In this episode my friend Tom Schermitzler shares his testimony of being healed of multiple sclerosis. He also shares a testimony of healing of an infant who drowned in a pool. In the second part of the podcast he shares some amusing stories about the things he's seen Jesus and angels do in his work as a hospice musician. We close out the program with a discussion of God's will for healing.
Resources
God's Living Room Facebook page
God's Living Room in Phoenix Facebook Page
God's Living Room website
Power Healing by John Wimber
Now the show about faith, miracles, and the supernatural, Praying Medic Live!
Our host is a paramedic and a former atheist who now sees miracles nearly every day, and he teaches others how to live a supernatural life.
Here he is, Praying Medic.
Hi there!
Welcome to Praying Medic Live.
I am your host, Praying Medic.
I'm here every Thursday night at 8 p.m.
on Independent Talk, 1100 KFNX.
My goal is to teach average believers how to live a supernatural life, and I have a really awesome guest in the studio tonight.
We have my friend Tom Schmetzler, who is the host of God's Living Room here in Phoenix.
Now, later on in the show, I'll explain to you what God's Living Room is.
Tom, glad to have you on the show.
How you doing tonight, buddy?
Oh, it's an honor to be here.
It really is.
You like our intro music, don't you?
I do.
Makes me dance.
You were dancing over there.
So was I. I'm not gonna lie.
So, Tom, our show is all about the supernatural.
One of the things I like to talk about is healing, and you have a rather interesting healing testimony to share.
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Well, and it kind of fits in with the dancing, because there was a time in my life where I wasn't able to dance.
I had multiple sclerosis.
I was 23 years old, five weeks into my marriage.
Woke up one morning, my right foot was asleep, and by the end of the day it was my whole right side from the chest down.
And then the next morning it started in the left hand side, started in the foot.
By the end of the day, I'm pens and needles, just like when your foot's asleep, just from my chest down.
And I'm starting to lose my equilibrium, starting to feel woozy, not able to stand up and just feel like I can't feel the floor.
It's like I'm walking on cotton balls.
And all of a sudden, the next thing you know, I'm diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
And this was a very rapid progression of the disease.
Yes.
Well, within a couple of months, we went to see the neurologist, and he noticed that, you know, first of all, to be 23 and to be losing your equilibrium the way that I was, and I was starting to need a wheelchair to kind of help me out at times, and he even commented to us that he wanted to get our affairs in order.
He said, this is progressing so quickly that I don't recommend you having any children.
Because MS is incurable.
Right.
Pretty much it's just your muscles waste away until you basically die.
Correct.
Correct.
You just lose the ability to do everything.
And it turns off in the nerves of your brain.
And the nerves in your brain stop synapses or stop sending the signals to the rest of your whole body.
And they can take pictures and scans of your brain and they can see where the MS is originating or where it's attacking.
And then depending on where that's happening, it affects the way that you live life.
Well, you got healed because this was, you were 23 years old and you're not 23 years old anymore.
I've been healed for 22 years.
The Lord healed me at the age of 30.
So how did that happen?
Well, I was meeting with a group of guys.
There was like a half dozen of us or so we would meet before going to work every Wednesday morning.
And we'd get together like at 7 in the morning and just kind of, we would do a little Bible study.
We'd pray for each other, pray about the church, we'd use the church prayer list, and then we'd kind of spice it up each week, you know, stand in a circle, or spend time together, or whatever.
Did you play dodgeball?
Yeah!
In the sanctuary, oh yeah!
Right on home.
But the day that this happened, it was just like any other day.
I had nothing to tell me that anything special was going to happen.
I was just meeting with these guys, and they said, you know, Tom, today we're actually going to find a different spot in the church and spend our time alone with God.
So I was alone.
I was by myself.
I walked to the front of the church.
I sat down in the front row, and when I did, my hair went straight up.
It was like static electricity.
And I had been in the theater in my college years and high school years, and so I'd worked with lights, and it was like I'd zapped myself a couple times accidentally, and that was actually going through my hair.
Just going through and it was like my, my, my scalp was just tingling.
And so I stood up, I thought maybe it was static electricity.
So I'm reaching for metal and I can't make it stop.
And so I sit down and I go, Lord, is that you?
Is that your power?
And I'm not hearing anything.
And I said, well, God, I'm here to pray for the church today.
I've got the church prayer list.
I want to pray for the church.
So I bow my head and I'm, I'm, I'm praying for the church.
And the next thing you know, I become hot.
I'm like a hamburger under a heat lamp.
And I'm just on fire.
And I reached to my clothes, and my clothes are cold to the touch, and there's no lights on the sanctuary.
And at the time, it was like end of March, so it was still fairly cool.
