Testimonials

At the end of my life when I enter eternity with Jesus, I want to be remembered as a woman who lived God’s Word in a balanced manner, integrating the spiritual with the practical. What do you want your legacy to be?

VICKI HARR

My Testimony

You may either read or listen to Victoria’s 15-minute testimony of how the Lord healed her after 48 years of migraines.

Click below to listen to the audio version or read the written version below.

Healing Testimony presented March 18, 2009

Since it has been over two years since the Lord healed me from migraines, I thought now would be a good time to share about the events leading up to that healing.

I began having migraines at about age 16, but they didn’t call them migraines back in the late 1950’s. They just called them “tension headaches”. Initially, I got them each month along with vomiting and sensitivity to light and sound, and I’d be bedridden for 24 hours. But over the next 10 years, they increased to where I was getting them weekly, and they would last 2-3 days because no medications that I took were effective. The only times I was migraine free for 48 years was when I was pregnant both times.

Now I believed God could heal, so I prayed to be healed, and I also went to all kinds of doctors and specialists and tried some kinds of natural and holistic treatments. I tried so many medications I felt like a guinea pig a lot of the time. I tried avoiding my trigger points. For me, some were flickering lights or certain foods like chocolate and caffeine. I would even try to avoid crying because that always brought one on. You name it. I tried it, but nothing worked.

But all during this time, when I’d have a migraine and the pain would be at its peak (and by that I mean sometimes I thought it would feel better if I pounded my head against a wall), and I’d be crying out to God, He’d speak to me so clearly through the pain, that despite the pain, I knew there was a reason for it. I’d hear His voice, and as long as I could hear Him, nothing else mattered because that helped me endure the pain. He taught me things I wouldn’t have understood if I had not had that affliction. David said, “[It is] good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.” Ps. 119.71 I knew God was developing character in me, and I asked him to teach me the lessons, no matter how hard, that I needed to know that I otherwise might not learn if I did not have migraines, but I still prayed to be healed.

Then in the early 1970’s, I joined a ministry in Oregon called Shiloh. I went on staff, and I really began pursuing healing with a vengeance. I had elders anoint me with oil more times than I can remember. But no healing came. Others were healed of other afflictions and diseases, but not me.

Then in my early 30’s, during my personal prayer time, one day God told me: “You are healed.” He told me in the clearest, most definite way, in the middle of a painful migraine attack, so I knew it was God’s voice. I was so excited!

I waited until the pain subsided, and then I told everyone in my immediate realm–my pastor, my friends, my family. I had no doubt I was healed and wanted to give God the credit and the glory.

And God gave me a reprieve for a couple of weeks. So you can imagine my shock when I got another migraine attack about two weeks later.

I was temporarily confused, so I went back to my pastor, and he said either (1) it wasn’t God who spoke, or (2) I hadn’t heard God correctly, or (3) it would happen in God’s timing, not mine.

But I never doubted God had spoken, and I clung to that personal “rhema” that God gave to me. From experience I knew what the voice of the Holy Spirit sounded like. I knew in my heart it had not been Satan’s voice, and I clung to that promise–the promise that my sheep hear my voice. John 10:27 NKJV says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” And I’m one of His sheep. Since I had heard His voice so many times before, I was certain this voice was from God. So I settled it in my mind that my healing was about God’s timing, not mine. After all, He is outside of time, and all of us exist within the realm of time. Although my healing was not immediate, I thought it would come to pass real soon.

As a result, each time I had a new migraine, and it would begin to subside, I’d think “Oooooooooo, this must be the last one, because God told me I was healed.” When I’d be lying on my bed, I’d often comfort myself with the thought that Christ probably had the worst migraine possible when they thrust the crown of thorns on his head. And I would recall the scriptures about partaking in His sufferings as well as His blessings–how Paul said in Philippians that he counted all things as loss and called them garbage and rubbish, just to gain a more intimate relationship with Christ, not to just learn about His resurrection, but to experience the power of His resurrection and to share in His sufferings. Now, that’s a foreign concept to many of us sharing in His sufferings so we can be conformed to be more like Him and it’s an uncomfortable one, but it’s in God’s Word. “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” Phil. 3:8-10 NKJV

I don’t believe God wants us to be sick, but He uses that pain to work His purposes in us, and He even wants us to rejoice in that suffering if we truly are partaking of Christ’s sufferings, not something we’ve brought on ourselves by some poor decision or something that we’ve done. “. . . but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” I Peter 4:13 NKJV

So I continued in this train of thought, always receiving comfort that God said He had healed me–not “was going to heal me.” That isn’t what He had said. He said He had healed me. God’s Word says: “We are confident that as you share in suffering, you will also share God’s comfort.” II Cor. 1:7 NLT I believed that, but I still had migraines.

