I had a mentor of mine, a spiritual mentor, ask me a couple years ago, “Who in scripture Renee, would you say you identify with most?” And so I thought about it and I, you know, there were several people that came to mind. But one person in particular came to mind that really resonated with my story and that’s the woman with the issue of blood. She had this encounter with the power of God. 

My world turned upside down about 10 years ago. I’m married to an amazing man, had three kids under the age of 10, and lived in a great community. Really, I wouldn’t say life was perfect, but it was, you know. We were involved in our church; we loved our church. We loved our kids. Our kids were challenging. We had two kiddos that — one that really wrestled with anxiety and fear and learning differences; another one, at the time, that was having these random bursts of anger and impulsive issues. So anyway, life was challenging, parenting, but nothing out of the ordinary was going on that would kind of mark the things that were about to transpire. 

I remember it was in June and my husband and my oldest son, I think he was maybe 10 or 12, had just gotten home from a mission trip with our church. They were telling me all about the trip and how amazing it was and I got up to kind of go into the other room so I could hear a little bit more clearly all the details that my husband was sharing. And all the sudden, everything went black and I passed out. So that kind of was the start of this, this unexplained sickness I guess, or illness or whatever you wanna call it; things that I started developing. So I had that blackout then a couple months later, started getting these unexplained stomach issues and like intense stomach pain. I was really healthy and so it was kind of odd that all these different things were happening to me. I went to several doctors for the stomach stuff. They put me to sleep and did a scope and you know, ran that down and checked out everything and nothing wrong with the stomach. I don’t even remember what they said but there was nothing going on. But I was still having this really intense stomach pain. Then from there I started getting these crazy headaches and I never had headaches. I started every month getting like a really debilitating migraine and I’d never had migraines so that was odd. Those went on for several months and started to you know, be kind of the new normal of four days would shut me down I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t see anything, couldn’t be a mom, you know, all that kind of stuff. I started going to doctors for that, still having the blackout stuff, a little bit of the stomach stuff lifted, but mostly it was the headaches and blackouts. Like, not just blacking out, but I would pass out on a regular basis as well. I tried homeopath, naturopathic, I tried, you know, all of it. I went to several different neurologists. I was on five medications by the end of it. I even spent a whole year with my sweet dentist who thought it was all related to my jaw. He rewired my jaw he was confident it was TMJ. I changed my diet, like everything you could think of; I did acupuncture at one point in time. 

So this was kind of throughout the whole year just trying to get some answers. Towards the end of that year I had a friend, I don’t even remember who it was, recommend this book to me. It was not a book that I would have ever been given through my church or through anyone. It was a book about how diseases can have spiritual roots. So I kind of read through the book and the, the book said migraines were linked to a lot of fear. Fear. Fear for direction, fear like an internal struggle within yourself, like self rejection. And so there’s a couple different things. So it’s like, okay, we’re gonna, we’re going to power through this and I’m going to figure this out. And so I guess, let me rewind, that was kind of my walk with the Lord, I love the Lord. I had gotten to know Jesus and was saved when I was 10. I was very involved in like, college ministry stuff. We had been in some amazing churches throughout my years of being married but there was a lot of striving, a lot of self sufficiency, a lot of fear. Now looking back, fear of man, fear of rejection, fear of failure was a big one, fear of intimacy. So there’s a lot of things that I didn’t realize that I was walking with, with this fear. You know, I kind of pulled up my bootstraps. That was kind of the mindset, not intentionally, but that’s kind of where I was with my walk with the Lord. So I powered through this book and prayed these prayers and well, nothing happened. I was like, well, obviously it’s not that, so I kind of discarded the book and moved on into year two. 

