I ask forgiveness for the mess of writing below but I think it was more important to post and then not to however I’m 2 hours past my bedtime now responding to this and this is the best I’m able to do. I welcome any questions LOL and anybody who wants to be my personal editor. And no I’m not using AI. 🤢😆I refuse to take more meaningful work away from society even if it’s volunteer work.
RZ I’m sorry if you’ve never seen prayer in action. I am 56 years old and I don’t know how many coincidences you would call answered prayer, but if all of the answered prayers we’ve had in our life we’re coincidences and chance, we would be winning the lottery every time.
I know you don’t know me and I get that in the internet sort of kind of sucks that way because you have no idea if I’m real or if I’m an AI or anything, however I was raised ghetto Brooklyn by Christian parents who prayed.
I have seen answered prayer thousands of times in my 56 years. Some more notable answer prayers was when the Holy Spirit told me to pray for my husband when I was about 12. I met him when I was 16 and he was 17 and then I went to Oklahoma and he went to Africa and God kept telling me to pray for him, but I didn’t know that particular man was my husband I was just praying for my husband. Those years I was praying for him were so enough the hardest in his life. They lost everything in his teen years in a war in Africa, he suffered things that you can only suffer in a third world country. Some of the things were so damaging it permanently damaged his brain and God said to pray. So why do the bad things happen? What good were my prayers if there was still bad stuff? He didn’t die. When I was living in Tulsa Oklahoma God told me to go to Denver. When I didn’t listen God picked me up and put me in Denver which was a bit surprising. I was out of a house out of a church and out of a job in one day which is pretty hard to do. And I called my old Pastor back in Brooklyn and they said he was in Denver, sorry technically Queens, and he was helping me out and so he let me apply for a job and I moved to Denver where I happens to run into the man that I had a crush on when I was 16 and he was 17. We’ve been married 26 years.
But the answered prayer was he was going through some really hard time the years that God told me to pray for him while he was in Africa. Please understand I didn’t know who my husband was going to be until I was 30. I was just deeply praying for my husband because God said to, and my husband has said he was very grateful for those prayers. There is great protection when somebody is walking in Jesus Christ in his Truth and Love. I’m sorry the Christian church in the Western world hasn’t done a better job of representing Christ at times. Sometimes it’s what we call wolves in sheep’s clothing, people pretending to be Christian but they’re not even if they think they are. But sometimes it’s people that are just immature. If you’ve ever had a teenage kid you understand what I mean. They don’t always act like you want them to LOL of course you’ve ever been a teenager you might understand too..
I have seen the kind of daily miracle that shouldn’t happen, I I have major mental health issues and physical health issues. There is no logical reason why I should not have been homeless, in a mental institution or dead. The only reason is Jesus and the Living God sustaining me Moment by moment and day by day. God is good. But this life can be really difficult and hard. I like how in the Bible God doesn’t lie about all the problems, he doesn’t even lie about his own people and how Wicked we all can be. That’s why he sent Jesus to die. But prayer makes a huge difference down here if somebody is praying in Jesus, walking with him in faith and love.
I have seen prayers answered after 10 years. I knew a mother whose daughter left home that prayed for her daughter for 10 years and 10 years later her daughter returned and they were reunited for the rest of their lives. I mean until the mother passed away. But in Christ there is still a Unity Between Heaven and Earth.
I’ve seen more prayers for provision be answered that I could even begin to count. But there is a balance because all of God’s word is true and one of the things that the Bible teaches strongly against is greed so sometimes people try to pray prayers because they want God to do what they want, but they’re not willing to listen to God and do what God wants them to do. And very simply it doesn’t work that way. God is God. He is the heavenly father and he tells us what to do not the other way around.
