Me:  What are you doing?

Prodigal:  I am pray walking!

Me:  That is a great idea, let me encourage you in your pray time.

Bill Hybels shares this story in his book Too Busy Not To Pray

 

Some years ago we had a baptism Sunday when hundreds of people publicly affirmed their decision to follow Christ.  It was incredible!  Afterward, in the stairwell, I bumped into a woman who was crying.  I couldn’t understand how anyone could weep after such a celebration, so I stopped and asked her if she was all right.

“No,” she explained, “I’m struggling.  My mother was baptized today.”

This is a problem?  I thought.

“I prayed for her every day for twenty years,”  the woman said, and then she started crying again.

“You’re going to have to help me understand this,”  I said.

“I’m crying,” the woman replied, “because I came so close—so close–to giving up on her.  I mean, after five years, I said, “Who needs this?  God isn’t listening,’  After ten years, I said, “Why am I wasting my breath?’  After fifteen years, I said, ‘This is absurd.’  After nineteen years, I said, ‘I’m just a fool.’  But even though my faith was weak, I kept praying.  And finally she gave her life to Christ.  And that woman was baptized today.”

Looking me dead in the eye, she said, “I will never doubt the power of prayer again.”

 

Psalm 119:111

Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.

 

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org