And I said, God, is that you?
Is that your power?
And I'm just sweating.
That's it's you?
I'm not hearing anything.
So I bow my head.
So I'm going to pray for the church today.
And while I've got my head bowed, I feel a tap on my shoulder, and it's a dear friend of mine, and he's all apologetic.
Tom, I'm sorry.
I know we're praying for the church.
I know we're spending time alone.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but he says, I was sitting over there across the sanctuary, and I looked at you, and I had a word flash in front of my eyes, and I think it's what's wrong with your brain.
And I said, really?
What's the word?
And I expected something, you know, Charlton Heston, like, thus saith the Lord.
And he says, Tom, the word was mapping.
M-A-P-P-I-N-G.
And I said, mapping?
I said, what does that mean?
He says, well, I asked the Lord.
He showed me a map of the state of Arizona, showed me a railway system, and let's say it goes up from Phoenix up to Flagstaff.
Well, it's going to go east and go over to Albuquerque, or it's going to go straight up north to Utah, depending on how the rails connect.
There's a disconnect in the rails of your brain.
And he didn't know how MS works, but you've got a myelin sheath that covers your nerve, and that myelin sheath breaks down, they don't know why, and it causes a disconnect in your nerves.
Right.
And so, as he's saying this, I'm feeling what's like warm honey coming over the top of my head, and this warm, peaceful honey starts to come over my nose, and I feel like I'm breathing in water, and God just speaks to my heart, and he says, Tom, just relax, this is me.
I got this.
And this warm, peaceful honey just covers my body.
And he says, can I pray for you?
And he didn't know anything about what I'd been feeling.
I said, well, the Holy Spirit's been on me all morning.
You can probably pray anything.
It'll work.
Go ahead.
And so I closed my eyes and he prayed a very simple prayer.
And I was like, is that going to work?
And when I opened my eyes for the first time in two years, I could see clearly because the MS had attacked my eyes earlier on.
I actually went through a season of blindness.
But when it went into remission, anytime I changed rooms from one degree of light to another, my eyes would automatically blur and I'd have to wait for them to readjust.
Wow.
And so for the first time in two years, I opened my eyes and I can see totally clear.
And I go, could it be that simple?
And so I get up and this guy doesn't even know what's up.
I just get up and I run out of the church and I run a few blocks away and I run back and it's like I've been training for the Olympics.
It was like I wasn't even winded and I'm jumping up and down and the guys are coming around me.
They're going, Tom, you shouldn't do that.
And I said, I've been healed.
And they said, no, you haven't.
And I said, oh, yes, I have.
And it's been 22 years.
And that was really interesting, too, because the MS ed progressed to the point where you would get winded and exhausted just going up one flight of stairs.
One flight of stairs at work.
My boss knew I needed a half hour nap to recover from it.
Right, and so you were extremely weak at that point.
Yeah.
But once you got healed, you were ready to run a marathon.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so when I went to work that day, I was running up and down the steps.
And your boss is probably freaking out.
Yeah, he's going, what are you doing?
Are you crazy?
You're going to sleep for a week.
I said, that's nothing.
Watch this.
And then I ran around the whole building, you know.
That's awesome.
Well, I love that testimony.
That is just so good.
And I would like to encourage people who are listening, if you have been waiting for healing, Believe that God wants to heal you and will heal you, and do not give up hope and do not get discouraged.
Because miracles like this happen all the time, every day around the world.
I get testimonies from people, I see people healed, you see people healed.
And we know that this is real.
We're not just telling stories here.
This is the real deal.
Jesus loves to heal people.
So, Tom, you have been involved in healing for quite a long time.
When healing first came to the Phoenix area back With the Vineyard Church origin, you were kind of active in that at the time, weren't you?
John Wimber came out with the original Signs and Wonders conference.
Back in the 80s?
1983, yeah.
And the church that I was a part of sent our whole staff to go over to the conference.
And when they came back and found out about how easy it was to listen to the Holy Spirit, because John Wimber was so laid back, made it so simple, so accessible, then we saw revival hit our church.
And we saw the Lord do tremendous things.
I've read a lot of books on healing, and I think Power Healing by John Wimber is one of my all-time favorite books on healing.
You know, how John goes through his own testimony of his own unbelief, and his trying to get people healed, and his, you know, failure.
But then the Lord's saying, look, John, this is not rocket science.
You need to really just trust that I will heal people.
And he, like most of us, he had to have his mind renewed to the truth.
But once he finally got it, he got it.
You know, the interesting thing is, everybody who is really operating healing today, almost everybody in America for sure, kind of has their roots in what John Wimber did.
I mean, Bethel and most of the churches that are teaching on the supernatural, most of them go back to people who were discipled by Wimber.
