will be done in my life, to the glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.'" And with that prayer I rested in His love and grace.

On the day of my surgery the orderlies wheeled me into an operating room equipped with the most up-to-date surgical apparatus. Everything shone with a brilliance that spoke of cleanliness and care.

Five hours later I found myself back in my room and feeling fine. Sometime later Dr. Wise came in to see how I was doing. He informed me that he had not found any trace of a tumor. Also, he seemed surprised when I told him that I felt no pain. The patient in the bed next to me had had the same kind of surgery, and he needed injections every so often to relieve the suffering.
The removed tissue went to two different labs to be checked for signs of cancer. Four days later I left the hospital feeling tine and praising God for His great goodness toward me. Another three days went by, and I went to Dr. Wise's office to find out the results of the tests. When I entered, he was all smiles and excited. "No traces of cancer have been found," he reported, then explained how fortunate I was in light of the earlier tests.

Thanking him, I reminded him that after the first tests I had requested to know exactly how critical my situation was. I had wanted to know my condition, I explained, so I would know how I needed to pray. "Now I thank you for being honest with me, and most of all I thank God for doing what was humanly impossible."
 
Shocking News

About six months later I received a call from California. It was Cyril Grosse, the man who had led me from spirit worship to Christ. After we had chatted a few minutes, he mentioned that he had some bad news to tell me.

"This may shock you," he said, “but according to my doctor I have only about six months to live. The biopsies have revealed that I have advanced prostate cancer. It has spread to adjoining organs, including the lymph nodes. The doctor says that he will have to do drastic surgery as well as radiation treatments. It may even involve castration."

While the news was bad, it did not throw me into a state of despondency. After all, I had passed through a similar situation only a few months before. God had brought me through it, and I believed that He would do the same for my close friend.

I suggested that he try to postpone the surgery for about three weeks and use the time to enlist the prayers of people he knew to be men and women of strong faith. Of course I added that Hilda and I would also pray for him.

Cyril liked my suggestion, and the doctor went along with his request for a short delay in the surgery. At the end of the three weeks the specialist ran tests that showed a definite improvement in my friend's condition. He told Cyril to return in another three weeks. To the doctor's surprise, the next set of tests showed that a number of the smaller tumors had vanished, and the cancer was in remission.

Every three months Cyril went to the specialist. In October the doctor suggested that the enlarged prostate should be removed in order to restore normal urinary function. The operation was a success, and laboratory analysis revealed only a tiny trace of the cancer remaining in the center of the organ.

Subsequent examinations have shown Cyril to be free of cancer, and my friend is back teaching in his classroom.

A Call for Help

One of my brothers, Edmond, lived in Ottawa. Shortly after my first book on intercessory prayer came off the press, he bought more than 50 copies and sent them to relatives and friends. One copy went to his ex-wife, who lived in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Impressed by the stories of how God had responded to prayer, she phoned Edmond and asked if he would be willing to contact me and request that I pray about a bone disease that was progressively crippling her.

She had suffered from the painful condition for a number of years. At first a bone deformity had appeared between her ankle and heel, creating a lump that had enlarged to the point that she could no longer wear a shoe. It had also become so painful that she couldn't put any weight on her foot, and had to use crutches.

When the pain became so severe that even powerful medications could no longer block it, the doctors began seriously thinking of amputating her foot. But shortly after I began praying for her, the pain diminished and in a few days vanished completely. The lump began to shrink, and before long she could wear a shoe again.

Since then she has been able to shop and do other activities that people had once been doing for her. She has especially appreciated being able to visit some of her children living in northern Ontario.