SID: Dodie, your husband was Southern Baptist. You didn’t believe in healing and then a tragedy hit your family. Your baby daughter Lisa had, in birth, a problem that resulted in a condition much like the polio that you had. So if you don’t have any paradigm for healing, what did you do about it?
DODIE: Well that’s just about the time that John decided that he was going to receive God, that he knew that Jesus went about doing miracles and healings, not just when he was here on Earth. So he took a train to a meeting where he was going to preach in Atlanta or some place and so he would have time to seek God. And he came back, and he told me, he said, “Dodie, I know that things are different than what we’ve believed. But at that time I didn’t know a thing in the world about healing and he didn’t either because he wasn’t taught it in seminary. So he just said, that was just a little while before Lisa was born. And so when we got this news he said, “We’re just going to pray for her and believe that God will heal her.” I didn’t know what I was doing, but he said, “I’m going to pray a prayer then I want you and Paul,” we had two children at that time, “I want you to just look at her and say thank you Jesus for healing her.” So that’s what we did. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I said, “Thank you Jesus for healing her.”
SID: And what happened to this horrible condition she had?
DODIE: Well she was so listless and all. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t take a bottle. It took 45 minutes to get a half an ounce down her. And so she began to improve. She began to be able to have more strength and then she began to sit alone. And the doctor had told her she may be in a wheelchair. But then she started improving and the doctor said this is a real miracle. So now Lisa is a grown woman with three children, two of them in college.
SID: I’m glad that you and John prayed for her.
DODIE: I’m so glad. Listen, we wouldn’t have had a little healed girl preaching the Gospel now if we hadn’t known about healing.
SID: You did something right at home, you and John. All of your children are in ministry.
DODIE: I know. I’m so proud of them. You don’t know how proud I am of them.
SID: You go to the hospital for a day and you end up staying there 20 days. But then John is told you only have a few weeks to live.
DODIE: A few weeks to live.
SID: What did he say when he heard that?
DODIE: You can’t believe, I mean, the feeling, it was right at Christmas time. It was December the 10th that I got that news after they had done every test under the sun. I was supposed to just stay three or four days, but they couldn’t find out what it was. They thought at first it was an abscess, a liver abscess. But then a tumor the size of an orange and two small ones like almonds. So John just said to her, “Well Doctor, we’re going to believe for a miracle.” The doctor said, “You’re going to have to have a miracle, Pastor.” So we went home that day on the 5:00 train.
SID: Did they just release you?
DODIE: They released me. John said, “I don’t want to keep her here anymore. I want to take her home and pray over it and get the church to pray over her.” And so we did in the 5:00 traffic. I so I looked terrible. I was jaundice. My skin was wrinkled, and of course now it’s from age, the wrinkles. And my skin was jaundice. My eyes were jaundice. And we went home and I didn’t go to bed because I thought I don’t want to look like I’m sick. I just will stay up, my mother and dad were there, until bedtime. And so the next morning we woke up. We laid at the foot of our bed and John prayed a prayer and commanded the cancer to leave me. Like Jesus commanded the fig tree to wither and die, he said “Cancer, you leave my wife. Don’t you ever come back again, in Jesus’ name.” These words stuck with me, Sid. “I need her, Jesus. The church needs her. The children need her. Her mother and daddy need her, and you need her, Jesus.” I never will forget that. As far as I was concerned, on December 11th, I believe I received healing of cancer.
SID: But wait, you weren’t healed.
DODIE: I wasn’t healed.
SID: This went on for several years. So why did you believe it started at that moment?
DODIE: I had to have a starting point otherwise I would have lost it.
SID: Did you believe that you were healed?
DODIE: I believed when my husband prayed he had commanded power. I had faith in John Osteen. I had faith in God and his belief in God.
SID: She learned how to stand on the Word of God, but it was beyond that. You literally did that.
