Me: Hi, I’m Mary, Fire Starter for Jesus for online publishing. I’m with Bill and Raye Gray. They had an amazing, traumatic adventure happen over Thanksgiving time. We’re sharing it with you, so you can celebrate with us how good God is, discover what he did, and build up your faith for similar things in your life; for God’s rescue and his presence to be there whenever you need him.

This YouTube video documents the entire interview. The blog post is a condensed version.

Mary: So, with that introduction, who wants to go first?

Raye: Well, I guess I’ll start out by setting the scene. We flew to Silver City, New Mexico…

…to help my twin sister, Faye, and her husband, Floyd, with some remodeling…. Bill and Floyd were going to install an oven…. Bill was helping Floyd…. It was the day before Thanksgiving.

Bill: We were moving the location of the wall outlet…. This is an adobe home…. Floyd was using a little handheld jigsaw… to cut the wall so that we could move the outlet up…. There was an unknown gas line behind the wall…. While that jigsaw was cutting, it nicked a propane line.

He was under the counter…. I was… leaning in with a vacuum cleaner to keep the dust down. Multiple times, he hit this saw into the wall. Floyd stopped the saw for a moment…. When it restarted, that electric saw ignited the propane. So, he and I both got a fireball in the face and on the hands and arms. That’s how it all started.

Raye: My sister Faye and I were in the back of the house. We heard this explosion. We ran in. It was frightening; there was this fire in the kitchen. Bill was standing with his hands up… screaming. They were both in shock. My sister got the fire extinguisher and started to put out the fire.

Meanwhile, Bill looked at me saying, “I’ve got to get some cool water on my body.” So, we ran into the master bath and pulled off his shirt, His whole neck was bright red, the side of his face and his hands too. The hair on his arms, gone. His skin, bright red and already starting to form blisters.

We splashed cold water on him…. Then I looked and said, “We have got to take you into the hospital and see what they say about this.”

He was in shock and started praying in tongues. He prayed loudly. Every time he could feel the pain, he would scream in tongues. He was crying out to the Lord. The Spirit was interceding for him.

Throughout the drive, he was shaking and praying in tongues. When I stopped, I would lean over and touch him. The shaking would stop. I’d say, “Okay, we’re almost there.” He’d be okay for a while. Then he’d start praying in tongues. We got to the emergency room. I had to park the car, so I dropped him off and he ran in.

Bill: I had no shirt on. It was cool. Raye threw her coat around me. She loosely tied the arms around my neck like a cape. I went running through the emergency room door kind of like Superman….

There was no one there; no security guard, nobody waiting. I looked into the triage office…. I was freaking out. The pain level with burns is something that you wouldn’t wish on anyone.

I ran to the back of the ER room. Somebody was inside, so I knocked on the door and loudly stated, “I need to see somebody.” The lady inside… pointed to go someplace else. So, I ran back to this triage office. There were two desks…. One was empty. Another was around the corner. Someone was… there!

So, I ran in. With burned hands, I had to pull my wallet out and throw my identification and insurance cards on the desk. I said, “I’ve been burned! I need help!”

Raye: Right about then I came in. They just kept looking, staring at him, not really getting what was going on.

Bill: I was wet, no shirt on.

Raye: We’d been splashing water on him. The whole thing combined to make him look rather odd. I said, “He’s with me. He’s been badly burned. They hit a gas line. There was an explosion.”

That’s when they took him back into the triage area. I had to sit in the waiting room for quite a significant amount of time, the better part of an hour.

Bill: As much pain as I was in, they were not giving me medication. They needed to draw blood, to make sure I wasn’t on something…. They took chest X-rays to see if my lungs had been burned. All of this before they were going to give me any intravenous pain medications. It was a significant amount of time.

If they hadn’t previously heard speaking-in-tongues, they understand what they are now. We were right across from the nurses’ station, just a little thin curtain between us. My choice was between screaming or speaking-in-tongues in a loud voice.

Believe it or not, I didn’t have to try to speak in tongues. I just was!

