Prayer In Faith

This last summer our high school ministry had the priviledge of spending a week in Ensenada Mexico ministering along side Tim and Kathy Johnston, two people committed to reach people with the love of Jesus.

There were many things that week that the Lord used to challenge, encourage, and move me. One of those things was Kathy's fervent prayer in faith. On one of the days at the construction site where we were building a house for a needy family, one of the little boys in the family fell and cracked his head open while playing piggy back with one of our students. It became very apparent to us that he was in pretty bad condition so we made the decision to take him to the hospital.

After checking him into the hospital we then went to share the news with Kathy. She almost immediately went to prayer with us. I was so moved by her prayer and the faith that she had that the little boy would be completely healed and would not need the treatment that the doctors were wanting to have him undergo. A few hours after our prayer we went to see the little boy at the hospital and the Lord had obviously done a great healing! He looked great and he felt great! It was a wonderful testimony to his mother, who was with us, and certainly to us, as to how powerful our God is. It was also a wonderful testimony of how God honors the prayers of His people. Prayers offered in faith.

I received this week an email newsletter from Bill Drake, a Christian artist and speaker. He had just returned from a YUGO Ministries retreat in which he had led worship. YUGO is the ministry in which the Johnston's are partnered with.

Bill shared the following in his letter...

I first met Brian Johnston in Mexico, where he was serving with his parents in Ensenada. Brian’s heart for the Lord, and his enthusiasm for seeing the Gospel go out were always his calling card. Brian worked as an advocate for YUGO Ministries, trying to get youth groups to go to Mexico for outreach, and began to develop into a good speaker.

Eventually the Lord led Brian to plant a church in Lake Elsinore, California, and the church went from 150 to 600 in a very short period of time. On October 5th last year, while helping the driver move some new staging out of a delivery truck, Brian came face to face with his own mortality.

Poorly packed pieces of staging began to fall on Brian, and as he tried to get out of the way, he heard a sickening "crunch" as over 900 lbs of weight hit his head. He remembers falling to the floor as his entire body went numb, and with the last air in his lungs, answered his mother’s worried cry, “Are you OK?” Brian whispered, “I can’t breathe”. He surmised that he was now going to die slowly of suffocation.

Brian’s mom rushed to call 911 praying all the time for her son, and she specifically remembers crying out, “Lord, lift your servant up!” Minutes later, Brian realized that he was now able to breathe, if only the slightest breath. Then the ambulance, then the helicopter flight, the intensive care unit, and then, ‘the halo’ as they literally drilled a circumferal device into his skull that they would then use to try to straighten the three mangled vertebrae that now impinged on his spinal cord.

What happened next over the next few weeks is nothing short of a miracle. Brian is one of the less than 2% who can "walk and talk" again after this sort of neck injury. He is a man of great courage and resolve, and I had the privilege of ministering with him last Tuesday evening at the YUGO retreat.

Once again, God honored the prayer of his faithful servant Kathy, a servant that understands faith, a servant that prays in faith.

I am so thankful to have a God that listens to us and moves on our behalf. May we all pray in faith, believing that God desires to act on our behalf.

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Proverbs 5:16