This is a story I have never told anyone in my life.
There’s a specific reason why I kept it to myself, and I’ll explain that towards the end. But what I’m about to share is a true story with zero exaggerations.
A Little About Me First
The people who know me closely will tell you that I’m an emotional guy, but also that I’m extremely logical about what I’m emotional about. I love hard when I love. I give up when all hope is lost. But I also rise up strong when hope is found. My feelings, though they oscillate a lot, tend to be steady underneath. I know what I’m feeling and why. No emotion goes unnamed.
I had to set that premise up, in case anyone thinks what follows was an emotional reaction or a mental breakdown. Trust me, I would know if I was having one. This wasn’t that.
The Suffering I Couldn’t Shake
This happened sometime in 2017. I was fairly new to the faith. I had received Jesus into my heart, but despite coming to Him, I was struggling with severe cystic acne. Not the “aw, he’s got a few pimples” kind. This was the nasty, ugly kind, where it looked like you had a mini golf ball under your skin. It was unbearably painful. I had to take painkillers just to sleep at night. The pimples were everywhere: my face, my back, and mostly my head, which made sleeping almost impossible.
I had asked the Lord to heal me many times. Accutane did nothing, and God seemed silent. You can imagine what that does to someone new to the faith. Asking God for healing and receiving nothing. It was disheartening.
The Phone Call
Then, on a random Thursday night, I got a call from an elder at my church, Brother Binoy, someone whom I consider to be like a father figure in my life. He called to ask if he could pray for me, specifically for healing from the severe acne on my head.
His sudden, unexpected call struck me as odd. I suspected my mom might have had a hand in it, but I said yes.
He prayed for a long time, and then said one thing before hanging up:
“Please go to your room and thank Jesus for healing you.”
My immediate thought was: Why am I thanking Jesus for healing me? I can literally feel the painful cystic acne on my face and head right now. If I try turning my head to the left, I can feel the immense pain.
It seemed hypocritical. It also insulted my intelligence. But something moved within me, and so, I obeyed.
I didn’t say a word to my mom, who was in the living room. I closed the door to my bedroom, turned off the lights, and knelt down to pray.
I said, in a very casual tone: “Ok, Jesus, Brother Binoy just prayed for me. I just wanted to say thank you for healing me.“
And almost as a joke, half-sarcastically raising my hand as if to say, hey, look, I’m thanking you for something that’s still there, I put my hand on my head…
I was shocked.
Gone. Everything on my head was completely gone. No pain, no discomfort, no pimples.
I had been completely healed, and I couldn’t believe it. I’d never experienced anything like this before. I kept saying out loud: This can’t be real. This is not possible. I’m imagining this.
I was repeating these words of doubt, over and over, and that’s when it happened.
The Presence
I went completely numb almost instantaneously, and fell hard to the ground to my left side.
When I came to my senses, I realised that I was paralysed from the neck down and could only shout and scream.
My mother was literally four feet away from me, on the other side of the door. She only needed to open it and she would have seen me. There was absolutely no way on earth she couldn’t have heard me screaming. I was shouting for her at the top of my lungs. And the more I screamed, the more I waited — expecting her to come.
Nobody came.
I stopped screaming. It was then that I noticed I was bawling my eyes out, crying because I couldn’t move my fingers or my legs. Natural reaction to being suddenly paralysed, I think.
The room was still dark. I knew I needed to get some help. So after a few minutes, I began to get some feeling back in my lower body. I began to crawl, but instead of crawling toward the door, something compelled me to crawl in the other direction, toward the middle of the room, to the foot of my bed.
One inch at a time, and by the time I moved a couple of feet, all while crying and shaking, that’s when I felt something surreal.
There was a presence above me.
The best way I can describe it is like this: I felt more loved than I had ever felt in my entire life, and at the exact same time, I had never felt more afraid.
And it wasn’t fear like being scared of a demon or a ghost. More like trembling at the overwhelming power of this presence. Something more powerful than anything I had ever encountered in my entire life, and I couldn’t even bring myself to look up. I tried, I could feel Him, but the weight of this power overwhelmed me and I had no other option but to keep my head down.
And again, all while this was happening, I felt more loved, more content, more complete, more at peace, than I ever had been in my whole life. Like all the trouble in the world had suddenly disappeared. And nothing could ever hurt or bother me again.