Then one day, about five years later, during my personal prayer time, God once again spoke to me and said “My grace is sufficient for thee.” “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” II Cor. 12:9 KJV I put all those scriptures together about Christ’s suffering and His grace towards me, and how Jesus healed, Isaiah 53:5 NKJV says “. . . And by His stripes we are healed . . .”, and I began to understand in my spirit that the word I’d previously heard was about being healed for sure when I got to heaven, and maybe I’d receive a healing while still on earth. At that point, I was able to enter into His rest, and I stopped struggling in my spirit about being healed. The Apostle Paul sought the Lord three times to be delivered from his thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan, and was never healed. I had certainly asked more than three times to be healed. So I rested in the fact that I was in good company with Paul.

I realized that short of a miracle, in the interim, the Lord would give me grace to raise my children as a single mom, work full-time to support them, be involved in ministry, and do anything else he called me to do. And He did.

After all those years, I finally received a supernatural peace–the peace that passes all understanding–knowing that it didn’t matter if I saw the results of my healing in this lifetime or the next. It was up to Jesus whether or not He saw fit to heal me here on earth or until I got to heaven. And I really didn’t pray for my healing much after that. Others who knew I had migraines prayed for me behind the scenes mostly, and when anyone asked, I’d let them pray for me, but pretty much I just stopped requesting others to pray for my healing.

So for the next 38 years or so I had between 5 and 23 migraine attacks each month. And I know that because l kept track of them on a calendar. Think about it:

That’s an average of 12-17 a month.
That’s having a migraine every 2nd or 3rd day.
That’s literally all the time–either having the migraine, or having the medication, or being wiped out after one.

By now, the medications I took were so heavy-duty that I had to keep track of them because they had to be timed with the onset of the migraines to be effective, and yet I was limited as to how many I could take in a 24-hour period or during a week. So believe me, I was very aware of how often I had those attacks, and I monitored those medications closely.

Although I had to modify my activities around the attacks and medications, most new people I met never even knew I had migraines or, if they did, to what extent. God gave me grace to do whatever He called me to do despite the pain.

Then late in 2007, I was invited to speak to a group of men and women, out of town, set for January 16, 2008, and for weeks before, my prayer team and I prayed that I would be migraine-free the day before, the day of, and the day after speaking. Now this was a prayer I had prayed numerous times before when I had commitments or activities that could not be avoided, sometimes with the desired results and sometimes not. But, I know whenever God asks you to do something, He will ALWAYS enable you to do it.

Thankfully, I was able to travel and arrived the night before the presentation headache-free. The next day, after my presentation, I ministered and prayed for many people one by one, and the Lord so touched my heart over their burdens that my spirit cried with many of them. When the tears started, knowing that was a major trigger for me, I prayed, “Please Lord not now.” I didn’t want a migraine now. But, by the time I was done praying, I was having a full-blown migraine attack.

So I went back to my hostess’ home, took my medications, never telling her I was in pain, packed up, and then drove to my girlfriend’s home where we had previously planned to spend the night. When I arrived, I told her I had a migraine and just needed to sleep. She had known me for about 25 years and had seen me have many episodes like this one, so she understood completely.

I expected to wake up the next morning totally wiped out as I always was after an attack. Instead, I woke up the next morning completely clear-headed from the medication of the night before and out of pain, and that was the last time I needed to take those medications because that was the last migraine I had. HALLELUJAH!

It was like turning off a light switch that day. I had suffered with them constantly for over 48 years and on January 16, 2008, they abruptly stopped. It was not like they had tapered off or that I had found some new remedy, but rather a miraculous healing occurred! ONLY JESUS CAN DO THAT!!

But this time I waited about six weeks to make sure the healing was secure. Then I shared with my pastor and his wife and my friends, and everyone that has known me for years has rejoiced when they hear this. The Lord reminded me about Job when he had prayed for his friends and the Lord gave him twice as much as before, and the Lord reminded me that I had been praying for my friends for 48 years, and now I was seeing the results of those prayers by being healed completely of migraines.

I hope this has blessed you and that my journey has encouraged you, especially if you haven’t received a healing yet. And I know this raises a lot of questions about why does God heal some people and not others? I don’t know. And why he waited so long to heal me? I have no clue. And I’ve never understood all those years when I was serving the Lord why He didn’t heal me then . . . but He didn’t. I just know that God is sovereign, and that He has had His way in my life the way He has wanted to.

I pray that you will continue to seek Him for everything in your life–not just healings, but consider everything in your life important to Him, and ask Him what He wants to do for you and what direction He wants you to go in.

May God abundantly bless you exceedingly more than you could ever ask or think as you seek His face.

In Jesus name, Amen