One morning while at work, I began to feel chest pain. The pain wasn’t bad at first, so I put off dealing with it prayerfully. But after lunch it grew much worse, and I needed to find a place to lie down. It was only with great difficulty that I was able to make it to the employee lounge several floors below by elevator.
Once there, I collapsed on one of the couches, unable to move or speak, and I was very frightened by the symptoms. But soon, in spite of the mental chaos of all those fearful thoughts, I heard a voice, an angel message, that was quiet but unmistakable: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
This verse from the Bible didn’t come to my thought as a result of any effort on my part—it just came. And the message came again and again. Each time, it had not so much the feel of an order that had to be obeyed, but rather the reassuring sense that God was there with me, and was bigger than this problem—that I wasn’t a helpless victim and I didn’t have to give in to the symptoms, but could instead hang on to the truth and trust God’s healing power.