DODIE: I did. I got my little Bible and I stood on it. My feet aren’t very big because of polio, so they fit on my little Bible. And I said, “Jesus, I’m standing on your Word. I don’t know anything else to do.” I stood on the Word of God and I have been ever since.
SID: Now God spoke to you because you knew, she knew Oral Roberts, T.L. Osborn, all the great healing evangelists, and John Osteen her husband, and they all could pray for her.
DODIE: They did.
SID: But then God said to you, tell me what God said.
DODIE: God spoke to me one night and he said, “You’ve had Brother Roberts pray, you had Brother Osborn pray, Brother Hagin,” he said, “but it’s up to you and me. It’s between you and me.” So I realized I’d better get with it.
SID: Tell me some of the things you did. Tell me about the pictures.
DODIE: I put pictures up of me, of John and I at our wedding and then I put a picture up of me when I was 38, I think.
SID: Why did you do that?
DODIE: Just to remind me of how I was healthy and strong, and that I would be that way again someday.
SID: And you know something else that impressed me?
DODIE: What?
SID: You refused to talk about the suffering, the pain, that you’re feeling sick and tired. Why would you do that?
DODIE: Because I didn’t want to bring, we’re snared with the words of our mouth and I didn’t want to be snared. I wanted Jesus to hear good things coming out. So when the children would say, “Mother, how are you today,” I would say, “I’m blessed. I’m so blessed.” And we lived where we had a long driveway out in Humble at that time, and I would take mail out or checked on the mail, bring it back, and I would say, “I trust Jesus to heal me,” all the way up to the mailbox. I just did it. Now I still, when I see a cemetery, “No, devil, you will not take me. You’ve [?] to steal!” I said it loud, too. There’s people with me. I don’t care. Just let them know I’m a fanatic. I’m alive.
SID: Now you’re a fanatic.
DODIE: I’m a fanatic.
SID: About saying God’s Word out loud, meditating.
DODIE: Where would I be, Sid?
SID: Tell me if you hadn’t learned to meditate on God’s promises, do you think you’d be sitting here right now?
DODIE: No I don’t. If I hadn’t stored up the Word of God in my heart, those years that we had been married, I married when we were 22. I was 48 then. If I hadn’t stirred up the Word of God, if John hadn’t learned about the healing that did and I hadn’t stirred, he used to tell us, “Stir the Word of God in your heart for use when needed. You may not need it now, but someday you will.”
SID: Tell me a few scriptures. I want you, what you say when you’re by yourself, out loud with the same attitude. I’d like you to do that.
DODIE: Okay. I will not die, but I’ll live and declare the works of the Lord. He sent his Word and healed them, and saved them from their destruction. I will restore health unto you and heal you of your wounds. Every day I read all these, Sid. I have in my little iPad I read them every day of the week. I have not missed a day reading them. I don’t leave the house without reading them.
SID: But you, I’m sure had many bouts with fear.
DODIE: I did. In the middle of the night I would wake up and I was just thinking and when John was asleep right there by me, I’m thinking the devil would say, “You’re not really healed. You think you are, but you’re not.” And I would say, “No devil, you will not tempt me with that. You will not keep harassing me with those words. I shall not die, but I shall live and declare the works of the Lord.” And the devil would say, “You’ll wear that pink dress to your funeral. I’ll see to it.”
SID: And what would you do when he’d say that?
DODIE: And I’d say no. I’d replace that with a good thought, with the Word of God. I’d just replace his word with the Word of God.
SID: Okay. It was a process.
DODIE: It was a process.
SID: And she did get healed. In fact, I’ve read some doctors’ reports outside of one of her books and she really did. And if God will do that for Dodie, it’s not just healing. The promises of God, standing on the Word of God, the faith to stand on the Word of God, this woman lived it. However, I have her here for a purpose and that is she has a gift of the Spirit that we’re going to talk about. It’s a gift that is the most important gift on the planet, and I want her to pray for you to have that impartation when we come back. Don’t go away.
