Prayer Changes Things – Part 2
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. – Jeremiah 29:11.
Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know. – Jeremiah 33:3.
Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. – 1 John 5:14-15.
John Thornton shares this story that recently occurred at his church: Recently at Community Reformed Church in Sioux Falls, SD they loaned their church building for a week to Resurrection Church for a conference. In church on the following Sunday, CRC’s Pastor, Clyde Teel shared that he had a group of people from the other church, Resurrection, come on Thursday morning to say that there was a person in their church that needed prayer. They were unsure, as they did not know the congregation, but they said that they needed to pray for someone named Heather. Clyde explained that a lady in Community was named Heather and she was expecting a baby, but Clyde did not know of any difficulties. So the prayer people from Resurrection prayed for Heather. She had no idea that these people were praying for her.
Saturday Heather sent an email to Pastor Clyde. It reads, “Jaron, Mickila, Baby and I just had to share the praise that we need to give God for our family. On Thursday afternoon I was feeling light-headed and short of breath so my doctor asked me to go to the hospital for testing. They quickly told us that the baby was doing great and everything was fine with her. They decided to keep me overnight to figure out what was wrong so Jaron stayed with me and Mickila stayed at my Dad and Patty’s house. They also did a lot of tests on me to rule out blood clots in my lungs, pneumonia, etc. They tested my blood gases and discovered that my oxygen was low (later they figured out that was probably from a really mild case of bronchitis) but also noticed that my Carbon Monoxide was a little high. Our doctor suggested that we have our house and where I work tested. Work was fine, but our house had very dangerous levels of Carbon Monoxide. We were feeling pretty fortunate but really didn’t understand how amazing it was that God sent us to the hospital (and kept my brother who lives with us working on a project at school until early in the morning). Both the man from the gas company and the furnace technician said that we are very lucky to be alive. We just really had to share how God took care of our little family.”
So Clyde was about to ask Heather about the timing of her visit to the medical people when told it was at the same exact time that the prayer group from Resurrection was praying for “someone named Heather.” So that Sunday Clyde shared about how the Spirit led one group of people to pray for someone that they did not know, but a miracle happened as Heather was protected from harm.
As Heather now tells people, “So buy good Carbon Monoxide detectors and trust in God to take care of you!”
Also, I might add that you should pray for God’s protection and ask others to pray for you because prayer really does change things.
(A wonderful testimony to the power of prayer. Prayer really does change things!)