The Greatest Miracle I Know
A true story by Rick Joe Musick
I want to share with you a true story about a three-year-old little boy who lived in a small farming community in Texas. Brownfield Texas comes by its name honestly. Brownfields are everywhere. If you have never been in a dust storm in Brownfield Texas you know very little about dust, dirt, and sandstorms. I remember as a child playing outside and the wind was not blowing very hard, but on the horizon, we could see a wall of dirt filling the sky. Within twenty minutes the wind picked up, straight-line winds were blowing about fifty miles an hour and everything went black. It was literally dark in the middle of the day. Dust covered everything inside the house. That is why, I am sure they named Brownfield TX, Brownfield.
In Brownfield, a young working-class family was doing there best to live the American dream. Raynell was a young housewife. She married at the very young age of fifteen. She gave birth to Cindy when she was seventeen, she had a little boy named Fred when she was nineteen, and she gave birth to another little boy when she was twenty years old. His name Was Rickey.
Alfred and Raynell lived about a half block off the main highway that ran through the heart of Brownfield. At this time Alfred was at work, Cindy was in the second grade, Fred and Rickey were playing in the front yard with there little black and white puppy. Raynell was washing the morning dishes. Little did Raynell and Alfred know that their peaceful lives were about to be shattered by the screams of Fred.
Fred and Rickey were playing with there puppy. The puppy wandered out into the street and little three-year-old Rickey stepped off the curb into the path of an oncoming car. The car literally ran over the toddler. Somehow the child’s body lodged between the back wheel and the axel and was dragged for almost a block before being dislodged from the automobile. Fred, five years old witnessed the whole shocking event. Fred ran into the house crying and screaming, “Bubbas been run over!, Bubba got run over!” Raynell turned from the kitchen sink to witness the reality of the words of her five-year-old son. Rickey indeed had been ran over!
Rickey was rushed to the emergency room in Brownfield and was later transferred to the Methodist hospital in Lubbock, Texas. Emergency brain surgery was performed and the prognoses were not good. The brain surgeon came out and told the young parents, “There is a strong possibility that your son will not live through the night, and we want you to be prepared for the worst. If your son lives he will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and he will be severely mentally retarded. The back of his brain has been destroyed.” Bone fragments had to be removed from his brain.
Shock, fear and helplessness gripped their hearts, “Our baby might die, and if he lives he will live a very challenging life.”
Raynell has a sister named Wanda Faye. Wanda goes to one of ‘those’ churches that really believe in the power of prayer, divine healing, the laying on of hands, anointing with oil and miracles. When Wanda Faye who lived in Lubbock Texas at the time, heard the news about her three-year-old nephew she called on her church to pray, she called her pastor the Rev. John Kershaw to come to the hospital to ‘pray’ for her injured nephew.
Pastor Kershaw walked into the hospital room and said, “I felt so helpless, as I looked at the broken body of that baby boy.” Little Rickey was wrapped from head to toe with bandages and stitches. His little body had been scraped and bruised from head to foot. There he lay under an oxygen tent fighting for every breath. Brother Kershaw took out his ‘anointing oil’ and placed a little on the tiny hand of this broken child, and he began to pray the prayer of faith according to James chapter five and verse fourteen. He prayed, “In the name of Jesus heal this child! Give us a miracle! Heal his brain from all injuries, and let him walk again!”
God answers prayer! God honors His Word! God respects our faith! And God touched little Rickey! Rickey lived through the night! Rickey responded to light, and Rickey responded to touch, and Rickey was recovering very fast considering the extent of his injuries.
After a speedy recovery, Rickey was released from the hospital. The surgeon told Raynell I want to see Rickey in my office in two weeks so we can run some test on his brain activity and make sure there is no swelling in his brain. To the doctor’s surprise two weeks later Rickey came walking into the doctor’s office holding his mother’s hand! Raynell said, “When we walked into the doctor’s office the Dr. staggered backward, set on his desk and began to weep, saying, this is a miracle!”
I know this story to be true, because, I am Rickey! I am forty-nine years old, and yes I still walk, and no I am not mentally challenged, just a little crazy. This incident happened in 1962. That is a wonderful miracle. God completely restored my sense of balance, healed my brain, and gave me life! However, this it is not the greatest miracle that I know. The greatest miracle that I know took place twelve years later. When I was four years old our family moved to Amarillo Texas, and I would discover, God was not finished with me yet.
