Subject: Prayer Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 00:35:50 +1000 From: Victor To: webmaster@jesus-is-lord.com Greetings, When I was about eight years old my mother gave me two dollars and told me to go down to the wood yard and order a load of wood. In 1948 the average Australian worker had a take home pay of about nineteen dollars for forty hours work so two dollars was about half a days pay, the equivalent of about fifty dollars by today's standards. When I got to the wood yard the place was closed on account of it being a public holiday, so I returned home and explained what had happened to my mother. When she asked for the money she gave me I put my hand in my pocket and the money wasn't there, I had lost it some where, either going to the wood yard or coming back. Well mum did her Irish thing and really chewed me out and then my step father joined in with lots of shoving and pushing and announced loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear that I was facing death. My step father was the kind of guy who on a bad day could make Rambo want to say in doors. And that day was fast turning into a very bad day. He ordered me out of the house and told me not to come home until I had found the money, and he gave me a very vivid description of what would happen to me if I didn't find it. I had a memory bank of many unhappy encounters and a collection of scars that reminded me of just what he was talking about. So I went out and in a state of high anxiety walked back to the wood yard and home again, twice, carefully checking both side of the street. To my utter dismay I found nothing. When I got home I stood at the front gate full of guilt for what I had done and almost paralyzed with fear from knowing what was about to happen to various parts of my anatomy when I explained to my step father the bad news. Over and over I had searched my pocket, but they were always empty. I had search every inch of both sides of the road twice. The money was gone alright. So I went inside to face the music. I don't recall all the details of what happened but I do remember standing outside the house with my step father with more shoving and shouting. He put his hands in my pocket but he got the same result that I had. The money wasn't there. I got sent off on a second search for the money but the second search was just as futile as the first. Once more I stood at the front gate scared witless and crushed by a sense of failure and so afraid to enter the house. In those days I used to sleep out on the front porch and without understanding exactly what was happening I knelt down besides my bed and poured out my heart to God. I had never prayed in my life before and it would be many years and some bad history before I prayed for the second time. I don't remember the words that I addressed to the Majesty of Heaven on that occasion but the Psalmist himself with all his eloquence never prayed a more fervent prayer than I did on that day. I told God of my fears and I asked him to help and deliver me from my distress. Then I got up and began a third search for the money with the same result as the other two. For the third time I stood at the front gate – without the money. My prayer was forgotten and all my fears had returned with a vengeance. I decided that I may as well get the thing over with so I started to walk toward the front door. Just as I got inside the front gate I put my hand in my pocket. My fingers touched something, I pushed my hand into my pocket and gabbed whatever it was and pulled it out. It was the two dollar note. Let me tell you this. The money wasn't at the bottom of my pocket stuck in a corner or something, it was laid out flat, and my fingers touched it before my hand was even in my pocket. I had put my hand it that pocket more times than I recall. My step father had searched my pocket with more enthusiasm than was necessary and he had found nothing. And yet there it was, the missing money that God Himself had picked up from where ever it was that I had dropped it. God laid out that money flat so that it could not be missed just so I could know that He had been about His business. The miracle in this story for me isn't simply that God answered my prayer, it is that from out of nowhere He prompted me to pray so that He could answer it. I have no idea why I prayed, it wasn't a choice, it was a compulsion. And where did that come from? It was my first prayer ever, and I don't know that faith had anything to do with it. Mine was a cry of distress simply hoping that someone would be listening. And somebody was. That day a thought was planted that remained hidden from my consciousness for many years. But it came to me years later when I accepted Jesus. That thought is that God is a personal God, and that no one is obscure enough to escape His attention. Do you think you have been forgotten beloved. That is impossible. God cannot help thinking about you. Do not think that God lives in a galaxy far away, and He can only be found there. He is for you, in the words of the ancient poet, nearer than breathing, closer than hands or feet. In ways that you will certainly know it He will disclose Himself to you. And: "Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart." (Hebrews 4:7)