Sid: Karen Mayer Cunningham is red hot for the Messiah, she had a little boy James and he was diagnosed with autism and it was I mean, I am not Karen that familiar with autism but it sounds like it was a living hell for you and your husband.
Karen: It was it was a living hell for us.
Sid: I mean, he would literally eat the sheet rock, he would, anything rubber he would eat. He would have tantrums that would never cease. How did you live like that?
Karen: You know, you live however you live, it becomes, it’s all we knew we didn’t know anything different and you know when you have a child you can’t take him back to the hospital and say this one’s broke you live with whatever you have to walk out. And it was discord and our relationship was discord and we were doing the best that we can to try to get some semblance of normalcy we were reaching and grasping at any straw that we could get.
Sid: Okay, so you went to a deliverance team and all of a sudden you were there for yourself, they said that James will be ready shortly for his healing. What did you think of that? I thought that they didn’t know what they were talking about. Because I’d never heard of anybody being delivered from autism, I heard of a few people being delivered from cancer or diabetes and every other situation, but this had never happened before. And it was something that they had never had the opportunity to take anybody through deliverance and I thought that they were just being kind and I had gotten what I needed to get. I went there for me, now they gave me some tools there, they said that if I played praise music in James’ room while he slept that the enemy cannot stand the presence of praise music and so they had given me some tools. I had a knew refreshing in my spirit about who Jesus was and the power that He left for all off us to use to combat the enemy and how to pray over my child and speak life into him and not speak death over him. And I was ready, it was all I had come for, and she said, “But we’ll have to pray and wait for God.” Well, my husband and I had been on staff at churches and so usually when people say that we’ll praying for you, that didn’t really show much results in my life. And I didn’t really think about it again. That was in July of ’99 and then we get a call in January of 2000 and the team asked how we were doing? And I said, “Great,” and she said that, “Well, God said, that it’s time.” I had no idea what she was talking about, what do you mean God says it’s time, do you have some sort of red bat phone that He calls on?
Sid: Ha-ha.
Karen: That’s not the God that I knew, and I didn’t know people that when they said, that they were going to pray for you, actually prayed for you till the very end. Most people that I knew, like myself prayed for a few minutes and they were off to eat lunch somewhere. And so she said, “God says, it’s time.” So we set up a ministry time, they came back to Austin, it was February 17, 2000 Thursday, 4:00 and we went into my church and where they would meet with families that came for ministry. And when I saw the team I just broke into tears, I just started sobbing, and she said, “What are you crying for?” And I said, “Because I don’t think that this is going to work, I just don’t.” And she said, “Well, I beg your pardon, the Lord said that he’s going to be healed.” Well, I had never heard anybody talk like that and so I tried my eyes for the 100th thousand time in the last four and half years and we sat down and the intercessors began to pray. And Sheila just began, the head of the team talking to James, well he wasn’t having any of that. He was pulling on my hand, go, go, go, he wanted to leave and being a mother I was thinking those two things that you always think over your child, “Act right.” And pretty soon he’s on the floor, he’s hitting his head and I don’t remember the first thing that they prayed to break over him, but Tom my husband picked up James and the team just gently put their hands on his back and said, “That the first demonic curse would have to go in Jesus name into the dry places and my son reached his hand back and screamed, “Come back, come back, come back, come back!”
Sid: My goodness, what did you think when you saw that he was actually telling that spirit to come back?
Karen: I was for the first time in my life speechless, I’m never speechless, I had never seen anything manifest like that in my life. And we were all…I was undone, I was humbled, I was shocked, I was scared, I was excited I had a possibility of hope that maybe this team actually was trained in what they did. And that maybe the God of the Universe would be kind enough and to completely heal my son.
Sid: Now, just out of curiosity, you told me that he didn’t speak much, was it unusual for him to just say come back over and over again.
Karen: Come back, he only had about twenty words of communication at that time. He said, Cup and hot, cheeo and dog, no, bottle.” He would still talk like he was eighteen months old, he had been tracked from eighteen month and he was almost six at this point where time had sit still in the emotional progression. He had not progressed socially or emotionally, he was almost a six year old kid trapped inside an eighteen mouth old. And so he had never said that and then he just put his little arms down and he was calm and peaceful. And she said that the team had said, “That that would be all that they would do that day and that he would have to come back for more and that that they would take away whatever the strongholds were in the correct order.” And he had three more sessions and his sessions weren’t long, and at the beginning of June was his last sessions, June 2000 and I’m here to tell you that God has completely delivered and healed him from the demonic oppression of autism.