You would have thought that after such a significant miracle my parents would have turned to the Lord, but they did not. My Dad turned to the whiskey bottle and to six packs of beer. My father was an alcoholic for the greater part of my childhood. Drinking whiskey right out of the bottle, all day every day, along with can after can of beer. I can recall several times my family huddled around the kitchen sink watching my father weep pouring a bottle of whiskey down the drain promising his wife and children that he was going to stop his drinking. Only to buy another bottle as soon as the liquor store opened the next morning. My father was bound by, possessed by, controlled by alcohol.
Because of my dads drinking my mother was a nervous wreck. She spoke of death often, telling us, “If it were not for you kids I would kill myself!” I remember mother at times shaking uncontrollably, with a cigarette in her hand. As I look back on my childhood I realize my mother was a very unhappy, unstable, angry person. There were times that I believe she took her anger out on her children. She yelled a lot, she cursed us often, and when she whipped us, she beat us. Not with a fist, but with the lashing of a belt, very hard. I Will admit at times we needed a good spanking, however, Mom went too far. I remember an incident that happened when I was n the third grade. My brother Fred and I got into a little scuffle, and Mom was going to spank (beat) us. I did not start the fight, Fred did, and I was not going to take a whipping for something I did not instigate, so I ran! Bad mistake! It gave mother all the more reasons to vent her anger on me. When I was dragged into the house she unleashed her fury on me. I was slapped to the ground, and she sat on my chest and commenced to slapping me across the face repeatedly.
Something changed in me after that. I became very angry at my parents. I hated Dad’s drinking, and I hated my mother’s attitude. Thus at a young age I learned to hate, and rebel. I was mad at God, I was mad at my parents, I was an angry young man.
Years passed and now I am a teenager in junior high school. I fell into what some would call the wrong crowd. At the time they were my best friends. Every one of our parents was drinkers, drug abusers, and pretty much miserable. So we all had a common denominator, we were young, angry and frustrated.
This was in the early seventies, so we were all still caught up in the hippie movement. We all had long hair, and we all hated authority, and all of us never wanted to go home. So we went to Sam Houston Park and we did as our parents taught us to do. We drank alcohol, some smoked cigarettes, and all smoked pot, except for me, for some reason dope never appealed to me. However, I loved whiskey, cheap wine, and loud heavy metal music.
I was only thirteen years old when this was taking place in my life. Drinking heavy, and getting involved in things a thirteen-year-old has no business doing. Something is wrong when a thirteen-year-old can get a hold of hard liquor or cheap wine, and sit in broad daylight in a city park and we are all drinking, and pot is being passed around, and the police are driving by constantly and they never slow down and see what we were up to. Perhaps it was because God was still with me, and He kept me from getting in trouble and going that direction.
By the time I was fourteen I was drinking almost everyday. All my friends were getting into deeper narcotics, popping pills, huffing acrylics, gasoline, model airplane glue, and smoking a lot of pot. I stuck with drinking anything and everything I was given. What is weird about all this is my parents either did not know what I was doing or did not care. I was fourteen years old coming in at one o’clock in the morning, or later. They never said anything about it. I believe that they were so miserable with there own lives that they overlooked mine and my brothers and sisters.
When I turned fifteen things were about to change for all of us. God works in mysterious ways and uses people and circumstances for His glory, and to fulfill His will.
My Mother had a brother by the name of James Byrd, we always called him uncle Bud. Uncle Bud became a preacher. He was an evangelist, and when his travels brought him close to Amarillo, Texas I and my brother and sister would go listen to him and my aunt Von sing, and preach. I was young then about seven or eight. I really did not understand much of what he preached, but he was Pentecostal and I enjoyed how excited he got preaching. He would jump on one leg, swing his arms excitedly while emphasizing the point the was making. After church, he would always without fail to take us to get an ice cream and a soda pop. I loved my uncle Bud. He had his life together. He was married to the sweetest woman I have ever met. They had two children Martha, and James Jr.
