 This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. And we're rejoicing that you're with us on Hope Today. I'm Tom Hollis. I'm here with Angela and I'm here with Amanda. And we've got a great guest coming up Amanda. We sure do. You are not going to want to miss this. This is Susan Patrice. I got to say this right. She taught me. She's a teacher. So it's God, raw, sheo. There we go. She's going to be with us, but she has an amazing, miraculous testimony. Her book is called Love Was Here. And I think for all of us, you wonder when you have those struggling moments. God, where are you? And her story is that God, His love, was there. You call someone up, tell them. They're going to be so encouraged when they hear what God has done. Absolutely. Angela, you've known people, we all have that seem like they're really struggling wanting to get that healing from God, wanting to get that answer from God. It takes a lot to stand strong sometimes. It does. Oh my goodness. I think that even if you're not in really difficult times, it's hard in today's world to stand firm and to trust God with all that He has, you know? So yeah, today I'm excited to hear her story and how she really stood the test of faith and persevered through such a deep and real struggle. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe you're going through a struggle today. Maybe there's something in your life and you say, I just can't seem to get where I need to go. I can't seem to hear God. Well, we always have our prayer partners available. So you can call the numbers there on your screen, get hold of a prayer partner. They're there just for you, just to pray with you. So you can call them, pray that answers 24-7, but you can call right now and get some prayer. But right now we're going to do something else that we call stump the host. Okay, we've been on a pretty good roll here. So let's see. I think this is the first time this group has ever been together for stump the host here. Well, so we'll see how it goes. Again, we have not seen these. So we do not know the answers. They don't prep us with the questions. So you can play along with us. Which birds did Jesus say neither reap nor sow? That's what I was thinking. We saying sparrows? Sounds good to me. Sparrows. Just turn off the TV. I don't know. It is not very good here today. That's Luke from 1224. Man, there's sparrows elsewhere though. Where he says, oh man, we've got to look into this. All right, we need redemption here. This is question number two. Pray first, y'all. Which king did Paul almost convert to Christianity? Oh, I know this one. This King Agrippa. Agrippa. Yeah, he said, yeah. King Agrippa. Oh, thank you. He said, almost you persuade me to be a Christian. It's in Acts, what is it? Acts 26. Yeah, there we go. King Agrippa, almost. That's a sad story, that almost story. You want to see him come to Christ. Well, here's the last one. By volume, who wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else? You would think Paul, but you know what? I think it might be Luke, because he wrote Acts and Luke. If you take all the chapters. By volume. So if we go by volume, they're trying to trick us. They're trying to embarrass on TV. Volume. All right. All right. We're gonna say. Oh, I didn't even get the final answer. Luke, you wrote 37,392 words, and Paul wrote 32,408 words. Come on, Paul, get your act together here. All right. Oh, that was good. Yeah, that's great. Well, when we return in 60 seconds, you're going to meet someone who is living proof that God still performs miracles. Stay with us. We'll be right back. When Laura called our 24-7 prayer line, she had so much fear that she didn't want to leave her house. She had lost her husband of 54 years, just six months earlier. Laura was flipping through TV stations when she came across Cornerstone Television. She felt compelled to call. One of our prayer partners talked, listened, and prayed with her for 45 minutes. At the end, Laura said how much the ministry had helped relieve her fear. Praise God for how he's using CTVN. When you give, you become part of what he's doing. This month, when you give, we'll send wild expectations as our way of saying thank you. This book will inspire you to live your life as God intended. To give and request your copy, visit us online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at 888-665-4483. Hope happens here. Many believers know that the power of prayer is real, yet some believers struggle to believe that God continues to perform miracles each and every day. Our next guest had a miracle healing of her own that completely transformed her faith. Susan Patrice Garascio is the author of the book, Love Was There. And she joins us now to share her incredible story of God's love and miraculous healing power. Suzy, it is great to have you on Hope Today. And just tell us a little bit about your background. It's an honor to be here, so thank you very much. I'm a retired teacher, taught my whole life. Married to Eddie and we have three adult daughters. And I wrote this book in Thanksgiving for all that God has done to heal and cure me. I had stage four cancer in 2009, a blood cancer. My family wasn't given any hope for my survival. And I guess for four months I was suffering. I went to several doctors. I was on everybody's prayer list at a point. All my wonderful teacher friends from all different religions