Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
MATTHEW 17:20
Once, when visiting North Carolina, I read in the local press about a well-established church that was outraged when they learned a pornography store would be opening right across the road from their building. In response, the church called a special Friday night prayer meeting, the purpose of which was to pray against the store. One week later, a freak bolt of lightning struck the store and the whole thing burned to the ground. The article I was reading concerned the court case that followed. The proprietor of the store had somehow learned that the church wanted to “pray him out of the area,” so he blamed the church for the decimation of his store due to their prayers! The church, however, protested saying that it was not their fault; this was an “act of God” (in the insurance sense, not the spiritual!). The bit of this story I love is the comment made by the judge in his summation: “I have a dilemma. In front of me I have the proprietor of a pornography shop who believes in prayer and a church that evidently doesn’t!”
How effective do we believe our prayers are? Do we ask God for something and then dare to believe him for the answer? Can we rise to the challenge of holding on and believing him for the answer even when we don’t see a bolt of lightning after only a week?
Have you ever prayed for something truly audacious — and gotten results? If so, how did you respond?