The 40-day prayer initiative “Why Pray” is only 3 days away! Hopefully the following testimony will excite you to join us on this adventure in prayer! Mary Ghee was a missionary in India and had served as a teacher for a year and a half when she was introduced to “Listening Prayer.” It changed her life! It started when an evangelist conducted a week of meetings in the village where she was teaching. Miracle upon miracle occurred. The Indians were puzzled, however, and wondered why there were so many miracles when the evangelist had been there only a week, and yet, there were no miracles in the year and a half that Mary had been there. So they asked her if she served the same Jesus the evangelist was talking about. Mary was troubled and sought out the evangelist.
The evangelist told Mary that the secret was “Listening Prayer.” He taught the Hindus how to turn to Jesus and ask for something specific and then wait quietly for an answer. In seeking for that answer they were asked to meditate on a passage of Scripture. As they filled their minds with God’s Word, an idea would form. They wrote it down, and then they acted upon it. God responded to their requests in utterly unexpected ways.
Mary had been fighting with her neighbor, a Christian widow with many children, and she decided to try listening to God. “How can this fight be ended?” Mary asked the Lord, and then waited for a thought to come to her mind. “Take her an egg”, was the idea Mary received, and when she had written it down, she was so embarrassed by the strangeness of the answer that she wrinkled the paper up, threw it away and went to school.
When she returned home for lunch she shooed a chicken out of her big chair and discovered an egg in the chair! With great embarrassment she took it next door, gave it to one of the children, and asked him to bring it to his mother.
Shortly after receiving the egg, the widow came to Mary’s house and asked why she had given the egg to her. Mary told her the story of “Listening Prayer”, to which the widow replied, “Mary – you know how poor I am. I gave all my food to my children this morning and then prayed all morning, ‘God if You will only give me an egg today, I can make it through.’”
You can imagine what happened – an impossible grudge was solved by a rather irrational means, resulting in an incredible new friendship!
God has plans for you as you begin your Forty-Day journey in prayer. He wants to tell you His plans. He is eager to have you discover them, because they are beyond anything you could imagine!
The Why Pray Books have arrived – pick up your copy at PoG this week, or Sunday, May 27th.