When I was an active deacon in my church I was in charge of the prayer chain. I had front row seats to answered prayers and miracles. I’ll share a few personal stories of when prayer worked and a couple of answered prayers from my time running the prayer chain.
In 2014 my family and I went to Universal Studios. My then husband had a continuing education seminar, so we made it an event and planned to head out for the weekend. I had a strong feeling that we shouldn’t take the van. I told my ex-husband about the feeling I had, but he insisted we take the van and not his vehicle.
We arrived at the theme park and as we were in the line to pay to get in to the parking lot, the van started to smoke. Smoke started to come out from the vents and under the hood- the van was overheating. My two kids saw the smoke and started getting scared. Nervous, I turned to my babies and told them to do the only thing I knew to do in that moment, “Pray.” I told them. And we did. We prayed for angels to carry us through this line, as we were jammed in bumper to bumper cars and there was no way we would get out. The van continued to smoke, but we stayed in line and found a parking spot. We spent a few hours enjoying the day and left Universal at closing time. When we turned the van on, it smoked again. My ex-husband decided to drive it anyway. Any Floridian knows I-4 can be a parking lot. It’s perpetually under construction, so the chances of getting stuck in dead-locked traffic is high. As predicted, traffic was horrible and we were barely moving. We came to a gas station and pulled in. My ex-husband bought a few containers of oil and poured them into the van. He bent over to check and noted that the oil was spilling out just as fast as he was pouring it in. Defeated, he got back into the van and we drove to the hotel we were staying at. I encouraged him to find parking in the flat, open parking lot, so that in case if we needed towing, the tow truck could easily access the van, but he parked in the parking garage instead. We went to our room, packed up and decided to head to an auto-repair shop early the next morning.
We got up early as planned, loaded up the van and started off. The only thing was that it was Sunday, so many shops would be closed. I searched for open repair shops near us but it didn’t look promising. More smoke came out of the van. Nervous again, I turned and asked our babies to pray for God and our Angels to be with us, get us to a repair shop safely and for our van to be ok. We pulled out of the garage, but as we drove on I-4 a horrid, loud ‘click’ started and got worse the farther along we drove. We managed to find an ity, bity repair shop but it was swamped and they told us they couldn’t get to it for a while, but that they’d look at it by the end of the day. We still had a two-hour ride home, so we settled in the lobby for a long day. Two young kids under the age of ten obviously meant there was a lot of busy, bored energy. The gentleman who was running the shop was hispanic and looked about my age. He was kind and asked my kids what they wanted to watch on tv and put it on to help entertain them. The gentleman pushed his crew to push our van to the front of the repair line, so we could get on with our trip home.
After they inspected it, they found the van held no oil, as the tank was completely deteriorated and the timing belt was busted. He asked us how long we drove the van in this condition and we told him. His eyes grew large, he was shocked and he said, “I don’t know how you didn’t completely destroy your engine. It hasn’t had any lubrication, not to mention your timing belt being broken.” He was completely dumbfounded as to how the van was ok. We figured it was going to be a pricey repair, not to mention a long one. He assured us he’d get it fixed right away so we could get on our way.
I sat back down in the lobby and continued my prayers. Every now and then I’d ask one or both of the kids to continue to pray as well. I believe my ex prayed “Jesus take the wheel.” Several times also.
After some time the shop manager came back out and told us the van was all fixed and ready to go. Not only did our van not suffer any damage, the service, repair and parts were on the house. We paid NOTHING. The manager simply gave us our keys, gave us kind smiles and bid us a safe trip. We were so grateful to him and of course gave our thanks up to God and our angels for taking care of us and the van.
Another time prayers have been answered was immediately after a mission trip to Nicaragua. We were with our church group and two friends from church were traveling with us. My dad was giving all of us a ride home. Due to delays leaving South America, our chances of making connecting flights in the states was slim. Not to mention the fact that we had to go through customs in Miami, since we travelled internationally.
I was in touch with my dad the whole time, as he was the one who had been caring for my kids and was picking us up from the air port. My dad was skeptic and said, “You better get a hotel for the night, your flight leaves soon and there’s no way you’d make it out and home tonight.” He was online at the time and saw that there was one last flight, but the odds of it having four open seats for all of us was slim.
