How I was touched by God’s healing hand

Keith Faust can testify to a miracle moment when his prayer was answered by the prayer of his no ordinary family.

Keith Faust knows there’s no ordinary Sunday when you have no ordinary family.

A hands-on prayer for healing at the end of a NewSpring gathering is one of the reasons he’s still alive. And that’s a lot to be thankful for.

You can see the moment for yourself on video.​

During the response time after a message on the power of the Holy Spirit, Teaching Pastor Clayton King asks, “What if one step was the thing that it took for you to be liberated, set free and healed?”

Seconds later, Clayton jumps up, emotional, and says, “I feel like somebody needs to be healed of cancer right now. I don’t know who you are ... Can you identify yourself?”

Right then, amid dozens of people seeking prayer all over the auditorium, Keith walks to the front of the stage, with his wife, Somer, a few steps behind him.

“It’s you?!” Clayton exclaims.

Holy Spirit Power

At the beginning of 2018, Keith had brain surgery to remove two of four brain tumors. Then, two weeks before the service that day, two fast-growing tumors had returned, bursting blood vessels, paralyzing him in the left arm and left leg.

“When the tumors busted, that should have been it. It was very life-threatening,” Keith says. “When I walked into the healing service, I said ‘Thank you, Lord! That’s exactly what I need: Healing.’”

Clayton King sees Keith approach the stage, and he gathers people around to lay their hands on Keith and pray.

Clutching Keith’s outstretched hand, Clayton asks Jesus to remove every cancerous cell, and for Keith to tell “a story that will cause people to lean into your Gospel and be saved.”

“My whole body was warm and tingling,” Keith recalls. “One of the safety volunteers and ushers said they felt it, too. They said it was powerful and amazing.”

Six months later, on the same stage, Clayton celebrated that miracle in the “Testify” series. The tumors are so small that they’re impossible to radiate, and they’re still shrinking.

“It was two weeks after that we went to our doctor and did an MRI. And he said, ‘Wow! This was your brain in March and this is your brain right now. It’s straightened up, and all the tumors have gone.’”

“My friends are just amazed. A couple of them call me ‘Wonder Boy’ and ‘Miracle Boy.’ The ones that are not Christian, I will talk their ears off about Jesus and what He's done for me when they ask.”

Keith and Somer have served and worshipped at the Anderson Campus for more than a decade. The couple has two girls, Taytum, 7, and Aspen, 6.

Signs of grace to come

The first signs of Keith’s melanoma were nausea, dizziness, and high blood pressure — so bad he couldn’t get up the steps in his home.

He spent Christmas Eve 2017 in the emergency room doing CAT scans and MRIs. A week later, he was in surgery to remove the two biggest tumors, which were the size of nickels.

Keith knew God was at work when the doctor’s estimate of a week in intensive care turned out to be just one day. He was home watching Clemson play in the college football national championship game a few days later.

“He said, ‘You’re doing amazing,’ and I said, ‘No, God is amazing. He's healing me.’”

The doctor’s estimate of three months of rehab from surgery proved to be true, though. It was brutal, especially the radiation therapy.

“They make a mask for your face. You can't move at all. It’s got straps, and they buckle it to a table and bring the laser out. You can smell flesh and hair burning. I told the good Lord, ‘I do not want any more radiation if that will be your will.’”

Part of Keith’s cancer treatment included chemotherapy with a new type of immunotherapy cancer drug called Keytruda. Although it was targeted to small spots of cancer that were also found in his lung, the drug not only shrank those by 50 percent, but it also traveled unexpectedly to the brain and worked there, too.

The chemotherapy will continue, but doctors are only monitoring him now that he is cancer-free.

“I think it was 90 percent prayer, and maybe 10 percent medicine — and all God,” Keith says about his healing as a whole.

Believing for more

Keith’s cancer forced him to take permanent disability, leaving his maintenance job at Furman and the coworkers he loved, after 20 years.

The partial blindness that followed the surgery and the paralysis that followed the bursting of the tumors is being slowly reversed. He still needs to watch his footing because his balance is off. He’s still missing vision in his left side, and he struggles with short-term memory.

But he believes all of that will be healed in time.

“I'm about 85 percent and believing for the 100,” Keith says. “There's no doubt in my mind He wouldn’t have brought me through the storm I've been through just to leave me hanging.”

Keith loves the outdoors. This fall, he was able to get back to some hunting and fishing. He was also got to hike all the way up and down Table Rock, although he admits it was scary, especially after a shower left the ground slick with rain.

One of the things Keith’s still sad about is that he can’t pull wagons in KidSpring like he used to. His volunteer team was supportive during his medical troubles, literally circling the wagons for him in prayer.

But physical limitations won’t stop Keith from smiling and greeting at the KidSpring doors.

After all, Keith’s got a lot to smile about.