Then in year two of this it began. I started getting [headaches], it wasn’t just every month, like it turned into every single day. I had a headache where I literally would get out of bed and I would just, I just would slit my eyes and every day I had this headache along with maybe once, maybe twice a month, I would you know, pass out or I would black out. We were spending all this time and money going to all these doctors trying to figure out what the heck was going on you know, spent thousands of dollars. My husband took me up to Mayo Clinic to see and nothing. All they could say is, Oh, you have a migraine disease and, and here’s these five medications and you’ll be fine. So where I say I relate with the woman with the issue of blood loss–everybody knew this lady, like they knew her by her issue. They knew that she had this bleeding. They knew all of that. Well, that’s kind of what happened with me. I was in a small community, a great neighborhood and amazing friends that were helping, bringing meals. But I began to be known as the woman with–Oh, there’s Renee. She’s got migraines. Like oh, that’s just, that’s who she is. And sadly, I have to say that I, that became my identity. My issue became my identity. That’s not what I wanted. But you know, when that’s what you’re living with, and you’re in year two of having a headache that became my identity. 

The end of the summer, we’re at the, kind of at the end of our rope. My husband’s family has a cabin in Colorado. We just got, we got to go away just the two of us, because we were like, well, maybe if we just get away and just have some time together, everything’s going to get better. We go for the weekend and we’re coming back and we never fly, but because it was a short time, we flew this time. We’re about to board the plane and we get this, the lady calls our names up and says, “Hey.” I mean, literally, we’re about to get on the plane and she says, “Hey, I’m gonna have to separate you two, you’re not gonna be able to sit next to each other.”

And I was like, “Okay, no problem.” So we get on the plane, and he goes one way, and I go and sit next to this lady who has her Bible out. We ended up making some small talk and she begins to tell me about all these health issues that she’s had for a whole four years. Then we just have this amazing conversation. And then she says, “Yeah, and my stomach and digestive, all these things, they had spiritual roots.” And I said, “Did you say spiritual roots?” And she says, “Yeah, I have this book that a friend gave me” and blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that book sounded awfully familiar, because that was the book that I had kind of chunked about a year ago. And I said, “Well, you know what? That that’s awesome for you. I’m glad you got healed. But that did not work for me. Like, I read that book and I worked through that stuff and I’ve still got the headaches and I still have the blackouts.” She looked at me and she said, “I really think you should go home and you should pray about it and you should give that a second look.” And I said, “Okay.” 

Two days later, I’m out in my–it’s August and it’s like 105 and I’m out in my front yard and this kind of sounds a little silly, but I bought this device to hold our water hose because it’s always jumbled up. So I’m out there with a headache, you know, you just have to press through like when you’re in chronic pain, you just press through and you do life. So I’m trying to un-knot this hose that is literally completely knotted up. And I’m like doing this and flipping it over and it’s literally like I’m wrestling with this water hose. I was so frustrated and I was mad and I was like why won’t this thing just submit and go into this container. All the sudden I had this thought run through my head and it was Hebrews 12: 1-2. It says, “Let us throw up everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” And I was like, well, that’s cool. Like, that doesn’t happen a whole lot where I just have a verse kind of pop into my head. Then I heard the Lord say, “This is a picture of you, Renee. You are completely entangled in anxiety and control and fear and stress, just being impatient, just feeling rejected, and you fight Me when I just want you to surrender to Me.” And then He brought to mind how the water cannot flow freely through a knotted up hose. He wanted to un-knot the hose and allow His living water to flow freely through me. And then He said, “Surrender everything and allow Me, the living water, to bring My power and healing to your soul.” And then He brought to mind John 7:38, which says, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” 

Let me just tell you like that, never in my entire life has anything like that ever happened. And I know it sounds crazy, but I like, I talked about it for months. My friends are like, stop telling us about the water hose. But it was so profound. And I was like, I think I went inside and I told my husband. I was like, I think the Lord just talked to me and like, I’m all knotted up on the inside and He wants to un-knot me so the water can flow freely through me! And he was like, That’s awesome, sweetie, that’s great. I’m like, “I think this is a key.” And, and because all I’d ever really kind of been taught in the church we were in was that it was the word, the word, the word. Which is awesome, you need the word but like, God speaks to us still today through the Holy Spirit. and so so happened. A couple days later, I was on a walk and I was listening to this guy, Sam Storms and he was doing this sermon on supernatural healing. I don’t ever listen to this guy; I didn’t even know he was, but I loved John Piper at the time and, and so I listened to this sermon, and it really opened me up to, Wow, like, God still heals today. Like for real, He’s still heals. So that was kind of interesting, that I heard this sermon. So I’m thinking about spiritual roots. I’m thinking about all this entanglement going on inside and then the Lord was showing me like, hey, you’re missing the boat on the Holy Spirit; you really need to look into that more. And then we need to kind of further investigate the spiritual roots. So I’m thinking, Okay, I don’t really know about either those, but we’re going to figure it out. 