Anytime someone came in and needed to ask me a question, I could speak in English. But as soon as they were gone, I began speaking in tongues again. It was probably for the better part of two hours.

After an …hour they put pain medication into the IV. It took time for that to slowly work the pain level down. At some point … I said, “You know, my wife could come in.” They said, “Oh! Okay,” like they didn’t know anybody was out there.

Raye: When I walked in, a man was working on him. He said, “My name’s Ted and here’s what’s going to happen…. We are going to airlift your husband to a burn center. The closest burn centers are in San Antonio, Denver, Tucson and Phoenix.

First they had to contact the centers and say, “Do you have room? And can you send a helicopter?”

So another hour and a half later they came in and said, “Okay, the burn center in Phoenix has an opening. You’ve already been here two-and-a-half hours, almost three. We can walk you through fixing the circumferential blisters here.”

To explain, circumferential blisters go all the way around your finger without stopping. They tend to swell up and cut off the circulation. Since Bill’s a guitar player, they were concerned that his fingers would suffer and not recover. So, they were going to airlift him.

Bill: So, they took the blister material off of my hands. I don’t think there was 360 degrees of blistering; an area was charred but never blistered. In the release papers they talked about an area with superficial burning, which must have been on my face, where I’d lost part of my beard, an eyebrow and about a half an inch of my hairline.

They put a triple antibiotic on me, wrapped ‘em up, and sent me home with Percocet.

Raye: They sent him home with six Percocet because the next day was Thanksgiving. Not one pharmacy was open in this small town on Thanksgiving Day. They were concerned that my brother-in-law and Bill, would be in pain. So, they sent us home with Percocet, ibuprofen and Tylenol. They said, “…you can come back the day after Thanksgiving and we’ll check everything out to make sure everything’s going well.”

Bill: As we left, they said, “The pain is hard to knock down, so don’t let it come back. Use these Percocet and we’ll keep you in good shape.”

I took the Percocet before bed, assuming I’d wake up in the middle of the night with pain and have to take it again. They wanted me to use Percocet and also take two Tylenol and two Advil at the same time every four hours.

It’s amazing that I didn’t wake up in the night with pain. I woke up in the morning with no more pain than the night before. It was unexpected…. Instead of taking another Percocet I dutifully took two Advil and two Tylenol. Within a couple of days, I dropped the Tylenol altogether. I simply wasn’t dealing with pain, which was amazing to me.

Friday we went back to the hospital as they’d asked…. I thought they wanted to inspect my hands for circumferential blistering, so even though I had no pain to speak of, we went back.

The attending emergency room physician was someone we hadn’t seen before. He unwrapped a couple of fingers on my left hand, then became upset saying, “Well, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to do this at home.” We said, “We’re here because we were told to come in so that you could take a look.”  

He got so upset he just kind of left….

They sent in the same guy who had done the bandages in the first place…. He opened up my hand. It still looked about the same. But there wasn’t any pain. Evidently, it didn’t look how he expected.

My face looked like it had been in the sun. The redness on my neck was all gone. In fact, before we’d left the first time, the coloration had turned almost natural. I’d had a sunburn look around my neck where the shirt blocked some of that flame. So, we were seeing accelerated healing right from the from the start.

As you might expect, I was a basket case. There was fear and panic….

The first time we were there, I’d taken one look at the back of my left hand. It looked like a steak that had been grilled at 500 degrees. When you pull the steak off the grill, before it turns brown, it turns an off-white color. No knuckles anymore. My hand had these funny striations going in the direction of the fingers.

This second visit, as he was demonstrating the wrapping process he told us, “It’s not going to be a quick fix…. You’re going to be looking at six to eight weeks anyway. So, plan on the long haul. As soon as you get back to Seattle see your doctor. Have him refer you to the Seattle Burn Center. You can continue there.”

Any questions so far? Anything I missed?”

Me: I remember, when hearing this before, you made a comment about the burn on your face and on your neck. You said, “I wanted my wife to be able to look at me.”

Bill: I snuck a peek in the mirror while we were splashing water. I was fearful of what I was going to see. I saw my face. I just praise God that my wife has a face that she can look at. So that was wonderful!