Many of the leaders had been impacted by that very conference, and ones that were near that.
Yeah.
So, it's cool.
I love it.
I love healing, and I love what God is doing with the supernatural and healing in our generation.
And I think that we're going to see a lot more healing in the days to come.
We're going to see people healed of things that have not been healed.
I get a lot of requests for different conditions and some really, there aren't many testimonies.
But I believe we're going to start seeing those testimonies coming as we continue to step out in faith and believe God for greater things.
Now, Tom, after you were healed of MS, The Lord gave you a vision to explain the process and the dynamic of what was going on during your healing.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Well, when I was jumping up and down, the guys were saying, hey, you're not healed, you shouldn't do that.
And I said, I've been healed.
And they said, no, you haven't.
I said, oh, yes, I have.
And so we decided this was for real, then we needed to pause and thank the Lord.
So we stood in a circle, and we were thanking the Lord.
And as we did, I had a vision.
And in it, I saw a dam.
And in the dam, there were drops of water that were filling like this lake behind the dam.
And he said, Tom, these drops of water represent the prayers of the saints, everyone who's prayed for you over the last seven years.
Every one of their prayers counted for your miracle and then the dam erupted today.
And so he said, go back and thank everybody who's ever prayed for you.
And as you run across them, thank them because they were a part of your miracle today.
And that is something that we probably don't have enough appreciation for sometimes when it comes to, you know, the dynamics of healing.
Because sometimes people get healed, boom, it's a one-time thing, one prayer, and you get healed.
And other times, you need hundreds of people praying for you over years and years before that dam finally breaks and you get healed.
Well, and I realized in that instant that you and I are made in the image of God, and that God said, let there be light, and there are still stars being formed.
So, when we pray, when we pray, that is still being activated in the spirit realm.
Right.
Even though it may be days, months, years later, it's still being activated by the Lord.
Right.
So, before the break, we were talking about the John Wimber's Signs and Wonders Conference in the 80s.
Now, you did not get to go to that conference.
I was the janitor, so I had to stay back and clean the toilets while all the staff got to go.
They got to go have fun and you got to stay home.
But...
When they came back, you got to witness your first healing.
Yes.
So how did that happen?
Well, and of course, I wasn't at the conference, so I hadn't heard anything of what had been taught.
And so my cousin, who was the worship leader for the church, and we were like twin brothers of different mothers, very close, and we joked together, had a good time.
He had a cold, and it came out of nowhere, and he's feeling sick.
He'd been trying to work all morning, and it's getting to be the afternoon, and he's going, I've got a cold in my nose.
I can't feel good.
And so he was, and then he looked at me and he says, wait a minute, you could pray for me.
And I said, what?
And he said, you can do it.
You can do what I've learned.
And I said, well, I wasn't at the conference.
He says, all you got to do is be quiet and ask the Lord what he would have you do to pray for me.
Just ask him to show you.
So I said, okay.
And so I said, okay, Lord, I just love my brother.
I ask that you bless him and I pray you'd show me how to pray.
And in my mind's eye, I saw me take my index fingers and point them up to his temples and just touch him.
And so I said, Lord, be healed in the name of Jesus.
And I just touched him there.
And he looks at me and goes...
I think I'm better.
I said, no way!
It can't happen that fast.
He said, no, no, I feel good.
I feel good.
The headache's gone.
He says, all the congestion's gone.
Oh, no, I feel better.
I think I'm going to go back to work.
I said, no way!
You're going to go home because you're sick.
He said, no, I feel better.
And that was the first healing I ever saw.
And I had a hard time believing it myself.
It was so wonderful.
I had the same unbelief myself.
The first couple of times I saw people heal, I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Are you absolutely sure?
Because I am having a hard time believing that you're really healed.
That God actually healed somebody through me.
But when it happens, it happens.
And it is really unbelievable sometimes.
Well, and it's nothing that we make happen.
It's all of the Lord, and so we're like a witness, an eyewitness of what's going on, and even though we may have said the prayer, He's the one who's making it happen.
But you know, you kind of touched on something that I think a lot of us need to consider when we're praying for people, and that is that Wimber was big on following the leading of the Holy Spirit, Letting his presence come and following the leading of the Holy Spirit.
That's something that some of us have kind of gotten away from.
And I think, I personally think a lot of the reasons why sometimes people aren't healed is because we are not actually asking the Lord to show us specifically what needs to be done.
I think there's a hand in hand with authority and anointing.
Right.
Of standing in God's authority of what he's given us as children of God to be able to pray and to make happen into this world because of who we are in Christ.
But there's also an anointing of his presence to be aware of, to watch for.
Like me with my healing, feeling all those symptoms or things that were going on in my body and recognizing something special was happening.
