At 6:03 pm CDT on May 31, 2013, a wedge tornado developed just south of El Reno, Oklahoma, and within a half hour grew to be the widest tornado ever measured at 2.6 miles across, with the damage swath spreading another mile further out.   The highest speeds recorded were 302 mph, and the fastest the storm traveled over land was 50 mph.  It dissipated at 6:42 pm CDT.  Eight people had been killed, all of them in vehicles, some trying to wait it out as it passed by, and three who were storm researchers whose white Chevy Cobalt was overtaken before they could get away.  I cannot even imagine being so close to a storm like that on purpose!  Once, about 40 years ago, we were closer than I ever want to be again, and it wasn't even that big.
          We awoke that Saturday morning to ominous gray skies and strong winds.  The forecast for the day made it dangerous to be out, so we called those we had invited for a singing that afternoon and canceled.  Instead of walking to the paper box, about a quarter mile down our driveway, Keith drove the car, and as huge, plopping raindrops began falling, parked it next to the front door when he returned so he would not get too wet.
            A few minutes later, he looked out the window by the table where he sat reading the paper and sipping a cup of coffee.  Something in his manner made me look too, but I didn’t see anything. 
            “Get the boys,” he said very quietly, “and go crouch down in the middle of the house.  Cover your faces.”  I did exactly as he said, unquestioningly.  He grew up in the Arkansas mountains, and he knew about things I had no experience with.  A few minutes later it was all over with.  What “all” was, I still did not realize.  The power had gone out, but we were still intact. 
            We stepped out of the house, and the hay barn across the field no longer had a roof.  Several water oaks and wild cherry trees were down on the long driveway to the highway.  A large chinaberry had fallen right where the car had originally been parked before he decided to drive for the paper instead of walking.  It would have been flattened if he had parked it there again.
            Then we edged around the corner of the house on our bedroom side, and saw the worst of it.  A huge live oak had split.  Half had fallen on the power lines, but the line was still alive, wiggling and sparking on the ground.  The other half, its roots mostly out of the ground, leaned right over our bedroom.  We had no idea how long it would hold before it too fell and demolished our house.
            We called the power company immediately and they rushed out to take care of the live wire, but they had too many other calls to send someone to handle the tilting tree.  We would have to wait our turn.  Word gradually spread down the highway, and within an hour, two men who worked timber drove up with cables and chainsaws, and those two men, who were complete strangers to us, took the tree down safely and with no damage.  We thanked them profusely.  “That’s what neighbors are for,” they said, and off they went.
            A preacher friend who had been invited to the sing never got the message to cancel.  He showed up amid the raucous roar of chainsaws, and heard the whole story.  It impressed him enough to include it in a lesson on prayer and providence.  The people in the audience were not impressed.  Afterward they took him aside and scolded him.  “God does not act in the world today,” they told him.  He was astounded, and so were we.
            When we become so intent on exposing false doctrine that we blatantly ignore the truth, swinging the pendulum so far back that we miss it entirely, something is wrong with our perspective.  If God had no hand in what happened that day, then why do we bother to pray at all?  Do we not believe James? 
            “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” 5:16. 
            Do we not believe the book of Esther or the last 14 chapters of Genesis?  “God sent me,” Joseph told his brothers who had thought it was all their idea, and God continued to “send” Joseph through Potiphar’s wife, the baker and butler, and eventually Pharaoh himself.
            God spent much of the prophets talking about how He would work through the enemies of Israel.  “Ho Assyrian! The rod of my anger!  The staff of my fury is in his hand,” Isa 10:5.  God sent those Assyrians to punish Israel, just as certainly as He sent those two lumberjacks to save my home.  He did it because of the prayers I started the moment I saw that look in my husband’s eye, the moment I crouched on the floor trying to shield my little boys with my own body, the moment we saw that tree clinging to the pitifully few clods of dirt left on its roots.
            I will never believe otherwise.  In fact, why do we bother if we don’t believe it?
 