Raye: Yeah.

Bill: When I was in that hospital the first time, I looked at the back of my hand. My fingers were stiff, almost like somebody had taped popsicle sticks to the back. There wasn’t any ability to bend them. I was freaked out that there could be an issue with me ever playing guitar.

At some point while we were in the hospital… I got a little flash of myself playing the guitar. It was as if I were looking over my shoulder, seeing myself with a guitar in my hands. I believe the Holy Spirit was giving me a glimpse into the future to settle me, to let me know that I can count on doing that again.

Raye: Also, he’s mentioned trauma and fear. Thanksgiving Day we just had soup for dinner because none of us wanted to turn on the propane barbecue. We were all like, “No. Way, too soon for that! We are not going there.”

Friday, we got up early and joined an online prayer meeting. After that we felt like, “Okay, time to break off trauma, fear, timidity; anything that could have made an entrance because of the trauma…. So, we did. Floyd, Faye, Bill and I prayed for one another and broke trauma off all of us. It was a real thing; it really left us at that time.

When we got home, without thinking, Bill turned on the gas stove and put something on it. We looked at each other and started laughing. “Oh, my word. We just overcame, you know!

Bill: I want to make sure everybody knows, Floyd and Faye’s brand-new kitchen was unscathed. Nothing caught fire. It was remarkable! The biggest mess was from the fire extinguisher. Ha, ha! That took a while to clean….

Now, there’s another thing before we go on. Usually when there has been some kind of emergency, I tend to lock down emotionally and get stuff done. Then later I’ll think about the emotions. That was not the case at all here. I was simply beyond myself. I was making noises.

Either I stepped back quickly or angels may have pulled me back. I don’t know, but it was quick. I was back. I still can envision this orange ball of fire that hit me in the face as I backed up.  You can’t get back fast enough. It comes faster than you can move. Suddenly, I was back. And I remember seeing orange flames coming off my arms and hands. It was a bizarre, incomprehensible image.

I was totally in shock.

Me: Your clothes didn’t catch on fire, right?

Bill: No…. Floyd’s vest, I sent you a picture of that. It was a mess. It burned up the back towards his hair. He didn’t remember taking off the vest. Had he not taken it off immediately, it would have probably melted to whatever he was wearing underneath.

Me: I’m glad you’re talking about the pictures you sent. I will put them in the video. Which picture is of you, and which is of Floyd?

Raye: There’s one that shows a big blister on the wrist: that was Floyd. It was taken after a couple days. Floyd’s skin did not present immediately with much damage. He looked like he had a very slight sunburn. Bill was bright red; his hands were all blistering before we went to the hospital.

Floyd felt burning, but it didn’t manifest the way it did with Bill. Floyd took a shower. Then finally his wife convinced him to go to the hospital. So, Floyd was in a room with one doctor, and we were in a different room with a different doctor. They were being treated completely differently. They told Floyd, “We’re just going to loosely bandage this, Go on home.” They were talking about airlifting Bill because of circumferential burns.

Bill: Floyd was actually closer to the action.

Raye: So, for Floyd, during the next couple of days he started to badly blister. His entire face swelled up. The skin burst open. It was horrendous.. It all peeled off and now he’s got baby skin; nice and soft. So, the reactions behaved differently. We still don’t know why.

The Lord used that traumatic incident to show both Bill and I some things that we were afraid of. Maybe we’ve had these fears our entire lives. So, when we started praying to break off trauma for different things, Bill said, “You know, I feel like I need to break off a spirit of timidity that’s been with me my whole life.” So, the Lord was bringing up other things for us to address, as though they were traumatic like this incident. It’s been a life-changer for both of us.

Bill: I want to go briefly back to my state of mind in shock. I want anyone who listens to understand what I learned from this situation: You may not be the person you think you are. I bought three more fire extinguishers. If there’s a fire upstairs, I may not have the wherewithal or the time to run downstairs, find a fire extinguisher in the garage or in the laundry room, or wherever I happen to have one, and get back up. I believe that something as simple as a fire extinguisher should be in multiple places… where you don’t have to think about it. You can grab and go. Then there’ll be time to think about it….