And when I pray for people, I often ask them what they're feeling or what they're sensing.
And some people, you know, they ask me like, okay, why are you asking those questions?
Why are you asking, you know, what are you sensing?
What are you feeling?
Because I want to know what the Holy Spirit is doing with them.
Do they feel heat in their back?
Do they feel tingling on their skin?
Do they feel something going on?
Are they seeing something?
Because that tells me what the Holy Spirit is doing.
And that way I can sort of work with him if I know what he's doing.
And sometimes I see it, but sometimes I don't.
Well, and that's what John Wimber said, to pray with your eyes open, because sometimes they may actually be trembling or showing signs of the Holy Spirit being on them, and they don't feel a thing.
I've seen videos, old videos of Wimber, where he was at one of the conferences, and he would tell people, look, look at their skin.
Look at how their skin is rippling.
Look at this.
Observe this.
Look at how their eyes are fluttering.
And he would point out to the students how they could see the way that the Holy Spirit was manifesting on people.
He was a very, very keen observer.
Yes.
And I think, again, I think we need to become observers and really pay attention to what the Holy Spirit says.
I like the taking hands with God in the process of praying, that that whimper allows with that.
To me, it's like tending the garden with God of our lives.
Yeah, it is exactly like that.
So, can you tell me one of your favorite healing testimonies of all time?
You have a lot of them.
One of my favorites was actually back in that time.
My cousin had a daughter, Amber, 10 months old, was just starting to learn how to walk.
She was in one of those metal walkers with the wheels on the bottom and she'd bounce up and down and the thing would move around.
And so I was at the church and I was mopping the floors on a Saturday and in comes the administrator for the church and she says, I've got some very hard news, Tom.
At that moment what had happened was Baby Amber was outside in the backyard of the house and was being watched by one of the teenagers and the teenager fell asleep and Baby Amber was bouncing up and down in her little walker and it went to the deep end of the pool.
Took her right to the bottom.
Wow.
Code blue at least 15 minutes.
At least 15 minutes.
Okay, so she comes out of the pool limp and not breathing.
Right, right.
And so they call the EMTs and they're trying to get a pulse.
They can hardly get one.
They call the EIRVAC unit.
Mark and his wife Paula and the family, they said, you don't take off until we pray.
So they took hands and they paused and they said, Lord, we commit Amber into your hands.
And then they put on the EIRVAC and they said, we'll meet you at Good Sam.
Don't expect much because we don't even have a pulse.
We don't even see much of a pulse here.
And so I got word, and I had all this mop floor in the water.
The best way to mop the floor is to throw it all down on the linoleum and start scrubbing.
And so she left me there, and when she did, I fell to my knees, because it was the first grandchild in our family, and I was just like, Lord, no, not Amber, not Amber, Lord, no, what's going on?
Why, why?
And I'm crying, and I'm weeping, and it feels like a good 20 minutes or so, and you get to the end of the cry.
And I took a breath, and that still small voice of God speaks to my heart and says, she's going to come out of this better than before.
And I went, what?
That's what I want to hear.
And then he says it again.
She's going to come out of this better than before.
That's what everybody wants to hear.
Yeah.
And so I then proceeded to argue with God as I'm cleaning the church, you know, and I can show you like six spots.
No, but you don't understand, Lord.
How can I tell him that?
You know, I'm going to look like a weirdo.
I'm going to look crazy, you know?
Normally, I would be done cleaning the church at 530.
It took 10 o'clock that night.
You know, I'm just arguing with God.
And I get in the car, and I put the keys in the car, and he says, Tom, are you going to tell them?
I said, tell them what, Lord?
Tell them she's going to come out of this better than before.
And I said, Lord, I don't even know what that means.
He says, they've been receiving negative news all day.
You're the only one with anything positive.
And if you don't go tell them, I can't make her better than before.
And I said, Lord, I just don't want to pull his leg.
I don't want to be, you know, one of those false fanatics, you know, who wants to believe someone who's not there.
He says, Tom, the hospital is between here and your house.
If you go there and you find out she's got a pulse, can you tell them that?
I said, well, I could do that.
So I drive to the hospital.
I get there.
I come to the main desk.
Amber's still here.
Is she still alive?
Well, she's still on the list here.
I don't know if she's alive.
ICU.
So I get in the elevator.
I go up to the top and the Lord says, speak only to Mark and Paula.
Dingo the doors.
There's Mark and Paula.
And I said, is there a pulse?
And they said, Oh, there's a pulse, but not much of one.
And I said, then I need to tell you what's happened to me.
And so I told him about how I'd been talking to God all day and he said better than, and they were like, what does that mean?
What does that mean?