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. Psalms 145:18-19
 
Dene Ward

If you are under 50, this will take some explaining.
            Back in the "olden days," as my boys used to call them, you only got a couple, or maybe three channels on your television set—usually one each of the Big Three national networks back then.  And none of this hour long set up and downloading and hooking up to satellite dishes or cables.  You bought the thing, you took it home, you plugged it in, turned it on, and, voila! you could watch TV.
            One more thing you had to do was unfold the antenna, usually two metal rods, telescoped inside themselves.  You pulled out each rod to the desired length, then moved them around until the picture cleared up.  They usually wound up in some sort of V, which accounts for the name you might have heard your parents or grandparents use, "rabbit ears."  Depending upon how far away you were from the station, or in which direction it lay, your antenna might look more like an L than a V, or one side might be much shorter than the other.  Once you figured it out, you just remembered that ABC was a perfect V, CBS was an L that looked like nine o'clock, and NBC was an almost perfect straight line—or whatever configuration yours needed to get each channel.
            Everywhere we lived we got all three channels, but one was always a little snowy.  Sometimes it had ghost images.  Sometimes the horizontal and vertical holds wouldn't "hold."  In fact, we had one that we had to whack on the top to get the vertical hold to work.  And here is where the tin foil comes in.  Sometimes you had to take a square of aluminum foil (I have no idea why we all called it "tin foil") and wrap it around one arm of the antenna, creating a shiny silver flag on one end.  Sometimes it took one on each arm of the antenna.  And usually, when the person putting it on walked up to the TV, the picture improved so dramatically that we all shouted, "Stop!  Don't move!"  But of course, we couldn't expect anyone to stand perfectly still for the entire program, especially if his arms were halfway up ready to wrap the foil flag in place, and most especially if he couldn't watch the show himself during that time.
            I am sure that sounds incredibly primitive to many of you younger folks.  I am told that the reason the foil flags worked was that they increased the bandwidth of the antenna and the aperture so you could receive more of the incoming radiation.  Sounds like so much gobbledy-gook to me, but it did work.  Which leads us to today's lesson.
            Upon occasion, some have asked me if saying a prayer silently really counts.  If you will check out the 57th and 59th psalms you will see that they are described as "Maskils," and were prayed when David was hiding from Saul in a cave.  While most of those Hebrew designations for specific psalms are unknown, some scholars will make what amounts to "educated guesses."  C. H. Bullock suggests that "maskil" might refer to "silent prayers."  Most of the time Jews prayed aloud—it was the custom.  But at least once, when David was hiding in the back of a cave, Saul was sleeping in the front of the same cave.  Praying aloud might have defeated its purpose!
            When we try to lay restrictions upon prayers, our stance, their wording, and their occasion, I wonder if we aren't being a little like people trying to put tin foil on antennas.  We keep thinking we can make the reception better.  God doesn't need tin foil flags on your prayers to hear them.  His end of the matter works just fine.  It's more a matter of what you need on your end--a receptive soul, a humble spirit, a penitent heart.  It might come at a time when praying aloud would be inappropriate or simply impossible.  You don't have to worry.  He can hear those prayers just fine.  No snow.  No ghost images.  No problems with vertical holds or horizontal holds.  Just a crystal clear picture of a Father who loves you and a Lord who died for you, two Beings who want to hear from you every chance they get.  If David can pray silently, crouched in the back of a dark, dank cave, trying his best to breathe quietly and stay absolutely still, it seems to me that God is not nearly as picky as some of my brethren are.
            Just pray, folks, silently or aloud, standing or lying, in whatever words your heart needs to say.  I guarantee you won't need a box of tin foil to be heard.
 
 And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people's way.” For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite (Isa 57:14-15).
 
