Prayer Investigator: A Miracle in the Flames with Sue Detweiler

In this compelling episode of 'The Prayer Investigator,' host Linda Evans Shepherd welcomes Sue Detweiler, a world-class leader and bestselling author, as she shares her harrowing experience of being trapped in a burning house with her five-week-old baby. Sue recounts the miraculous rescue that she attributes to the power of prayer — specifically her mother's month-long fasting and prayers based on Isaiah 43. Sue discusses the profound impact this event had on her life, emphasizing the themes of forgiveness, spiritual growth, and the deep emotional healing she experienced. This episode is filled with inspiration and powerful prayers aimed at helping viewers overcome their traumas and bitterness, standing as a testament to the miraculous power of faith and prayer.

00:00 Introduction: When God Says No

00:40 Dr. Nancy's Story: A Miraculous Journey

02:16 Dealing with Anger Towards God

03:29 Finding Purpose in Loss

06:44 Faith Beyond Circumstances

08:27 A Prayer for Healing and Peace

11:02 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

11:58 Connecting with Dr. Nancy

Linda Evans Shepherd is an international speaker and a best-selling author of 38 books including Praying Through the Hard Times. She is the CEO and founder of Right to the Heart Ministries which includes the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Arise Esther Movement, Leading Hearts Magazine, and the Arise Daily Devotionals.
Important Links:
Linda's Prayer Books: https://www.gottopray.com/linda-s-pra...

Get Linda's Blessing Gift Here: https://blessing.pages.ontraport.net/...

Peace Blueprint: ...

Transcript

  She was trapped in a burning house and there was no hope to rescue her or her five week old baby. But then, you need to stay tuned. If you want to hear the miracle,  welcome to the prayer investigator. I'm Linda Evans Shepherd. My guest today is Sue Detweiler. Sue is a world class leader, a best selling author of inspirational books.

She traveled 40 weeks a year, speaking around the world. And she has taken time to stop in and to say hello to us today. Sue, welcome to the show. It's so good to be with you, Linda. I feel the same way. And I'm so excited that we're going to be talking about miracles today.  Before you get a miracle, sometimes you have to go through a very terrible difficulty and that's exactly what happened to you.

You and your little five week old baby were caught in a terrible fire. Tell us what happened.  That day is really emblazoned on my mind and my heart. And I remember this is my first baby and we had been on vacation. So I remember driving home in the car, talking to God. God, I feel far from you. Have you ever felt that way?

And I got home and I put my baby in her crib. I fell asleep, like deep sleep. And my husband went to the church because we were pastors and the next day he was making sure it was all set up. When I woke up  in terror, actually, because my daughter was screaming and it was a different kind of scream. And I got out of bed, I went to the room, but I couldn't find her door, like I knew something was wrong.

I got caught in a closet and I couldn't even tell what direction was out. I could not find the way out to get to my daughter. And I didn't really know what was happening. What I learned later is you usually die of smoke inhalation. That's what you die of. So it was when I went across the room, put the window open, I figured out that my house was on fire.

I tried to scream, it was a two story window, so I couldn't get out and I couldn't get to the doorway. And so I did what everyone does when they're about to die. I dropped to my knees and I prayed that prayer, help, because it was impossible for me to save myself or my baby. And that type of panic that you feel in that moment, by the grace of God, my husband got home and imagine how he felt because the house next to us that had been under construction, but fully built, had already burned to the ground.

And ours was on fire, the other house was on fire. This was such a hot fire that people had driven up on the street to see what was happening. Like car bumpers melted. A siding on the other side of the house melted. And I was in the middle of this infernal. And you know how battles are.  There should have been a whole host of fire engines.

But there was only one fire engine because the rest had been stopped by a train. And so this poor fireman has had the hose on the house that had already burnt down. And my husband grabbed him and said, did you get my wife and my baby out? And he was in shock. He dropped the hose because they didn't know there was anybody in the house.

And so they ran, my husband got Rachel Joy, who was like five weeks old, they got him out. Now, I didn't know who was in the house. I'm frantic. I'm just screaming, get my baby out, get my baby out. And then by the grace of God, the fireman came in and he shone a light. It was probably huge, but it looked like a pin light.

And he said this, Linda, he said, Come towards the light  and I thought about that prophetically because the reality is so many times We're in a dark place if we can just move towards the light and he got me out He got the baby out. They rushed us to the hospital and then after a whole night of treatment I called my mom and I'm like frantic.

I'm on the phone and I'm telling mom what happened. On the other side of the phone, it was almost like perfect peace coming across.  And  I found out  that my mom was the real hero of the story because she had felt prompted  to fast and pray for the month before this happened. And the focus of her prayers were Isaiah 43.

