It works! Prayer really works!

People in our day are always wanting to look at the end result of things. What is the bottom line? What will the outcome be? Following are several examples of answered prayer.

One day an insurance man came to a farmer, trying to sell him a policy to insure his wheat crop. When the farmer’s wife heard about it, she said, “Insure against an act of God? How can they do that? Let me pray.” No insurance was purchased. Then a hailstorm came. You could hear it coming for miles, and everything in its path was beaten down. The farmer’s wife began to pray. The hailstorm came right up to the fence on their property line, and stopped!

On September 2, 1981, a man walking on a sidewalk in Brooklyn, New York, was struck by an out-of-control truck. Conscious but paralyzed, he was rushed to the hospital. The head neurologist examined him and conferred with four other specialists. The injured man was told that they must operate. “No operation,” he told his daughter, “just call the ministers at the church and have them pray.” Prayer was made, and God answered! Just three mornings later he suddenly felt a tingling in his body. When the doctor made his rounds, the injured man told him he was going to get up. He got out of his bed and walked the length of the hall saying “Thank You, Jesus!” with each step.

An armed robber and deserter from the U.S. Navy was saved, but he faced many serious restitutions. After much prayer, he went to the Naval authorities and confessed that he had jumped ship in New York City. “I was saved in the Apostolic Faith Church and I am going over my old life,” he told them. “You can do to me what you want to do.” A few days later he received a letter saying, “According to the laws of the United States you are a wartime deserter, but because of the new life you are living now, we don’t feel like punishing you for your desertion.”

A young man was taking a boat across Puget Sound from the San Juan Islands to Port Townsend. The boat struck a sunken log. The collision caused a hole in the boat which immediately began to fill with water and sink. “When that first wave went over us, it was cold,” the man said later. “But under that wave, Jesus was there with me.” He cried out to God, and the Lord gave him a promise from Isaiah 43:2, “When thou passest through the waters . . . they shall not overflow thee.” Miraculously, God spared his life. After six hours in the water, he finally struggled to shore on Whidbey Island, worn and exhausted, but alive! Again God had answered prayer.

A high school girl who hadn’t felt any need of the Lord in her life was facing death. Her throat was so badly swollen it seemed there was only one breath between her and eternity, and it was an effort for her to get that breath. Her mother stood in a church service and told the assembled congregation, “Pray for Edna, she is dying, and she is not ready to meet the Lord.” God intervened, healed the young girl, and about a month later saved her soul.

One night the Lord showed a young man on his way to a dance that he should go to church instead. Looking up into the sky, he prayed, “If You want me to go to church tonight, let that star fall.” He raised his hand and pointed out a bright star, and as he brought his hand down, that star fell! “I knew at that moment,” he said, “that God was real and He had heard my prayer.” Just a short time later he turned his heart over to God.

A young man in jail for drunkenness heard a minister tell him something which he couldn’t get away from. “You don’t have to be in church to pray. If you get honest with the Lord, He will hear you.” One night, in a cheap hotel on Market Street in San Francisco, he remembered those words. He got out of bed and prayed. “I felt I was going to die,” he recalls. “I wanted to know if there was a God and if He would hear me.” In the twinkling of an eye, the power of God came down into that hotel room. “I didn’t know what it meant to be born again, but the Spirit of the Lord spoke to my heart, ‘Your disease-wracked body is clean; your sins are forgiven. Go forth and do right.’” What a miracle in answer to prayer!

These wonderful miracles are true stories, and the results of prayer. God has reunited homes torn apart by divorce, provided work in times when jobs were hard to find, put food on the table when a family didn’t know where their next meal would come from, led families to a church where the whole Word of God was taught, and worked in mighty ways for those who looked to Him. But the most miraculous result of prayer is when a person is saved from sin—changed by divine power into a completely new creature.

Do you want to see results like this in your life? Do you want to be saved? God will listen to your prayer. And He will answer when you come to Him with your whole heart!