put me on their church prayer list. And I eventually went to a healing mass. And when the priest laid hands on me, I rested in the spirit. And it was the most transformative moment of my life. Do you want me to describe it? Well, we're gonna come back to this because I, you know, the thing, reading your book, I found myself connecting with so many parts of your story, your childhood. You literally lived a hop, skipping a jump from Cornerstone Television. And your family had a place up in Cooks Forest. You came from an ordinary Catholic family. Just, and I could see in your book how important God was to all of you. Family, education, and, but I thought, you know, Tom, you guys have Cooks Forest. I was like, there were so many connecting points. There's another connection is that Susie was Junior Miss of this area. A hundred years ago. And my sister was Junior Miss the very next year. Susie put the crown on my sister's head. And so that was like an interesting little connection we made this morning. So I feel like, you know, even our audience, there's so many connections that are made. And just, it's amazing that God does the impossible through people like ourselves. We're ordinary people. And, you know, you talked about in your book this moment. And I just want, if you can talk about this, that your father had a not good diagnosis. And you said that that Christmas was different than any other because your focus was more on the Lord than it was on the gifts. And I feel like a lot of families can live in that tension but talk to us about what that looked like for your family. Yes. Well, I think everyone has a story. And I think we all experience suffering in some capacity. But I really believe that prayer is powerful and it makes the difference. And, you know, we prayed like we never prayed before. And I think when you pray with an expectant faith, I think God hears you and answers you. Now, you don't always get the answer you want, but if your prayer, I think coincides with God's will, then miracles do happen. And they, you know, they're happening every day. I believe that I am a miracle. We've seen miracles with Ryan Shazir and Demarhan. You know, I think those are, you know, but they're more public. But I think you don't have to look too far, families and friends to see that, you know, other families have been touched by God's grace, you know. So talk to us about that day. It was not long after the Christmas that you're walking through this with your dad, that then in February on Valentine's Day, talk to us about that moment. Well, when I was diagnosed, okay. I had been sick for several months. I had gone to various doctors and everybody kept saying, you're fine, you know. It was very hard to diagnose non-Hochkins lymphoma. But eventually they did on Valentine's Day. And it just, you know, when they came in and told me, my husband had taken me to the emergency room at UPMC McKee Sport Hospital. And the doctor said, I'm sorry, you have cancer. And I went like black. I just kind of couldn't process that. I went through, I guess, my first chemotherapy. I lost all my hair. I was extremely sick. My family wasn't given any hope for my survival. And I went to a Catholic healing mass. And when the priest laid hands on my head, I rested in the spirit. The priest was blessed with a gift of healing at Medjugorje, where the Blessed Mother had appeared since 1981 to the children. And today millions and millions of pilgrims go there on pilgrimages. And they have over 350 miracles documented there. Anyway, when I rested in the spirit, it was just, it's almost impossible to describe the priest laid hands on my head and said some prayers. And at first I heard him in English. And then I heard him, I thought, is he speaking Latin? And then it was like, wait a minute, it's gibberish. And then it dawned on me, he's speaking in tongues. The next thing I knew, I had my eyes closed and I started like floating. I felt like floating down, like I was on a cloud. And I just felt the warm, loving embrace of the Holy Spirit of God. And I saw bright lights and I felt the warmth. And I felt God's love physically, spiritually, and every way. It was euphoric, it was ethereal. It's like too much for words. It's too difficult to explain. I've never had anything like that. I rested in the spirit for some time until my husband was there and there were two catchers there and they were shaking me to get me up, to wake me up. I had no sense of time. They said it was about 10 minutes, but I woke up and I just felt transformed. And I've really never been the same. It just makes you feel so personally loved by God. You know, that you just, you feel called then to share that because when God shows you mercy and His grace and heals you of something like that, you're called to give testimony in gratitude. And so that's what I tried to do with writing the book. Yes, so you got to tell them. So after the healing meeting, you have a doctor's appointment that you go to and share the words of your doctor. It's like complete remission. Yes, after one chemo, I was scheduled to go to six months of chemotherapy. The tumors were everywhere. They were in my liver, in my duodenum, in my intestines, areas around my heart. They were quite large and there were many. And so after I had the first chemo, it was right before the second chemo, I was well enough to attend the healing mass. And