Answers to a Pastor’s Prayers

Years ago I remember hearing the “prayer evangelist” Terry Teykl (a Pastor in the United Methodist Church) say, “God won’t send live chicks to sit under a dead hen!” This one-liner has stuck with me and God has used it to encourage me to be a man of prayer ever since.

Several months ago I felt the Lord leading me to not only pray but to also start a
weekly prayer meeting for our church. As I sensed God’s leading I eventually responded and in July we launched a weekly prayer meeting for our church! It’s been a rich time of prayer each week and we’ve already begun to see the fruit of it!

Each week we pray for our leadership that God would grant us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, we pray for our weekly services and upcoming events, we pray for our church, community, nation and the world. One of our major focuses however is the lost (If you’re wanting to reach the lost in your life I encourage you to start HERE)! Almost every week we’ve prayed that God would draw people here to our church and to Himself through whatever means possible! Simple but persistent prayers like, “God, use the marquee to draw people in! God, may people just sense your presence as they’re driving by, walking by, or our parking lot for for whatever reason (picking their kids up from school or getting pumpkins, etc.) God, may people just feel drawn to come here from the north, south, east and west and as they come draw them to yourself!” Even more recently we’ve prayed a crazy prayer, “God would bring those who no one else wants…”

Well…Can I just say that God answers prayer?! I’m in charge of our connect cards and I can’t even tell you how many people have been visiting us and when it asks “How did you hear about us?” They’ve almost all checked “DRIVING BY” I don’t see it as a coincidence as I’ve been doing this for a while and I’ve never seen the amount that I have recently all check the same thing!

Now let’s break it down even more: On a Sunday night at a parenting class we were offering we had a new couple who said they saw the Marquee about the parenting class and felt drawn to come and check it out! They have a few little ones but have also been pursuing adoption for a couple years. They came that Sunday morning for the first time and it just so happened to be Fostering and Adoption Sunday (they had no idea as it wasn’t on our website and they didn’t know anyone at the church). They said it so greatly impacted them that they’ve decided they are now going to foster as well!!! (It was their first Sunday here!!)

The last couple weeks people have been just walking into my office off the street needing to talk to a pastor, feeling that they couldn’t go anywhere else however felt they were suppose to come here, pulled in our parking lot and just felt drawn to come in! I’m not making this up!!!

Last week (shortly after praying “God would bring those who no one else wants…”) a man came in very broken needing prayer, financial help and mostly community! He said, “I don’t belong anywhere I go, even churches, no one wants me.” I assured him he is welcome here and that we’d love for him to join our community! He came Sunday and he’s been in close touch almost daily since we met! Then later that day a teenager walked in from the street asking for a bible! When I gave him a bible I asked, “What brought you in here today to ask for a bible? He responded, “Curiosity!” I was immediately reminded of the prayers we’ve been praying!

I could go on! We’ve had visitors from Japan, kids just showing up at our door wanting to volunteer, more and more people saying they just felt like they needed to come and check us out. God answers prayer my friends!!! So whether you’re a pastor, business owner, student, mom or dad may this be an encouragement to us all to pray, pray and pray some more!!! Let’s pray for our hearts to be alive, our needs to be met, our churches to grow, our communities to be reached and definitely for the lost to be saved! Let us pray…