Refocus – Prayer
Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know. – Jeremiah 33:3 NKJV.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. – Ephesians 3:20-21 NKJV.
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. – Hebrews 4:16 NKJV.
In August 1998, Michael Giovanetti (39 years old) was heading for home. Michael is married with a son and twin girls. He had been unemployed since April and was searching for work as an avionics technician. He lost control of his car on some gravel trying to get onto a turnpike. He shot across the highway, over a guard rail and his car flew into the air and finally landed 100 feet down a steep hill strewn with boulders. The accident tore the front off Giovanetti’s car, which came to rest on its crushed roof. The passenger side of the car was buried in dirt and rocks. He regained consciousness upside down, his face mashed against the broken windshield. He unlatched his seat belt and fell against the steering wheel.
Michael was injured with a head wound and broken ribs but knew help was only 100 feet away from him. However, he was stuck in the twisted wreckage at the bottom of the steep hill. He had to endure four days with humid high temperatures before he was able to crawl out of the wreck and drag himself up the hill. Michael says that he PRAYED MIGHTILY when he first woke up after the wreck and gave thanks whenever a cool breeze blew through his car. Michael shared, “Everybody tells me I’m really lucky. I felt somebody else was helping me – like it was a team. Someone had a reason to let me go. I was in a bad way. Someone had to pull me out of there. I don’t remember it hurting. I remember it was very hot. It was very difficult uprighting myself.”
Michael spent his first day yelling and banging a piece of metal from the wreck against the body of the car. Nobody noticed. He spent the second day in a failed effort to wiggle out of the mangled wreck. On the third day, he dragged himself halfway out of the wreckage, where he rigged a rubber mat to direct rainwater into plastic water bottles. By the morning of the fourth day, Giovanetti realized no one would come for him. Weakened, he dragged himself backward, crablike, up the steep hillside, gripping rocks in his fists to protect his hands from broken glass.
When he finally made it, Giovanetti was too weak even to pull himself over the guard rail. He lay on the side of the road waving unsuccessfully at passing cars and trucks until finally some people did pull over to help. Michael said about the ordeal, “It seemed mostly like a long, bad day. I didn’t know it was four days until I got to the top. I just kept trying to get out. I wanted to see my kids.”
Usually we do our best praying when we are in desperate situations. However, what if we didn’t wait until it was a desperate situation? What if we prayed every day as if our lives depended upon those prayers? What if we prayed for our protection, the protection of our families, and others every day? What if we prayed for God’s will to be done in our lives every day? What if we prayed for God to deliver us from evil and temptation every day? What if we committed ourselves to pray for 30 minutes to an hour or more every day for a year? What would happen if we were to do that? Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah 33:3. The apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 3:20-21. The fact is that prayer works, there is a God and He answers prayer if we will simply pray. Will you make that commitment? Refocus your life through prayer.
(Refocusing your life through prayer.)