Delivered from Drugs—And Hepatitis Too

When Eddie was in his twenties, he struggled with drug addiction. Then a friend invited him to church. “As soon as I walked in there, I felt something-something nice, like as if something was helping me,” he says. “It was an experience that I cannot tell you--but all I can tell you was God, and that night, I got saved.” 

Eddie tried rehab, but was unsuccessful and returned to using heroin and cocaine. “I backslid. I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy at all. I knew that I had turned on God,” he says. “I was lost, but I wanted to come back. I wasn't happy. I was empty. I was confused. I couldn't make decisions. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t sleep. So I said, ‘You know what? I'm going to go back. I want to ask God to take me back. I'm going to beg him to take me back.’"  

In 1996, Eddie went to church and rededicated his life to Christ. “They prayed for me, they laid hands on me, and turned me back to the Lord.”

Eddie also went to rehab and overcame his addictions. He lived clean and sober for five years and things were looking up when in 1999, Eddie began experiencing abdominal pain. The years of IV drug use had caught up with him.

“That's when I went to the doctor, and the doctor told me that I had liver disease and I had hepatitis C, and I said ‘Well, I'm going to die.’”   

With medication Eddie lived with the disease for over 15 years. Then one day, he had a revelation while watching one of his favorite shows, The 700 Club. “I said, ‘Look, I belong to the Lord.  I'm your son. When you were on this earth, in this world, anybody who came to you, you healed them,” Eddie says. “There's not one person in your Word that didn't get healed.  You healed them and you forgive their sins. Now, I'm your son, and I want you to do the same for me.’”

Eddie began praying and called the prayer center at CBN. “I talked to a very nice lady, and when I was talking to her I began to cry,” he recalls. “I said, ‘It's because of my sin that I'm like this.’  She said, ‘Look, Jesus didn't come to this world to save you and then to kill you from hepatitis or whatever disease you've got.  We're going to pray for it.’ She prayed for me and again, I felt the peace.  I felt like God said, ‘Don't worry about it.’ I was already claiming victory.”  

Eddie continued to pray for healing. “After that once in a while I would feel some sharp pain, but I said, "You know what, Lord, I trust you Jesus, I trust you.  This is the enemy trying to contradict your blessing and your miracle, trying to tell me that I'm not completely healed. But I am healed because if you heal me, I'm going to stay healed.”

One evening, Eddie attended a healing service at his church. “One of the members of a prayer team came and said, ‘I proclaim, I plead the blood of Jesus over the body of this man from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, that he's clean and healed,’” Eddie remembers. “And I didn't even tell him about my hepatitis. When he told me, I felt some peace, and I said, ‘Thank God.  Thank God.  You are answering my prayers. Thank you, Lord, thank you.’"  

A few weeks later, Eddie went to his doctor to get the results of some blood work. “He said, ‘Eddie, I got good news and bad news.’ I said, ‘Give me the bad news.’ He said, ‘Well, the bad news is that I'm going to miss you. You won't be coming back to see me again. You're a nice guy, and I’m going to miss you. Now, the good news is that it is true; you're clean, clean. You're just like me. You're clean.’”

Eddie shows no signs of hepatitis or liver disease. Today he is active in his local church, and ministers to the homeless and prisoners in Texas. “When God does something, he finishes it. Until the day that I leave this earth, until the day I go meet him, I'm going to be healed,” Eddie proclaims. “I’m so happy, I want to tell everybody, and as long as I live, I'm going to glorify his name.”