I don't know.
And then my cousin had this wonderful idea.
He knew I fainted at the sight of blood.
So he says, if you can go in there and you can see my daughter with all these tubes coming out of her and a big bolt in her head for the swelling in the brain, and you can tell me that she's going to come out of this better before then I'll believe you.
So they put all this stuff on me and I go into ICU and when I walk around the corner, I see Jesus.
Next to the bed.
And I go, she's going to be better than before.
Amazing.
Welcome back to Praying Medic Live.
I am your host, Praying Medic.
In the studio is my friend, Tom Schurmitzler.
And if you just joined us, man, you just missed a really good story, but we'll get you really caught up on it.
So, Tom was telling us a story about a child who drowned in a pool.
Yes.
And the Lord told you she's going to be better than before.
She's going to come out of this better than before.
And you are full of doubt and unbelief.
Oh yeah, I'm the Don Knotts of faith healers.
But the Lord says, look turkey, I want you to drive by that hospital and I want you to stop in and see if she's got a pulse.
Right, right.
He said, all I've heard is negative stuff all day, Tom.
And if you don't go in and share this, then I won't be able to do this for them.
And so I was the only voice of anything positive.
And that's what Mark and Paula told me.
They said, we found out that her brain is going to swell.
And if her brain swells, you know, they've got this scale of zero to 15.
If it gets over 10, then she's probably going to be a vegetable.
That's the intracranial pressure monitor.
Correct.
And so they were all concerned about the swelling, and so my cousin looks at me and he has this bright idea.
He goes, you know, if you can see all these tubes coming out of my 10-month-old baby, and you can see that bolt in her head that's monitoring the pressure in her brain, and you can still come out and tell me that she's going to come out of this better than before, then I'll believe you.
And I also faint at the sight of blood.
So he had this great idea.
They put all the stuff on me, the booties and everything, and when I walk in, I see Jesus in my mind's eye next to the bed, and he's leaning over baby Amber, and when he looks at me, he's got this look like, isn't she beautiful?
Isn't she just beautiful?
And I know what the gift of faith is, because in that moment, I felt like I could just unplug all those tubes, because she's going to come out of this better than before.
I just knew it.
You just knew that you knew.
I knew that I knew.
That she was going to be fine.
Mm-hmm.
So what happened?
So I turned around and came out of the room, and my cousin is there, and he's got family members up in the hallway there, and they're all weeping.
And I mean, I've never seen them like this, and they're like, you want to come spend time over here?
I said, no, I've been arguing with God all day.
I'm going home, I'm tired.
So the next morning was Sunday morning and we're worshiping the Lord and we get a call from the hospital to the church that her brain has swollen to 13.
And so my pastor looks at me and he says, Tom, you're the only one with any faith for any of this.
In other words, I was the only one who said anything positive about anything from God on any of this.
So, you're coming with me.
So, I take this long drive, and I mean, you could tell, he was just like, what have I taught these people?
I've got this little baby, and what's going to happen?
And so, he said, as we got out of the car, he says, okay, Hotshot, what are we going to do?
I said, we're going to do what you taught us to do from that John Winford conference, you know?
We're going to surround her, we're going to ask for the Holy Spirit to come, we're going to ask for God's love to fill her, and then we're just going to wait for Him to show us what to do next.
So we surrounded Baby Amber and we asked for God's presence to come and had our eyes closed.
I closed my eyes because I was trying to pray extra hard.
I feel a little tap on my shoulder and it's my cousin and we look over at this monitor and it's coming down.
12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5.
And he jokes and he says, first time I've ever seen prayer monitored in my whole life.
That's cool.
And so Baby Amber spoke her first words ever that afternoon in the hospital.
They released her in 24 hours.
The next Sunday was Easter Sunday, so we celebrated two resurrections, Jesus and baby Amber.
And two of the AMTs had given their lives to Christ because of the miracle.
It was just too amazing.
That is an amazing testimony.
I love it.
It's easy to underestimate the power of the testimony.
But, you know, when people witness the miraculous, especially people in medical professions, EMTs, nurses, doctors, they know people don't survive stuff like that unless it's the power of God that does something.
And when the power of God shows up and does a miracle like that, it is incredibly powerful.
I've heard of testimonies of entire families giving their lives to Jesus when one person got healed.
I saw a church that got impacted by that.
There was a lady who had come from California, was at Mayo Clinic.
She had been diagnosed with cancer, was full of cancer.
They didn't expect her to even survive the biopsy.
And so it was Wednesday, she was going to do the biopsy on Monday.
And so they told her, they said, man, we don't expect you to even survive this.
And she was there with her daughter.
She's probably, you know, latter 60s.
Her daughter's 40-ish.