Dene Ward
 

We went a long time before we finally gave in and bought a cell phone.  It was an expense we did not need, and an aggravation we did not want.  I am not the servant of my phone and will not allow it to have me running at its beck and call!  But finally the phone companies took down most of the phone booths I had used when there was an emergency or I just needed to make some unexpected last minute arrangements.  I had to have a phone for those things. 
            It still isn’t the cure for everything, especially where I live.  While I may be one of the only people in the state of Florida to actually use her cell phone for emergencies only, when I need to use it, I really need to use it.  Then it becomes more than a little aggravating to get only one or two bars or worse, the big red X—no service.  Wherever that tower is, it is to the southwest, and I have spent a lot of time wandering around in my southern field trying to turn that red X into at least three bars so I will hear more than static and be less likely dropped. 
            Once I was meandering with such rapt attention on that tiny little screen that when I finally got my three bars and stood stock still so I wouldn’t lose them, I found myself jumping around a moment later, covered in fire ants.  The only place I could get reception was in an ant bed!
            But cell towers do not matter when you need the Lord.  Whenever His children need Him, he is just a word or a thought away.  You don’t even have to dial, and you certainly don’t have to wander around outside in the heat or cold or rain trying to get a signal.  “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you,” James tells us (4:8).  Indeed when I looked up the word in a concordance, I discovered that the only reason God is ever “far” from us is because we have gone far from Him (Isa 29:13; 33:13;  46:12; etc.).
            The next time you pull out that little monstrosity, remind yourself how blessed you really are.  You have a Father in Heaven who will answer your call no matter how many bars your spirit has left within you.  He will hear you, even if you only have strength left to whisper.
 
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need, Heb 4:16.
 
Dene Ward

Most of us know the story of Hannah who asked God for a son and promised to give him back.  She certainly made an amazing vow and an astounding sacrifice I can scarcely understand.  But do we consider her many examples in prayer?
            Hannah was the second wife of a man of Ephraim, a Levite (1 Chron 6:33-38) named Elkanah.  The story reminds me a bit of Leah and Rachel, except that Hannah  and Peninnah were not sisters, and Hannah, the favored wife, was far more righteous and God-fearing than Rachel, who stole her father’s household gods (Gen 31:19) and nagged Jacob to death about her inability to conceive as if it were his fault (Gen 30:1,2).  Going to God was Rachel’s last resort, after first badgering Jacob, then offering her handmaid (Gen 30:3) and finally using mandrakes (Gen 30:14), the aphrodisiac of the day.  You should take a few minutes sometime and read the meanings of her children’s names (by her handmaid) if you want a flavor of her mindset, and compare them with the names of Leah’s children.  Then of course, there was Joseph.  When God answered her prayer for her own child, she named him, “Give me another one.”  Look at the marvelous contrast of Hannah, who after asking for a child and receiving him, gave him up to God, with no promise that she would ever have another.
            Hannah shows us what prayer is supposed to be—not some halfhearted muttering of ritual phrases, but a “pouring out of the soul” 1 Sam 1:15.  She prayed so fervently that Eli, watching her, thought she was drunk.  As she told Eli, “Out of the abundance of my complaint and my provocation have I spoken” v 16.  Her prayer life was such that her relationship with Jehovah gave her the confidence to tell him exactly how she felt, in the plainest of speech, evidently.  You do not speak to someone that way unless you have spent plenty of time with him and know him intimately.  Are we that close to God?
            She also teaches us what prayer should do for us.  Look at the contrast between v 10 and v 18.  Before her prayer “she was in bitterness of soul…and wept sore.”  Afterward, she “went her way and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.” 
            Of course, Hannah had the reassurances of a priest and judge that God would give her what she had prayed for, but don’t we have the assurance of the Holy Spirit through the word He gave that God listens and answers our prayers?  Shouldn’t we exhibit some measure of ease after our prayers?      In whom do we have our faith?  If the doctors say it is hopeless, do we pray anyway?  Do we carry our umbrellas, even though the weatherman says, “No rain in sight?”  Do we pray on and on and on, even when it seems that what we ask will never come to pass?  God does not run by a timetable like we do.  Hannah had the faith that says, “It’s in God’s hands now,” and she was able to get on with her life.  Life does go on, no matter which answer we get, and God expects us to continue to serve Him with a “thy will be done” attitude.
          “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” James tells us in 5:16.  Hannah shows us it works for righteous women as well.  Can people tell by our lives that we believe it?
 
Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.  From the end of the earth will I call unto you, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.  For you have been a refuge to me, a strong tower from the enemy.  I will dwell in your tabernacle forever.  I will take refuge in the covert of your wings.  Psa 61:1-4
 
Dene Ward

Sometimes I think in our efforts to be so careful about doing exactly what God has said to do, we ruin perfectly simple commands with all sorts of convoluted logic.  I recently heard one of those old notions again:  since we cannot pray 24 hours a day, “Pray without ceasing,” must mean to be in a prayerful attitude all the time.  When I was a child I never did understand that, but I assumed I would when I grew up.  I still don’t.  It says “pray,” not be in a prayerful attitude, and exactly what is a prayerful attitude anyway?  I know for a fact that you cannot be in a prayerful attitude 24 hours a day any more than you can pray like that.