I have seen quite a number of answered prayer for healing, occasionally supernaturally, but one of the prayers we will often praise for God to bless the doctor’s hands. I witnessed a man who was a friend whose wife had passed from cancer and then he came down with covid a very strong healthy man, and the Holy Spirit said go to the hospital and pray for him and there were a bunch of people praying for him not just me, and it was the craziest thing because three of the workers let me go up on to his room which technically was completely not allowed and I just trusted God there was a reason. And every nurse and doctor said he was going to die. He was in a coma I forget how long it was months I don’t know if it was 6 months or a little bit less but there was absolutely nothing in the natural that could be done for him to live. But his children and his mother-in-law and a boatload of people from the church prayed continually but that one day they let me in I prayed outside his door on the floor for about 45 minutes I think it was before the head nurse found out what was going on and man did I get a talking to!
Which I get she was exasperated with her staff and with me, but she was kind nonetheless even though she did basically just kick me out which was fine cuz I wasn’t supposed to be there but I was really thankful it was at the beginning of covid so they were worried about me catching covid. But he lived. He didn’t die. It took him about 2 or 3 years to recover and I don’t know that he ever got fully better but he still had two kids at home and we were just talking to God and said Lord you’ve already got the mom up there can we please keep bill down here.
Not everything that happens is God’s will. God doesn’t micromanage every human. God is love and love doesn’t do that. Jesus cried over Jerusalem saying Jerusalem Jerusalem how I have longed to protect you as a mother hen protects her chicks, but you were not willing! Look you’re Devastation is upon you. And that was just 30 years prior, sorry 40 years prior to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. So sometimes things happen because humans are not doing God’s will. Sometimes humans, like an individual might be doing God’s will but there might be other circumstances in the spirit Realm that keep the will of God from happening. It’s not that God is Not all-powerful. He is. But he’s loving and love doesn’t take a gun to your head and commands you to love. You might take a gun to somebody’s head and command them to marry you, but you can never Force anybody to love you. God is God. And the prayer somebody who is righteous when they are fervently praying the Bible says it avails much. That means it works really well. However contrary to the bumper sticker that’s all over the place, the greatest Force against evil is not prayer, it is love, particularly God’s kind of love as defined bye First Corinthians 13. The kind of love at the cross that forgave the people that were torturing and killing him. That is the most powerful force against evil. There are so many answered prayers. I mean think about it just from a logical standpoint, do you believe that you have wisdom to make good decisions about religion or lack of religion? Do you believe you have good knowledge? Do you believe that you were the only person that has good knowledge and ability to make decisions about religion or lack of religion? Do you believe your knowledge is perfect?
So think about this it’s crazy, do you have any idea how much blood has been shed so that you can get a Bible in your hands and read it? So a lot of other Martyrs in a lot of other religions die so that they can gain heaven. But that isn’t how it is in Christianity, and here I’m speaking of true Christianity cuz sometimes there are twistings in the name of Christianity that are not true Christianity, but in true Christianity you don’t die so that you can gain heaven, God allows his children to be killed, no no he doesn’t want it! But he permits it because other people would spend eternity separated from him if they do not receive the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. It’s completely upside down and backwards from anything else the world has to offer. Christ was beaten and suffered for your sins and for mine, and at the cross he uttered a prayer to his father while he was being tortured and killed, father forgive them! Because they don’t know what they’re doing!
If that prayer had not been answered do you seriously think there would be any Christian standing today? It was the sin of every human that caused Jesus Christ to be crucified. It is finished. The Salvation of mankind was purchased at the cross in God heard his son’s prayers. And so if by any Miracle anybody’s actually reading this, but whether they are or not every person that hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ here’s it because God answered his son’s prayers. The first martyr Stephen if you read the book of Acts as the Jewish people were stoning him also Cried Out Lord don’t hold this sin against them.