And so the daughter looks at her and says, well, mom, what are we going to do?
And she says, well, I'm not ready to die yet.
And they came from a church that didn't believe that God heals today.
You know, that was all back in the Bible when it needed to be written and it doesn't happen today.
And so she said, I'm just, I got to find somebody who believes in healing.
So they began to drive up and down the street saying, God, show us which way to go, which was a big step for them.
And God directed them to our church.
And when I had gone to church that day, I was on the staff there.
The Lord said, I'm going to send somebody today for you to be praying for, for healing.
And I went, great, wonderful.
Knock, knock, knock.
Knock, knock, knock.
And so I was praying for her and asked the Holy Spirit to come, and she began to tremble.
And I said, you're feeling electricity, aren't you?
And she said, yeah.
I said, that's God's presence.
It's all good.
She was like, what are you doing to me?
Is this a parlor trick?
Yeah, not exactly.
And the Lord had given me a couple of pictures for her about, you know, that this is a season of greater faith, and He wants you to lean on Him.
And this piece just came over, and her daughter said, Mom, I've never seen you smile like this.
They got in the car and so the next Sunday came around and up came the daughter and her dad was with her and I thought, oh no, the mom died.
And she comes up and she says, I want to tell you what happened.
She said, when we got in the car, she said, you know, I've never heard anybody just talk to Jesus like he's a friend, like Tom just did.
I've been in the church for 40 years.
I wonder if I've really given my life to Christ.
So she gave her life to Jesus and said, I want to know you like Tom just prayed to you.
I want to know you like that.
And so they did the biopsy on Monday.
She got through it.
And when they did it, they found out she had no cancer.
And they told her at Mayo Clinic, they said, ma'am, you were full of cancer.
The question was simply, how full?
So whatever happened between Wednesday and today is a miracle.
And so the dad was there because he wanted to shake my hand because he's got a new wife because she's happy all the time and she's not sour.
And the church back in California said, we've got to find people to pray for.
So then they started going to door trying to find people to pray for for healing.
It changed and shifted their whole paradigm.
Wow, that's amazing.
So, Tom, you have kind of an interesting job where some interesting things happen.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing, what God is doing through you at work?
I sing for hospice.
And so I sing for hospice patients all over the valley.
With your guitar.
With my guitar.
I've heard you play guitar and sing.
You're actually pretty good.
Thank you.
I sing about 740 songs, everything from Golden Oldies up through the Beatles, West End Hymns, Frank Sinatra.
I love your Elvis.
Your Elvis is pretty solid.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And so I'll be playing these songs, but I sing them unto the Lord as if they're worship songs.
So I'm worshiping the Lord when I'm playing this music.
And he'll tell me songs to sing, you know, and I'll play them and somebody over here will start crying and they'll go, how did you know those were the songs at my wedding?
Or how did you know those were the songs that my dad always sang to me?
And I've just watched the Lord's presence shift atmospheres, if you will, in care homes, where they were sitting there just kind of lifeless and kind of down and despairing.
In comes joy.
In comes... Can you tell us about the angels?
Sure.
Because I love that story.
I just, I'm praying while I'm playing, and so one day I'm in a facility I'd never even been to before.
I didn't even have any patients there, I was just there to kind of say hi.
I've been there!
Because we were telling the story, I'm like, I know that place, I've been there, I know exactly what you're talking about.
They put me in this wing, and there was probably ten people or so there, and as I'm playing, people are coming out of the woodwork.
And as a worship leader, you sense God's presence, and I could just feel God, like a pin drop was to fall.
They were just so in with me in that moment.
And so I'm singing, and I'm singing Sunnyside of the Street, and when I glance up, I see three angels in my mind's eye.
I see three angels, two of them with instruments, one of them with a book.
And they're just swaying, and they're smiling, and they're looking up to heaven, and there's just this joy, and I wanted to clap.
I wanted to laugh.
And the Lord says, don't laugh, I'm up to something here.
I glance over and I see Jesus, and He's dancing to Sunnyside of the Street!
Which just made me want to laugh, and the Lord said, don't.
I'm up to something.
And then the Lord says to me, I want you to sing all of me.
All of me.
Why not take all of me?
And when you do, I want you to meditate on Romans 12.1, which is, I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice unto God.
So I hit that strum, all of me.
And when I do, there's a guy who was in a wheelchair who introduced himself to me.
He says, I've got leukemia.
I've got like six weeks to live.
And he jumps out of the wheelchair.
He grabs a nurse and he goes, whoo!
Woo!
And he starts dancing with her, doing jitterbugs.
And they're jitterbugging over to my left.
Behind me are two nurses.
They're dancing.