then a week later, they wanted to put the CT scan up to see if my cancer was even responding to the treatment, if it was shrinking. And so the nurses, my sister Sheila, who's a nurse, said, you know, now don't get your hopes up. They might have to try a different cocktail of chemotherapy. And I'm like, okay. So when the doctor, Dr. Cain, my oncologist, put up my CT scan results on the computer, he called us over and he said complete remission. It's a miracle if I've ever seen one. And it was a miracle. Every single tumor was gone. There was nothing there. So I said to the doctor, does that mean I don't have to go for, you know, four more months of chemo? And he said, no, just in case there's a microscopic cell, we're gonna make you go through the whole regimen. I had already lost my hair and, you know, was very sick. And what I didn't know was each subsequent chemo would make me sicker because chemo is cumulative. It did, but after six months, I was well. I was healed. That was in 2009. And here we are, you know, to the glory of God. And so that's why I wrote the book in Thanksgiving. So you had an amazing experience. Some people call it being slain in the spirit or going down under the power. You had this amazing experience with God and then this amazing result. What did that do for you and your relationship to God? How did that make you relate to God differently? Well, I feel closer to God. I feel like we are connected. Like I feel more of a spiritual being than, you know, physical kind of at times. I know I can turn to him for anything now. I know he hears my prayers. I know he loves me. I felt his love. He loves every one of us and he doesn't have favorites. And I think he delights in all the different ways that we have chosen through our different religions, whatever, with our faith, to honor him and give him glory. And, you know, and that's why I wrote this book to give him glory and thanksgiving for his mercy. He's all love, you know, he is. So I love this quote. You kind of alluded to it. It says, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And you talked about that God's answer isn't always what we want. So though you had the miracle happen, you still had to go through the chemotherapy and you talk about that you went to a second healing service. I just love your pursuit of God. And I love that this was happening in your Catholic church setting. It amazes me. Because I had heard like the Pentecostals, you know, resting in the spirit. And quite frankly, you know, I didn't have that faith then. I didn't, I was skeptical until it happened to me. And it's for real, you know, God is real and he's still here with us and he's still answering prayers. You just have to pray to him. You have to talk to him. And he does listen. That's right. Yes, he is ever present. One thing that I noticed is that your education, you love learning. And even during that season, you went and took piano lessons. You'd never learned the piano and here you find. And I thought, how God, yeah, just equipped you. But even with the writing of your book, talked to them about how he prepared you to write your book. Oh, that was funny. So for the past 20 years, before I retired, I was teaching at the Norwin School District and they were wonderful. I loved my experience there. I loved my teachers, administrators. And anyway, I kept getting reassigned every year to teach writing. And I really didn't want to teach writing and literacy and reading and grammar and all that stuff, you know. I kept saying, I want to teach math, you know. Anyway, I see now why for all those years I taught writing because then I was able to apply all the skills that I taught my students, focus, content, style, organization, conventions. I then applied that to my own writing and it definitely helped me. And my publishers were, they were so wonderful, you know, offering me, you know, copy editing and whatnot. And I said, well, let me try it myself because I did this for a living, you know. I'm used to editing and revising and my students would give me their writing samples and I would have to go over each of them painstakingly. And so, you know, my publish was like, wow, this looks good. So I see now why God had me teaching writing. You know, he had a plan. He knew that I would use it someday and I did. Amen. God's given you a voice, Susie, even if it is through pen and I just, you know, there's that one out there that they battle with the doubt of that God is real. And when you said that, I just felt in my spirit, like a quickening, what would you say to that one that is weighing in that balance of, is he really there? Oh, he is definitely there. He is real and he loves you and you, you know, if you seek him out, you will find him, you know. If you seek him out, he is always there waiting, always loving us, unconditional love, mercy, grace. You know, you just have to have faith. Amen. In the one and only God Almighty. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. You're so welcome. It's really been an honor. Well, it's an honor to have you. I feel like I was called to do this. Yeah. Well, God, you know, he does things that we don't expect, like when you received that prayer. Angela, we have a scripture along those lines. No, a beautiful scripture that will remind us and root us in her testimony. First, John five, 14. Now this is the confidence that we have in him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. As you just heard Susie's testimony, there is no question that God hears your cries. He sees right where you are. And he longs to intervene with his love, with his kindness and with his healing. I don't know where you are today, but I trust that the good God that we know will do exactly what he did for Susie, for you. No matter the space you need healing in, no matter what touch you need, he has everything you need. I think that her testimony, Susie, your testimony is so powerful and so absolutely beautiful to express the goodness of God. Like in that moment, what I was struck by was you went expecting healing and you got so much more. That's very true. That is very true. A personal relationship aside from physical healing, spiritual growth, my relationship with God, I feel like it just went to the next level. Yes. It's interesting how it took your experience, there's a pastor I know that always says that a person with an experience isn't at the mercy of a person with a theory. Because when you experience God, it's a different thing. All of a sudden it went from being religion to this depth, this relationship. And I think you have to look at these things through the eyes of faith, to recognize that God is there, he is in control, he loves us, and he wants us to be happy. When Jesus was here on earth, everybody that asked him, he healed the blind, the lame, the people that had diseases. And all they needed was faith. They had to have the faith. Your faith has healed you. Yes. That's good. Well, I think that's the key for all of us that are watching. Where are you? What are you struggling with? What is that thing that you've, you say, I've been asking, I haven't seen it. Well, this wasn't the first time Susie prayed. This wasn't the first time that anybody prayed for her either. Keep seeking God. Amanda, this is the key thing. Keep seeking God and say, God, no matter what, I'm gonna serve you. That's the bottom line. But then believe in God for that answer. That's right. And I loved Susie that you brought out. You don't always get exactly what it is you're asking for, but God is answering nevertheless. And so trust him through that process. And I think that's so important. You know, I heard a testimony this past weekend at a women's conference and the individual sharing, she went through two miscarriages. She's a born again believer. You know, the first one happened, caught them really by surprise, but then the next one, they really were praying the word and still she miscarried again. And she said how it can perplex a person in looking at Peter's life. And when God showed him the sheet, you know, with all of the unclean animals in St. Peter, you can eat now. Well, his whole life he was taught, I cannot eat from that. And it perplexed him. And there's this thing that God is inviting us to tap into his thoughts, his ways are higher than our ways. And I think it's important for each of us to be able to exchange our ideas, our own identity for his. And just let him be at work in our life. And you never know what God can do. It's the impossible thing, Suzie, that God did through you. And here you are living to tell us about it. Oh, God had a beautiful plan. Well, I believe today that God is speaking to your heart and he has something amazing for you. He desires for you to overcome in every area of your life. And as Tom mentioned earlier, we have prayer partners that are standing by. We never want to miss an opportunity that we would have together, together in God's name, Jesus. And on his word and see God move in your life. So give us a call at our prayer line. And right now I feel like we could pray. We should pray. I was gonna ask Angela to pray with you. We just have about a minute left, Angela. Would you just pray for anybody who needs that encouragement, that faith and that answer? Absolutely. Father, we come to you and we ask that in every space where we feel lack, you who are abundance would consume us. We pray, Father, for the one who is in need of healing in their body, in their mind, in their spirit, in their emotions, that you who are Jehovah Rafi would bring healing to the depths of them. Lord, you see right where they are, God. You're not distant and far, but you are near, even closer than their next breath. So we ask that you would consume them and feel them, that they would know even now that there is a tangible presence in the room, right where they are, loving them, pouring over them and seeing them and meeting every need. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen, amen, amen. So that is God's will for you. So we're nobody special here. Tom and Amanda and Susie and Angela, we're just regular people that are seeking after God and all of us need God. All of us need that relationship with God. We need forgiveness. We've all sinned. We need redemption and he brings all that to us and he brings answers to. So seek him today. When you seek him, you will find him and you'll find his hope today too. On tomorrow's Hope Today, learn to live a joy-filled life with a firm sense of who you are and all that you were made to be. Lifestyle blogger and media personality, Caitlin Skaggs addresses the issues Christian women face and offers practical steps to help women live bravely and boldly in Christ. That's tomorrow on Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.