Uncle Bud was the real deal. He was not a Christian title, he was a Christian by deed and actions. He loved everybody, and always had a smile on his face. Uncle Bud was a young thirty-three year old when He was diagnosed with cancer. Uncle Bud was dying a slow miserable death. We have all witnessed what chemotherapy and radiation treatments can do to a person trying to overcome cancer. Uncle Bud was no exception. I wept openly when I visited him in the V.A. Hospital. He had been a large man, and now he had lost a tremendous amount of weight, and he had lost all his hair, and at thirty-three he looked old. I was devastated.
Towards the end of his battle with cancer my mother had gone to visit him in the hospital in Temple Texas. One afternoon he called my mother over to his bedside, and as always he had a smile on his face. He took his big sister by the hand and told her how much he loved her and the rest of his family. They wept together for a few moments. Then He told my mom, “Skeeter.” Skeeter was my mother’s nickname given to her as a child because as a little girl she was no bigger than a ‘skeeter’. Holding my mother’s hand he looked her in the eyes and said, “Skeeter Jesus loves you and Alfred, yawl do not have to live the way yawl do. God can change your life. Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and He will forgive you of your sins right now. My mother knelt down beside my uncle’s hospital bed and repented of her sins. She was soon thereafter baptized in the precious name of Jesus Christ.
Mom came home a different person. She was determined to live for God. She went to the First United Pentecostal church in Amarillo Texas and mother received the Holy Ghost! When Mother received the Holy Ghost, Hell lost! Mom changed drastically. She was radically saved! My mother came home glowing, she was smiling the biggest smile I had ever seen on her face. She was singing all the time, she was hugging us, and all she wanted to talk about was Jesus and church!
Raynell, the new convert was determined to get her family in church and filled with the Holy Ghost. She was on me and my brother relentlessly about coming to church. I mean it was a continual everyday mission for her. She knew she had salvation, and she wanted her family saved. Thus after about three weeks of relentless pleadings, one Sunday afternoon I told my brother, “Fred we might as well go to church because mom is not going to quit asking, and maybe if we go we can get her off our backs for a while. My brother agreed to go with me to church.
Keep in mind that we hardly ever, almost never went to church. I could probably count on one hand how many times I had gone to church as a teenager. A church was for the weak, the wimps, and the elderly that knew that they were about to die, and as a last minute gesture to get on Gods good side they went to church. I did not know one scripture! I did not even know John 3:16, and I did not know Genesis from Revelations. I mean I was totally ignorant concerning the church. However, I did know that God thought enough of me that he healed me as a child. That is all I knew about Church.
We did have a Bible in our home, as do most Americans, and we like most Americans hardly ever picked it up. We were Christians after all! At least we were Christians by religious title, not knowing anything about what it actually meant to be born again of the water and the Spirit. I remember picking up the Bible and trying to read it, and nothing made any sense. It was a book with a lot of words, and I had no idea how to read it. So I would thumb through it, and put it down, and go on about my business.
Fred and I went to church October 6, 1974. I will never forget walking into that church! These people were absolutely the most excited people I had ever seen in my life! The most radical sports fan could not hold a candle to these people! Not to be demeaning or anything, but the few times I did go to church it was so boring, and mundane. Keep in mind at that time I was a young hippie. Hard rock music and alcohol was all I lived for. So when I walked into this church that was ‘loud!’, had drums, guitars, bass guitar, organ, piano, saxophone and about five tambourines. I was just a little taken back! These people were freaking me out, and Alice Cooper didn’t even freak me out! These people were clapping, raising there hands, and worshipped God with a great amount of enthusiasm. I was a nervous wreck. My brother and I sat towards the back, Mom marched right up to the front like she had been going there for years. I remember watching my new mother get involved in the service and she was really having a great time. Honestly I was a little embarrassed for the way my mother was acting. You weren’t supposed to actually have ‘fun’ at church. I thought you was supposed to sit there and endure to the last amen.
