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The Testimony Of Reverend David Halford
(Note: If you think I am a horrible person for having had sin in my life and then having the audacity to become a pastor, please accept my apologies and know that my life as a human has been a tough road.)
As I strived to know more about Our Lord I spent more time reading the Bible than I did asking others what it was all about. My family and I were attending a Church, but some aspects of this local meeting group left me a little skeptical. I became very depressed one day and decided to drive into town and try to cheer up. When I pulled onto the highway, I started to cry and pleaded to God to tell me what it was that He wanted me to do so that I could Glorify Him to the fullest. It was then that the Holy Spirit first descended on me and told me to use the talent that God had given me to Glorify Him. At that moment, a poem flooded into my head about following God blindly, letting Him lead me along my path. Needless to say, I was all over the road trying to find a pen and paper to write these words down. I gathered my senses enough to pull over and not kill myself and maybe another. That poem was “Blind Paths” and was the first of many to follow.
That spring my family and I found ourselves destitute as my wife had lost her job cutting our income in half. My salary was barely enough to pay our house bills and left nothing for food. We decided to plant a small garden in our backyard and try to supplement our food pantry. The area we had was only about ten feet by ten feet, but it was all I had. Everyday as I worked in this garden, I prayed to The Lord to bless this small garden to provide food for my family. When the harvest came in, I walked from that garden with a full basket of food. My thanksgiving was great and everyday I brought a full basket of food from that small garden.
I soon became a victim to serious back problems. I spent a lot of time unable to move without tremendous pain. My doctors put me on MS Contin, Percocet, Lortab, Klonopin, Paxil, Elavil, Neurontin and other medications to counter the side effects of these drugs.
This went on for about four years until one Saturday when I was stricken heavily with pain from my lower back to my knees. I was hurting so bad I couldn't even roll over to call 911.
I thought I was going to lay there and die, so I began to pray. I had never prayed for my own healing. I always prayed for all my family and friends, but I never prayed for my own healing. Not this day. I prayed and cried to The Lord to help me with this plight. I knew I couldn’t stand it anymore. At that moment, I fell into a deep sleep. It was like the sleep you fall into when the anesthesiologist injects you with whatever it is when you have a procedure at the hospital. You know, you close your eyes and open them and ask when they will do the procedure and the nurse in recovery tells you to wake up because it is all over. Well this time, the anesthesiologist was The Lord. I closed my eyes and opened them, but it was about one hour later. All the pain was gone. All the pain in the back, in the legs and in my hips was gone. All the pain was gone.
That is when I started really praying. I was praising The Lord and thanking Him with all my heart. That is when The Lord came to me in the Spirit and told me to, “Stop taking all the medications!!!”
I promised Him I would do this. I asked for His help as I knew it would be hard. For whatever reason, I took the bottle of MS Contin and flushed it down the toilet right then.
About a month later, I was in the hospital having tests run and they asked me what medications I was taking. Well, I didn’t think anything of it and told them what I was taking, not what the doctors were prescribing. Who would know they would call my doctor and ask him to verify this.
To say the least, there was a state of pandemonium there for the next four hours. My doctor’s office came to the hospital and starting to tell me all the danger of dropping these medications without help. That’s when they asked when I had ceased the taking of the MS Contin. I told them the truth that I flushed them a month ago and never took another one. They jumped around and cackled like a chicken and told me I could die in less than a week and that I needed to get back on them immediately and that I should have never done this without notifying them and was I crazy and I can’t remember much more of it other than the look on their face when I restated that it had been a month since I had one. They stared at me for a minute as if they were waiting for me to jump up laughing and yell “PSYCH!” But as I didn’t do that and sat there straight faced and started telling them how I had reduced the other drugs to wean myself completely, they finally asked, “How in the world did you do it?”
I told them the truth. I told them about The Lord healing me that day and telling me to STOP THE DRUGS. For a minute, they still pried to try and convince themselves that I was either lying or had gone to a rehab center to do this.
They now know that there was no lie. There was no rehab center. There is God. There is this loving God who cares for us more than we can understand. He wants us to love Him and He wants only the best for us.
Since then, they have sent a number of doctors to me to ask about how I did this and how I mustered the will power to do this alone. I reiterated my original statement about God and The Lord’s healing. I told them about how Jesus was my accountability partner. I couldn’t lie to Him or cheat, because He was always there and He held my hand during the bad times. He rubbed my forehead when I was sweating. He told me, “It will be fine and eternity will see no pain, no addiction, no withdrawals, no tears, no fear and no more wrong. He assured me that eternity was a very long time and He would be with me and my brothers who have accepted His Love.
I have the testimony to all who would like to turn their life around. All who want to kick their drug habits, prescribed or streetwise obtained. Jesus wants to help us all. He wants us all to turn to Him for all we need. He wants us to give all our trouble to Him and turn around to the new nature, a spiritual nature that needs no drugs and has no place for pride or hatred.
This is my story and I am asking anybody who is having a problem with drug dependency to notify me. I would like to help you bring God into your life with the direction to let Him take the pain and addiction away.
There are many more instances where the Lord has come into my life and did something I can only explain as “supernatural”, but for the sake of space and time, I will leave those stories for another day.
I hope this inspires another to turn to Jesus for help in their life. Just know He loves us all. He loves us all the same and me no more than you or you or you.
