CHAPTER 4 SEASONS OF PRAYER
Let me say very strongly that we believe in prayer, and yet, as much as we believe in prayer, we have witnessed, first hand, on more than one occasion, how the Lord sometimes answers prayers in such a way that we are astonished.
One such incident occurred when we were on a mission weekend in Fishers, Indiana several years ago. The team working the mission always has a time apart to pray and prepare for the service. Everyone is given the opportunity to name any prayer requests they wish the group to pray about.
On this particular mission, one of the couples had two teenage girls visiting them from South Africa and as soon as the group was given the opportunity to name prayer requests, the girls said, pray for snow, weve never seen snow.
My husband spoke up and said, I dont think we want snow for this mission weekend; lets pray for snow in Chicago. Chicago is where the girls hosts lived. The girls thought this would be acceptable, so the group prayed for snow in Chicago.
The next morning, when the group began to gather, someone asked, Did you hear it is snowing in Chicago? The mission weekends are set up in such a way that you do not learn much of what is going on in the outside world, but when we returned home and turned on the news, the big story was all about the blizzard that hit Chicago.
The snowstorm was so fierce that it closed down OHare airport and really caused those poor people some headaches. This certainly was an affirmation that the Lord answered prayer.
Time passed and we were invited to participate in a mission in Missouri. The theme of the weekend was answered prayer and when my husband was asked to come and share about answered prayer he related the Chicago snow story.
The lady minister of the church was seated in the back of the room and when he finished his story she stood up and said, So youre the one responsible for that! Do you know how long I was stranded in OHare airport? I was there for three days.
Everyone in the crowd had a good laugh, but it sure brought home to most of them that you should be careful what you ask for in prayer.
We never heard from the host couple or the two girls from South Africa. We hope they made it home.
On another occasion we had an answer to prayer that made us cling to one another and cry.
We were driving a car that had had it. When I say had had it, I mean that literally. Almost anything that could go wrong with a car had gone wrong with that one, there was no money to purchase another car so I said, lets take it to the Lord. We agreed to pray about it and even went so far as to ask for a van. We had an antique business that required some hauling and we were always, it seemed, borrowing a truck. We told no one about our prayers. I need to stress -- no one -- but the two of us (and the Lord) knew we were praying for a van.
We were preparing to spend a week as counselors at a Youth Camp and our granddaughter was going with us as a Junior Counselor. We made it to the camp and had a wonderful week, but when the time came to return home we went to where our granddaughter was staying to load her luggage and discovered we had no reverse. We could not back up. We managed to get her things loaded and headed home without having to back the car up.
On the way home, we were discussing what we would do. We finally came to the conclusion that we would be staying home a lot because there arent too many places that you can go and not need to back up your vehicle.
We can still go to church, we concluded, because if we have to we can drive all the way around it. We could still go to the grocery store if we were careful how we parked the car. So all the way home we were busy doubting and feeling blue and low.
We took our granddaughter home and headed to our own home. When we drove up, there was a van sitting in our parking place. My husband said, We must have company. We drove on around and when we got to the other side of the van, we could see a huge, red bow on the windshield. We got out, circled the van, and noted that it had no license plate and then it hit us. The Lord had provided the van we had been praying about. We just sat and cried.
After a time, we decided to call our son. We felt like the Lord had probably worked through him to provide the van. Remember, no one knew about the prayers, except us, but our son did work on our car and tried to keep it on the road for us, so he knew how desperate the need. He hadnt even heard about the transmission at this point.
He was so innocent. Did we have a van? In the end, he admitted that he knew about it. After we had left for camp, a man came into his car repair shop and asked if he knew of anyone who needed a good used van. Our son asked the price and couldnt believe the answer. He bought it on the spot and you know the rest of the story.
That prayer van gave us plenty of opportunities to witness. I think perhaps that more than one person thought we surely must have made up the story or changed a few details, but its all true, and we stand behind every word.
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