We pray that nothing like this happens to others. I just found for myself, I was unable to be the person who I previously thought I would be. Does that make sense?

Me: Yes.

Raye: It’s not because we’re such great spiritual people. It’s all God. Because at your worst, your lamest, your weakest, your most fearful, your most traumatized; he comes and rescues you. That’s really the message. Like Bill said, it wasn’t that he decided to speak in tongues. He just started. So, I guess the only thing would be to make sure you’re well versed in your prayer language because when you need it, you want to have more than just a couple words.

Bill: I’m so happy that I have that relationship with the Lord. The word of God says what’s in us comes out of us. Tongues was in me. It’s the first thing that came out once I got a hold of myself, once I quit just making noises…groaning. I was doing some of that up front. But it was so wonderful that tongues came out.

Raye: Yeah… if anything could be marked to our credit, it would just be practicing the art of staying in contact with the Lord. Outside of that, there is nothing that prepared us for that situation.

Me: I’m thinking, you might not have known where the physical fire extinguisher was, but tongues was your spiritual fire extinguisher! You got that ready!

Raye: That’s good, Mary. So good!

Bill: That’s true.

Me: So, can we pick the story back up with the recovery process, go a little further into that?

Bill: This is when it started to become amazing. All I knew is that I didn’t hurt. That was so surprising! But I set up an appointment with my local MD…. I saw him Wednesday morning…. He unwrapped the wraps.

He looked quizzically at me and said, “Now when did this happen?”

I said, “Well, a week ago today, in the afternoon.” He shook his head and said, “We don’t need to contact the burn center. I think you’re going to be done with this in about a week.” He was stunned!

I just went, “Praise God.”

He showed me how to rewrap. We did it for a week. We started not covering those parts that were healing.

Fourteen days after the event… It was Tuesday night when we typically attend the healing rooms at church. For a number of years now, I’ve played a couple of songs there to set an atmosphere. I had not picked up a guitar. At that point I had a band-aid on each of two fingers.

I felt compelled to go there, to share this testimony and to give God the glory. In strapping on the guitar and singing a couple of songs I started to realize that something amazing had taken place a few days or a week earlier.

We’d been home for a couple or three days. And the way our minds are built, we tend to forget the negative. As things were getting so much better, this thought came to my mind: maybe it just wasn’t as bad as what I think it was. About that time, Raye came with the release papers that they gave us at the hospital. The papers said they’d treated us for superficial burns, smoke inhalation, (which I’m not sure I had much of), second-degree burns, and third-degree burns.

All of a sudden it kicked me back into miracle mode.

We were fortunate enough to have had doctors that wrote… what it was, what the natural says. And here is what the kingdom of God says, where God meets the natural world. The supernatural is His natural. It’s only supernatural to us.

So, I’ve been walking through this incredible acceleration of healing. I’ve spoken to so many people in the last few weeks who, at some point in their lives, had burns. Some of them were serious. I talked to somebody a couple of days ago that has scars that have never healed.

Yet there are no scars!

It’s absolutely amazing and unbelievable except in God. Our Lord is so good! Beyond all we can ask or think.

Raye: Yeah. Remember, he said he had no movement in his hands. Look at that!  

He was able to play a week later at the healing rooms…. It just sounded wonderful!” Now he’s released a new Christmas song and his hands are working perfectly….

Later in the interview…

Me: Raye, I’m wondering… This was super traumatic for Bill. He went through all of this, but you were right there experiencing this with him, and seeing what was happening to him. You have your own processing and your own story. I think we’d like to hear a bit from you, too. if you want to share.

Raye: Sure…. It’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through; seeing my husband hurting so badly, not having anything that I could do for him, just knowing that it had to be God. And the trauma of walking in, seeing everything that’s going on, and hearing him literally screaming like a wounded animal. It was nothing you ever expect to hear from your husband or from anyone that you care about, or love.

So, when that happens, oh, it grips your heart!

