Randy and Shari's World

Some of you know that Teri stopped by the Compound a couple months ago and shared his vision for an International House of Prayer (IHOP) in South Carolina. I haven't shared this with him, but his testimony of how God was working in his life and his passion for prayer made an impression on me. It motivated me. If my little brother can discipline himself to pray regularly, and for more than just a few token minutes to ease his conscience, than so can I. I have been feeling like I want more out of life, so why not start now, and ask for more.

Hence, I began to pray a little more. As Pastor Howard says, it's better to grow like a tree than like a weed, so I just focussed on adding a little more time and thought to my prayer.

A little later, we heard news that a friend of ours had colon/rectal cancer. Our hearts break for him and his family. Perhaps it is because our situations are so similar (He is a young guy, just out of school, married with a young child) that God burdened my heart for him. It became clear to me that I needed to pray for him, and pray hard. God further motivated me to organize a prayer meeting with our Sunday School class, and to make it special. But who am I to organize a prayer meeting? I don't know anything about healing prayer. But God told me to do it. So I asked The Mom for advice and she suggested asking Teri. Fortunately, he was stopping by again that weekend to help me paint windows (perhaps that wasn't his plan, but he did it anyway), so I got to ask him for his thoughts. He said that the first thing he would do fast and pray about it, and he also suggested having others in the class fast and pray with me before the day of our prayer meeting.

So I followed his advice. I fasted and prayed, and I asked others to join me which they gladly did. When the meeting came and we prayed in our Sunday School class, I know that we were praying with deep and sincere hearts. I remember that it was mostly guys praying, and mostly with faltering voices. A friend afterwards mentioned, "That was pretty intense!" We didn't see a miraculous healing, but we saw God pour out his love on our friends, who have no family and few friends in the area. It was awesome to see the encouragement and hope that they felt.

We have had several other opportunities to pray with them, and they have often expressed how much they appreciate our prayers and concern for them. It brings tears of joy to my eyes to see how God is willing to use me in my weakness to be a blessing and an encouragement to my friends. I've seen our class truly come together and support them in this time, and I am truly blessed to be a part of it.

I say all this not to build myself up, or even to build Teri up (though he deserves much credit and thanks), because it was not by my initiative, or Teri's initiative that these things have happened. It is by the grace of God. God poured out his grace on Teri and motivated him to do things that he would not have done on his own. God told him to come up here and ask for prayer. God opened my eyes to the need for more prayer in my life. God burdened my heart for my friends, and directed me to call our Sunday School class to pray for them. It was a chain of events – a pipe line of grace - orchestrated by God alone.

I say all this to build you up, and to aim God's pipe line of grace at you. Who has he placed on your heart? How can God's grace flow through you to be a blessing to them?

My prayer is that God's grace will flow through you to bless others and motivate them to seek God's grace, and that we all will be drawn closer to Christ who is the center of it all.