Vertigo

Recently, a lady came to me for help. She said,

“I have been battling from vertigo, and I would like to be free from it”.

She had been suffering from vertigo for several months and was on medication 3x a day. Her vertigo attacks would cause her head to spin so bad that she would feel nauseous, unable to walk, move, or function normally. Her only option was either to lie down or to sit down. It was debilitating! This illness seemed to have started for no reason; no one in her family has it, neither did any of her ancestors. So, it was a baffling one.

Root Cause

I asked when her episode of vertigo first began? She thought long and hard, and recalled a time when she attended a traditional folk festival in Slovakia with a couple of friends. One of the friends had a friend whose brother had set up a stall in the festival showcasing his artwork in carvings. He had made many fantastic carvings; some were life-size statues. There was also music in the background to add to the atmosphere of the festival. Being caught up in all the excitement, she decided to dance around one of the statues – if only for fun.

Not long after returning home, she began to feel dizzy and nauseous. These dizzy episodes continued to occur more frequently as time went by. Then on New Year's Eve 2019, she experienced her worst episode yet. She felt so much pressure on her head. It pounded away in intense dizziness; feeling sensitive both to sound and light.

As she tried to walk, her legs gave way and she fell to the floor. With the help of her sister, she was rushed by an ambulance to A&E at the local hospital.

She was eventually diagnosed with vertigo and was put on medication to help her stabilise. Because of this, she was unable to do anything physically demanding, certainly none of the sports she loved to take part in. Her life became restricted and full of uncertainty.

As I was listening to her story, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the root cause of it all – it was the dancing around the carved statue! It was a form of worship – a sin of idolatry. When I told her of this, her reaction was one of surprise - she had never thought of such a thing. She was, however, willing to accept this and proceeded to repent of this sin.

Deliverance and Healing

As she prayed her repentance, I saw tears flowing from her closed eyes. She would never knowingly worship anything other than her beloved Triune God: Yahweh, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Her heart was so deeply grieved that her contrite repentance moved the heart of God to heal her. As soon as she finished praying, I took authority over the spirit of Vertigo and commanded it to leave her body in the Name of Jesus. She started coughing and spluttering – vomiting slime. It was intense as the evil spirit manifested quite aggressively. After what seemed like bucketfuls of vomiting, she eventually stopped. We both looked at each other in amazement – God had just done a miracle. The evil spirit of vertigo had left!

She felt great, much lighter. She then asked me if she should stop her medication. I said she could try it just for the weekend and see how things went. I also warned her that the evil spirit may try to come back, in which case she must get the Lord Jesus to rebuke it on her behalf and stand on the healing the Lord had given her.

The weekend came and went – and it has now been over 6 months since she last took the medication, with no vertigo in sight! There have been occasions when she had felt it trying to come back, making her feel imbalanced, but as she stood her ground on the healing the Lord Jesus had given her, the feeling of imbalance would always subside and leave. She felt stronger day by day, and she is now able to go back to her beloved sports, enjoying the freedom that the Lord's healing offers. Praise be to God!

She shared her testimony with the church. As she did so, she realised that her vertigo had started sometime in August 2019 -- and that it was one year later, on 1st August 2020, that she was healed. This told me that God couldn’t wait to heal her, as He had arranged for her healing as soon as we came into the first day of August. He had longed to heal her, but had to first ensure our paths crossed, root cause identified, and for her to come to repentance.

Q & A with the Lord

Deep in my own heart, a question arose: What has vertigo got to do with idol worship?

The answer came one day as I was reading Exodus 32:8. It tells the story of how the Israelites, after being rescued by God from Egypt and on their way to the Promised Land, had built for themselves a golden calf to worship and to dance to.

Exodus 32:8

... (they) have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

This angered God since He was the One who brought them up out of Egypt (a golden calf statue cannot speak, much less bring anyone up out of anywhere). As a result, the Israelites went round and round in the wilderness for forty years before God allowed them to enter the Promised Land.

Numbers 32:13

The Lord’s anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.

God showed that the repetitive wandering in the wilderness (going round and round) is a picture of vertigo and its effects. So, this is how vertigo is linked to idolatry.

But what a God we serve -- that if we confess our sins...

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

As the lady confessed and repented, her sin was forgiven, and healing came to her.

The Israelites could have done the same: had they repented, they would have been spared from their 40 years of vertiginous wandering, and would have been able to enter the Promised Land in only 11 days. And so, it would be no less surprising if the lady's act of repentance had spared her from another 39 years of vertigo.

All praise and glory be to Father God, and to our Lord Jesus Christ who forgives us by His blood, and to the Holy Spirit whose power never fails to send evil spirits packing!

© Elma Larsen. All rights reserved