What Happened When Mother Prayed

My friend Marge Owens told me about her praying mother. “Mother wasn’t an eloquent prayer. In fact, I don’t remember ever hearing her pray in church, but Mother’s walk-in closet was her sacred place.

“My older brother had gone away from the Lord, and we’d hear her crying, ‘Oh, Lord save my boy.’

“She fasted so much that the doctor told her, ‘You’ll have to stop fasting or you’ll die. You’re losing too much weight.’

“‘If that’s what it takes to get my boy saved, then I’ll die,’ she said.”

During revival, a group gathered at noon each day at the church to fast and pray. Some would close their businesses to join in prayer. One day, as they were praying, Marge’s mother began to repeatedly exclaim, “Oh, my boy is going to get saved tonight! My boy is going to get saved tonight!”

“Her boy wasn’t even coming to church, so the others wondered how that could be. But Mother had heard from heaven.”

That night as they gathered in church, in walked her son. He said, “Today when I was out in the field I had the combine up on a jack. I was under it trying to fix it and I rolled out to get something. All at once that jack slipped and the combine fell where I had just been lying. As I lay there thinking about what had happened, God said, ‘Today is your day.’ I promised God I would come to church tonight. I knew mother had prayed through.” 

Marge said, “That brother became a district superintendent in the Wesleyan church and later founded the Bartlesville Wesleyan Bible College. When I look at a picture of our family and realize that 44 of my mother’s descendants are in active ministry, I wonder what would have happened to them if my mother had not prayed through.”

Jesus, thank You for those who pray until lives are changed.

Jacob’s effective prayer: “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26).