AMAZING STORY
Paralyzed Woman Walks Again!
By Randy Rudder
The 700 Club
CBN.com -“There’s a whole lot that I don’t recall specifically, but I know this: the vehicle was upside down and they were trying to get me out and there was music playing in my head,” Delia Knox says about the day she was involved in a life-threatening accident.
On a snowy Christmas Day in 1987, Delia was in a car with her sister and brother-in-law when they were hit by a drunk driver. “I was semi-conscious, and then I went unconscious, so then I woke up in the hospital,” she says.
Although the others escaped with minor injuries, the crash left Delia paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors told her she would likely be confined to a wheelchair the rest of her life. She says, “From there on, I went through, ‘What do I do now? Where do I go from here?”
Delia was determined to live her life. An accomplished gospel singer, she continued her work in music ministry, but her life was hard. “I continued to go and sing, and would push myself everywhere I went, into the restroom or the shower, or wherever, and I would drag myself into the car. It was one of those things where you always had to drag yourself and had to push yourself.”
Delia believed God would heal her, as people prayed constantly for her, but after a decade passed with no changes, she began to lose hope. “I didn’t like going to altar calls, because every time I would go somewhere, the service would change to a healing service, and somebody would try to pull me out of the chair,” she says. “I’ve been plopped, dropped, and flopped, and flipped to the point where I was like, ‘I just can’t go through that anymore.”
While attending a Christian conference, she was captivated by one of the speakers, Bishop Levy Knox. “It was so amazing because he didn’t see the wheelchair. He saw beyond the wheelchair.”
Bishop Knox later became her husband, and a major source of inspiration for Delia. She says, “I remember him taking me in front of the mirror at home, and holding me up and just saying, ‘I want you to see yourself standing. He would take me and dance with me. As my legs would dangle, he would take me around the room. He was one who continuously tried to put hope and faith in me to think beyond this, even though there were times when I was frustrated about it.”
By 2010 Delia had been in a wheelchair for over 22 years. In August, she and her husband attended a conference hosted by evangelist Nathan Morris. “The evangelist got up and he started talking about healing. Had I known it was a healing service, I have to be honest, I would have never gone,” she says.
Delia was at the front of the church with her husband when Pastor Morris started praying for her. “Here I am confined for 22 ½ years in this wheelchair, and for the first time in the longest time, I find myself thinking that something could possibly, be really happening,” she says of the life altering moment. “I told them ‘I think I’m feeling something in my legs.’”
As Pastor Morris prayed over her, he said, “The power of God is all over this sister right now. She normally has no feelings but right now, she can feel our hands on her legs.”
Delia adds, “I had to get to the heart of it, and the heart of it was, ‘Are you willing to risk your pride and take a step of faith, even if you fall? “ With the assistance of her husband, Delia slowly rose. She later stumbled and sat back down, fighting to block out the doubts flooding into her mind.
Delia adds, “I remember the words that he prayed were, ‘Let faith arise in this woman of God.’ In Hebrews 11, faith is in the present tense--it’s standing between two present terms--NOW faith IS—and as I sat there, a righteous indignation came in me, a righteous anger came in me,’ and I just said to them ‘Just worship, just worship, just worship, because I wanted to drown everything else that was going on out. ‘Just worship, worship, worship.”
Then as her husband and Pastor Morris helped her back on her feet, she took a few steps on her own. As the congregation sang and prayed, Delia stunned the crowd as she started walking around the church. “Paraplegics will tell you that you can move on your hips, and so I thought, ‘Am I moving on my hips?” I just started moving my knees up and down and I started bouncing on my knees. It was like the awakening that ‘This is really happening,” she says.
Her husband recalls that moment: “When she began to take those steps, and began to walk, it was like the Word that had already been spoken-beholding the Word, hearing the Word-and now the manifestation of the promises of God, was being fulfilled right before our eyes,’ he says. “It was phenomenal. It was life-changing for us.”
Over the following weeks, she says God began to strengthen her legs. Several weeks later, Delia walked in front of her own congregation for the first time.
Today, she leads worship at Living Word Christian Church in Mobile, where her husband is the pastor. She also dances with him every chance she gets.
“The miracle is the journey. It’s not the moment. It’s the journey of recognizing who God is. If He had not healed me, I would still be pushing through to seek His face,” she says. “Because it’s not about the healing—it’s about the journey of knowing that God is there for us.”
CBN IS HERE FOR YOU!
Are you seeking answers in life? Are you hurting?
Are you facing a difficult situation?
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