One of my friends….whom I’ll call April-is high energy. She and my ex-husband were next-level concerned/upset about the delays and our inability to get a flight. I was good at dealing with and feeling the giant energy of my ex-husband. But I couldn’t handle both of these giant energies, not to mention the fact that the entire room was full of people who were upset at the flight delays, coming through customs. I turned to my friend April and said, “Let’s play thumb war!” I’m sure she thought I was crazy, LOL, but it’s what I do to my kids to calm them down. Plus my focusing my attention on this game would help me bear all the overwhelming energies in the room. April is competitive and she grabbed the crap out of my thumb and won every time. Now my energy was focused on my sore thumb, lol. Her and my ex laughed at my expense and I said, “how about instead of trippin’ about this, we pray that we’re allowed to get home safely and in a timely manner and that we all get to travel together.” So we did. We prayed and took deep breaths and continued to stand in line. In my head I was like, “Really God? We JUST got done working like slaves for your less-fortunate children and this is our thanks?” I rolled my eyes. And then I felt bad. As if doing good deeds suddenly gives you a right to get to the front of the line. Or extra privileges. I apologized in my head for my spoiled brat thoughts and continued to wait.
Finally we made it to the front of the line and we were called up to the counter to get our boarding passes and flight information. We all stood at the counter, looked at the airport employee’s name tag and saw that his name was….. Jesus… I can’t make this stuff up! Jesus informed us that we did miss the flight by just a few minutes, but not to fear as there “just happened” to be four seats available back home in the next flight that left in less than two hours. It was a long night, but we managed to get home safely.
When my dad picked us up he simply shook his head in disbelief and asked, “what are the odds of all four of you getting home on the same flight?” My dad isn’t a religious man. He mostly scoffs at me when I advise him to pray about something, but he’s growing in his prayer journey as well. If anything, I know this gave him an example of the power of prayer.
Another story of answered prayers is regarding a family who is very near and dear to my heart. My very dear friend, whom I’ll name Bella, was visiting some friends with her husband, “Jason.” They were enjoying some pool-side fun, when her husband decided to dive into the pool.
He dove in, hit the bottom and broke his neck in what I believe was two or three different places, paralyzing him immediately. He was grabbed out of the pool by his friends and was taken to the hospital. Upon initial tests it was concluded that he had broken the vertebrae which controls your body’s ability to control your arms and legs, Jason would be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.
Between the hours of 3-5:00 in the morning, I received a frantic phone call from Bella. She was so upset, I couldn’t quite understand all of her words. I understood that her dad, our Pastor at the time, was injured and paralyzed. I got on my laptop, wrote and sent out the prayer chain for our congregation to start praying for a miracle.
We prayed.
And waited.
Bella called me again later in the morning and let me know it was her husband who was injured, not her father. I sent out another prayer chain that had Jason’s name in it, with the faith that God knew who we meant and Jason was receiving all of our healing prayers all along. Our prayer chain goes out to a couple hundred people. But some of those people belong to other prayer groups, so by 11:00 in the morning, Jason had thousands of people praying for him from all over the world.
More praying.
More waiting.
The days passed and Jason’s body was given a few days to heal as further testing was done.
The accident happened on a Saturday night. Friday night Jason walked out of the hospital, to the complete awe and amazement of his doctors and their staff.
My final story is about an older man from my church whom I’ll call Tuck. Tuck doesn’t talk much. His wife is the chatty one in the relationship.
Tuck had a growth on his knee that had been bothering him and he’d gone to get checked out by his doctor. Tuck didn’t say anything until the day before he was to have surgery to have this growth removed. The prayer chain went out and per usual, I (with the guidance of God and Angels as always) wrote, “please let the healing be a miracle, so that his doctors and nurses are moved closer to you.”
Tuck went in for surgery…. and left without getting the surgery. The growth had disappeared! Tuck and his doctor couldn’t believe it, as they had JUST seen it and examined his knee!!
A few days after this, I was at my painting group in church, when Tuck walked into the room. With a glint of wonder in his eye, he came up to me, showed me his perfect knee and with an expression of awe, said, “It’s completely gone. I’d had it for a while and after the prayer chain went out, it completely disappeared. The doctor couldn’t believe it.” I grinned a massive, excited grin at Tuck and said “prayer works.”
It does. We are loved by our Maker and He delights over us. Not based on our deeds but simply because we breathe. We are told in The Word: “ask and you shall receive.” Matthew 7:7 , “pray without ceasing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “in all things give thanks.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (pray even when things suck! For even the bad stuff is “for” us- we just don’t realize it yet.) “Faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains.” Matthew 17:20. All this is promised us, simply because we have been born. We have been created with great care. We have been created from Love and upon our last breath Love is that to which we will return.
Prayers, Dear One, work. Not a single prayer leaves your lips and escapes the ears of our Maker. He hears you, He listens and He loves you, far more than you can fathom. Simply because you breathe.
