15 Aug FAITH ACTING THROUGH PRAYER COLORS THE FUTURE
The lines are drawn for us, but faith acting through prayer can color the future. After killing James, the brother of John, Herod saw that it pleased the Jewish leaders, so he took Peter and threw him into jail, intending to kill him also. “So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him” (Acts 12:5). An angel appeared to Peter, the chains fell off his wrists, and he was led out of the prison with the final set of gates opening of their own accord. This same Peter years later would be martyred, but this early attempt on his life and freedom was turned into a miraculous victory by faith acting through prayer.
Years ago I awoke from a dream with a start, my heart pounding. I had seen a fire burning somewhere in our house, the flames racing between plywood and wooden joists. Leaping to my feet in search of the fire, I strained for the scent of smoke. Finding nothing, I returned to bed, lying in the dark for a long time praying, feeling that God was warning me of an event that was coming. I prayed that when the fire came, we would be at home, that our children would be protected, that my mother’s artwork would be preserved, along with the most precious of our irreplaceable possessions. Several times over the next few years the same dream came, and each time I asked God to intervene.
Then one summer evening a lighting bolt shook the air. A few moments later I smelled an acrid odor and my dream of the fire burst into my mind. I RECOGNIZED THE MOMENT with a holy calm. I called 911. “Do you see any smoke?” the dispatcher asked, “No, but I’m home alone with my children, and I’m telling you there is a fire”. Minutes later the fire trucks came clanging up the street, black smoke was pouring out of our attic eves, and suited firemen began dragging a fire hose through our house.
Later, after the fire was put out, the fire chief told me, “It would have only been 2 or 3 minutes until the fire reached the attic, engulfing your house in flame.” His words drove home the miracle of my calling 911 when I did, I gazed through the hole in the wall where blackened, scorched, water-drenched wood was all that remained of the fire that had raced through the joists and plywood of our second story … hauntingly like what I had seen in my dream.
The next morning, numb with the realization of what we had just passed through, I thanked God for His goodness to us, He led me to Hebrews 11 where I read about those “who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire …” I stopped, my heart pounding. It was sinking in. The fire was an event that had been coming, and by warning me, He was helping to prepare me, calling me to prayer, where my faith in His character and goodness left no room for fear, filling me with a sense of permission to ask Him for what I wanted Him to do for me.
God has given us the most precious book, The Bible. It tells us of coming events. It records Jesus’ remarkable prophecy that not one stone of the temple would remain upon another, which was fulfilled 40 years later with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. At that time he answered his disciples’ questions concerning the coming of the kingdom and the end of the age. He warned them, “when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ … then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains … But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 24)
The lines are drawn for us. Certain events will come. But our prayers have the power to affect how those events will affect us.
FOOTNOTE: The fire took place as we were getting our house ready to put on the market. We didn’t have the funds to redecorate the second floor playroom, but when the insurance money came in, it paid for the complete restoration of not only that room but the adjacent spaces as well. All my prayers were answered: we were home, the children were protected and lived to tell about it, and we didn’t lose a single precious possession. But even more … God taught me the power of faith through prayer to seize the victory in a harrowing moment, so that all I remember is the way He shone through.