Last week, I asked a prayer warrior how prayer worked. She said, “I talk to God like he’s my best friend.”
“No, no.” I said. “I mean, how do your prayers get answered.”
She said, “I tell God what I want, and He gives me what I need. I have never been rich, but even when I was destitute, when my husband got sick and died, and I had nothing to eat, and the power was shut off, and didn’t have food for groceries, I lacked for nothing.”
“So, prayer simply changed your attitude about things, but you still lost everything?”
“No,” she said, “I have witnessed many miracles.”
“Tell me about a one,” I urged.
“When my husband was in the hospital, the power company turned off the power at our home. It was cold. The house would have frozen up. I don’t think they can do that anymore, but back then, they would just shut you off. I got a call at the hospital from Jack, who lived next door that and he said that they had come out and shut off the power at our house. So, I prayed about it. Well, that same day, they came back out and turned it back on. A few days after my husband died, I found out that the manager of the power company had paid my bill himself. I don’t know how he found out about it, but he did. The church brought over groceries for weeks after Eric died. That was God.”
“So,” I said, “Prayer works because the people praying for you care enough about you to act, to help you out.”
“I suppose that is part of it,” she said, but I could read the frustration in her voice. I just didn’t get it, she thought. “God laid it on the hearts of those folks to help us, the man at the power company, my church family.”
“But, have you ever seen anything that you were sure, was a divine miracle?”
“Yes,” she said. And this is where my jaw hit the floor. This ninety-something year old woman, whose name I will never tell, said this: “God changed my life. You see, my father ran out on my mother and me when I was a eight. I had two little brothers and a sister. Then, a few years later, my mother died. I was fourteen. She was ran over by a street car. I was forced to sell myself to men so that we could all live. A couple years later, after I was married, and my husband had a good job, I stopped. When he went off to war, though, I began selling myself again. When he came home, I didn’t stop. I sold myself to whoever would have me for… well, for a long time.
“Then, one day a preacher came to a church down the street from our house in Kansas City. People were lined up for blocks to see that man. Hundreds stood outside just to hear him through the open windows. I don’t know why, but I was drawn to him. Drawn to the Holy Spirit in him. It took me most of an hour to make my way inside, but I listened to him the whole time, and the very second he gave an altar call, I fell on my face and wept. I was changed. Everything about me was changed. I was saved and sanctified that night. The next night, I drug my husband to see him and he was saved. I was changed. I never looked back, and I never did that that terrible thing again.”
“God changed you overnight,” I said.
“In the twinkling of an eye,” she said.
“Do you believe God still works miracles, then?”
“Let me tell you about how He healed me of cancer last year,” she said. That’s another story.
Fear Not, for God Still Works Miracles. He still changes lives.
The weather has been extreme. I personally do not recall the heavy rains and flooding being as wide-spread as it has been this past week. Many mobile homes were totally washed away leaving some families completely devastated. One man featured on the news Wednesday told how his cabin was washed away with him in it and he was convinced that he would drown. It took 10 hours before he was found and rescued. Another told how lightning killed over 30 of his cows—an estimated $70,000 loss. Bridges have been closed and some swept away from all the flood waters, leaving communities isolated with no way out. And the stories of destruction and tragedy along with stories of miraculous rescues abound. I especially liked the testimony of the woman who prayed for the 2 little children who were taken from the vehicle that was caught in the flood waters. As the rescuers performed CPR, the woman prayed and suddenly the children coughed and began to breathe. To God be the Glory!