Which says, you will go through the fire and you will not be burned. The flames will not consume you. And when I, when she said that over the phone line, I realized  that we had been saved, I believe because of the power of my mother's prayers and I've never been the same since. Wow, I, that is an amazing story to imagine you caught in the fire and in the dark and the smoke looking for your baby and the Lord was already on the case.

He had already set about to save you in something that most people would not have escaped. I believe it was a miracle. I do believe it was in response of my mother's prayers. Because the reality is, the enemy hates us. And I wish I could say, Linda, that everything was fine after that, but truthfully, it really wasn't.

The amount of stress of being a mother and you lose your home, you no longer have the diapers, you don't have a home to live in, you don't have a crib, like everything that you had set up, but the fear was,  how would Rachel Joy be? That was the fear. We didn't know if her brain had been damaged. We didn't know she was hanging limp after the fire.

And in fact, we were supposed to be, because we were pastors at a major convention and they stopped the convention and because they were putting Rachel into a hyperbolic chamber, forced the carbon dioxide poisoning out.  And they stopped the convention and they prayed for the healing of my daughter. And I, I really believe that she was touched miraculously.

And the reason I say that is smoke on your lungs, your brain, your heart. And she ended up being a baby where she did everything quickly. She walked quickly, she spoke quickly, and she was an absolute joy. But truthfully,  before she was an absolute joy, she was an absolute terror.  I don't know if anybody has had colic.

Where a baby screams for three or four hours inconsolably for several months. That was Rachel Joy. So I would be at elders meetings outside a whole screaming baby. And  that's truthfully what led Wayne and I to go to a deeper place of who we were as Christians. Our development, our spiritual maturity, because we needed to go through just a prayer ministry that helped us to get to the heart of the trauma that we had faced.

And really forgive because it was an arsonist who set that fire. It was somebody that intentionally set the house next to us on fire. So it, there was a whole forgiveness issue in this, but it led to our biggest breakthrough of our lives that we really thanked God for the fire because of the transformation that he did in our lives.

I think that is probably why the Lord allows some of these really difficult things to happen to us. It's for our own personal growth so that we would trust Him and rely on Him and let go of that bitterness. And tell us more about that. Why is that so important? Our choice to forgive sets us free.  And I, I don't know who the person was that set the fire.

And I didn't see the face of the fireman either. I don't remember the face. I hope to thank them in heaven.  But the prayer ministry, truthfully, I'm in this session forgiving the person who set this A house on fire, but I had to go deeper than that because often when we go through pain and trauma as adults, it will connect to an earlier trauma.

And the earlier trauma in my life was that I was abused as a child. And even though I had gone through counseling for this and had tried to work through it, there's a deeper level of forgiveness that brought freedom. And so that was something that when I forgave the person who did that, it was like, uh, shackles were off of me.

I was really set free from the heart so that it was like a really different person.  And it really impacted our marriage, too, with all the screaming, you can imagine with that sort of experience, you get frustrated at each other, even though it's your baby having trouble. And it was such a freedom that it has impacted now how we minister to people and how we'll often minister to their hearts,  to their thinking.

We go deeper because God goes deeper with us and he changes us from the heart. I know that there are people who have tuned in that are saying, maybe I haven't been in a house fire, but I have had the fire of bitterness in my life.  How can they be set free? I believe that the scripture gives us a pathway, but he also uses other people on that pathway.

Amen. Amen. And part of it is, and the book that I write about the fire is Women Who Moved Mountains, and I wrote five steps of a journey guide, and that is free on the website, sue. weiler. com. But it's a five steps to freedom, and I talk about those five steps.  And obviously forgiveness is a number one step of finding that freedom, but often we need others to pray with us.

And there's something about how God will use each other. It's like we become freedom fighters for each other. We help that others free. Wow. I love that concept. And what we need to do is let's all become freedom fighters for one another right now. Can you lead us in a prayer charge for that? Yes. And I, I want to pray first of all for your hearts. 

And as I was sharing that, that not only are you in a present trauma, but it's connecting with earlier traumas. And I just want to say. Let Jesus come in,  rather than trying to cope or figure it out, admit that you need help. So Jesus, right now, I pray, just like I dropped to my knees and I said, help.

Because I knew that I could not deliver myself from that burning house. I had to have somebody to come and rescue. Lord, I pray right now that you would identify in people's lives if they are at that point of help. And Lord, I pray. I thank you for ministries. I thank you for pastors. I thank you for churches.