There’s such heaviness about it. And you know, just flailing around in my own natural mind, thinking, what can I do?

My first reaction was, “Why are you screaming?” I thought he was trying to tell me something to do, like how to put out the fire or something. My mind was kind of suspended. I’m like, “Why are you screaming? Why are you screaming?” And then he says, “I need water.” And then I realized, “Oh, he’s burned.”

It was out of the realm of my brain to try to solve. And so, there was that immediate trauma. And then when I walked into the emergency room and saw that they had not been taking care of him, or helping him, and they were discounting him, because of thinking maybe he was on meth or something. Yet he was still screaming in pain.

I didn’t understand what was going on. When I finally got back in the ER they said, “Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to airlift your husband.” I just heard that word, “we’re going to airlift him to a burn unit.” I got out my phone and started texting every prayer group I could think of.

Me: The word got around fast!

Raye: I was like, “We need help. We need people storming heaven because this is beyond me. I know it’s not beyond the Lord. And I felt like he was saying, “Hey, you’ve got lots of resources. Reach out to them. Get them on the job.”

There were people praying in Somalia, people praying in Pakistan, people praying all over the United States of America and Europe who belonged to the Corey Russell small groups. They were all alerted. The word was spreading like wildfire. All of those groups, and the groups at Eden, and the groups at Hope community in Burien; all were praying for one person, not just one, because I mentioned Floyd of course. These two people had been burned. I know God used that network of people.

Bill: I want to thank each and every one for your prayers. The fervent, effective prayers of the righteous accomplish much. And they did; they do; they have and they will. Yeah. And God bless everyone.

Raye: Yes. It’s so wonderful! It’s wonderful to have access to that kind of support, those kinds of warriors, that kind of army.

Me: Yeah. It’s a great illustration of the body of Christ working. When one-part hurts, everybody gets involved. And how important it is to be networked, to know other people, right?

Raye: And Mary, none of these people said, “Well, what’s his theology? Does he believe in this, this, and this?” No. They were all just like dropping everything and praying for him. I felt this unity of the body of Christ. No bickering about details. No, no bickering about what you believe or don’t believe. None of that.

It was just that we love this person or at least someone who loves this person, we love them.

Hey, the body’s coming together and… every joint supplies. What a wonderful thing! Life started flowing through Bill’s arms, his hands, his face and Floyd’s face, his arms and hands. What wonderful unity I felt with the body of Christ.

When we prayed with a prayer group online that next day, we felt this belonging. One told me later, “When we saw your name pop up; that you guys had joined the prayer meeting two days after the fire, she said, “There was great rejoicing in the camp, rejoicing that you were on there.”

So, it was such a powerful time. The Lord is faithful to reveal mindsets that we don’t realize we have, unbelief we don’t realize we have, things that traumatized us earlier in our lives; all this stuff. The Lord gently uses your circumstance and situation and says, “Okay, now is a good time to take care of this. Let’s just get it all cleaned out.” He’s so faithful.

Me: In that regard, the people watching have probably experienced trauma of some form in their lives, or they know someone who has.

Bill: Absolutely.

Me: Could the two of you who experienced this prayer for the healing of trauma, pray for our listeners; for the Lord to bring healing in whatever way they need it? As we’ve been telling this story, some people may be remembering trauma they’ve been through. It might be on the surface right now. They might need that touch and that comfort. So, if you could do so, that would be awesome!

Raye: Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah…. You know there is absolutely nothing that can stand before the power of God.

You (listeners/readers) are filled with the same power that raised Christ from the dead. When he brings that to your remembrance, that power will rescue you and draw you nearer to God. And there is nothing, no trauma, no pain, no sorrow, no grief; there is no darkness that can stand before the mighty, unlimited power of the Almighty God. He is just hovering, so to speak, waiting; waiting for you to open your eyes, look at him, and say:

“Okay! Mighty power of God, break that trauma off me. Release me from the grief… that keeps sucking me down. Release me into your joy.”

 And he will do that. In fact, I believe he’s going to do that now, if you will turn to him this minute.