And over to my right, there's a guy who picks his mom up out of a wheelchair and starts dancing with her.
And I notice that everybody in this room is singing with me like it's a sing-along song.
And they're all having like this big, you know, party, like it's a Super Bowl party or something.
And it was just this joy just erupted.
So when I got done, the head nurse, she comes up and she says, how did you do that?
And I played coy.
How did I do what?
She says, I've seen people do music therapy before and I've never seen that before.
And I said, well, ma'am, it's prayer therapy mixed with music therapy.
You know, I'm praying for them and God told me to play those things.
And I didn't tell her about the angels, but we had a marketer there and she said she saw me look and see them.
And so I had to tell her about the angels that were there.
That is awesome, dude.
It blew my theology out of the box, because up till then, I'd never seen anything like that.
Well, you know, neat and tidy theology is overrated.
Hey, I am Praying Medic.
We are going to take a commercial break.
Do not go away.
We're going to be right back with more supernatural stories on 1100 KFNX.
Welcome back to Praying Medic Live.
I am your host, Praying Medic.
In the studio with me is my friend Tom Schirmitzler.
Got a question for you, buddy.
So now I have all the easy questions out of the way.
Now we're going to give you the hard one.
You have a magic wand that can magically erase any teaching about God that exists.
What is the one teaching that you get rid of?
There's a phrase that people use all the time about, well, it must be God's will.
That must have been God's will.
And it's like, it's this wonderful out that we've given for the things that have happened that we can't explain or that we don't like to have happen.
We say, well, it must be God's will for you to be sick.
Because a lot of people think God's in control of everything.
Right, right.
So from that place, then like with me with the MS, one of the things I had to work through was, is God angry with me?
Is He upset with me?
Is He letting this happen because He's trying to teach me a lesson?
Are you being punished?
Are you teaching a lesson?
Right.
So it must be God's will because it's happening.
It's God's will to have this happen to me.
And that question, it must be God's will, or if it's the will of God, or after the person said, well, it must have been God's will for them to go to heaven, I think is such an easy out for us.
I think God wants those of us, especially those of us who aren't suffering, but we know people who are.
I believe God wants us to be more in a state of intercession, more in a state of his heart of love towards the people who are suffering.
Because I think it's up to us to get the answer, not the person who's suffering.
I believe God wants us to be more involved instead of giving in to, well, if it's God's will, then that's just the way it's going to happen, and there's nothing we can do from it.
Look, they did those things, and so now they're paying the price for it, because it's God's will for them to suffer, and there's nothing we can do.
And they stop praying, they stop being involved in the process of inviting God in to be an answer.
We kind of become like Job's counselors.
Yes.
Yes, precisely.
You've done something to deserve this.
You know, if you wouldn't have done that, you wouldn't be having this situation.
You know, it's God's will.
Yeah, I agree with you.
That whole idea really just bugs me terribly.
And I think we need to develop a better understanding of God.
And we need to understand that suffering and sickness and disease is not God's will.
Jesus didn't tolerate any of that stuff.
When he saw people that were sick, blind, lame, He healed them.
He didn't say, well, you know, it's the Father's will for you to suffer and be blind.
No, He healed them.
Gave them their vision back.
That was one of the things, when I had the MS, that was important for me, was I realized God is not angry with me.
He loves me.
He died on the cross to set me free from this.
So then I realized I'm to draw near to a God of love and to His heart, and the closer I can get to His heart, the more comfort I felt.
So I felt like if I'm at least going to walk through this with God, a loving God, then to believe that he's got something.
Unless he wants to show me what my sin is, then I'll be more than happy to confess it.
And you went through a lot of emotional changes, emotional healing, some identity shifting during that time.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, he dealt with me about taking the whole diagnosis and how to become my identity.
I have MS.
And he said, no, you're my child.
You're a child of God who has been attacked like a warship that's been hit with a mine.
You've been hit from the outside with something, but you are my child and I love you.
I think that's one of the most difficult things that I see, personally, is when I run into people who say, I'm a diabetic.
The diabetes, the disease, becomes their identity.
Yes.
They really start to believe, I am a diabetic.
That's who I am.
That's what I am.
And I'm always going to be a diabetic.
Or I'm always going to have MS.
Or I am bipolar.
No, you're not bipolar.
You are a child of God who has really bad mood swings.
Yes!
And you need some emotional healing.
And when we start to get our identity right and stop identifying ourself with our condition, That really frees up God's, and it gives Him an ability to work with us to get us free of the other stuff.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Because then we're inviting Him to be a part of the process for our healing.
We don't feel like He's against me.
He's actually for me, which is what Scripture tells us.
He's for us and not against us.
He's for us.
And you know, Jesus said, as a man thinks in his heart, so he is.
