Principle
“If you abide in me
and my words abide in you, then ask whatever you will and it will be done for
you.” John 15:7
“Truly I tell you,
whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will
be yours.” Mark 11
Consider it all joy,
my brethren, when you encounter various trials... But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of
God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to
him. (James 1:2, 5)
Theory
Sincere, desperate prayer works. If we are asking out
of true need, for ourselves or others who are desperate, then we can be confident
that God will hear, give wisdom, and meet our needs.
Test
Although I quit my
job in 1997 to work full time for the homeless, and so became homeless myself,
Diane and I made the decision that we wouldn’t ask for anything ourselves. Rather, we would take it up to God and not
our supporters and allow God to move the Holy Spirit to encourage people to
meet our needs, whatever way God decided.
We lived like this for fifteen years, making God our only advocate, our
only financial counselor.
Result
I will admit, living
by prayer, we found that we came close to living out on the street, close to
losing our water and electricity, close to not having food to eat, close to being
without transportation, but none of that actually happened. Living by faith, we learned, means learning
to either live with anxiety or setting aside anxiety. Because I believe the Holy Spirit works promptly,
but people do not respond to the Holy Spirit promptly.
Although the many
difficulties of living by faith, especially when it means living in poverty,
still my children never lived without a roof, my household (plus many guests)
never went hungry, we were able to pay our bills (although rarely on time). When we had little income, we would have to
take our trash to the dump ourselves, we would have to do our electrical and
plumbing work ourselves. When something
was broken, if the Lord didn’t provide money, he would provide a person to do
the repair for free. When we couldn’t
afford housing, the Lord provided someone to live with, and then he provided someone
to pay our rent. When we had illnesses
when we couldn’t afford to go to a doctor (we never had insurance until this
year), we prayed and God healed us, or provided other means, such as illegal
antibiotics for our children from a Mexican store.
The same with our
friends. God provided housing when a
person was too sick to be on the street anymore. God provided money for our friends when they
were starving. God provided healing for
those with ailments. Every step along
the way, if we prayed for it, it would be answered. Mind you, we are careful about what we pray
for. We don’t pray for anything that
someone requests. We keep our prayers
biblical and somewhat humble. If someone
asks that the police would go away, we prayed that the police wouldn’t see
them. Someone might ask for the cursing
of someone, and we’d pray for their repentance from action that hurt
someone. Prayer sometimes would take
time—it’s rarely an instant solution.
But to the person of faith and compassion, prayer always gets
answered.
Anecdotes
I have many stories
I could tell about answered prayer.
There are the many times that we were concerned about someone and we
prayed that we would hear from them and we would, within a week, every
time. There are the times when we couldn’t
pay our basic bills, and unexpected, unasked for money would come our way—Like the
time that we asked specifically for 5000 dollars to pay for all of our back up
bills and rent. Two months later, a
congregation member came into an inheritance (early—his father hadn’t died
yet), and his tithe to us was 5000 dollars.
But let me tell you a couple specific stories in which prayer was
answered in unexpected ways.
We were just
starting our ministry and we were living in two different locations, about 45
minutes apart. We couldn’t live in one
space for half the week and we couldn’t live in the other space for the other
half of the week. We were all packed up
and ready to drive to the other side of town, with our car in the church
parking lot, when the car wouldn’t start.
I can’t fix it because you open up the hood of a car and I am
automatically an idiot. I’m lucky I know
where the oil goes.
We were in trouble
because we couldn’t stay another night at the church. And we couldn’t all fit in the car overnight,
so we’d be stuck outside, maybe in the park.
My six year old son, Ian, asked me if we could pray that an angel would
come to fix our car. I sputtered,
because my disbelief came out. I told
him that I didn’t think God was in the business to send angels to repair
cars. Ian said, “But if you pray for it,
it will happen, right?” His eyes shined
with naïve belief. So I asked him to
pray, because I didn’t believe in the prayer, and he responded that he couldn’t
pray, I had to. Sigh. So I prayed for him, telling God that Ian
wanted an angel to come and fix our car.
It was fifteen
minutes later that someone came wandering onto the church property. He came up and asked if his daughter could
play in the playground the church had available. Ian looked at me as if to say, “This is the
angel!” I sighed again.
“Um,” I said, “I don’t
suppose you know anything about cars, do you?
Because we are stuck here and we don’t know how to get our car started.”
“I know a little
bit. Let me look.” So I opened up the hood and he piddled for a
bit. After about ten minutes, he turned
the key and it ran.
Dang if God didn’t
send us an angel. I hate being wrong,
but this is being wrong in the best way.
“I don’t know what I
did, actually,” the stranger said.
“Well, my son would
be upset if I didn’t say that he made me pray for an angel to fix our car, so
you are our angel.”
“HA!” he
barked. “I’m no angel.”
“I’m sure.”
And we drove away,
the car expressing no hesitation at the long drive ahead.
* * *
One more story and I’m
done for today.
 |
| What our street usually looks like. Our house is on the side you can't see |
We were three
thousand dollars behind on our bills. I
know, I said that before, but it was a pretty common problem for us, and the
more responsibility we took on, the bigger our prayers got. This was before the five thousand dollar lapse. So in our evening prayers, we asked the Lord
for three thousand dollars to pay our bills, in Jesus’ name, Amen. And we put it aside, because no amount of
worrying would get us that kind of money.
That night, at 1am,
my wife woke me up. “Steve, the car is totaled.
You need to come.” What? Did she say something about the car? I stumbled out of bed, went down the stairs
and glanced out the door. The car was
not parked in front of our house, where I left it. That’s strange. Did it get towed. Diane is still talking, but I can’t really
hear her.
So I go outside and
there are police lights flashing in front of our neighbor’s yard. I see a huge—HUGE—red pickup and the police
are talking to a woman in the car. She
is clearly inebriated. In front of the
truck… yards in front of the truck… in front of the neighbor’s house… deep
inside the neighbor’s yard… was my car.
The silver minivan was pushed perhaps fifty yards on the street which
(miraculously) had no other vehicles on it, and then pushed into my neighbor’s
fence and into their yard. The back was
completely smashed in, and one sliding door was completely unusable. The front of the car was also damaged from
impact on the fence.
Inside the car,
there were papers and trash strewn everywhere (that was normal) and broken
glass and…
I hear an officer
ask a question of my wife, who clearly had been speaking to them for a while, “What
is that stuff all over the back of the car?”
There wasn’t
anything on the outside of the car, oh, he meant the inside. I tried to open one side door, but it wouldn’t
open, so I opened the driver’s door and one sniff told me what was dripping all
over the inside of the vehicle. “Gravy,”
I said. “I feed the homeless and there
was a large pot of gravy left over and it was cool tonight so I left it in the
vehicle to use it tomorrow. I guess I
won’t be using it. I would like to get
the pot, though.” Stainless steel 20
inch diameter pot—not even a dent.
I said to my wife, “Well,
this won’t help us pay our bills.”
I was quite
wrong. In fact, this was the answer to
our prayers. Insurance paid us
immediately because if there was anything that was obvious here, it’s that I
wasn’t at fault for the accident. They
paid us 6500 dollars for the totaled vehicle.
We were able to find a decent van to replace it for 3200 dollars. The balance of the money paid our bills.
I can’t say much for
the orthodoxy of God’s belief, but one thing is certain. God’s answers to prayer are quite unorthodox.
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