I pray right now that they would diligently seek out the help that they need  and Lord for others, maybe they're doing okay, maybe they've pushed the trauma down, but in some ways they become scarred. They have scar tissue. God, I pray that you would begin to heal the scars and any way that there's self protection where they're trying to protect themselves.

I pray that self protection would come off in Jesus name. Lord, there's others that when I talked about forgiveness, they know that they have to go to a deeper level of forgiveness. Lord, I pray that there'd be a choice in their heart right now  to forgive.  And Lord, I thank you that forgiveness is not necessarily forgetting, that forgiveness is not allowing that person to just beat us or continue to harm us, but Lord,  forgiveness sets us free from bitterness.

So Lord, we speak that over them right now. Be free from any form of bitterness. Be free from every form of trauma. Be free in Jesus name. I just agree with that prayer in the name of Jesus, and I add a prayer to go with it, and that is, Lord, we break the lies. That the enemy is whispering to their heart saying, it's impossible for you to forgive.

It's impossible for you to break free. No, it isn't because we are calling upon the power of God to strengthen you to say, no, I am set free and the power and authority of the name and the blood of Jesus. And this bitterness that's in my heart, this trauma that I've been carrying. I just, in the strength of Jesus, I lay it down at the foot of the cross, and I say that does not belong to me anymore, because I have given it to Jesus, and I say, Lord, all of this trauma, all of this bitterness, it is now your problem, because you died on the cross to cover it. 

And I would be foolish to hang on to it because this is the very barrier that keeps me from knowing you more. So I break free in your power and in your strength.  Take a deep breath everyone and say, Wow, I am free to clear it. I am free in the name of Jesus.  Linda, I love how brain science backs up what we've just done and your listeners who've just prayed this prayer of forgiveness, you might be encouraged by this.

They've done studies on brains. And where there's been trauma, it's like a thorn, it looks like a thorn in the brain. What happens is it will fuse together thoughts, memory, smells, that traumatic event. I learned about it because I would smell smoke and it would set off the panic in me. But what happens is when you go through a process of forgiveness and they take a picture of your brain, it literally. 

Dethorns the brain so that you no longer, when you think about an event, you're no longer feeling that panic or smelling that smell or wanting to escape. It's been healed and it shows up even in your brain. Wow. What a beautiful picture. And I know that people are wanting to know more about you and your ministry and they're wanting to know more about how to reach out to you.

If you know how to spell my name, I'm pretty easy to find on social media. And one of my websites is simply my name, S U E Sue and last name, D E T W E I L E R. com. And I have a lot of free things on there, like the guide that I talked about. And this is my most recent book. And I talk a little bit about the fire in the introduction.

But it's called Healing Rain, immersing yourself in Christ's love to find wholeness of mind, body, and heart. And the reason I wrote this book is often the other issue, the lack of forgiveness, that can actually cause you to be sick, not only in your heart, but also in your body. And this is really a step by step guide of receiving inner healing.

Your thoughts your heart as well as your body. Oh, wow. That's beautiful I hope that people get a copy of that because you need to continue to just dig into the healing and the Emotional healing that God has for you and I would just encourage them Are there any final thoughts that you have to share? 

Yes, I want to encourage you to begin, in both of the books I talked about, Women Who Move Mountains and Healing Rain, within them I have declarations that you say out loud. And I want to say this because I think there's some of you that you feel like you're forgiven, but you're still stuck. And sometimes we've got to hear ourselves say out loud, in prayer to God, what the scripture says about us.

And in the process of praying the word of God out loud, it's like there's a rinsing effect. It happens in our mind, in our heart, our emotions. And I, I feel like there's some of you that you need to get up every single day because when you wake up, you're depressed. When you wake up, you're feeling down.

When you wake up, it's hard for you to get out of the bed. And the Lord says, put this pattern into your life that just like you get up and you exercise and hopefully you read the Bible and pray. But even before that,  have written prayers that help jumpstart. The reality of who you are and what your identity is in Christ.

And I believe for some of you, that's a word that's going to help you this week.  Oh, thank you so much for that. And you know what? Friends, it is time to be set free and to enjoy the power of the love of God that he has for you because he loves you and he wants you to walk with him. Thank you so much, Sue, for being here with us today. 

What a joy. Thank you, Linda. And thank you to each one of those freedom fighters that are going to fight for others.  Amen. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Sue Detweiler. And if you did, would you like, share, subscribe, comment? We would love to hear from you. And I have a beautiful gift for you. It is a blessing that you can play, pray, and print.

Just go to MyPrayerGift. com and remember, God loves you and He wants you to talk to Him. See you next time.