And if you are convinced in your heart that you are schizophrenic, And that's just how God made you.
Or that you are whatever, and that's how God made you.
If that becomes your identity, it's really, really difficult to change that because you've taken it on as your identity.
And God is not going to make you something that you don't believe you are.
Right.
You kind of put yourself within the cell of it, if you will, like a prison cell and said, this is the way I am and it's always going to be.
Yeah.
I had a dream, speaking of prison cells, I had a dream years ago where the Lord showed me that he had authorized people to be free of their prisons.
And I was part of a team that went around and set people free and opened up gates of prisons.
However, There was, we came to this one area where there are people in prison and they had decided, they had voted, not to get out of prison.
They wanted to stay in prison.
So, God said, with that particular prison, you have no power over that prison because they have decided they want to remain inmates.
You can go and you can free anybody who has decided they want to be free, but for anybody who's decided they want to remain an inmate, you have no power over them.
They have already decided their own fate.
Even though God's will was for them to be free, and I could have freed them, they have chosen not to be free.
And we have to choose freedom.
We have to choose to cooperate and work with God so that we can be free.
I mean, that's a big part of the process, I think.
And it shifts.
You have to shift and say, God is a God of love and kindness, and He's for me.
He died on the cross to free me from this.
He did all that He could to be here for me.
So, to actually say that it's God's will for me to have this, so I'm meant to suffer, we're giving into a lie from the enemy.
It is a lie from the enemy.
And a lot of what's wrong with us today is that we're believing lies about ourselves, about God.
So, Tom, tell me about God's living room.
God's Living Room is located on Cave Creek Road and just south of Greenway.
Actually, the heart of the place is we're kind of like a, it's like a retreat center in the middle of Phoenix.
I have people coming in from different parts, like from Bethel and different speakers from people who've experienced revival from around the world, and they come there and they speak.
And so I invite people to come from all over the valley who want to taste or receive an impartation from that, and then take it back to your churches.
So that's our number one goal for God's Living Room.
Okay, so it's off Cave Creek Road.
When does God's living room meet?
Well, we currently have a Wednesday night class where we're learning the art of hearing God, and we do different classes on that.
And then we have, every other Friday night, we have a worship night where we get together and just enjoy God's presence, just spend time in his presence.
And that sometimes goes into the wee hours of the morning.
Sometimes our meetings can go, just because God's presence, and not everybody has to stick around, but you just get so caught up with the Lord that you lose track of time, and next thing you know, you're like, wow, it's midnight.
Or one o'clock in the morning.
Or one o'clock in the morning the other night, yeah.
And then Sunday mornings, we have a church family, if you will.
We have a group that gets together on Sunday mornings to worship the Lord.
Yeah, kind of a traditional worship service.
I've been there to that on Sunday morning.
Somewhat, except that I let the worship go however long God wants to go.
We'll sit there in His presence and just enjoy His presence.
The whole idea of God's Living Room is to enjoy His presence and let Him do whatever He wants to do.
Right, that's cool.
Is there a website, a Facebook place, or some way people can find out more about God's Living Room?
Godslivingroom.org.
Okay, and you're on Facebook.
Is there a Facebook page?
Yes, God's Living Room in Phoenix.
Oh, and here's a great site.
If you go to just God's Living Room in Facebook, it's a place where you can go and spend time with Jesus.
It has all kinds of stuff, clips from Bethel, worship clips and scriptures and things that you can just spend time with the Lord.
But if you go to God's Living Room in Phoenix, and that's about the church, that's about Groovy.
So if you are a local person here in the Phoenix area and you're looking to go to someplace, you know, a little different, a little outside the box, God's Living Room is something you might want to check out.
Like Tom said, you can go on Facebook and check out their page located on Cave Creek Road.
And that is cool.
We are going to have you back on the show sometime in the spring when the Arizona School of Supernatural gets back into swing.
Yes.
And we can talk more about that later.
Wonderful.
Because if you're here in the Phoenix area and you're looking for some training and mentoring in the supernatural, there are some things going on here locally that you can get involved with.
So we'll have you back on the show and we'll talk more about that later, I guess.
Love it.
That'll be cool.
That'll be great.
Well, Tom, we are just about out of time tonight.
It has been really awesome having you on the show.
I'm so glad you were able to come in.
I love hanging out with you.
We always have a good time.
You'll have to come over to the house sometime.
We'll have to make dinner for you.
I would love it.
It'd be awesome.
All right.
I am Praying Medic, and I'd like to thank you for tuning in.
I'd also like to thank Brayden on the board.
Awesome job, buddy.
If you want to check out my website, where I have a lot of free articles, videos, you can check it out at PrayingMedic.com.
