TESTIMONY: No way will I drop my diamonds, says Alta Smith

Alta Smith has followed the Lord all her life and has experienced some powerful healing miracles over the years — but she says it has taken a revelation about forgiveness and a word about diamonds to give her a fresh boost of faith and boldness.

Her new season began at a Christian conference in East London last December when she heard and was impacted by a message that it was not enough to just forgive those who had wronged her but it was necessary to release them from the consequences of her unforgiving heart attitude.

“This was my breakthrough that changed my life totally,” said Smith, who is the manager of a Christian bookstore in East London.

- Advertisement -

“I grew up with ‘just forgive and walk on’ but now I have learned to forgive in love and speak blessing over those I forgive.”

She said sometimes, when she shared her life-changing understanding of forgiveness, people would say: “But you don’t know what they did to me.”

“That’s because we tend to ponder on small things and give them oxygen to grow. Now, if I see something coming my way in that form [of people wronging her], I say: ‘God I bless that person.’

“What am I doing? I am giving myself a booster to go faster,” she said.

Smith’s word from the Lord about diamonds came just after the weekend conference last December.

On the following Monday night she was suffering from flu and battling to fall asleep. During that night she kept hearing God say: “Don’t drop your diamonds.”

Frustrated at her sleeplessness and puzzled by God’s word to her, she got up at 4am, made tea, settled in a chair, and asked the Lord what He meant.

‘Look at your hands’
She said God told her to look at her hands. She did, and saw that they were shining like diamonds.

The Lord explained that diamonds were hard and indestructible because they were formed under pressure. Likewise, her hands held His unbreakable promises to her which she had received under pressure.

The next day she saw a doctor who said she had pneumonia. She shared another medical problem with the doctor, who examined her and said she must go for further tests as it looked like she had colon cancer.

God’s instruction not to drop her diamonds came to her in that moment and she remembered the promises of God that had carried her through a colon cancer ordeal 24 years previously in 1993. She told the doctor that while the medical view might be that she had colon cancer, the truth was that the blood of Jesus had healed her, and Jesus’ death on the cross had provided her with healing for all her sicknesses.

She went for the cancer tests. About a month later she called the doctor’s office and the receptionist said they had been trying to contact her as the test results were positive and she needed surgery.

She queried how the receptionist had not been able to contact her, as she had been going to work daily and had her cell phone with her. She told the receptionist she must be mixing her up with somebody else.

But the receptionist confirmed her name, ID number, and the date and location of her tests, and insisted that the results confirmed she had colon cancer and needed an emergency operation.

Smith said in that moment she was translated in a vision into an empty, white room, where God asked her what she had decided. She replied: “No, I don’t have colon cancer.”

When she continued to insist the positive results were not hers, the exasperated receptionist said she would call her back.

Cancer battle
Smith thought back to her battle with cancer in 1993, where 90% of her stomach was removed and her weight dropped from 73kg when she was admitted to hospital to 41kg when she was discharged 13 weeks later.

She remembered how she had stood on God’s healing promises in 1993 and how, despite dire warnings from doctors she refused further surgery after a post-operation complication developed.

So, when the doctor’s receptionist called back she continued to insist she was mixing her up with somebody else.

Later the receptionist called back again and apologised that they had indeed made a mistake with the test results. The positive colon cancer result was for another woman who was born on the same day and year as her, and had the same test as she had on the same day at the same laboratory.

She said she told the receptionist she had been certain she did not have cancer because God had told her not to drop her diamonds.

“So diamonds have become a very big thing for me. I am not dropping my diamonds — my promises — for anything!”

Smith said she was born with a heart valve defect. She was in hospital for six months with rheumatic fever at the age of seven. She had rheumatic fever again when she was 15 and doctors wanted to do heart valve surgery on her, but her father refused.

“Miraculously I have two very healthy daughters and three grandchildren,” she said.

In 2016 she experienced severe chest pain and her left arm was numb. Doctors said she was having a heart attack and that she needed a heart valve operation. She declined the surgery. Two weeks later friends prayed for her at a weekend prophetic conference. One of them said she did not need healing but a new heart and so they prayed for her to receive a brand new heart.

That Monday she went back to the doctors for tests. She said after six hours of tests, with the doctors walking backwards and forwards, she asked what was going on. They said they thought her file had got mixed up. Her heart was testing perfect and did not match their previous results.

New heart
“I said: ‘No, that was my heart, but this is my heart now. I went through all of this just to tell you that Jesus loves you and cares for you. Now my mission is done.’ Then I walked out.”

She said one of the specialists, a Hindu man, came to her shop about a month later to see how she was doing. She said she told him she was well and reminded him of her mission.

“I think we as children of God sometimes miss the centre of our mission because we get stuck in stuff that happens to us, instead of going through it. We have a job to tell people about Jesus.

“So if something happens to me, even at work, I don’t say: ‘Oh no’ but ‘What is it, Lord, that you want to do in this?’ Even if it is making a cup of coffee for someone or testifying or just walking through it, so that somebody else can be bold and get hope out of it.”

She said: “I think if we, as Christians, meditate more in the Word of God we will have so much more victory because that’s what we hold onto — the promises in His Word over us, over our situations, over our workplaces. Because in His Word there is power and breakthrough, constantly.”

Smith said that since her forgiveness breakthrough and diamonds experience she has been much bolder in responding to the needs of people who come into her shop.

“Sometimes God gives me a word of wisdom. Before my breakthrough, I would have done nothing about it. But since then He has given me a boldness and I don’t care. My staff didn’t understand at first but every time they grew in their faith. They see people come in with no hope and I share with them and sometimes they give their heart to God, or sometimes we just pray together and they walk out changed people. Now the staff are getting bolder,” she said.