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TREAT EACH OTHER LIKE THE ANSWER TO A PRAYER
I can still see one of the great provokers in my life. I met her on a work trip to Kentucky. Our youth group was working on a woman’s house, but it wasn’t very much fun. We hated where we were. Porches and front yards littered with old cars, sofas and garbage. We hated it and we began to make fun of the way those people lived and we began to act like a group who would rather be doing something else. We picked on each other. We argued, we made sarcastic jabs every chance we got. In other words we acted just like the older people in our church when they lost sight of who they were.
Eventually the woman who owned the house we were working on came out with tears streaming down her face. She sat us down in the grass in front the house and she stood there, shaking her stubby finger at us and speaking through the few teeth she had left. I mean to tell you she laid into us like I’ve never seen before or since. She railed at us, "What’s wrong with you kids? Don’t you know? Don’t you know I’ve been praying for a long time for someone to show up and help me? Don’t you know how badly my kids need to have bedrooms and a bathroom that works? I’ve been praying for a long time. Don’t you know you are the answer to my prayers? Why don’t you treat each other like the answer to prayer?"
From that moment on, everything changed. Instead of obligation, the work became true mission. Instead of tearing each other down, we built each other up. It was amazing. When someone tells you that you are the answer to a prayer, everything changes. It provokes you.
I came here today to tell you that you are the answer to prayer.
A missionary and his family were forced to camp outside on a hill. They were carrying money and they were fearful that thieves might rob them. After spending time in prayer, the finally fell asleep. Several months later, a man that had been injured was taken to the mission hospital. He asked the missionary if on that special night they had soldiers guarding them. The man said to him, “We intended to rob you, but we were afraid of the twenty-seven soldiers.”
When the missionary returned to his homeland, he shared this story with his church. One of the members responded, “We had a prayer meeting that night, and I took roll. There were just twenty-seven of us present.”
According to a poll on prayer for Newsweek (3/31/97), the following percentage said:
They ask for health or success for a child or family member when they pray -- 82
They ask for strength to overcome a personal weakness -- 75
They never ask for financial or career success -- 36
God answers prayers -- 87
God doesn’t answer prayers -- 51
They believe God does not play favorites in answering prayers -- 82
God answers prayers for healing someone with an incurable disease -- 79
Prayers for help in finding a job are answered -- 73
They believe that when God doesn’t answer their prayers, it means it wasn’t God’s will to answer -- 54
They don’t turn away from God when prayers go unanswered -- 82
HOPE AND A PRAYER
50 Christian truckers got together to pray to pray that somehow the sniper terrorizing the Washington, DC area would be caught. Ron Lantz would be retiring as a driver in a few days and didn’t even live in the area, but he felt sure that God would answer their prayers. In fact, he told the others there that God was going to use him to catch the sniper.
A few days later he was listening to the radio as he was driving again through the region and felt compelled to pull off the highway to a rest stop. It was just a couple of miles from where the prayer meeting had taken place. As he pulled in, he was shocked to see a car similar to what was being described on the radio right there before his eyes.
Carefully trying to read the license plate, a chill went up his back as the numbers matched. He quickly called 911 and remained there for what he said were the longest 15 minutes of his life until the police arrived. He even pulled his truck across the exit, there would now be no escape for these elusive murderers. The rest is now history-the snipers were taken into custody without incident.
Ron’s testimony is being beamed around the world today. It shows the power of prayer. And in a class act, showing his true character, when asked what he would do with the award money, he said the half million dollars would si...
In the middle of a forest, there was a hunter who was suddenly confronted with a huge, mean bear. In all his fears, his attempt to shoot the bear was unsuccessful. He turned away and started to run as
fast as he could. Finally, he ended up at the edge of a very steep cliff. His hopes were dim. But, he got on his knees, opened his arms and said, "My God! Please give this bear some religion!"
Then, there was a lightning in the air and the bear stopped just a foot short of the hunter. The bear was puzzled and looked up in the air and said, "Thank you for the food I am about to receive...
(Anonymous)
During the dark days of the American Revolution, when the Continental Army had experienced several setbacks, a farmer who lived near the battlefield approached Washington’s camp unheard. Suddenly his ears caught an earnest voice raised in agonizing prayer. On coming nearer he saw it was the great General, down on his knees in the snow, his cheeks wet with tears. He was asking God for assistance and guidance. The farmer crept away and returned home. He said to his family, “Its going to be all right. We are going to win!” “What makes you think so?” his wife asked. “Well,” said the farmer, “I heard General Washington pray out in the woods today—such fervent prayer I have never heard. And God will surely hear and answer that kind of praying.”
Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger. Pray not for crutches but for wings!
Phillips Brooks. Leadership, Vol. 12, no. 3.
Lorraine Pintus says that she realized that her spiritual life was in the doldrums because she was not making Jesus a part of her daily life. She wrote: "When I started taking Him with me wherever I went, then I started relating to Him and enjoying Him in a deeper way. I would ask God: `Would you like to go with me for a walk? And then we would go and I would just converse with Him. I would ask: ‘Would you like go to the grocery store with me? And then to the ho...
A woman who worked for a vet was to have knee surgery. She was nervous about the procedure and asked her boss if he had any advice. He replied, rather half-mindedly, ‘Just turn your worries into prayers, get plenty of rest, and don’t lick your incision.”
Always when needs were pressing, Mr. Mueller would call the staff together for prayer. And often, when getting off their knees, they would see dray wagons [drawn carts] backing up to the kitchen door, loaded with buns, bread, apples, cakes, potatoes, boxes of soap, sacks of peas, haunches [sides] of venison, rabbits and pheasants, and every other conceivable edible article.
SOURCE: Anna Talbott McPherson, They Dared To Be Different, published by Moody Press, Chicago, Illinois; pg. 173.