A couple days after that, this lady, I get introduced to this lady and she comes from a more charismatic background. My friend told her about me and how I had been wrestling with these headaches and blackouts and, and so we set up this meeting. I explained to her everything that had been going on for the last two years and I was like, “Can you help me?” So we, my friend and I, we started meeting with her every single week. She began to teach us all about our identity in Christ and our authority in Christ. She taught us all about the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit, all these things I had never learned in church. Then she introduced me to this other lady who came in and this woman was incredible. She was like, super prophetic, and she told me all these things about me and about my kids and I was like, “How do you know this stuff?” And she’s like, “Oh, my Papa, He’s so good. The Holy Spirit…” Then they started praying over me and we had multiple prayer times where they were praying in tongues over me and, and praying for God to bring healing. Honestly, every time they’d pray, I just kept thinking, Gosh, they’re just making that up. They’re just making that noise up. I just really didn’t believe. Like, I wanted to believe, but I didn’t believe because it never happened to me. And so I didn’t know. 

One day they had left and we had been going through the book of Acts and they’d been teaching me all about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. And, and I remember I was sitting on my couch and I was like, and again, I’m desperate to be healed because I can’t see straight, I can’t function. I’m miserable. But I’m just pressing in and I just said, “Lord, I believe everything, everything that You said in the word. Here it is all in, all throughout Acts they are teaching about the Holy Spirit and being filled or baptized in the Holy Spirit and this power from on high and what comes with this.” And I said, “God,  You’re going to have to help my unbelief because I believe, but help my unbelief. And I said, Lord, please. Like, You’re just going to have to sock it to me.” And right when I said, “God, I want to baptized in the Holy Spirit, You’re going to have to sock it to me.” literally, the power of God came on me and I just started to shake and shake and I’m like, volts of heaven are going through my whole body, pulsating. Then just out of my mouth, just all of a sudden, just this–these words that are–I just start going, flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing at the top of my lungs and all I could think was, Oh my gosh this is real! Holy cow this is crazy! What in the world? Oh my gosh those ladies weren’t making this up. This is totally real. And I just, I just started praying in the Spirit and I was just going through my house praying everywhere. I couldn’t even believe it and I’m still shaking because the power of God is still on me. It was amazing. So that pretty much started this whole journey. I’m going to shorten it because we would be here all night if I went into all the details.

I was on the tennis court and I passed out. But like, started to pass out and my friend caught me and right when I was about to go down, I had this thought, Renee, the headaches aren’t medical. They’re not medical, it’s the enemy. And I was like, what? The enemy is invoking these headaches on me? Are you kidding me? Like, what is that all about? So my friend grabbed me and she’s like, “Are you okay?” She prayed for me and we finished the match. Which is kind of crazy, but we did. Then a couple days later, I just had this newfound like, Okay. It’s on. This is a war. So the headaches would just start to intensify. I would get these headaches, and then they would just get really intense. So I had this arsenal of scriptures, these healing scriptures that I’d written out and I just started coming with the Word of God, “By His stripes, I’m healed. By the blood of Jesus, I’m healed.” You know, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.” And I would just go and go and go at these headaches. Not seeing them as headaches, but seeing them as the enemy, like literally trying to invoke and create this pain. 

