From I Stand at the
Door and Knock by Corrie ten Boom
I had been in the concentration camp
a couple of weeks when I said to Betsie, my sister, "What should I do? I
have a cold, I don't have a handkerchief."
"Pray," she said, and I
laughed. But she folded her hands and prayed, "Father, in Jesus' name, I
pray to You, please will You give Corrie a handkerchief? She has a cold.
Amen."
Yes, I laughed again, but do you
know what happened? I heard someone call my name. I went to the window where I
saw a friend of mine, a fellow prisoner, who worked in the hospital.
"Here," she said,
"take this, a little gift for you."
I opened the parcel and it was a
handkerchief. "Why on earth are you giving me a handkerchief? I asked.
"Did you know I had a cold?"
"No, but I had found an old
sheet, and I made a couple of handkerchiefs out if it, and then there was a
voice in my heart which said: 'Take a handkerchief to Corrie ten Boom.'"
Can you imagine what a handkerchief
means to you at that moment? That handkerchief told me that there is a God in
heaven who hears when one of His children is praying on a small planet, the
earth, for something incredibly small. And that God in heaven tells one of His
other children to give Corrie ten Boom a handkerchief.
From I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes by Glen Clark
A story told by the Captain
of a ship on which George Müller
of Bristol was a passenger: They had encountered a very dense fog.
Because of it the captain had remained on the bridge continuously for
twenty-four hours, when Mr. Müller came to him and said, “Captain, I have come
to tell you that I must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon.” When informed that
it was impossible, he replied: “Very well. If this ship cannot take me, God
will find some other way. I have never broken an engagement for fifty-seven
years. Let us go down into the chartroom and pray.”
The
captain continues the story thus: I looked at that man of God and thought to
myself – What lunatic asylum could that man have come from. I never heard such
a thing as this. “Mr. Müller,” I said, “do you know how dense this fog is?”
“No,” he replied, “my eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living
God, who controls every circumstance of my life.” He knelt down and prayed one
of those simple prayers, and when he had finished I was going to pray; but he
put his hand on my shoulder and told me to not to pray. “Firstly,” he said,
“because you do not believe God will, and secondly, I believe God has, and
there is no need whatever for you to pray about it.” I looked at him, and George
Müller said, “Captain, I have known my Lord for fifty-seven years, and there
has never been a single day that I have failed to get and audience with the
King. Get up and open the door and you will find that the fog is gone.” I got
up and the fog was indeed gone. George Müller was in Quebec Saturday afternoon
for his engagement.”
My Confession
I share these
stories of prayer because I’ve been thinking a lot about my own prayer life. I read
these stories and have no problem believing it happened just the way the
stories tell. God hears our prayers, large and small, and as our loving Father,
does what he does to comfort, protect, provide for and support us. I believe
that whole-heartedly. I admire people like Betsie ten Boom and George Müller
and desire and strive to have the intimacy with God that was so evident in
their lives.
Unfortunately, I
must admit that I am more like Corrie and the Captain when I look at prayer in
my own life. I have experienced great miracles of healing of my pain and my
past through God’s grace in faithful prayer. Of this I have no doubt. And yet
for some reason, my prayers often lack the conviction shown by my heroes in
these stories. Too often I pray in earnest but down deep I’m not really
expecting or looking for God’s answer - when I say amen, I’m still expecting
the fog to be there even when I’m hoping against the odds that it has
dissipated. Or I don’t pray at all because I feel it is too insignificant or
absurd to pray about – like a handkerchief in the middle of a Nazi
concentration camp. I wonder why God would answer me. I wonder if I’m asking
for the right thing – am I praying in His will? Often, I don’t know what to
pray for, and worse yet, too often it doesn’t even occur to me to pray before I
rush into life’s moments completely unprepared and vulnerable to worldly
influences.
I know there is
some kind of barrier of doubt or disbelief that hinders me from having the kind
of confidence that Betsie and George had on their knees and I know that I’m not
strong enough to remove that barrier – destroy that wall that has built itself
up between my Lord and me. However, just as I know that God took the brokenness
of my life and created something beautiful out of it, I know that if I ask him
to break that wall down for me, he will. So that is what I am asking right now
and where my hope lies.
What kind of
barriers stand between you and a more intimate relationship with God and will
you trust him to remove them?