Sid: You know what I would like to do, I would like to hear from the pastor of what he observed when you came into the church with James, before his deliverance and then after, let’s go to that: Sid: I have the former pastor of Round Rock Chapel in Round Rock, Texas on the telephone, Pastor Dennis Hall. And Dennis, when James and Karen came into your church, I understand you were a little concerned.
Pastor Dennis Hall: Well, the Lord had been teaching us about deliverance ministry, we had seen God do something’s but I’ll be honest with you that when I heard that he had autism and that they had been forced to float from church to church and never really finding a place. I knew that God could but I would have to honest with you my mind I’m saying, “God help”
Sid: But I have to compliment you, you allowed them to stay a lot of pastors wouldn’t have done that.
Pastor Dennis Hall: Well, what else do you do?
Sid: I understand, what type of bazaar behavior did you observe?
Pastor Dennis Hall: Well, the first thing is he didn’t communicate at all, primarily just grunts and fits of anger, sometimes just one word, but he never responded to anybody that was there. He didn’t seem to acknowledge your presence. Seemed content to do his own thing whether it fit with the schedule of anything else that was trying to be done around him. I do know that you look at the van that he had torn and eaten the weather stripping all around the family van; I found out later that he was very strong, he was a bruiser. And I understand that his mother told me that he would knock holes in wall and then begin to eat the paper the sheetrock and just nearly destroyed his room.
Sid: Now, after the deliverance, was it obvious there was a change in him?
Pastor Dennis Hall: Well, there was an immediate change, I mean first of all there was peace over is whole demeanor. The other thing is that he began to connect with me, he began to connect with people of the church, he would run in and began to hug people, would actually begin to call me Brother Dennis, would come. He still had some learning he had to do; it was almost like he was having to learn to talk and learning socialization skills again. But there was such an immediate, immediate change that it just encouraged and stirred the whole church that we continued to pursue and work with him and see this thing completed. I kind of almost feel like it was like it was like when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and said, “Take off the grave clothes.” You know if we are going to continue to let him live. We saw the significant miracle in James and now we had to walk with him through reentering society and reentering the family, the Body of Christ.
Sid: Thank you. Now when James came home he wasn’t really totally delivered but did you see immediate changes in him?
Karen: Immediate changes, he had already been changed a little bit from playing the praise music, he was just a different child because he got some sleep at night, but the severity of it was completely taken down a great percentage. He still tantrumed, he still threw fits but they weren’t as severe, they were like he was back at two years old when it wasn’t quite so bad. And I believe God did that to give us hope that he would be healed. And that was what I had to hold on too, was that hope, that possibility that this will stick, this will stick, this is real, this is God. And I remember one time right after his first ministry, I had, the ministry had Monday night Spiritual Warfare Training. And I was obviously very new at it but I was writing down everything that I could as quickly as I could and I had seen what they did and the way they prayed. And one day James was tantruming a little bit and I just tried to do what they did and I said, “You need to go devil in Jesus name, but I didn’t do it in as much authority I was just sort of reciting the words and James went “Whooa” And so I called the ministry team, I said, “I think that I did something wrong,” Woops, and you know we live in a very real powerful spiritual world of supernatural Jesus and the demonic and the demonic know if you know what you’re doing or not. And so I was reminded by the team that I didn’t know what I was doing. And but I could learn, and so I have and you know they walked out his deliverance and they gave us tools and it was an exchange.
Sid: Karen, what did God tell you would happen to people when they heard your testimony?
Karen: The people would be moved to hope again that there’s a possibility that whatever their situation is that with the power of Jesus there would be a way out of this thing. And it’s not exclusive to autism but whatever it is that they’re dealing with that whatever they’re battling with in their life it is going to come against them that there is absolute possible hope. That James’s story could be anybody’s story it’s not exclusive to us. There’s nothing unique about me, I’m not the good Christian, I was not the good wife, I was not the good mother.
Sid Roth: Woops were out of time.
