Sid: Hello, Sid Roth here with Ben Godwin. Ben was in an accident. A car, in his blind spot, hit Ben who was riding on a bicycle. Three inches of his leg bone is now on the ground. The worst, he could lose his leg. The best, they do bone grafts and he would walk with a limp the rest of his life. He’s in a wheelchair now, but he believes in miracles. In fact, when you were in the hospital, your parents constantly read scriptures about healing.
Ben: That’s right. They surrounded me with an atmosphere of faith, and they went through the Bible. They selected miracle stories and scriptures pertaining to healing, and they read them audibly to me on a daily basis.
Sid: So you’re at a congregational meeting, and your mother has a vision. Explain.
Ben: That’s right. One of the elders in our church felt led to pray for me, so he began to pray for me. While he did, my mother saw a vision of a x-ray. It was an x-ray like we had seen many times, showing the three inch gap of missing bone in my leg. In the vision, suddenly she saw a milky thread-like substance span the two tips of the bones. Then suddenly it began to fill in until it was solid bone. Again, that was another confirmation to her that God was going to do something supernatural.
Sid Roth: There was one meeting where there was such an amazing presence of God, it was tangible. It affected people. Describe that meeting. I wish I’d been at that meeting.
Ben: That occurred at my pastor’s home. She was, at that time, a 79 year old woman. When she started that prayer meeting years before, she had seen people kneeling all over her living room and Jesus walking among them, touching and blessing them. Well, this was that kind of night. It started off as a normal prayer meeting would, and then suddenly the atmosphere changed. I was keenly aware, as an 8 year old, I’d just turned 8, that something had changed. It began to manifest, because my pastor, who would never ordinarily do something like this, fell out of the chair she always sat in and literally crawled on her hands and knees across the floor to where I was sitting.
Sid Roth: Why did she crawl on her hands and knees?
Ben: She was just overwhelmed with the Spirit of God.
Sid: In the Jewish scriptures, it says the Spirit of God was so strong in the temple that people could not stand.That’s what it sounds like to me.
Ben: I believe it was a similar experience. She was praying, she was weeping. She sat down right at my cast. I was on a sofa. She sat down, laid her hands on my cast, and she began to pray. I’ll never forget, I distinctly heard these words in her prayer, “A new bone for Ben, God. Honor Thy word with a new bone in this leg.” She continued praying a few minutes. When she prayed, I don’t know how else to describe it, I felt something move inside of my cast. On the way home that night, I told my parents. I was in the back seat of the car. I told them “When pastor prayed for me, I felt something move inside my cast.” Of course we believed God had intervened, but we needed medical confirmation.
Sid: So you knew that you had a new bone, your parents knew that you had a new bone, your whole congregation knew that you had a new bone, but your leg was I guess still in a cast?
Ben: Yes.
Sid: So you go to the doctor. What happens?
Ben: It was 27 days from that day of the prayer meeting we went back to the doctor. We had skipped a couple of appointments, because my mom felt directed to do something rather unusual. She changed doctors right in the middle of this crisis.
Sid: Why? You don’t normally change doctors.
Ben: The first orthopedic surgeon, he’s to be credited with saving my leg and the surgery he did, but he was a profane unbeliever, he used profanity in his language, and he insulted my mom and dad’s faith. They didn’t want me under his influence.
Sid: I can understand.
Ben: They wanted me under the influence of a believer. So we went back to the doctor, and at first he scolded my mother because a total of 48 days I had not seen a doctor.
Sid: Well what difference did it make?
Ben: Remember I’d had a six inch gaping wound, and that has to be tended to very carefully, because infection could set in, and again, that would jeopardize my leg. He really scolded my mom for her irresponsibility, as it were. He left the room and went to the x-ray room to see the new x-rays. I’ll never forget, my mom grabbed my hand and began to pray, just kind of under her breath. She said “Lord, we’ve trusted You this far, and we’re not giving up now.” We kept praying until the door opened, and we tensed up for more verbal abuse. But this time, his countenance had totally changed. He wasn’t lashing out at us. He said “Mrs. Godwin, something has changed in Ben’s leg since you were at your last appointment.”
Sid: What changed?
Ben: He led us down the hallway to show us, to the x-ray room. He pulled out his pointer and in medical terms tried to explain to my mom that I didn’t need a bone graft anymore, that new bone had appeared on the x-ray. My mom, she was a very demonstrative, vocal person. She literally began to jump. I mean leap for joy.
Sid: Jump for joy.
Ben: Yes. I’ll never forget, I began tugging on momma’s shoulder,
I said “Momma, Jesus did it! He really did it!” The doctor just kind of looked at us strange, and he conceded. He said “Mrs. Godwin, you really do have faith.”
Sid: I’ll tell you what, when you read his book, you will really have faith. I love the title, “God’s Strategy For Tragedy.” People are reading this book, and where they have been really angry with God because they misunderstood, they misdiagnosed and read what was going on, they’re getting their first love back. His full story, with x-rays. We’re going to see his x-rays.