Have you ever tried to play a 40 page Beethoven sonata from memory?  Believe me; trying to remember the fingering and the notes, not to mention getting the nuances just right, takes all the concentration you can muster.  How about singing German lieder?  As an American who does not speak the language, trying not only to remember words that sound like gibberish to me, but knowing when the “ch” sound is a frontward cat hiss and when it is a backward throat scrape, takes all the brain power I have.  I am sure that some of the things you do take equal concentration—one cannot do them and pray at the same time, nor even have a prayerful attitude.  And I defy anyone to have a prayerful attitude while he is asleep!

One of the works of the Holy Spirit was to take God’s words and put them into words we humans could understand, 1 Cor 2:6-13. The way to understand 1Thes 5:17 is simply to use words and phrases the way they are ordinarily used.

Suppose you have a checkup with your doctor.  He says your cholesterol and blood pressure are both up, and asks, “Have you stopped taking your medicine?  Have you stopped exercising?”  No, you tell him, but instead of believing you he says, “How can you lie to me like that?  I am standing right here in front of you and you are neither exercising nor taking your medicine at this very moment!”  I hope you would get a new doctor immediately because you certainly cannot communicate with this one.  You have not stopped taking your medicine because you still take every dose on schedule.  You have not stopped exercising because you walk every morning.  Nothing has caused you to change those habits.  Just because you are not doing it at that particular moment does not mean you have “ceased,” and anyone with common sense would know that.

How about a Biblical example?  Daniel prayed three times a day, Dan 6:10.  When his enemies tricked the king into making the law that anyone caught praying to anyone besides him would be cast into a den of lions, did Daniel cease to pray?  We all know he did not. He still prayed three times a day.

So the passage means “Don’t stop praying.”  If you begin to have one problem after another, don’t blame it on God and stop praying.  If unbelievers make fun of you, calling you a superstitious fool for believing in a higher power, don’t be embarrassed and stop praying.   If you have great successes, don’t start relying on yourself, forgetting that God can take it away in a flash--remember the great privilege you have, and don’t stop praying.  Pray without ceasing.
 
Bow down your ear, Oh Jehovah, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.  Preserve my soul, for I am godly. Oh my God, save your servant, who trusts in you.  Be merciful unto me, O God, for I cry unto you all day long, Psalm 86:1-3.
 
Dene Ward

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven, Matt 6:10.
            All my life I have thought of this in a passive sense.  I pray for something, just as the Lord did in Matt 26:39, 42, and then add, “But thy will be done,” as if God is the only one who is expected to do His will.  Then suddenly one day I thought, “Doing God’s will is the simple definition for obedience.”  If I am praying for His will to be done, I have an obligation to do that will myself.
            I cannot pray, “Thy will be done” if I look at one of his commands and say, “But God wouldn’t mind if…”  I can’t expect an answer to my prayers if my answer to His will is, “I do well at everything else and this is such a small thing.”  If I do not obey in even one instance I am not doing His will.
            So I did a quick little study.  I may have thought that “God’s will” had more to do with what He does, but I was wrong.  Notice the following.
            “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, Matt 7:21.  A lot of people out there go around doing “good deeds,” but if doing God’s will doesn’t come first, it isn’t worth a thing.
            For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother, Matt 12:50.  You are not in the Lord’s family if you are finding excuses for your disobedience.
            Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work, John 4:34    If you want to follow in his footsteps, doing the Father’s will must become an essential of life, every bit as much as food.
            If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority, John 7:17.  You can’t go around claiming to know and teach about Jesus if you are not obeying the Father.
            Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, Rom 12:2.  The only way to know God’s will is to change your life.
            For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality, 1Thess 4:3.  You are not doing the Father’s will if you are engaging in sexual sins of any kind.
            Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you, 1Thess 5:18. You are not doing God’s will if you are whining and complaining about your station in life, about your trials, about the suffering you must deal with, especially those due to your faith.
            For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised, Heb 10:36.  It isn’t always easy to do the Father’s will and the task is never completed.  One good deed doesn’t mean your work is finished.
            [God will] equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen, Heb 13:21.  No matter how hard it seems, he will see that you have whatever you need to do His will.  If you didn’t manage to do it, it was your fault, not His.
            The next time you end a prayer, “Thy will be done,” remember that you are as much responsible for that as He is.  If you aren’t willing to do His will in every aspect of your life, why should He believe you mean it when you pray?  And why should He do what YOU want, when you won’t do what HE wants?
 