Well, I would like to say that helps, but it just made things worse, not because of the Word of God, but because I was in a real live battle. And so I was in this place where the enemy had been exposed. But I didn’t, I knew just enough to be dangerous. I’ve been taught my authority, been taught the identity that I have in Christ, taught about the Holy Spirit, but I didn’t really have a grid for any of this because I was in a church that really didn’t understand or believe in spiritual warfare. So I’m literally, I’m kind of in the fight for my life here.–The start of it. So we continued to get prayer from my husband, the couple friends that knew, we’d pray but things just got worse. One of the ladies that, the one that was super prophetic, she had told me about this conference that was coming up. She said, “Oh, there’s this healing conference coming up, and you need to go. You should go.” And I said, and I don’t know what it was about that conference. But it was like, I just knew. Because there had been, this had been going on for several weeks continuing to war back and forth and I’d literally, I was exhausted. Because it was like, the greatest time in my life where I’d had the most powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit and I was having dreams and visions, and all these gifts. I thought I was like, in the book of Acts. I was like, I can’t believe this is all real. I felt like He put me in the microwave and pushed double high, but then on the other side of it, it was like this intense spiritual warfare. And so, imagine just weeks of this going on, and then this woman saying, there’s this healing conference. So it was kind of like this hope at the end of all of this. So, so I just I don’t know what it was. But it was something in my deep inside me. I just knew if I could get myself to that healing conference, I’m going to get healed. 

We went with some witnesses, just in case, because my husband had never been to a healing conference, and neither had I. So we took one of his friends and two of my friends, and we show up at this conference. It was like, 1,000 people and there’s a guy that’s speaking, that’s known internationally for miracles and signs and wonders and people getting healed. So we show up, we’re worshiping and there was like a prayer line up at the front. And there was this woman that,

I guess the Lord highlighted, because I just kept watching her and as she would pray for people the power God would just come so gently on these people, and then they would just be slain in the Spirit or they would just, they would just kind of go down. And I don’t know, I just felt like the Lord said, She’s the one that needs to pray for you. So I leaned over to my husband and I said, “Hey, See that lady over there? I really feel like that’s the lady I’m supposed to go get prayer from.” And he goes, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you are not going up there for prayer from her because that’s not biblical.” You know, he’s totally in a different place now, but back then, there were still lots of questions. He said, “No way, you’re not going up there.”

 Honestly, we got in an argument about me wanting to go get prayer. Our friends are involved in the argument and I’m like, “Why would you not let me go get prayer from her?” Because he didn’t feel comfortable with it? No. Do you see what happens every time she prays for somebody? No way. So then the session ends as we’re kind of all arguing and our friends are like, “Hey, hey, guys, let’s remember why we’re here. Let’s just go get in the book line so that Renee can talk to the speaker.” Because he’s the one with–had been miracle after miracle healing, healing, you know, all these things all around the world. So we’re heading over to the book line, and it’s lunch break, everybody’s kind of leaving and this lady comes up. And she finds me, and keep in mind 1000 people, and my husband saw her making this beeline over to us because we were at the very back and she was at the front of this huge conference room. He sees her walking. And I didn’t know this till later, but he said he had this thought in his head that said, if she smells sweet, she can pray for my wife. Like if she smells sweet, she can pray for my wife. So the lady walked right by my husband and he said that she smelled like roses. Then she comes up to me, and my two friends and his friend and we’re all just, they’re kind of in awe because that’s who I thought I was supposed to get prayer from. And she says, “Sweetheart, the Lord highlighted you and I’m supposed to pray for you. Can I pray for you?”

She grabs a hold of me and gives me this big hug and then she goes off, to follow protocol and she wants to make sure she’s okay to continue to pray for me. So she goes and finds the leadership and kind of clears everybody out of this big ballroom and then she comes back and it’s in this, we’re in this big ballroom. It’s me, my two friends and my husband’s friend and this woman and she begins to pray for me. It was really intense and there was a lot of struggle going on. But the power of God was there and anyway long story short, I got delivered of all of this demonic, these spirits that had been inflicting and tormenting me for two years. Then she just begins to continue to pray in her prayer language over me and just, the Holy Spirit, just this peace, like this liquid peace, literally like His love just went from the top of my head to the bottom my feet and I knew that I was healed. I knew that I was delivered. I didn’t know all the out workings of it because I literally went home and my husband said he put me in bed and I cried for like 12 hours. It was just the Holy Spirit and He was just ministering.