The book of Acts is so interesting. And so God heard Steven’s prayer, and a young man named Saul who was holding the coats of those that were stoning Stephen, who later went all over trying to persecute and put Christians in jail, but God had heard Steven’s prayer, is that young man who is called Saul, had a miraculous vision of Christ and became the Man known as Paul who wrote I think it’s 2/3 of the New Testament. And who eventually gave up his life for Jesus Christ. So God heard the prayers. We wonder why God permits so many things like his children suffering so much and allowing them to die but don’t you understand? God created this beautiful world every blade of grass every rainbow every sunrise and sunset is God crying out I love you and every breath is intentionally given to every human by God when that wasn’t enough for us to understand or see his love because we were too blind and dead in our sins, he sent his own son to die for our sins, because the way the world was set up was to have righteousness and peace and joy and all the things of Heaven, but when sin which is just simply breaking God’s law, came in it destroyed all that, worse mankind was separated from God forever. And it is only here in the shadowlands that light and darkness can coexist. When we cross through the veil there is a separation because God doesn’t want his children to spend eternity suffering so the people who refuse his love God will honor with their choice even though it saddens him deeply and they will be separated forever from his love. But all who call in the name of the Lord but will be saved. And his name is Jesus.
Why God doesn’t just heal us all at once to me is pretty obvious, we what become completely arrogant and prideful and we wouldn’t know how to love, number two God sent his son to enter into the suffering of this world he doesn’t want his children not to share in the suffering of the world around them and his invitation to Salvation is to every person who chooses to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for the sins of mankind and and 3 Days Later physically rose from the dead, proof that he is the Son of God that will come to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end and of his righteousness and peace there will be no end. I was raised 50% below poverty level and often whatever we asked God for something it was there. This is the normal Christian walk if somebody is walking in truth and Grace in Jesus Christ, however it isn’t too simple because there’s a lot of lies out there.
And apple seed does not look like an apple tree at all. So sometimes we have immature Christians that are not knowledgeable in the love of God, because the biggest sign of a real Christian is they are patient and kind, they are not rude they are not self-seeking, they do not envy they do not boast they are not proud, a true follower of Jesus Christ that is mature does not Delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. For me when I look at those words from 1st Corinthians 13 and I look at the western church, there’s quite a few wolves in sheeps clothing and quite a few apple seeds. A few other Miracles throughout my life that were answers to prayer was when in obedience to the word of God in our pretty conservative Lutheran Church when I had scoliosis at age 14 my mother took me to the church and ask the elders and pastors to pray for me because the doctor said I had to have a brace because the curve was so bad.
They laid hands on me and my mom had her hand on my back and then one of the elders was a doctor and he set off in scoliosis was caused by one foot being longer than the other. They sat me down in a chair and he held up my feet and sure enough one was about an inch and a half longer than the other and according to the word of God they anointed my head with oil and the past and the elders ask Jesus to please heal me and I felt the power of God and watched my leg grow and inch and a half. My mother said she had her hand on my back and she felt my back straightened out. We went back to the doctor who was not a believer in Jesus Christ or in miracles and my mother had enough wisdom not to say anything. But after double checking everything and getting ready to design the brace he came back to us completely confounded and said this doesn’t make any sense but she doesn’t have scoliosis anymore. Her curve is down to six degrees it’s normal. It was at that point my mother said oh well thank you they prayed for her at church on Sunday. One huge question that young Christians ask I mean young in the faith, not age Young, and that people who haven’t walked with this loving powerful God often ask is why doesn’t everybody see these miracles? And there are a number of reasons and they are outlined in the Bible. By All rights I should be homeless. I am 56 years old and I’ve never been able to hold down a job in my life. There is no reason I shouldn’t be on drugs or something horrible should have happened to me. So when we are living in Jesus Christ, there is ground that needs to be taken because there is a spiritual battle. If you were to believe in Jesus Christ today, one of the biggest books I would recommend is little Pilgrim’s Progress, a children’s book that helped me greatly throughout my life in my walk, of course the best book you can ever read is the Bible, however without understanding Jesus and the love he has for you it’s just a book. It’s not until you realize that he is real and his love for you is real that it becomes a love letter. But birth in the spirit Realm is very similar to birth in the Physical Realm. You are born again when you acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord. We in some scriptures the Bible says to repent and be baptized but that word repent doesn’t