It’s a sense of happiness I have never experienced before or since that day.
What He Said
After a few minutes, this presence put a thought in my mind. I know that sounds strange, but that’s exactly what happened.
It was about my doubting. I had just been healed and then doubted the healing the moment it happened. This presence was before me, reminding me that He was the one who healed me.
The presence didn’t speak audibly, exactly. But He didn’t need to. It was loud enough for every part of my soul to understand.
He wasn’t angry. He was almost concerned. Grieved.
Why did you doubt?
That’s all He wanted to say to me.
Why I Never Told Anyone
This is the reason I kept the story to myself.
I had just been healed from something I had carried through high school and into adulthood. And my first response was to doubt.
This isn’t a happy ending story. It actually got worse. This is a story of failure and shortcoming.
For the next few minutes, all I remembered doing was begging for forgiveness. I said, I’m sorry, please forgive me. And while I was still saying sorry, the presence left.
I immediately got feeling back in my hands and feet, stood up, and after a long silence, I said out loud: “What on earth was that?“
Then, still doubting, even after everything I had just experienced, I went straight to the bathroom to check my face in the mirror.
I looked like a mess. Bloodshot eyes. Snot everywhere.
And the pimples were back.
Not as bad as before, there had been a healing, but it wasn’t complete like before. I won’t pretend to fully understand why.
Part of the reason why I didn’t share this even in Christian circles was because I didn’t get a full healing. And I felt like I’d be putting God in a bad light if I said the whole truth. So I had another reason to hide this.
But I’ve read about why Jesus healed a blind man in two stages in Mark 8, and I don’t believe it was His lack of power.
But I do believe it was because of my lack of faith.
Still, at that point, I felt lucky just to have my soul intact after what I had experienced. Whether I was completely healed or partially healed didn’t matter at all.
I was in the presence of God.
When I came out of my room, the first thing I asked my mother was:
“Why didn’t you come when I called you?“
She looked at me, confused. “What do you mean? When did you call me?“
I asked again, insisting. I told her to stop joking around. “I was shouting and screaming, why didn’t you come?“
When I saw her starting to worry, I just said, “It’s fine, forget it.“
Nobody in my house had heard me scream. It was almost as if God had silenced the noise I was making with His presence.
And I never brought it up again, not to my mom, not to Brother Binoy, not to anyone.
So Why Am I Telling You This Now?
This happened right at the beginning of my walk with Jesus. There’s a reason why I buried this memory so far deep, I had almost forgotten it.
A supernatural experience like this should be more than enough to set any man or woman straight for life. I’ve heard people say, “Let God Himself come and speak to me, and then I’ll believe your sky daddy is real.”
Dear reader, I was in the presence of God for a good 30 to 45 minutes.
And guess what I did a few days later? I fell into sin. Cut to a couple months later, I started university and did some of the worst things imaginable. Tried drugs, got into relationships I shouldn’t have, and neglected God entirely for years, until I found my way back to Him in Toronto.
The point of me sharing this is to say that no amount of proof is enough to change a person.
Knowing God exists is not an intellectual decision. It’s something profound that happens in your heart, it comes like the wind. You don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. But when it does come, your world is never the same again. (John 3:8)
Have I since come back to the Lord, stronger? Yeah, I could say that, humbly. Not because of anything I did, but because of His grace. He chases after me, despite all my past choices.
I might still fall tomorrow. But He never fails.
Even after a surreal, undeniable encounter with Jesus, I still sinned.
But so did so many others before me. Moses sinned after parting a sea in half. Peter denied Jesus, after witnessing the raising of Lazarus from the dead, after watching thousands be fed with just a few loaves and fish, after witnessing hundreds of miracles sitting and walking with the Son of God Himself.
So if you’re waiting for a supernatural miracle before you start believing, in my most humble opinion, stop waiting.
Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed. Those were Jesus’ own words to Thomas, who said he would only believe if he could touch the nail-pierced hands of Jesus after His resurrection.
One Last Thing
Oh, and PS — the pimples are gone now. He healed me not too long after that.
They still come and go. But it’s never been as bad as it once was.
And do I need the healing to be complete? No. Because He is complete, and so am I.
I still wonder what my life would have been like if I didn’t doubt. Would I have made the same mistakes? I don’t know.
But I know that I don’t need to feel or think to have a relationship with Him.
Because He is, I am.