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God, 1Pet 4:1-2.
 
Dene Ward

It’s one of those recipes you don’t really like to admit that you use, especially if you have a reputation for baking from scratch or cooking multi-course meals for your anniversary dinner, meals like a leek and Swiss chard tart as an appetizer, an entrée of veal shanks with sage over polenta with broccoli rabe, ending with pear croustade in a hazelnut crust.  Somehow this recipe doesn’t fit into that mold.
 
             But once in awhile life gets hectic, stressed, entirely too busy, and you find yourself needing a dish for a potluck with exactly one hour to cook it and no extra time for much prep.  So then I pull out this three can, two bottle, two bag recipe, dump it all in a pot and go on with my life.  I have learned not to let it bother me when this stuff gets more raves than another recipe I spent six hours on.  I have also learned not to tell anyone what’s in it until they taste it because it is truly a weird concoction, but oh, so good.

              Those Party Meatballs, as the recipe calls them, have been my salvation more than once.  Sometimes we need something easy instead of something elaborate.  If it meets the need and is just as tasty, who cares?  There will be plenty more times for elegant three layer cakes and brined, crusted. herb-infused entrees.

              God understands that, too.  When I was very young I thought you couldn’t pray except at certain times, using certain phrases, making sure it was long and full of heavy, theological words and concepts, usually from the King James Version.  Why I thought that I don’t know.  The Bible is full of examples of people praying in all sorts of situations, all sorts of postures, long prayers, short prayers, prayers of profundity and simple prayers of just a few words.  Maybe that was the problem:  I just hadn’t studied enough myself.  All I had done was listen to what others told me.

              Now I know better.  Now I know that in the middle of a crisis I can send up a quick prayer for control, for calm, for an easy resolution.  I don’t always need an opening salutation, I can just say, “Help me, Lord.”  I don’t have to preface everything with my own unworthiness.  Usually in the middle of a problem, that is already on my mind anyway and God knows it just as well as I do. 

              I don’t have to find a quiet spot alone.  I can talk to God in the middle of a milling crowd if my child has wandered off and I can’t immediately find him.  In fact, I can scream to Him if I want to.  God understands if there isn’t time to hunt up a closet right now.  In fact, He is more than pleased that I think of Him first in trying circumstances.  He is thrilled that my relationship with Him can be so spontaneous.  There will be other times for reverence.

              God makes it easy for you to talk to Him.  People who have set up word and posture requirements, with ideological notions of “propriety,” are the ones who make it difficult to approach God.  He went to a lot of trouble and pain and sacrifice to make Himself available at any time in any circumstance. 

              You may not want Party Meatballs all the time, but when the time is short and the need is urgent, they will do just fine.  We certainly need lengthy times of humility and reverence in our approach to God.  But God also made a simple way for us when we need Him quickly.  Don’t let anyone mess with His recipe.
 
May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, "God is great!" But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay! Psalms 70:4-5.
 
For the recipe accompanying this post click Dene's Recipes on the left sidebar.
 
Dene Ward

I thought it was just because I was a classical voice teacher who, since I live in a rural county in the South, spent a lot of time on diction--clean enunciation, and particularly those wide Southern diphthongs.  What is the point of singing if no one can understand the words?  So I thought it was just because I was sensitive to it that I kept noticing that I could not understand the words in a lot of pop music.  Finally, one day when the boys were playing a “Best Of…” tape in the car, I asked them, “Is he really saying ‘dancin’ in the fryin’ pan?’”
 