Say, “Jesus, I acknowledge I’m filled with the power that raised you from the dead, and I am going to let that power work within me, deliver me, and set me free once and for all.”

Jesus never went back down into the grave repeatedly. He was raised once and for all. And so, right now we take that opportunity. “We say… God, I’m yours. I’m filled with God and you are working in me to release me from those things.”

So, Lord, break off every trauma. Break off every grief. Break off every sorrow and depression and anxiety in your name, Jesus.

Me: I want to point out, for those who are listening, Raye just used the word, “release.”

When you’re hurting, if you shove the emotional pain down, it’s going to pop back up. But if you do what Raye said, release it; release the hurt, the grief, the fear, the trauma, and the pain. If you will release it to God, then he’ll take it.

Raye: He will.

Me: Then he’ll release back to you what you need in its place. Might be peace, might be joy, might be comfort; it might be all three. But give him the painful feeling and receive his feelings which are way better.

Raye: Amen. Haha! Hallelujah.

Bill: A verse came to my mind when I realized that I didn’t want trauma that holds so many people back to be something added on to the things that have held me back. The verse the Lord brought to my mind was, “I did not give you a spirit of fear.”

Fear is a spirit. Related to that is trauma. Trauma is a fear related spirit. Timidity is a fear related spirit.

Me: Yes.

Bill: So, I said, “Gosh, this is a spiritual matter. But he gave us a spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind.”

 It was that sound mindedness that was particularly highlighted for me when I was not in that sound minded place. When I was filled to overflowing, not with the peace of God, but filled to overflowing with fear, anxiety, agony, terror; all those kinds of things.

And so, I want to speak and anyone who is listening to this now, or at a future time, in the mighty name of Jesus:

“We command any spirit of terror, trauma, fear, or timidity… go now in the mighty name of Jesus. You have no authority in this person’s life. Be gone from them now. Yes. In the mighty name, we command you to do so. Hallelujah!”

Bill: Even after the enemy’s been kicked out, it seems too often he comes back to kind of jabber in your ear, you know, and see if you’ll let him back in; to give you fear about this or that. I try to visualize. I’m somewhat a visual person.

I remember when Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

We have authority when a thought comes that is not of the Lord. We know where it’s from because it’s not an edifying thought. We have authority to take that thought and cast it out. And so, I tend to see the cross, the foot of the cross, right over here (to the right) someplace. These last few weeks, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve declared, “No, not doing that.’ Taking my hand, I grab and toss the thought or feeling down at the foot of the cross.

I just imagine the blood of Jesus, roll down the cross over that.”

If others can utilize that same visual, it’s a prophetic act. If you ever see me at church motioning a toss down, that’s what I’m doing. I’m removing whatever is trying to establish a foothold that is not of the Lord. I just take that out. I give it to Jesus. I just drop it at the foot of the cross. Then I thank and praise the Lord for removing it.

Me: Amen. Well, thank you so much for being willing to share what you have gone through with the world out there so other people can learn and be blessed by the amazing things God did. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Yay!

Bill: Thank you for doing what you’re doing. This is great. This is so wonderful! I’m excited that you’re doing this, Not for us, for everybody and for what we have to look forward to in all that you’re going to do in this way.

Me: Thank you.

Later in the interview…

Me: When you release these songs you’re got, do you know what your platform is going to be or how you’re going to do it?

Bill: We have a Facebook page that we will be telling everybody about. It’s called, “Bill Gray Worship.” And we will be putting things out on YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram…. I’m looking forward to releasing something every two weeks.

Me: Wow. Okay.

Bill: I do have a large number of songs that I’ve wanted, for years, to get into people’s ears, into their lives; so that they can listen, sing, and speak these words over themselves and over those they love. That’s where the power comes, in doing that. So, the Lord has given me all these beautiful talents that I believe he wants put into service.

Raye: Yeah. The Lord told him a long time ago, “Revealing His Healing.” That’s Bill’s ministry. It’s coming to pass.

Me: “Revealing His Healing,” yes, through music and worship. Amen. Well, thank you for your time and God bless you abundantly. Amen.

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