HOW A DAUGHTER’S PRAYER SAVED HER FATHER’S LIFE

Mark 11:24 (KJV) , “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (KJV) , “Rejoice evermore.  17 Pray without ceasing.  18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

Matthew 6:5-8 (KJV) , “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”

Romans 8:26 (KJV) , “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

          George Benfield, a driver on the Midland Railway, living at Derby, was standing on the footplate oiling his engine, the train being stationary, when his foot slipped; he fell on the space between the lines.  He heard the express coming on, and had only time enough to lie full length on the “six-foot” when it rushed by, and he escaped unhurt.

          He returned to his home in the middle of the night and as he was going up-stairs he heard one of his children, a girl about eight years old, crying and sobbing.  “Oh, father,” she said, “I thought somebody came and told me that you were going to be killed, and I got out of bed and prayed that God would not let you die.”

          Was it only a dream, or a coincidence?  George Benfield and others believe that he owed his life to that prayer. – DEAN HOLE

E. M. Bounds wrote in “The Possibilities of Prayer”: [Martin] Luther is quoted as once saying: “The Christian trade is praying.”  Certainly, for a great reason the preacher’s trade should be praying.  We fear greatly that many preachers know nothing of this trade of praying, and hence they never succeed at this trade.  A severe apprenticeship in the trade of prayer must be served in order to become a journeyman in it.  Not only is it true that there are few journeymen at work at this praying trade, but numbers have never even been apprentices at praying.  No wonder so little is accomplished by them.  God and the supernatural left out of their programs.

          Many do not understand this trade of praying because they have never learned it, and hence do not work at it.  Many miracles ought to be worked by our praying.  Why not?  Is the arm of the Lord shortened that He cannot save?  Is His ear heavy that He cannot hear?  Has prayer lost its power because iniquity abounds and the love of many has grown cold?  Has God changed from what He once was?  To all these queries we enter an emphatic negative.  God can as easily to-day work miracles by praying as He did in the days of old.  “I am the Lord; I change not.”  “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

          He who works miracles by praying will first of all work the chief miracle on himself.  Oh, that we might fully understand well the Christian’s trade of praying, and follow the trade day by day and thus make to ourselves great spiritual wealth!