           “No, mom.  It’s dancin’ an’ prancin,’” accompanied by exaggerated eye rolls and head shakes as only teenagers can.

            Recently I discovered a whole website devoted to “Misheard Lyrics.”  I feel vindicated at last.

            But pop music is not the problem.  The singers are the problem.  Most of us can tell stories of our children just beginning to sing our hymns and the often hilarious mistakes they make.

            In the middle of the grocery store one morning, three year old Nathan said, “Sing the song about the sandals, mom.”

            “Sandals?  A church song?”

            “Yes.  All other ground is sinking sandals, other ground is sinking sand.”

            Lucas at the same age asked his grandfather to sing the song about the peas.  “He whispers sweet peas to me.”  And a few months later I heard him singing, “When the roll is called under the water.”

            Do you wonder if God has the same problem understanding our singing?  Not as long as we sing and make melody with our hearts, Eph 5:19, rather than muttering half-memorized words on automatic pilot.  What about our prayers?

            Once in a women’s class, a dear friend was praying and had trouble with a certain phrase.  No matter how she tried, it kept coming out backwards to what she intended.  Finally she just said, “Lord, you know what I mean!”

            Of course He does.  Why was that such a revelation and comfort to me?  Because we spend so much time legislating prayer, telling folks which person of the Godhead they can and cannot pray to, what things they can and cannot ask for, and what things they MUST say if they expect their prayer to get past the ceiling when the real problem is, we don’t pray enough.  No wonder!  Everyone’s afraid of doing it wrong.  Just as the Pharisees made the Law of Moses a burden (Matt 23:4), we are making what should be one of our greatest comforts in this life, a burden instead. 

            Just pray!  We have an intercessor, a mediator who is on our side and pleads our cases.  He is not standing their just waiting to stamp my particular prayer, “Disqualified!” and send it back unheard.  There are no misheard prayers in Heaven.
 
For there is one God, one mediator between God and man, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all…1 Tim 2:3.4a
And he who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.  Rom 8:27
These things says the Son of God…I am he who searches the reins and the hearts…Rev 2:18,23
 
Dene Ward

The Great Fire of London began on the morning of September 2, 1666 in the home of King Charles II's baker.  By September 6, when the fire was finally put out, 80% of London had been destroyed.  You can read a lot about that fire on history sites, but I want to focus on this today:  In that fire they used something called a "squirt," a device similar to a bicycle pump that was first used on fires in the Middle Ages.  A nozzle was placed in a container of water and a plunger pulled to suck water up into the "well" of the squirt.  It was then directed toward the fire and sprayed out.  Sort of slow going for a real fire, don't you think?  Imagine if the king's baker had had a modern fire extinguisher in his home.  London might have been saved.

             We have two fire extinguishers in the house, one behind the woodstove at the edge of the kitchen and one in a back bedroom.  They have been there so long that I don’t even notice them any more.  In fact, when I think to look at them at all, it’s to dust them because “suddenly” they look like they have grown white fur.

              Fire extinguishers are great to have around, but let’s face it, they aren’t part of a beautiful decor.  They aren’t a handy item we use everyday like a coffee pot or a can opener.  They aren’t even a once a year need like my pressure canner—at least we hope not.  The only reason we have them is “just in case,” and we want that “just in case” to never happen.  We treat fire extinguishers more like necessary evils than anything else.

              I noticed something when we studied Psalm 99 in Bible class the other day.  [Speaking of Moses, Aaron, and Samuel] In the pillar of the cloud [God] spoke to them; they kept his testimonies and the statute that he gave them. O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings, vv 7-8.

              Those two verses contain everything we need to know about who can pray to God and expect an answer.  First God spoke to them.  They listened by keeping His testimonies and statutes.  Then God answered them.

              Those three righteous men did not treat God like a fire extinguisher.  He wasn’t there just for emergencies.  He was part of their lives on a daily basis as they followed His laws and prayed for help and forgiveness.

              The psalmist is careful to point out that these men were among those “who call upon His name” (v 6).   They were not the only ones chosen to receive this blessing.  Many others “called upon His name.”  That goes for us as well.  We possess His testimonies and statutes in the written form.  All we have to do is keep them, making God a daily part of our lives, and He will hear us just like He heard them.

