After a miserable childhood and failed marriage, Victoria Neville was amazed to be able to leave it all behind and embark on a healing adventure with God
Weighing just two pounds at birth and nearly three months premature, I was a miracle baby. My twin, Bella, weighed less than two pounds; of all the twins born in 1970, we were the earliest surviving ones.
My very first memory is of nearly drowning in my father’s swimming pool at the age of five. Mercifully, my father came through the garden gate, jumped in the swimming pool and saved me from drowning.
It was as if I had left my miserable childhood and unhappy marriage at the bottom of the river
At that young age, I was totally unaware of Jesus, but I do remember coming out of my body and watching my father jump in the swimming pool to get me out. Looking back, I now realise that it was an out of body experience. Despite our premature birth, I was blessed to develop normally, but my twin was brain damaged and from the age of 12 she suffered petit-mal and grand-mal epilepsy.
For much of my childhood, though, I felt as if I was struggling to keep my head above water. My father had married my nanny when I was four years old, which resulted in my mother becoming an alcoholic.
When I was ten, tragedy hit my family: my elder sister was killed in a riding accident. This galvanised my faith and from then on I started to pray to Jesus. At secondary school I was encouraged to take my faith more seriously and so I agreed to be confirmed at 16. A very nice priest explained to me that Jesus loved me and had died on the Cross formy sins, so for the first time I repented and accepted Jesus into my life.
This brought me a sense of peace, but I did not achieve high grades for my A levels, because I had to look after my twin in the holidays as she was having grand-mal epileptic fits and my mother was at work all the time. I did, however, manage to get into Westminster University and achieved a 2:2 in English and French.
To escape my miserable home life (by this time my mother was on her third marriage), I married at 25 and moved north. Sadly I soon realised that my husband was not a Christian, so I was “unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14), because he did not share my faith at all. We had three beautiful daughters, but sadly after 18 years our marriage was beyond repair and so we divorced. My divorce caused me to hit rock bottom and I had to be prescribed antidepressants by my doctor.
One night I felt so miserable that I cried out to Jesus in desperation. The Holy Spirit literally gave me word for word the salvation prayer to say: “Lord Jesus, I repent of all my sins. Please forgive me. I believe that you died on the Cross and rose again on the third day. Jesus, please come into my heart, and fill me up with your Holy Spirit. I accept you as my Lord and Saviour. Amen.”
Then I fell asleep and received a dream from the Holy Spirit about getting baptised in water. So, not long after, I drove to Hollybush Christian Fellowship and asked if they could baptise me in the river Rye during their summer camp. They kindly agreed and I was baptised on 8 August 2014.
What a glorious day! I felt like a different person when I came up out of the water. For the first time in years, I felt joy. I also felt clean and renewed; it was as if I had left my miserable childhood and unhappy marriage at the bottom of the river, and I experienced an immediate difference in my spirit.
I was now a born-again Christian, a new creation in Christ and this time I really took my faith seriously, praying and reading my Bible daily. For the first time in my life, I felt a desire to go out evangelising and I remember my second time vividly.
I had arranged to go out in York with Christa, a lovely Christian. Outside York Hospital we bumped into a young man pushing his father who had just had a toe amputated.
We got chatting to the young man and asked if we could pray for his father’s pain to go. Then, to our surprise, the son asked us to pray for him as he had a ripped cruciate ligament and was awaiting knee surgery. I agreed and put my hands round his knee, praying for all the pain to go and for the ligament to be healed and go back into place.
To my astonishment, he started leaping for joy and bent his knee right back to show he was healed. “I’m healed! I’m healed! My goodness, I’m going straight back to church!” he exclaimed.
His son’s knee was still healed and he was over the moon
I gave his father my phone number and later that evening he rang me to say that his son’s knee was still healed and he was over the moon.
Since that day I have seen the power of God heal two homeless men with fractured wrists on the street. I have served on the Filling Station ministry team for the last four years and have seen people delivered from illness, addiction and depression. I have also witnessed others receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit on Zoom and in Filling Station meetings.
Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and He is letting us know that He is still Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals TODAY!
Victoria Neville has written her testimony and the healings that she has witnessed first-hand in her first book, ‘The Reluctant Disciple’, which is available from Amazon, Waterstone’s website and Foyles. She can be contacted for prayer at crusadervictoria@gmail.com
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