"Faith over Fear"—Double Oscar Winner Al Kasha Describes His Battle with Agoraphobia and How God Healed Him

Dan Wooding : Sep 27, 2007
ASSIST Ministries

"I got on my knees, placed my hand on the television and began to pray. In my prayers I said, 'If there is a Jesus, please reveal Yourself.' A tremendous heat overtook me, an all-enveloping warmth. I was in an air-conditioned apartment where the windows were glued shut and suddenly they began to shake and open, and a light poured in... a blinding light. I felt a powerful pressure in my chest. I couldn't breathe. I knew something beyond my comprehension had taken place."

Beverly Hills, CA)?Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries, interviewed two-time Oscar winner, Al Kasha, who has been known for writing theme songs for such box office hits as, The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno.

Despite his success, Kasha was plagued by fear, and suffered from agoraphobia, which left him unable to leave his home, or even his own room. Below are some excerpts from that interview, to read the full ANS report about the remarkable way God delivered this talented songwriter, follow the link provided.

"Even though the world gifted me with Oscars and other tokens of recognition for my work, my whole life was based on the bondage of achievement. I never truly felt the peace which I had once assumed would accompany that kind of acclaim. Always striving for the next plateau produced only emptiness inside me. The striving was to satisfy others: my mother, my father, friends, producers...never for my own creative joy and satisfaction. My goals lay in the having, not the doing.

"This workaholism and striving resulted in depression and illness, which manifested itself in a disease called agoraphobia, a paralyzing fear of being in open, public places. At the height of my success, I had won two Academy Awards for the theme songs from The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. However, during this period, my father was dying of cancer, and the burden of balancing work and personal life became completely overwhelming.

"I reached a point where I could barely leave my house. My marriage, previously happy, was falling apart. I started psychoanalysis, which gave me neither comfort nor solace, until I reached a point of total emotional paralysis.

"I separated from my wife for a month, and during this unhappy time I began to reevaluate my life. I remembered conversations I had had over the years with friends in show business who had embraced Christianity. Their healing words seemed to come back in a stronger, more meaningful way. I sought solace in that wisdom, and started to think about spirituality for the first time in years. On a Saturday night, after being separated from my wife for nearly a month, my sense of loss and desolation became terribly acute.

"I couldn't sleep and flipped through the channels on the television disconsolately. I hit upon channel forty, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. A replay of Robert Schuller's ministry was on, and he quoted a Scripture that turned my life around: "God's perfect love casts out fear." (1-John 4:18-19) This struck me, as I certainly knew what it meant to be paralyzed by fear, and something in my spirit reversed it and I said to myself that fear also casts out love. I got on my knees, placed my hand on the television and began to pray. In my prayers I said, "If there is a Jesus, please reveal Yourself." A tremendous heat overtook me, an all-enveloping warmth. I was in an air-conditioned apartment where the windows were glued shut and suddenly they began to shake and open, and a light poured in...a blinding light. I felt a powerful pressure in my chest. I couldn't breathe. I knew something beyond my comprehension had taken place.

"The next morning I accepted Jesus...alone, with no other people ministering to me. That morning I felt peace driving for the first time in a year. I went to the house on a weekly visit to my daughter Dana, and did not tell my wife of my experience. Strangely enough, she mentioned to me that a mutual friend of ours, Pat Hollis, whom I hadn't seen for a while, was coming over and they were going to church. I had never been in church except for weddings and baptisms. As a matter of fact, Ceil had converted to Judaism when we were married. However, that day, I told her that I wanted to join them at church. (She had since given her life to Christ.) "I stuck to my commitment that I had decided to go. Pat Hollis was a Born Again Christian, and that afternoon we all went to church.

"On Sunday, October 8, 1978 at a Vineyard Fellowship, I reconfirmed my vows in front of witnesses and so did my wife. Since that time, my life has changed greatly, to the point where I can comfortably travel and speak to groups about agoraphobia and the deliverance of fears as well as about being a Christian living in Hollywood. In January 1984, I was ordained a minister.

I asked Ceil Kasha how she had seen her husband's life change.

"He has changed dramatically," she said. "For two years, because of his agoraphobia, he wouldn't leave the house; in fact, he wouldn't leave his room. I had to serve all his meals in his room. He could not even get out of that door.

"He turned our entire family into a phobic family. Then one night I just said, 'Father God, I can't do this; You've got to help me. You've got to get this man up and out of the bed and heal him.' I got on my knees and fell flat on my face and a friend of mine came over and prayed with me and, from that moment on, Al was healed and he was able to get out of the bedroom, go down the stairs and actually walk into the living room. When we saw him, we were so shocked.

"It took a few weeks and then he finally went out the door. A few more weeks after that we got him on a plane and he was completely healed and now he's flying all around the world with the ministry of our Lord of Jesus Christ with His healing and His blessing."