mean stop sinning. If I remember correctly the words stop sinning in the New Testament by Jesus or only used twice, repent means to change direction to acknowledge that God and His laws and Authority is correct and that there’s absolutely no way you’re going to be able to keep them all and to come to him for help and submit to him and ask him to help and rescue you. See he loves you. But the walk we have had in Jesus Christ where we see daily miracles and the many things I was blessed to be raised in is because our family has been in Christ for many generations. Don’t get me wrong God will answer every person’s prayer but he doesn’t always answer the prayers when we want or how we want and sometimes his answer is no. Because the number one priority of God is love. Love is not proud. Love is not self-seeking. So when somebody comes to Jesus Christ and they are the first one in their generation or family, there is a groundbreaking that happens. You need to be in a strong Church where there’s lots of love and spend as much time in prayer in the word of God and worship as you can because just like there is a God that answers prayer there’s a devil that deeply wants to stop the prayers from being answered. And you can read that story in the Book of Daniel. Very interesting reading the whole book of Daniel. But there’s one part where Daniel is praying and fasting for 21 days, this is a man who lost his parents to war and was taken captive as a slave by the king of Babylon and then made into a eunuch. I don’t know if you know what that means but basically they castrated them. He would never have children, in spite of all the hardships Daniel chose to worship and love God. And he did the best he could to be obedient to the Living God in the Babylonian Empire that worshiped many other gods. He knew the reason Israel had been destroyed was because they had gone to worship false gods and after God kept warning them and sending prophets to ask them to turn he let them have what they wanted. False gods cannot save and they cannot answer prayers, and that includes false gods that people try to make even in the name of Jesus and that’s where it gets really wicked and all I can do is pray for the Lord when he comes back to have mercy on people. So what I mean about false gods in the name of Jesus, God is love. In the name of God the Pharisees had Jesus crucified, tortured and killed. That was not the real God that was a lie in the name of God. And we live in a generation where there are many such lies. Pride is an Abomination according to scripture, Pride thinking we’re better than others so that we don’t need God. Anyway sorry that was so long but I really pray that you come to know this love. Those answered prayers don’t happen right away there is a growth in Jesus Christ in a maturing that comes. Sometimes they do I’m not saying they never do and sometimes newborn Christians have seem to have all sorts of answered prayers. God is a good father but it’s really important to be in a Godly Church to receive Holy Communion to be baptized when somebody comes to Jesus. If you wanted a steak dinner but your way of getting the ingredients was to enter the Walmart and look at every single item until you finally found the steak picking up every item on every aisle until eventually you finally came to the right one, you probably would never get your steak dinner. The Bible is God shopping list for a really good meal. People have a lot of questions in the questions are good and you can ask God to help you and be patient because he does hear you if you keep asking and you don’t give up, it is written ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find, knock in the door will be open to you. But in the English language we lose a bit of the translation because from my understanding the verb for each of those words seek, ask, knock is a continual asking and seeking and knocking. Again you can read the story in Daniel it explains it. God loves you. You are a treasure beloved and adored and there’s nothing you can do that can add to that and there is nothing you can do that can take away from that. And prayer, the fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much, but if you’re wanting to be righteous so that your prayers can Avail much, the only place you can get that from is Jesus. It is a gift God gives. We cannot earn it. And so our prayers Avail much not because we do good works God hears my prayers and I see them answered every day, and yes LOL sometimes the answer is no, he is a good father, but I’m not any better than you or any other person the only difference is I have believed in Jesus Christ for my sins to be forgiven and I have chosen to follow him. To listen to the words he speaks and to the best of my ability by his grace to do them, don’t get me wrong I screw up and sin everyday and then I have to ask is forgiveness because that was part of his command, and I asked him to forgive me everyday. And he answers that prayer every single day and he forgives my sins and so my righteousness is in him and from him it’s the most amazing gracious powerful there’s no word in any language that can describe it. My life has had much pain and suffering. And there was a season for years when I could not comprehend why my Father in Heaven would permit it, but now I understand. For all of the years I begged him to take me out of the fire, he allowed me to remain in it and to grow and to come out unscathed so in this time and season when suicide is prevalent and destruction all over the place by his grace I can go into the fire and bring others out because I know that pain and because he caused me to come out. But if I had never been through it, how would I ever relate to those who are suffering? Blessings and God’s peace
