The Power of Prayer - A Father Dramatically Teaches His Sons That Prayer Works


by Thomas Fortenberry - Date: 2006-12-29 - Word Count: 743 Share This!

Prayer is frequently the chosen topic for sermons and Bible studies at churches everywhere. Real prayer as described in the Bible gives the Christian access to an incredibly awesome Source of power -- the power of God Himself.

Needless to say this power is infinitely greater than any other power known to man. The power of God is without limitation or boundaries. Whereas a nuclear bomb may have the potential to annihilate a small country, God could, were He to so choose, vaporize our Milky Way Galaxy or even the entire Universe in a nanosecond.

In the Bible God repeatedly invites us to ask of Him what we will and, provided we have satisfied His requirements for getting our prayers answered, He promises to grant our requests. Of course, satisfying His requirements is the key issue when it comes to getting our prayers answered.

We are told about one man, Joshua, in the Old Testament who prayed and asked God to make the sun stand still in order to be able to continue a battle in which his army was engaged. The Bible tells us that the sun stood still for about a day as a result of this man's prayer.

The late Dr. Adrian Rogers, former pastor of the great Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis Tennessee and several times president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told about an incredible experience he had which serves to demonstrate the power of prayer.

He said he and his family went on vacation in Florida in a motor home which was loaned to them by one of the members of the church he was pastoring at the time. While on vacation they attended the Sunday morning services of a church located about thirty miles from where they were staying.

Upon arriving back at their home away from home, they discovered that one of the large wheel covers was missing from the motor home. They knew it was on the vehicle before their trip to church, so it had obviously fallen off somewhere along the thirty mile route they had taken.

Dr. Rogers said he could have simply bought a replacement, but he instead decided to use the incident as an opportunity to teach his two young sons a lesson about prayer. So he told them that they were going to pray and ask God to help them find the lost wheel cover.

They bowed their heads and did so and got back into the motor home and began retracing the route they had just taken. He told one boy to get on the right side of the vehicle and the other on the left and look out the windows for the wheel cover.

After having gone about half the distance back toward the church without having spotted the wheel cover, Dr. Rogers said he decided to stop and get out and look for it on foot. He told his boys to walk in one direction down the highway and he started walking in the opposite direction.

After he got out of hearing distance of his sons he again prayed and asked God to help them find the wheel cover, because he wanted his boys to see that God does answer prayer.

He said he doesn't think he walked more than about a hundred feet when he saw a puddle of water a short distance off the side of the road. He walked over to the puddle and there submerged in the shallow water was the wheel cover.

He said he called to his sons and told them to come get the wheel cover and they returned to their vacation home, his boys having seen a dramatic example of answered prayer proving to them that God really is a prayer answering God.

It should be kept in mind that they only stopped one time over a thirty mile stretch of road and when they did they found the wheel cover within about a hundred feet of where they stopped.

Had they stopped many times along the way it would not have been nearly as dramatic, but they only stopped once and that was where the lost item was found.

God will answer the prayers of those who are living in the center of His will when their motive is unselfish and their request is pleasing and glorifying to Him. If our prayers are going unanswered, we must reexamine the sincerity of our Christian life and ask ourselves if the answer to our prayers would be pleasing to God and bring glory to Him.


Related Tags: prayer, prayer request, thanksgiving prayer, the lord prayer, serenity prayer, daily prayer

The author has a BA degree in Bible and has been a student of the Bible for about fifty years. He may be contacted through his website: http://ChristianityThatWorks.com/.

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