Answered Prayers

It's a mystery how God answers prayer (other than He simply does!). You may pray for an item, an attitude, a situation and weeks, months, perhaps years later you see how that was answered surreptitiously, under the radar.
A blogging acquaintance prayed for slower days, feeling the need for time to process and hear the Holy Spirit in her life.... Her daughter contracted mono. The doctor recommended quiet in the house. The whole family is coming under their physicians guidance for the one child and slowing down, playing quiet games and engaging in crafts. You know how it goes, "Be careful what you wish (pray) for."

In 1999 we returned from 3 years in Canada with our trusty 1985 Jetta. We had 3 growing children and the small sedan. We knew we had to move into minivan country yet we were without any funds for such a transition. We prayed.

November of that year, driving home from Wichita, back to Denver, right after Thanksgiving...we are 3 miles from Colby, KS when bam, crash, screaching brakes...we hit a 5-point buck. The car is smashed and praisefully no one is hurt. We limp into town and Holiday Inn puts us up at a discount. Blessedly some work colleagues are driving on I-70 back to Denver the next day. Three of us get picked up in their Jeep for the 5 hour drive. Dave and Emma stay behind to get the Jetta in working order to make those last few hours home.

The insurance company totals the car and we get a nice hefty check. What do we do with that money-get a van-a VW van!

Fast-forward to 2007. We have a huge Ford Club Wagon (our VW van gave up the ghost 3 years ago). It is a gas-guzzler. Dave drives up to St. Louis quite a bit to visit parishioners in the hospitals. We recognize our dire need for a second car, something that will not drink the oil like water. We pray.

3 Weeks ago the van is parked outside our house. We get a knock at the door and our neighbor across the street, apologizing profusely, explains she backed into our driver's side door. Insurance is called, estimates are made and a week later we receive a check for repairs. Now, what to do? Do we use that money to make superficial, cosmetic repairs or do we put it toward a second car? We've been researching cars for about a year and settled on a Ford Freestyle. And there's one at a great price in Kentucky, about 2 hours a way.

To make a too long story short -- we have a second car and we love it. No one wants to drive the lug of a van anymore (especially Ian).

Suffice it to say, God does answer prayer - not the way you expect Him too - but your prayers will always be answered.

This is Holy Week

When my husband serves communion he reminds the congregation that what we are doing is something that has been done for centuries and by countless cultures. It is what binds us to our brothers and sisters in Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya and Paraguay. Our services may be in Swahili, Uzbek, Portuguese or French but we are all remembering and partaking of God through His Son Jesus Christ. Regardless of our language, how we dress, what we eat, how we live, if we are believers in Christ, we are family. And as family we are called to pray for one another. Holy Week is aan appropriate time (anytime is really) to remember our family who is suffering because they call Jesus their LORD. www.compassdirect.org relays stories of the church around the world. Here is one such story that must cause us to pause and pray.

NIGERIA: MUSLIM EXTREMISTS SET CHURCH ON FIRE
Fifteen more churches marked for burning following murder of Christian teacher.

Rev. Rukun Gaius
GOMBE, Nigeria, March 29 (Compass Direct News) – Two days after the killing of a Christian teacher in this town in northern Nigeria, Muslim extremists set fire to a church building of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) in the Chanchanya section.

The Rev. Rukun Gaius, 50, chairman of the Gombe district of the ECWA, told Compass that a large number of Muslim extremists went to the church on Friday night (March 23) and set it on fire, gutting the sanctuary.

“The Muslims came to the church premises at about 11 p.m. to set the church on fire,” Rev. Gaius said. “People around the area and some of our members who saw the church burning rushed there put it out, but by then much damage had already been done to the building.”

The 500 members of the church must now “worship and conduct their church programs in the open,” Rev. Gaius said.

Christianah Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin, a teacher at Government Secondary School of Gandu in Gombe, was clubbed to death by Muslim students and outside extremists on March 21 after a student accused her of desecrating the Quran by touching a copy.

Rev. Gaius, who is also vice chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Gombe state chapter, said security reports to CAN show that Muslim extremists have marked out 15 more churches to be burned down.

“We have received security reports that 15 more churches have been earmarked to be burned, and that’s why you met us holding the emergency meeting at the Bishop’s Court [residence of the Anglican bishop of Gombe diocese],” he said.

The Gombe district of the ECWA has about 15,000 members and 57 local congregations.

The burning of the sanctuary of the ECWA church in Chanchanya, Rev. Gaius said, is not the first in the state. Arson and other attacks on Christians have characterized their lives for years, he said.

