David was born into a deeply religious Muslim family in a Muslim village in a Muslim country in southwest Asia, and his family members and neighbors became very upset when he and one of his uncles became Christians. Not surprisingly, his family and neighbors became even more upset when his uncle began openly telling others about his faith, when David began preaching, and when people were delivered and miraculously healed in response to David’s prayers. David was twenty six years old in July of 2006 when his uncle was abducted and executed by a group of enraged extremists, and a month and a half later two men with AK-47s came into the family sweet shop where David worked and emptied 50 rounds, leaving David lying in a pool of blood with 11 gunshot wounds. His survival is miraculous, since the doctor at the local hospital refused to treat him, and he therefore did not receive any medical care until he got to a hospital in a distant city eight hours later, but his left arm was so badly damaged that it had to be amputated.

The ministry mentioned earlier helped David with the cost of his medications and with a prosthesis for his left arm, and when John visited in October of 2007 to provide medical follow-up he also asked David about the psychological aspect of the trauma. David stated that he was “all right,” but his face and voice looked and sounded depressed, and with further probing John discovered that he had full blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), including flashbacks of the machine gun fire during the attack. John then lead him through the Immanuel process, and Jesus showed David that he had always been with him, that he was with him throughout every moment of the attack, and that he would always be with him in the future. At the end of the ministry time, when John asked him to go back to the memory of being shot, David sat quietly, with a surprised but peaceful look on his face, as he reported that he could still recall being startled by the shooting but that he was now aware of Jesus’ presence with him, in the memory, even during the shooting, and that the memory was no longer distressing.

Excerpted from Karl D. Lehman, Outsmarting Yourself (Libertyville, IL: This Joy! Books, 2011), pages 72 & 73.