              The problem comes when we try to make a relationship out of one phone call, so to speak.  If we never talk to God otherwise, or more to the point, listen, He won’t listen either.  If we ignore His law with impunity, going our own headstrong way, He won’t answer—not according to Psalm 99, and several other passages (Prov 15:29; 28:9; Isa 59:2; John 9:31, etc).  We’ve seen too many heart-tugging made-for-TV movies where the old reprobate turns around at a crisis and promises God he will be good if God will just hear him this once.  God does not bargain, unless you think you are a man of the stature of Abraham, who talked with God regularly instead of treating Him like a fire extinguisher.  More often than not, old reprobates stay that way.

              Now is the time to begin that relationship, or deepen it if you already have.  If we keep God behind the woodstove until He grows some dusty fur, we needn’t think He will pay a bit of attention when we holler.
 
As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear, says the LORD of hosts, Zech 7:13.

Dene Ward

About thirty years ago, we awoke one Saturday morning to ominous gray skies and strong winds.  The forecast for the day made it dangerous to be out, so we called those we had invited for a singing that afternoon and canceled.  Instead of walking to the paper box, about a quarter mile down our driveway, Keith drove the car, and as huge, plopping raindrops began falling, parked it next to the front door when he returned.
            A few minutes later, he looked out the window by the table where he sat reading the paper and sipping a cup of coffee.  Something in his manner made me look too, but I didn’t see anything. 
            “Get the boys,” he said very quietly, “and go crouch down in the middle of the house.  Cover your faces.”  I did exactly as he said, unquestioningly.  He grew up in the Arkansas mountains, and he knew about things I had no experience with.  A few minutes later it was all over with.  What “all” was, I still did not realize.  The power had gone out, but we were still intact. 
            We stepped out of the house, and the hay barn across the field no longer had a roof.  Several water oaks and wild cherry trees were down on the long drive to the highway.  A large chinaberry had fallen right where the car had originally been parked before he decided to drive for the paper instead of walking.  It would have been flattened.
            Then we edged around the corner of the house on our bedroom side, and saw the worst of it.  A huge live oak had split.  Half had fallen on the power lines, but the line was still alive, wiggling and sparking on the ground.  The other half, its roots mostly out of the ground, leaned right over our bedroom.  We had no idea how long it would hold before it too fell and demolished our house.
            We called the power company immediately and they rushed out to take care of the live wire, but they had too many other calls to send someone to handle the tilting tree.  We would have to wait our turn.  Word gradually spread down the highway, and within an hour, two men who worked timber drove up with cables and chainsaws, and those two men, who were complete strangers to us, took the tree down safely and with no damage.  We thanked them profusely.  “That’s what neighbors are for,” they said, and off they went.
            A preacher friend who had been invited to the sing never got the message to cancel.  He showed up amid the raucous roar of chainsaws, and heard the whole story.  It impressed him enough to include it in a lesson on prayer and providence.  The people in the audience were not impressed.  Afterward they took him aside and scolded him.  “God does not act in the world today,” they reminded him.  He was astounded, and so were we.
            When we become so intent on exposing false doctrine that we blatantly ignore the truth, swinging the pendulum so far back that we miss it entirely, something is wrong with our perspective.  If God had no hand in what happened that day, then why do we bother to pray at all?  Do we not believe James? 
            “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” 5:16. 
            Do we not believe the book of Esther or the last 14 chapters of Genesis?  “God sent me,” Joseph told his brothers who had thought it was all their idea, and God continued to “send” Joseph through Potiphar’s wife, the baker and butler, and eventually Pharaoh himself.
            God spent much of the prophets talking about how He would work through the enemies of Israel.  “Ho Assyrian! The rod of my anger!  The staff of my fury is in his hand,” Isa 10:5.  God sent those Assyrians to punish Israel, just as certainly as He sent those two lumberjacks to save my home.  He did it because of the prayers I started the moment I saw that look in my husband’s eye, the moment I crouched on the floor trying to shield my little boys with my own body, the moment we saw that tree clinging to the pitifully few clods of dirt left on its roots.
            I will never believe otherwise.  In fact, why do we bother if we don’t believe it?
 
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. Psalms 145:18-19