My Pastor posed an interesting question from the pulpit on Sunday. He asked, “Why do we ask lots of people to pray for something? Do we think God is MORE inclined to answer our prayers if more people pray? Will his will be “No!” if 2 people pray about it, be “Absolutely!” if 200 people pray about it? Is he swayed by the multitudes? Does the majority vote swing the ballot box in heaven?” Pastor Joel says no. It does not. (He said a lot of great things-you can check it out here to listen!) The thing that really stood out to me in the reasons of why we DO ask people to pray, is that when God answers the prayer, that many MORE people will be blessed by his presence and goodness! So it is our responsibility when someone is praying for us to follow up with that person when God faithfully answers, so as to increase their faith and trust in our Lord! Great timing on this sermon- because I happen to have an answer to prayer that I would LOVE to share with you!
If you remember a few months ago I shared a post about my need for a car-and God’s Provision in ways I did not expect; this post is it’s follow up! When people would ask me “When are you going to start looking for a car?” I always responded, “When I get home from Germany”. That is when the true search would begin! Car-fax, Craigslist, Creepy-Used Car Salesmen, here I come! When I got home, I immediately started itching to get a car! I wanted to be able to get groceries by myself, visit friends, and go to work whenever I wanted to! For over 6 months I had prayed for God to supply a reliable car, but came to the realization that it was now my turn to take matters into my own hands and find one. But isn’t it wonderful (and just like God) that not even 24 hours after my plane landed, before I could start my own search for a vehicle…the answer to my prayers came in the form of a Facebook message. It said:
”Betty, _____ and I just got a minivan and are planning to sell our 1995 Subaru Impreza. If you are interested you are welcome to it (we don’t want much for it, $300, probably less), however, I should probably disclose some things to you. It is not a pretty car. It probably was in its day, but I have been driving it to work and back for the past 5 years and cosmetically, it is nothing to look at. It is white, it has 135K miles on it. No pressure. REALLY! don’t feel bad if you are like, “no I don’t want that piece of crap” I totally get it. It is very dependable mechanically. I faithfully change the oil and have had things fixed over the years and have kept all the paper work. If you would like to look at it, I could drive it to church tomorrow, or we could meet up sometime if you’d like to see it. Let me know either way, because if you aren’t interested, we’ll probably try to sell it this upcoming week. And even if you are like excited right now at this amazing offer and want to see it, and then when you see it are like, “whoa! no way, that car stinks!” That is totally fine too. No offense will be taken! Talk to you soon and welcome home!”
Did you smile as much as I did when I read that? It came at the PERFECT time, (originally they were not going to sell it until well into the winter months, but God blessed them with a GREAT deal on a minivan they couldn’t pass up!), it is exactly what I need (a reliable car, nothing fancy!), and even BELOW the price range I had decided on. They were incredibly generous. They KNEW I had saved $1,000 towards a car and could have easily asked double for this car! (I asked the “car guy” at our church-he said they could have easily gotten $2,500 for it).They are a young family with another baby due soon-they certainly could have used the money! But instead, they were RIDICULOUSLY giving. In fact, icing on the cake, when we went to switch the title over, they decided to gift the car to me. That’s right, I only paid for the title transfer. What generosity! What an answer to prayer! And you know what…it was ABOVE AND BEYOND all that I asked for! Ephesians 3:20 displayed in the form of a ’95 Subaru. Praise God from whom all blessings flow; be blessed by his kindness and intentional timing!
Bit o' Betty 