“I felt like the Devil was telling me my time was up. It was over,” says Clay Bentley. “He was whispering in my ear that, ‘It’s over for you.’” Sunday morning March 1st, 2020, Clay sang in a large church choir in Cartersville Georgia. When he came home that afternoon his wife Suzy could tell he wasn’t feeling well.
Things started going downhill. By the time he went to bed on Sunday night, he was having difficulty climbing the stairs. The next morning, he went to urgent care to get checked out, and they sent him to the emergency room. His oxygen levels were low and he had pneumonia in one lung. A flu test came back negative so they sent him home with antibiotics. Through the week, Clay’s condition grew worse.
Suzy says, “Thursday night got really, really bad. He was coughing and could not get a breath. And his eyes were huge, and it was frightening to see him that gasping and that like, ‘I cannot get a breath and I just feel like I’m not gonna make it.’”
Clay says, “On Friday morning, I called the hospital back and I said, ‘I feel like y’all have sent me home to die.’ I said, ‘I’m getting worse and worse, and I, you know, I can’t even breathe.’”
Clay was admitted to the hospital and tested positive for Covid-19 and had developed double pneumonia, while Suzy was quarantined at home. That week she and Clay asked friends and family for prayer and stood on the promises in God’s Word to boost their faith for Clay’s recovery.
“I knew that His Word in my mouth made a difference. His Word in anyone’s mouth, His Word is more important than just, ‘Oh God, help someone.’ Or, ‘Oh God, please help someone.’ His grace comes into effect there. But His Word does not return unto Him void. So His Word is what I just kept having in my mouth,” recalls Suzy.
Clay says, “Every healing scripture that I can think of was going through my spirit, ‘I will live and not die and declare the works of the Lord. He has plans for me, a future and a hope and no weapon formed against me can prosper.’ I was quoting them all out loud. And when it got to the point where I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t quote them anymore, but I was still quoting the Word on the inside of me. I knew within me that God had plans for me, that He didn’t want me to lay there and die, and that He wanted me to stand on the Word. He was telling me, ‘Stand on the Word.’ The Word of God has always worked in my life. He’s always proven Himself to me to be true. He’s never lied to me. He said, ‘I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you and I’ll never lie to you.’ So I knew all that and I knew He wouldn’t let me down. And I knew no matter what these doctors said, I wouldn’t believe in their report. God had given me a report that He was going to raise me up. And I stood on that.”
Suzy’s Facebook page was flooded with responses as people believed in prayer for Clay’s recovery. “I was up at two o’clock in the morning and I was just literally responding to each one of those, ‘Thank you so very much for your prayers. Please pray for improvement for his lungs.’ And just giving them very specific of what he needed just to keep moving in the direction that we knew God was leading us in,” she says.
Clay’s condition worsened through the week yet he still had peace believing for a miracle recovery. Then, on the night of March 14th, as he struggled for breath, Clay says the presence of God came into his room. He says, “I felt, in the Spirit, like I had a man laying on my chest and it was so heavy that it was like I couldn’t breathe. So, this man was laying on my chest and then all of a sudden, he blew air into my lungs. And when he blew air into my lungs, I took a deep breath. And it was like everything just cleared. It’s like it all went away, and I just laid there in bed from three o’clock to about 6:30 breathing. I still had the oxygen. I still had all of that stuff flowing, but it was so easy. The doctors came in my room to check on me and they told me, ‘What’s up with this?’ They said, ‘Yesterday, we come in your room and tell you you’re getting worse, that you’re in worse shape than you’ve been since you’ve been in the hospital. Both your lungs were filled with fluid, and today you don’t have any fluid in your lungs at all.’”
When they tested his lungs doctors were amazed his oxygen levels were at 95 percent. Clay told them why. “God came in my room this morning at three o’clock and blew in my lungs and I’m healed. I’m totally healed.” And he said, ‘Well, it – I’m amazed that you’re in the condition that you’re in.’”
Suzy remembers, “When he was sharing it the first time with me, I was just elated and ecstatic. You’re just like, ‘You are so good, God. You are so faithful. You are so amazing.’ Joy – it was joy unspeakable. It was awesome.”
Two days later Clay was released from the hospital completely healed. He says, “So when the Lord raised me up from coronavirus and healed me of that, not only did He heal me of that, but of rheumatoid arthritis. I haven’t taken any rheumatoid arthritis medication since before I went in the hospital. My joints don’t even hurt no more. I mean, I’m set free. Everything that was wrong, when Jesus came in, He made it all right.”
Clay and Suzy encourage everyone facing fear and difficulties to turn to Jesus and His Word for healing. “Whatever the biggest fear is, go ahead and call it out and answer it with the Word and see Him change your situation. Transforming. Absolutely transforming.”
Clay says, “And and I’m here to tell you today that if you’ll stand on the Word of God, if you’ll put your faith and you’ll put your trust in Him, it don’t matter how bad it looks. He’s the God of turn around and He’ll turn things around.”