A couple weeks passed and that prophetic woman, I was on the phone with her one day and I’m just celebrating like, Gosh, I’m healed. Like, I haven’t had a migraine. I haven’t blacked out, like, Oh my gosh. I’m talking to her and telling her, you know, recounting all these things and she says–and I remember I was sitting in my office, and I was kind of leaning back in my chair, and I was just still marveling at the miracle that God did. Like He did this amazing miracle, this amazing healing. And this woman said, “Sweetie,” she goes, “it was like, you were this water hose all tangled up.” And she says, “You were all knotted up on the inside.” And she literally recounted that exact thing that the Lord spoke to me. She said, “Oh, and it’s like He just needed to un-knot you; untangle you because He…” and then she just started prophesying over me like the living water’s gonna flow through you, and I literally almost fell backwards and hit my head because I never told her about the water hose. I never told her about the first time I felt like I really heard from the Lord. And then I said, “Oh my gosh, I cannot even believe you’re telling me this.” And I pulled, I had been journaling so I pulled it up on my computer because I was right in front of it and I read it to her. And all she did, she goes, “Mmmm, yeah, that doesn’t surprise me one bit sweetheart. That’s just how good our Daddy is. He’s so good.”

And so it was like I’d gone through all of this and then this ribbon, or this bow, that the Lord kind of tied on the very end. That He started with this, speaking to me through a crazy water hose and all this stuff that was going on, then He finished it off, giving me, speaking through this mighty woman of God, telling me the exact same thing, but in a celebration of what He did. My passion now, is because God has taken me from this oppressed, joyless, self sufficient, full of fear, Christian, that has been miraculously healed, and empowered, and given this new identity. That’s my heart, because I didn’t ever learn any of this in church. That’s my heart, because it breaks my heart to see so many men and women walking around with–I’m not saying every sickness has spiritual roots, but a lot of them do. And a lot of people don’t know their identity and they don’t know the power of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and the authority that they have in Christ. So that is my passion. I have a passion to impart and teach other women that and then also walk them through. Some things maybe not exactly, I would never [wish] what I went through on someone because it was really intense warfare; but, I do wish upon people to have an encounter with Jesus, because He is our healer, and He is the great physician and He loves us. And so that is my story. 

I just want to pray for anybody that’s listening to this right now, because I want you to have hope. I want you to have hope because everything that I’ve spoken is not just for me, it’s for you too. It is for you to be healed and set free. It’s for you to know the love of the Father. And so I pray for every man, woman, and child that may be listening to this podcast. One, that you would know that you are special and that you are loved by the King of the universe, that He sees you. You are valuable. You are important. You have a destiny and a calling on your life. You are made for greatness. I pray God, [for] any person that is bound up in fear and anxiety. God, You say that You do not give us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. And so I come against every negative voice that is speaking out, causing and invoking that fear, to be broken right now in the name of Jesus. I pray God, that You would take, You say in Your word that perfect love drives out fear. And so I pray that every person listening would literally have an encounter with Your perfect love that would drive out every ounce of fear, every ounce of anxiety, everything that keeps them bound. It’s your perfect love that will drive it out and I pray God, that You would break any wrong thinking, any skewed thinking, anybody that has agreed. Like, No, this is a…this is who I am. I just have this medical condition. This is it. I pray God, that You would give them revelation just as You did me. Just as you did that woman with the issue of blood, that You would renew our minds, Lord and that it is not over. Your story is not over. God wants to use you. He wants to empower you with the Holy Spirit. He has gifts available for you to walk in. I pray God that this would be the start of a new day and that whoever’s listening would just say, “Enough is enough.” Basta, I think that’s the Spanish word, but enough is enough. Enough is enough. Today is a new day! So I pray that You would miraculously bring healing, and deliverance, and freedom to every single person listening. In Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.