After about an hour of exuberant singing, and after the choir sang, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ and these people reacted like they anticipated being swooped up at any moment, Pastor Elms got up to preach. I had never really sat through an evangelistic sermon. This man was on a mission! He looked out in the congregation and saw two young men that needed God. One was a short haired, Merle Haggard listening type of guy, and the other was me, a long greasy haired, unkempt fifteen-year-old kid that hated just about everyone, and everything. I remember slumping down in the pew, and putting on my hardest face. Staring at this man that seemed to be preaching right at me! I will never forget that message as long as I live. Pastor Elms preached on the subject, “Voices From Eternity!” It was, for the most part, a Hellfire and brimstone type message. As the pastor preached I began to squirm. For some reason during the course of the sermon, I reached up and grabbed the back of the pew in front of me. His eyes were boring holes right through my heart! He looked right at me, as he took the microphone and lowered it over the platform and asked the question, “Can you hear your voice screaming out in Hell?” For all of eternity, you will cry out from a Devil’s hell! Can you hear your voice in Hell?” All of a sudden I stood up, my hands shot up in the air! I put them down to my side, but it was like two angels on each side said, “O’ no you don’t and put my hands back in the air. All this time I was heading towards the altar. When I got close enough, I literally threw myself into the altar. Bleeding for God to have mercy on me, and please do not let me go to Hell! I did not know how to recite a prayer, or quote a scripture, all I had to go on was my physical miracle as a child, my uncle Bud’s testimony and my mother’s conversion. I did not know how to repent. I had never heard the word repent, or repentance. I do recall these excited Christians got excited when I went to the altar. They swarmed around me like bees on honey. Praying with me, and for me. I remember pastor Elms laying his hands on my head, and praying more fervently for me, than he did preaching to me. Then something supernatural happened. Something miraculous happened. God filled me with the Holy Ghost! I began speaking in a language I did not know, and joy flooded my soul! I felt a world of iniquity lift off my shoulders! I was free! The love of God saturated me. This was real! This was powerful! This was amazing! No wonder these people get happy in church! After a while I stood up, and looked across the sanctuary and there stood my brother at the altar, hands raised in worship. I walked over to him fell in his arms and hugged my big brother tight, and God filled my brother with the Holy Ghost! Needless to say my mother was beside herself! Some churches believe in shouting, and some do not. This one did, and so my mother who had just witnessed her sons being filled with the Power of God was beside herself, along with about seventy-five other Holy Ghost filled saints! Wow, what a time we had that night!
After things calmed down a bit, one of the young men asked me if I had ever been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. I said no. He asked, “Would you like to be baptized?” I was ready to do anything and everything that God wanted me to do. So after Steve Beattie gave me a quick Bible study on baptism, I was baptized in the precious name of Jesus Christ for the remission of my sins! I came up out of that ice cold water, on fire for God! I was without a doubt born again of the water and of the Spirit! I was radically saved. Everything in my life changed! Everything!
This is my story and the greatest miracle that I know is not that part of my brain was destroyed when I ran over by a car. The greatest miracle is not that I can walk. The greatest miracle that I know, is that I am born again of the water and the Spirit!
Old things passed away, behold all things have become new! I was made a new creature in Christ Jesus! I now love everybody, I am not mad at anybody!
One night after we had been in church for about four months, my stubborn alcoholic father walked into the church on a Wednesday night. The service was almost over, and some of us were standing around the altar praying, and in walked my father, still in his work clothes, he walked right to the altar, he did not pause to acknowledge anyone, he marched straight to the altar, fell on his knees, threw his hands up and surrendered his heart to God. God instantly delivered my father from the awful vice of alcoholism. My Dad that very night went to the car and threw out every bottle of whiskey that he had, weeping as he did. Like the turning of a page, my Dad was set free!
I am so very thankful to write this testimonial, about the saving power of Jesus Christ! The Alfred and Raynell Musick family were all born again in 1974, and at the time of this writing September 15, 2008, we are all still in love with Jesus Christ. I am a pastor of a wonderful apostolic church in Memphis, Texas. Cindy is a faithful member of a church in Breckenridge, Texas. Fred attends a wonderful church in Longview, Texas. My mother attends the church that I pastor, sits in the second pew from the front, and still has the same zeal she had in 1974. Dad, he passed away thirteen years ago. The last time I saw my Dad on this earth he was laying on a hospital bed in my daughter’s bedroom. He was under hospice care. The cancer had taken its toll, and Dad was slipping away. I was getting ready to go to work and looked in on my father. My mother was on one side of his bed, and (Aunt) Sis. Wanda Faye was on the other side of the bed, and my father had his hands in the air, holding onto the sleeves of there blouses, and they were praying. I chose not to interrupt them. That day Dad passed away. The last words I heard my father say on this earth were, “Jesus I love you!” That is the greatest miracle that I know.
Rick Joe Musick
9-15-08