“Last year during protests against cartoons by a Danish newspaper, some of our churches were burned and Christians were attacked,” he said. “The ECWA church at Kagarawal was burned, another ECWA church at Nafada was also burned, this church has about 300 members; and Bishara Baptist Church in Gombe was also burned.”

In 2005, Rev. Gaius said, an ECWA church in Kagarawal was also set on fire.

“And in 2003,” he said, “a Christian student by the name of Yakubu Lanu was brutally killed at Government Science Secondary School in Gombe town, when Muslims said they were protesting the plan to build a chapel by Christian students of the school.”

Muslims protested the plan to build a chapel at the school even though there was a mosque for Muslim students, he said.

“Our religious rights are being violated daily,” Gaius said, and the government “has not made effort to protect us.” Rather, the Islamic government of the state encourages discrimination and crimes against Christians, he said.

The problems confronting Christians, he said, are related to the state having adopted sharia (Islamic law), which “encourages persecution of Christians.”

“There are no CRS [Christian Religious Studies] teachers in government schools, and yet there are Islamic Religious Studies teachers in all government schools in this state,” he said. “This is so even when there are Christian students in such government schools.”

The Islamic government discriminates against Christians even though the state population is half Christian, he said.

“You may find that where there are 10 Muslim commissioners appointed by the government, only about four may be appointed from the Christian community,” Rev. Gaius said. “And this is happening in a state with a population of about 2 million persons, with both Muslims and Christians constituting the population equally.”

Acquiring property to build sanctuaries is another pressing problem facing Christians in Gombe.

“Getting land here for churches is a difficult thing,” he said. “As a result, lack of worship places have made Christians to be trekking long distance to attend worship services in the few available churches.”

Rev. Gaius said the government has adopted policies that deliberately frustrate Christian churches from acquiring properties.

“We have applied to buy land from the government, since land law places ownership of land on the government, but no such land has been sold to the churches, nor have approvals been given to us to even develop properties we have purchased from individuals,” Gaius said.

As members of ECWA churches are either workers or farmers, church programs have to be designed so that congregants attend in the evenings; this, in turn, requires that worship centers be close to their homes, he said.

“In Chanchanya, where our church has just been burned by Muslim fanatics, over the years we sought to buy another land to enable us to build a second church, but the government has not given us approval to build the church,” Rev. Gaius said. “In this same area, there are six mosques built for the Muslims.”

Moreover, he said, the land where the ECWA was to build the church has been taken over by the government and allocated to the Ministry of Agriculture.

“Lack of land for the churches has affected all churches in Gombe state and is endemic in the towns of Gombe and Kwami,” he said.

Muslim converts to the Christian faith face intense persecution from family members and the larger Muslim community of the state, he added.

“We have 15 Muslim converts into the Christian faith. They were to be killed by other Muslims, and so we had to take them in,” he said. “They are currently in other safer towns in the country.”

I heard the most brilliant sermon...

...okay, it was given by my husband, but it was brilliant nonetheless.

We're going through the book of Revelation. Lots of preconceived misconceptions being tossed out the window, I hope! Sunday we covered chapter 8:1-5.

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half and hour.
And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.
Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar.
He was given much incense to offer, with the prayer of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand.
Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

For 30 minutes everything stops.... And God listens to the prayers of his people. He raises his hand to silence the world so he can focus on the requests of the saints. He is paying sole attention to my prayer, your prayer. WOW! The King of the Universe, Creator is not multi-tasking but laying aside everything to listen. WOW!

Does that change the way I pray- should it change the way I pray - will it change the way I pray? I hope so!

In Frederick Buechner's novel, On the Road with the Archangel, Raphael (one of the 7 archangels) talks about prayer:

Some prayers I hold out as far from me as my arm will reach, the way a woman holds a dead mouse by the tail when she removes it from the kitchen. Some, like flowers, are almost too beautiful to touch, and others so aflame the I'd be afraid of their setting me on fire if I weren't already more like fire than I am like anything else. There are prayers of such power that you might almost say they carry me rather than the other way round - the way a bird with outstretched wings is carried higher and higher on the back of the wind. There are prayers so apologetic and shamefaced and halfhearted that they all but melt away in my grasp like sad little flakes of snow. Some prayers are very boring.

If I'd stop and think about what I'm doing, each time I pray, I wonder how my prayers would change. I think I wouldn't say as much, but just sit open-jawed, in wonder and in awe, in pleading and on my face. And yet I think of my all-time favorite hymn And Can It Be and know God desires me to approach him, boldly and claim the crown. Amazing love, how can it be that Thou, My God, shouldst die for me.